The works of William H. Seward

Senator ol'tho (Jmi(;d Suites.

THE

WORKS

OP

WILLIAM H. SEWARD

EDITED BY

GEORGE E. BAKER

"Nature and Laws would be In an ill case, if Slavery should find what to say for itself, and Liberty
be mute; and if tyrants should find men to plead for them, and they that can waste and vanquish
tyrants, should not be able to find advocates." MILTON.

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOL. IV.

NEW EDITION

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,

BY GEO. B. BAKER,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the
Northern District of New York.

PREFACE TO VOLUME IV.

THE fourth volume of THE WORKS OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD, is
now presented to the public.

The three preceding volumes, beginning with the earliest events
of his life, closed with the enactment of the compromises of 1850.

The present volume includes the succeeding and eventful period
made memorable by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the
struggle of slavery for Kansas, the assault upon a senator in the
senate chamber by a slaveholding representative of South Carolina,
the organization of the Kepublican party, its almost successful con
test in 1856, and its triumph in the presidential election of 1860,
and by the admission of Kansas into the Union a Free State : — a
period that may be said to comprise the harvest season of those
principles which in previous years Mr. Seward had sown in the
public mind, and watched and cultivated with so much consistency
and integrity of purpose.

The Memoir begun in the first volume is continued in the follow
ing pages, down to the inauguration of a Kepublican administration.
It aims only to give a plain history of the times and events of which
Mr. Seward is so important a part. The action of Congress and the
movements of political parties during the ten years — especially such
as find illustration and comment in his speeches — are quite fully
recorded. His interesting tour through the Western states during
the last presidential campaign, including all the brief but eloquent

IV PREFACE.

speeches which he made at various places in response to the ad
dresses presented to him, forms a considerable portion of the Memoir,
These impromptu speeches contain many beautiful passages and are
full of Mr. Seward's peculiar sentiments.

The ORATIONS and ADDRESSES, following the Memoir, are among
the most valuable productions of their author's fertile mind. They
are entitled, The Destiny of America ; The True Basis of American
Independence ; The Physical, Moral and Intellectual Development
of the American People ; and The Pilgrims and Liberty.

A BIOGRAPHY OF DE WITT CLINTON, occupies the next twenty
pages of the volume. This is an original paper,1 prepared with that
just appreciation of its subject which Mr. Seward is known to enter
tain. It gives more clearly than any biography, yet written, of that
illustrious man, the political springs which moved his public life.

POLITICAL SPEECHES, is the title of the next division of the
volume. The limits of a Preface will allow but a passing allusion
to any of the contents Of the volume. We can only, therefore, call
attention to these speeches — some twenty in number, beginning with
the advent of the Eepublican party, in 1854, and extending through
the campaigns of 1856, 1858 and 1860 — as containing the history
and philosophy of the great party which now governs the country.

The SPEECHES IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, embraced
in this volume, present an eloquent and vivid history of the Kansas-
struggle from its inception in 1854, when Mr. Douglas introduced
the bill to organize the territory, to the final success of Freedom in
1861, when the Senate by a decisive vote admitted the new state
into the Union.

Mr. Seward's latest speeches, on THE STATE OF THE UNION, con
clude the volume.

His speeches in the Senate, with those before the p'eople in their
primary assemblies, make a text book from which the richest instruc-

1 A portion of it appears also in the New American Cyclopedia.

PREFACE. V

tions may be drawn in the new Era upon which our country is just
entering.

Perhaps the criticism that in some quarters greeted the earlier
volumes may salute this — that herein is Mr. Seward proven to be
an Agitator. But History vindicates the agitator, from Paul to
Luther and from Luther to the century of Eomilly, Wilberforce
and Jefferson. That Mr. Seward has been an Agitator to no pur
pose will hardly, now, be contended, if the to-day at Washington
be contrasted with the morning when the Atherton resolutions were
introduced into the House, or with the hour when Mr. Seward,
almost alone, confronted an unbroken column of pro-slavery senators.

Nevertheless, as Mr. Seward himself has said, the verdict is not
to be looked for in the passing hour. " There is Yet in that word
Hereafter."

Neither, is this the place for vindication or eulogy, if any were
needed. The four volumes speak for themselves.

In those before published, appear Mr. Seward's Orations and
Discourses ; his Occasional Addresses and Speeches ; his Notes on
New York and Executive Messages ; his Forensic Arguments and
Political Writings ; his Correspondence with the Virginia and
Georgia Governors, and his Letters from Europe in 1833 ; his
Speeches in the Senate of New York, and in the Senate of the
United States.

The friendly zeal which has prepared these volumes, may have
given place or prominence to some sentiments and speeches which
a timid policy would have suppressed. In similar collections an
Index Expurgatorius, it is charged, has been allowed to swallow up
the living issues of the day.

But the Works of William H. Seward could not escape an injunc
tion writ from their primary author, unless the boldness and frank
ness of his thoughts had faithfully manipulated the types.

Mr. Seward's sentences are all so full of the inspiration of Liberty
and Justice, and so like aphorisms, that it is difficult to abbreviate

VI PREFACE.

or to suppress a page without loss to the public or injustice to the
author's fame. Therefore, what at first may appear to be an
editor's purpose to swell the size of the volume, will, on a closer
view, be found a necessity.1

In the State Library at Albany, within the past year, has been
erected the marble bust of the Ex-Governor and Senator of New
York. It is midway between the alcove of History and Philosophy,
and its gaze is directed at that immense compilation of brain labor —
the Edinburgh Review. A lady visitor, who was stranger to the
place and face, pausing before it said, " Here beams in expression,
thought, benevolence, earnestness and devotion to principle."

"When the partisan rancor and political schisms of to-day shall
have subsided, when prejudice shall have given place to candor,
the Muse of History, we believe, will say the same of these volumes,
and of those which time may add.

THE EDITOR.

March 4, 1861.

1 Another volume like the present will be required for the speeches yet remaining in the
editor's hands, unpublished. Several important speeches intended for this volume, and to
•which references are made in the Memoir, are unavoidably crowded out. An APPENDIX to the
present volume contains the eloquent speeches made at the Chicago Convention ; the Platform ;
and also the addresses oi welcome presented to Mr. Seward on his visit to the Western States.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV.

MEMOIR, BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL, 13

A Retrospect, 13 — The Struggle for Freedom in 1850, 15 — Mr. Seward's Course,
16 — Death of President Taylor, 19 — The Compromisers Triumphant, 20 — Nomina
tions of General Scott and Frank Pierce, 21 — Defeat of the Whigs and Supposed
Overthrow of Mr. Seward, 22 — Oration at Columbus, and Address before the
American Institute, 23 — The Repeal of the Missouri Compromia^ 24— Mr. Steward**
Speeches, 27— The New England Clergymen, 29— The Pacific Railroad and the
HoHesfeaxT Law, 31 — The Fugitive Slave Act, 32 — Mr. Seward's Reelection, 33 —
The Plymouth Oration, 36 — Aggressive Acts of Slavery, 36 — Kansas Affairs, 37 —
The Assault on Charles Sumner, 40 — Organisation nf thA "RppuMipan Party, 4.1 —
Presidential Election of 1856, 43 — Fulfillment of Mr. Seward's Prophecy, 44 — The
Atlantic Telegraph, 45— The Tariff Assailed, 46— The Dred Scott Decision, 47—
Reconstruction of the Supreme Court, 49 — Duties on Railroad Iron, 50 — The
Lecompton Matter, 50 — The English Bill, 53 — Oregon and Minnesota, 54 — Mormons
and Filibusters, 55 — The Elections of 1858, 56 — Mr. Seward's Irrepressible Conflict
Speech, 56 — Cuba, Kansas and the Pacific Railroad, $7 — The Homestead Bill, 58 —
The Indiana Senators, 60 — Acquisition of Cuba, 61 — Overland Mails, 61 — Mr.
Seward Visits Europe and the Holy Land — Departure and Return, 63 — Captain
John Brown takes Harper's Ferry, 68 — The Elections of 1859, 69 — Death of
Broderick, 70 — Election of Speaker — The Impending Crisis, 70 — Mr. Se ward's
Great Speech in the Senate, February 29, 1860, 71 — The Spring Elections of 1860,
favorable, 73 — Presidental Nominations and Platforms. 74 — The Republican Con
vention at Chicago, 76 — The Ballot, 77 — Mr. Seward's Cordial Approval of the
Candidates and Platform, 78 — His Yisit to New England, Reception Speeches, 81 —
Enters the Canvass for Mr. Lincoln, 84 — Remarkable Tour and Speeches through
the West — DETROIT, 84 — LANSING, 85 — KALAMAZOO, 89 — MADISON, 90 — LA
CROSSE, 93— ST. PAUL, 94— DUBUQUE, 96— In Missouri— CHILLICOTHE, 97— ST.
JOSEPH, 98 — In Kansas — LEAVENWORTH, 100 — LAWRENCE, 101 — LEAVENWORTH,
102 — ATCHISON, 103 — In Missouri, again — ST. Louis, 106 — In Illinois — SPRING
FIELD, Abraham Lincoln, 107 — CHICAGO, 108 — CLEVELAND, Ohio, 110 — BUFFALO,
111 — AUBURN, 113 — End of Campaign. 113 — Result, 114 — Celebration of Victory,
115 — Admission of Kansas — Secretary of State — Speeches on Secession and the
State of the Union, 117.

nil CONTENTS OF VOL. IV.

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES. 119

\
* Oration at Columbus, Ohio, September 14, 1853 — The Destiny of America, 121.

Address before the American Institute, New York, October 20, 1853— The True
Basis of American Independence, 144.

-Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, New Haven, July 26,
1854— The Physical, Moral and Intellectual Development of the American People, 160.

Oration on Forefathers' Day, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 21, 1855 — The
Pilgrims and Liberty, 179 — Speech at the Dinner, 203.

BIOGRAPHY or DE WITT CLINTON, 206

Birth and Parentage — George Clinton — Political Relations — The Council of Appoint
ment, 209 — John Jay — Party Spirit — Slavery — Mayor of New York, 211 — Hamil
ton, Burr, Lewis and Tompkins — Candidate for President, 213 — Projects the Canal,
216 — A Private Citizen in Adversity — Elected Governor, 219 — His Administra
tion — Death.

POLITICAL SPEECHES, 223

The Advent of the Republican Party: The Privileged Class^lbany, October^! 2,
1855, 225^15ieXJorfesr'andlKe Unsis^l^u^oTOctober f9, 1855, 241— The Domi
nant Class in the Republic, Detroit, October 2, 1856, 253 — The Political Parties of
the Day, Auburn, October 21, 1856, 276— The Irrepressible Conflict, Rochester,
October 25,1858, 289— The National Divergence and Return, Detroit, September 4,
1860, 303 — Democracy the Chief Element of Government, Madison, September 12,
1860, 319— The Constitution Interpreted— an Extract— Madison, September 11, I860,
329— Political Equality the National Idea, St. Paul, September, 1860, 330— The
National Idea ; Its Perils and Triumphs, Chicago, October 3, 1860, 348 — The Repub
lican Policy and the one Idea, Dubuque, September 21, 1860, 368 — Young Men and
the Future — an Extract— Cleveland, October 4, 1860, 384 — Kansas the Savior of
Freedom, Lawrence, September 26, 1860, 385 — The Policy of the Fathers of the
Republic, Seneca Falls, October 31, 1860, 397 — Trade in Slaves — an Extract — La
Crosse. September 14, 1860, 409— The Republican Party and Secession, New York,
November 2, 1860, 410 — Disunion and Secession — Extract — La Crosse, September
14, 1860, 421— The Night before the Election, Auburn, November 5, 1860, 422—
The Past and the Future— Extract— Cleveland, October 4, 1860, 430.

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 431

Nebraska and Kansas — Freedom and Public Faith — Repeal of theMissouri. Com-

Second Sveecfi, the night of the final paaaapp of

tfrs^Nebraska-Kansas Bill, May25T 1854. 464. The Immediate^Admission of
Kansas — Emigrant Aid Societies — Elections and Laws — Impeachment of the Presi
dent — Compromises and Disunion, April 9, 1856, 479. Kansas Usurpations —
Speech against Mr. Douglas's second Enabling Bill and in Favor of the Immediate
VOL. IV. 1

CONTENTS OF VOL. IV. IX

Admission of Kansas into the Union — Slavery and Compromises, July 2, 1856,
512. Kansas and the Army — The Spurious Laws — Barbarous Enactments-
Usurpations, August 7, 1856, 535. The same, at the Extraordinary Session — Com
promises and Popular Sovereignty, August 27, 1856, 559. Lecompton and,
Kansas — The Lecompton Constitution — The Dred Scott Decision and the Presi
dent — The Kansas Governors — The Supreme Court, March 3, 1858, 574. The
same — The English Bill — The Conference Committee — Compromises and Peace — •
Closing Speech, April 30, 1858, 604. The State of the Country— Speech on the
Bill to Admit Kansas into the Union under the Wyandotte Constitution — Labor
States and Capital Stares, February, 1860, 619. Secession— Speech at the New
England Dinner in New York City, December 21, 1860 — Secession and Disunion
Considered — General Views, 645. The State of the Union — Speech in the Senate —
A Review of the Great Controversy — Election of Lincoln, January 12, 1861, 651.
The same — Remarks on Presenting a Mammoth Petition from the Merchants of
New York in Favor of Preserving the Union — Debate with Senator Mason, January
30, 1861, 670.

APPENDIX, 679

The Chicago Platform — Speeches at the Chicago Convention, Messrs. EVARTS,
ANDREW, SCHURZ, BLAIR, BROWNING, BALDWIN, &c. — Reception Speeches of Gov.
Banks, Messrs. Longyear, Abbott, Gov. Randall, Judge Goodrich, Messrs. North,
Allison, Boynton, Wilder, Mayor Deitzler, Gov. Robinson, Mayor Wentworth, &c.

Mr. Seward's Speech to New York Delegation at Washington, on Inauguration
Day March 4, 1861, on his retiring from office as Senator, 692.

ALPHABETICAL INDEX, 693

•4lf you would iiiii/ko it promote most effectually all precious*
Interests, IDEJIDIOA.TiE it, I enjoin upon you., as our fore-
ftvthers dedicatecl all the Institutions whilclx they estatolislied,
to the cause of

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM H. SEWARD

,25785

"All my life long

" I have beheld with most respect the man
" Who knew himself and knew the ways before him *
"And from amongst them chose considerately
"With a clear courage — not a blindfold courage;
" And having chosen, with a steadfast mind
" Pursued his purposes." TAYLOR.

MEMOIR.1

A GLANCE at the memoir of MR. SEWARD, as contained in the first
volume of these works, shows us a boyhood passed in the patriotic
county of Orange; inspired alike by the ennobling scenery of its
natural grandeur and beauty, and the historic recollections of West
Point, Newburgh, and Minisink ; reminding us how consistently with
such early associations, his life, in all its vicissitudes, has displayed the
broadest patriotism and the sincerest humanity. It shows us a union
from ancestry of Welch perseverance and Celtic generosity that is
traceable in every foot-print of his public and private progress. It
introduces him to us as a faithful student at Union College ascending
to the summit of academic honors, only through the flinty paths of
analytical knowledge, acquiring a mental vigor that is noted in every
sentence of oration, conversation and private letter, as distinctly as
the apple-blossom lives in the autumn fruit. It shows us a young
man, not dependent upon a father's competence, journeying far
southward to become an instructor, where the practical lessons in
the social and political degradations of slavery there learned, became
a part of his after career. The glance acquaints us with his legal
novitiate with John Duer, and Ogden Hoffman, who loved and
respected him to the last of their distinguished lives ; and then dis
covers him in his earliest professional struggles at Auburn, afar from
those allurements of city life that so poorly temper thought or
strengthen mental conflict. How rarely indeed do districts other
than rural, furnish us with statesmen !

1 Continued from Vol. I.

14 A EETROSPECT.

We see him entering public life just as the debates on the
Missouri Compromise had closed — at the age of twenty -three writing
a convention address with such prophetic sentences as these :

" When, in Republican states, men attempt to entrench themselves beyond the
popular reach, their designs require investigation." "The Judiciary, once our
pride, is humbled and degraded." l

Our glance shows him entering the state senate quickening its
legislative pulse with the suggestions of moral courage, sublime in
a young man of nine-and-twenty years, yet put forth with fearless
ness and self-abnegation.

It shows him suffering a gubernatorial defeat only to be recom
mended the more strongly for a renomination and success. As
governor we behold him, original, bold, perceptive, and self-reliant
in his views and actions — extorting admiration from the very jaws
of calumny.

And here we may remark that no position in public life more
thoroughly tests a man's ability and character than that of governor
of the state of New York. If he who occupies it be not a truly
great man, a part of a term will be sufficient to make it apparent.
The political knowledge, the financial ability, the legal profundity,
the administrative tact, the accomplished yet sincere courtesy, the
patience of detail, the coolness of demeanor, the quickness of appre
hension, the promptitude of decision, the force of independence and
the dignity of character required in a true executive officer of a
state like New York, are equal to those several qualities demanded
of any ruler in this country or in Europe. When we consider the
great metropolis, itself containing a nation, the numerous growing
towns, villages and cities, the gigantic systems of internal improve
ment, the foreign governments on the north, the New England
states on the east, Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the south,
and the great inland seas on the west ; and the party animosities,
crime, poverty, tyrannical wealth, exorbitant monopolies, delicate
issues of reciprocity, extent of commerce, incessant reforms, unceas
ing agitations, and jealousy of sects, that exist within and around
the Empire State, with all of which, its governor is compelled to
deal, the estimate we have given of the importance of the office
seems not over-stated.

i See Vol. III., page 335.

THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN 1850. 15

Our glance shows him again as a lawyer turning aside from the
affairs of state to those of the humblest client, with a fidelity and
integrity of service only equaled by his conscientious devotion to
the law and equity of each particular case.

Finally it shows him a senator in congress, asserting with elo
quence and courage the supremacy of immutable right in national
affairs over the arts of compromise and expediency ; standing there,
almost alone, setting in motion the tide of freedom, which, rolling
from the Aroostook to the Rio del Norte, thunders its warnings in
the ears of the million voters who have too long dallied in subser
viency to the influence of slavery.

The memoir which follows shows Mr. Seward still in the senate,
yearly saluting new associates who displace those who have grown
false to freedom and worthless to their constituents — himself, in the
judgment of all calm and candid observers, the foremost statesman of
American Progress.

THE SUCCESS of the whig party in 1848 was promoted by the
expectation that it would prevent the introduction of slavery into
the new territories where it was already prohibited by the Mexican
laws. The representatives from the free states were understood to
be pledged to that wise arid beneficent policy. It was assumed that
the new president (Gen. Taylor) would not interpose the executive
veto should that policy be adopted. Mr. Seward was committed in
its favor, both by the circumstances of his election and the well
known tenor of his political life. On the meeting of congress in
1849 several whig members from the south apprehended the adop
tion of that policy and refused to unite with their northern brethren
in the election of a speaker. After delaying the organization of the
house for a number of weeks they finally joined with their political
opponents and elected a democratic speaker from one of the slave-
holding states.1 As soon as the house was organized, the southern
party demanded the establishment of the new territories, without
any condition as to the introduction of slavery.

1 Howell Cobb of Georgia. He received 102 votes ; Mr. Winthrop of Massachusetts, 99 ;
David Wilmot, 8 ; Scattering, 12.

16 MEMOIR.

The representatives from the free states earnestly protested against
this course. Mr. Se.ward took an active part in the opposition.
Faithful to their convictions they insisted on the insertion of the
Wilmot proviso (which was identical in its spirit with Mr. Jefferson's
proviso in the ordinance of 1787) in any act ordaining the govern
ment of the territories. President Taylor took a middle ground in
his message to congress. He recommended that the territories
should be left without any preliminary organization, under the
existing Mexican laws, which forbade African bondage, until they
should have obtained the requisite population to form voluntary
constitutions and apply for admission as states of the Union. Cali
fornia and New Mexico were already taking steps for this
purpose. The recommendation of the president was condemned by
the slave states while it met the approval of the friends of freedom.
At an early period it was opposed by Mr. Clay. After great reserve
and deliberation Mr. Webster subsequently declared his hostility to
the proposed measure. Mr. Seward, who upheld the recommendation,
thus became the leader of the administration party in both houses
of congress. The antagonists of slavery with whom he cooperated,
a minority in the senate, had a decided majority in the house of
representatives. Each branch of congress became the scene of vehe
ment debate. The slaveholding party indulged in such violent and
inflammatory language as to threaten the derangement of pui: it-
business and even the disorganization of congress. This party was
sustained by the Nashville convention — a body of southern delegates
assembled for the purpose of adopting measures for the secession
of the slave states from the Union. But neither President Taylor,
nor Mr. Seward was intimidated by these proceedings. They both
persisted in the course which was sanctioned alike by justice and
conscience. Mr. Clay, on the other hand, believed the existence of
the Union was at stake. Sustained by Mr. Webster he consented to
adopt the non-intervention policy, the avowal of which by Gren. Cass
had made him the candidate of the democratic party, in the recent
presidential election. Mr. Clay now brought forward his famous
compromise scheme and urged its adoption with all the force of his
glowing and persuasive eloquence. Appealing to the sentiment of
patriotism, to the prevailing attachment to the Union, and to the
love of peace, he represented the acceptance of his measures as
essential to the final settlement of the issues- which had grown out

THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN 1850. 17

of the existence of slavery, in the United States. Mr. Clay's views
were sustained by the leading advocates of slavery in congress. For
the most part these belonged to the democratic party. They were
pledged to insist on a congressional declaration of the right of slave
holders to carry their slaves into any of the territories of the United
States. But the compromise was opposed by most of the represen
tatives of the free states, who were determined to make no further
concessions than those involved in the position taken by President
Taylor. The whigs of the slave states on the other hand gave
the compromise their hearty support. It was defended also by the
more especial or personal friends of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster among
the whigs of the north, as well as by a large portion of the demo
cratic party in the free states. The more conservative classes in the
great northern cities were induced to give it their support through
fear of the loss of southern trade and patronage, and a growing
discontent with the policy of the new administration. The friends
of the compromise moreover endeavored to arouse the fears of the
people by showing the danger of a dissolution of the Union which
was threatened as they alleged by the policy of the president.

Mr. Seward, of course, was denounced as a desperate and danger
ous agitator. His resistance to the compromise was represented as
contumacy. He was accused of wishing to obtain personal aggrand
izement, even upon the ruins of the Constitution and the wreck of
the Union. These reproaches were not without effect. They pro
duced a partial division of the whig party in the free states, and
awakened a prejudice in many quarters against the name of Mr.
Seward. But he was not shaken from his steadfastness. With
admirable firmness and self-possession he nobly resisted the current
of popular agitation and congressional excitement. The dignity of
his bearing and the wisdom of his counsels during the stormy period
receive ample illustration from his speeches, as recorded in previous
volumes of these works.

The first applicant for admission into the Union was California,
which had adopted a free constitution in a general convention. The
friends of the compromise refused to grant her demand, except on
certain stringent conditions. They insisted that congress should
waive a prohibition of slavery in organizing the territories of Utah

VOL. IV. 3

18 MEMOIR.

and New Mexico, and at the same time enact a new and offensive law
for the capture of fugitive slaves in the free states.

Mr. Seward demanded the admission of California without con
dition, without qualification and without compromise, leaving other
subjects to distinct and independent legislation. No fair man, it
would seem, could doubt the wisdom or justice of such a course.
The partisans of the compromise contended that Utah and New
Mexico should be organized without a prohibition of slavery, at the
very moment when the latter was known to have adopted a free
constitution and to have chosen representatives to ask an admission
into the Union. On this question, Mr. Seward maintained that New
Mexico should be admitted into the Union as a free state, or left to
enjoy the protection from slavery afforded by existing Mexican laws.

The fugitive slave law, which was proposed as a condition of the
admission of California, met with a determined opponent in Mr.
Seward, from the first. He clearly foresaw the impolicy as well as
the cruelty of the contemplated measure. He argued with no less
humanity than good faith, that no public exigency required a new
law on the subject, that the bill in question was as unconstitutional
as it was repugnant to every just sentiment, and that the principles
and habits of the northern people would inevitably place insur
mountable obstacles in the way of its execution.1 Admitting the
justice of these views, the compromisers demanded that they should
be set aside lest the determination of slaveholders should lead to
a dissolution of the Union. Mr. Seward was incapable of yielding
to such unworthy terrors. He constantly passed them by, as too
trivial for serious notice. At the same time he urgently pointed out
the danger of quailing before the threats of the South. Knowing
the disposition engendered by slavery, he insisted that any craven,
truckling on the part of the free states would lead to unbounded
aggressions by the slave power in the future. With prophetic saga
city he was enabled to cast the horoscope of coming ills which have
since been realized in the legislation concerning Nebraska and
Kansas.

The compromisers regarded their measures as essential to the sup
pression of slavery agitation in the national councils, and to the
permanent tranquillity of the Union. Mr. Seward maintained pre-

1 See Vol. I, pp. 65 and 348 ; also Vol. Ill, p. 445

THE STKUGGLE FOE FKEEDOM IN 1850. 19

•cisely the opposite views. He insisted that the extension of slavery
was too great a price to pay even for the attainment of peace ; that
a peace purchased on such terms would be only a hollow truce ; that it
would be disturbed by new and deeper agitations ; that freedom and
slavery were essentially antagonistic in their nature ; and that no
reconciliation could be effectual until the latter should abandon its
pretensions to new territories and new conquests. The soundness
-of Mr. Se ward's opinions have been confirmed by subsequent events.
The exciting congressional discussion of the subject continued for
several months. Its effect was favorable to the policy of President
Taylor and Mr. Seward. It promised to guaranty the establishment
of free institutions, unvitiated by the presence of slavery, to the vast
possessions between the organized states arid the Pacific ocean.

An unforeseen casualty changed the fortunes of the conflict. Pre
sident Taylor died in the month of July, 1850, and by the terms of
the constitution Millard Fillmore, the vice-president, was advanced
to the executive chair of the United States. A citizen of New York,
ne had already exhibited symptoms of jealousy in regard to the
influence of Mr. Seward — a feeling which was shared by many of
his triends. At the same time he was understood to concur with
Mr. Seward in the general principles of policy which had guided the
course of the latter on the slavery question. Mr. Seward advised
the new president to retain the cabinet of President Taylor and
endeavor to carry out his views. But this course was in direct
opposition to the views of the compromisers. They urged the im
portance of abandoning the policy hitherto pursued and of appoint
ing a cabinet committed to their own. Mr. Fillmore accepted their
advice. His administration was in reality founded on the principles
of the party which his election had defeated. Of course, it relied for
support on a coalition between members of that party and so many
of his own as could be gained to his views. Soon after this change
in the executive, many of the opponents of the compromise fell off
from the side of Mr. Seward, while others attempted to steer a mid
dle course, expressing themselves in language of moderation, or pre
serving a total silence.

Although the compromise bill itself, as introduced by Mr. Clay,
was defeated, the measures which it embodied were submitted to a
separate discussion, and successively passed. The whigs of the free

20 MEMOIR.

states were thrown into perplexity by this sudden change. The
coalition demanded the acceptance of the compromise as the final
adjustment of the slavery controversy.1 No favors were to be ex
pected from the administration by those who failed to comply with
the terms. A refusal was deemed sufficient evidence of disloyalty
to the government and of hostility to the Union. But Mr. Seward
was not influenced by the motives thus held out.

His opposition to the compromise measures was unabated. He gave
no heed to the denunciations of power. For the present, the vital ques
tion had been settled in congress, and had now passed over to the tri
bunal of the country. In fact, it waited the judgment of the civilized
world. Mr. Seward, unwilling to expose himself for a moment to
the danger of misapprehension, neglected no proper occasion to
declare his adhesion to the principles which he had expressed
throughout the congressional debates ; although he declined to
engage in any defense or explanation of his course amid the excite
ment of popular assemblies.

The question of slavery, in its comprehensive bearings, formeci
the turning point in the presidential canvass of 1852, which resulted
in the election of Mr. Pierce, and at a subsequent period, in the abro
gation of the Missouri compromise and the enactment of the Kansas
and Nebraska bill.

The national democratic convention which nominated Mr. Pierce,
unanimously adopted a platform approving the compromise of 1850
as the final decision of the slavery question. The whig party were
widely divided on the question of acquiescence in the compromise
measures, and still more at variance in regard to the claims of rival
candidates for the presidency. Mr. Seward's friends in the free states
united in the support of General Scott, who had, to a considerable
extent, stood aloof from the agitations of the last few years. On the
other hand, the exclusive supporters of the compromise, as a con
dition of party allegiance, were divided between Millard Fillmore, at
that time acting president, and Daniel Webster, secretary of state.
The whig convention met in Baltimore on the 17th of June, 1852,

1 The bill for the admission of California passed the senate by a vote of 34 to 18, and the
house by 150 to 56.

The fugitive slave act, in the senate, received 27 ayes to 12 nays. In the house, under the
previous question, it passed without debate. Ayes, 109; nays, 75.

The bill abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia passed the senate by 33 to 19 ;
the house by 124 to 59.

Mr. Seward moved a substitute for this bill, abolishing slavery itself in the District. It
received only 5 votes.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1852. 21

two weeks after the democratic convention, and nominated General
Scott as their candidate for president. A large majority of the dele
gates from New York and a considerable number from other states,
maintained their opposition to the test resolutions which were pro
posed by the other branch of the party. These resolutions, however,
were adopted, and a platform was thus established resembling, in its
main features, that of the democrats.1 Many voted for it who may
l>e presumed to have brought themselves to accept its principles,
while others were doubtless influenced by their fears of a disruption
•of the party. Supported by several advocates of this new platform on
the ground of his personal popularity, General Scott received the nomi
nation. He was, however, regarded with great suspicion by a large
number of whigs in the slaveholding states. It was feared that if he
was elected to the presidency Mr. Seward would be called to the office
of secretary of state, and thus exert a leading influence on the adminis
tration. General Scott lost no time in attempting to remove these pre-
judices; and in announcing his acceptance of the nomination, he
promptly declared his adhesion to the principles of the platform adopted
iDy the party. At the instance of the friends of the candidate, Mr.
Seward disclaimed all private objects in connection with the election of
General Scott, and with his characteristic frankness and fidelity to
political associates, he publicly announced his determination to accept
no office at the hands of the president in case of General Scott's
success. This had been his course hitherto, and it would not be
•changed under a future administration.11

Many ardent friends of the compromise, notwithstanding, refused
to rally around General Scott, distrusting his fidelity to the compro
mise platform ; while a large number of the whigs of the free states,
through aversion to the platform, assumed a neutral position or gave
their support to a third candidate.3 Another portion of the whig
party nominated Mr. Webster, who died,4 not only refusing to de-
•cline the nomination, but openly avowing his disgust with the action
of the party.

Mr. Seward and his friends could not so far belie their convic
tions as to approve the principles of the platform, but yielded their

1 The platform was adopted by a vote of 227 to 60. The first ballot for president stood: Fill-
more. 132; Scott. 131 : Webster, 29. The 53d and last: Scott, 159; Fillmore, 112 ; Webster, 21.

2 See Vol. Ill, p. 416.

3 A convention of the free democracy, at Pittsbnrg, nominated John P. Hale for president, and
•Geo. W. Julian for vice-president, and declared in favor of " free soil, free laud, internal im
provements," &c.

4 October 24, 1852.

22 MEMOIR.

support to General Scott in the manner which, in their opinion, was
best adapted to secure his election and defeat the ultra pro-slavery
party. The result, however, was what might have been expected.
The democratic party, forgetting its past divisions, at least for the
time, supported Mr. Pierce with unanimity aad zeal, giving him the
electoral votes of twenty-seven of the thirty-one states.1

The loud exultations of the prevailing party, as well as of those
whigs who had sympathized with it during the canvass, showed
their belief that, in the defeat of General Scott, Mr. Seward was not
only overthrown, but politically annihilated. The whig party, also,,
was, in their opinion, forever destroyed, at least as an enemy of the
slave power. Many prominent members of that party took an early
opportunity of offering their support to Mr. Pierce's administration,
while others more secretly, but no less efficiently, gave their aid to
its policy.

It was under these discouraging circumstances that Mr. Seward re
sumed his seat in the senate at the opening of the second session of the
thirty -second congress, in December, 1852. But neither his speeches
nor his public conduct were colored by the remembrance of the recent
disastrous struggle. No traces of disappointment were visible in his
bearing, and he at once devoted himself to the business of the session
with the same calmness and assiduity which had always marked his
congressional career. His speeches during this session were on ques
tions of great practical interest. His remarks in the debate on " Con
tinental Eights and Relations," although grave and forcible, were
interspersed with incidental touches of effective satire ; and included
a graceful and feeling tribute to the character of John Quincy Adams.2
On the proposal "to abolish or suspend the duty on railroad iron,"
Mr. Seward addressed the senate iu one of his most characteristic
speeches,3 warning the country of the danger of an approaching
revulsion in railroad and financial affairs generally, which proved no
less just than prophetic. The revulsion predicted actually occurred
in 1857. This, and the other speeches made by him during the
session, were marked by an admirable union of statistical narrative,
general reasoning and lofty sentiments.4

1 The states which voted for General Scott were Vermont, Massachusetts, Tennessee and
Kentucky. In the free states Mr. Pierce received 1,156,513 votes, General Scott 1.038.757, John P,
ll»le 157,685. 2 See Vol. Ill, p. 605. 3 See Vol. Ill, p. (556.

4 Theae speeches are briefly noticed in the concluding pages of the Memoir, in Vol. I.

THE KEPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 23

After an extra session of five weeks duration, the senate, on the
llth day of April, 1853, adjourned. Mr. Seward was occupied
most of the summer in the courts of the United States.

He, however, found time during the recess to prepare and deliver
two addresses of remarkable power and beauty. The first, at the dedi
cation of a university at Columbus, Ohio, rises to the dignity of an
oration.1 In it he pleads eloquently the cause of Human Nature as
especially committed to the care of the people of the United States.
" To disseminate knowledge and to increase virtue," he maintains,
"is to establish the principles on which the recovery and preservation
of the inherent rights of man depend, and the state that does this most
faithfully, advances most effectually the cause of Human Nature."

In October, he delivered the annual address before the American
Institute, in the city of New York.1 This is a stirring appeal to the
American people to rise to a higher tone of individual and national
independence in thought, sentiment and action. u Let this prevail,"
he says, "and we shall cease to undervalue our own farmers, me
chanics and manufacturers, and their productions; our own science
and literature; in short, our own infinite resources and our own
peculiar and justly envied freedom."

Both of these productions possess merit and interest of a perma
nent character.

On the first Monday in December, 1853, the first congress under
Mr. Pierce's administration assembled.2 It commenced deliberations
under inaugural promises which seemed either designedly delusive
or promulgated with an imbecility of purpose unworthy a chief
magistrate. High expectations of much beneficent legislation had
been formed. Among the measures which it was anticipated would
come up for consideration were the modification of the tariff so as to
enlarge the field of national industry ; the construction of a railroad
between the Atlantic and Pacific states ; the substitution of a system
of gratuitous allotments of land in limited quantities to actual settlers,
instead of the policy of sales of the public domain ; the improve
ment and reform of the army and navy ; the regulation of the com
mercial marine in regard to immigrant passengers; the endowment
of the states with portions of the public lands as a provision for the

1 See present volume.

2 Linn Boyd (democrat) was elected Speaker by 143 votes to 74 for all others. In the senate,
the administration was proportionately strong.

24 M E M O I K .

care of the insane within their limits ; the establishment of steam
mails on the Pacific ocean ; and the opening of political and com
mercial relations with Japan.

Mr. Seward addressed himself to the accomplishment of these
important objects with his accustomed diligence and zeal. He intro
duced early in the session a bill for the construction of a railroad to
the Pacific ; and another for the establishment of steam mails between
San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands, Japan, and China. The
times seemed favorable for such legislation. The public treasury
was overflowing. The slavery agitation apparently had died away
both in congress and throughout the country. This calm, however,
was doomed to a sudden interruption. The prospect of such extended
beneficent legislation was destroyed by the introduction of a measure
which at once supplanted all other subjects in congress and in the
political interest of the people. This was the novel and astounding
proposal of Mr. Douglas, in relation to the Kansas and Nebraska
territories. The country saw with regret and mortification the home
stead bill transformed into one of mere graduation of the prices
of the public lands. The bills for the improvement of the army and
navy, and the bill for regulating the transportation of immigrants,
were dropped before coming to maturity. The bill for a grant of
land to the states in aid of the insane was defeated in the senate for
the want of a constitutional majority, after having been vetoed by
the president. The bill for establishing the Pacific railroad was lost
for want of time to debate it; and the bill for opening steam com
munication with the East, after passing the senate, failed in the house
for want of consideration. Everything gave way to the renewed
agitation of the slavery question — an agitation precipitated on an
astounded nation by southern influence, yet for which the north has
been held accountable ever since, by orators and presses devoted to
slave predominance in public affairs, with a persistency that could be
called adroit if it were not so obviously false.

The administration had a majority of nearly two to one in both
houses ; and the opponents of introducing slavery into the free terri
tories constituted less than one-fifth of the senate, and were in a
decided minority in the house.1

1 At the beginning of the session the house was classified, politically, democrats 159, whigs 71.
freesoilers 4 : the senate, democrats 36, whigs 20, freesoilers 2.

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 25

The measure, already alluded to, which produced this sudden
derangement in congress, was a provision in the bill for the organi
zation of a territory in Nebraska, declaring that the states which
might at any future time be formed in the new territory should leave
the question of slavery to be decided by the inhabitants thereof on
the adoption of their constitution. This provision was, as explained
by the bill itself, the application of the compromise policy of 1850
to Nebraska, and, as was evident, virtually repealed the Missouri
compromise of 1820, which guarantied that slavery should be forever
excluded from the territory in question.

But, in order to bring the supporters of the bill and its opponents
to a more decided test, an amendment was moved expressly annulling
that portion of the Missouri compromise which related to the subject.
Mr. Douglas, after some deliberation, accepted the amendment, and
modified his plan so far as to introduce a new bill for the organiza
tion of Nebraska and Kansas within the same limits, instead of the
territory of Nebraska alone, according to the original programme.

The administration lost no time in adopting this policy as their
own. It was at first proposed to hasten the passage of the bill
through both houses so rapidly as to prevent any remonstrance on
the part of the people. But the opponents of the measure, including \
Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Truman Smith, Mr. Wade, l
Mr. Everett, Mr. Bell, Mr. Houston and Mr. Fessenden combined!
against it such an earnest and effective resistance that the attention^
of the country was aroused, and an indignant protest called forth
from the people of the free states. The bill, however, passed the
senate on the 4th day of March, 1854, after a discussion which had
occupied nearly every day of the session since the 23d of January.1

Of the fourteen senators from free states who voted for the bill
only three — Messrs Douglas, Gwin, and Thompson of New Jersey
— have been reflected, the others having been succeeded by reliable
opponents of the slave power. Of the twelve from free states who
voted against it, six have been reflected, and the places of the others
have been filled by republicans, with one exception.2

i The vote stood as follows : lreos~- Adams. Atchison, Bayard. Badger, Benjamin, Brodhead,
Brown, Butler, Cass, Clay, Dawson, Dixon. Dodge of Iowa. Douglas, Evans, Fitzpatrick, Geyer,
•Gwin, Hunter. Johnson, Jones of Iowa, Jones of Tennessee, Mason. Morton, Norris, Pettit,
Pratt, Kusk. Sebastian, Shields, Slidell, Stuart. Thompson of Kentucky. Thompson of New
Jersey, Toucey, Weller, Williams — 37 : Nays — Bell, Chase, Dodge of Wisconsin, Fessenden,
Fieh.'Foot, Hamlin. Houston, James. Seward. Smith. Sumner. Wade. Walker— 14.

•2 Mr. Pugh, Democrat, by the vote of A Legislature, elected before the agitation began,
succeeded Mr. Chase, Republican, who ha* in turn been recently chosen to succeed Mr. Pugh.

26 MEMOIR.

The bill as it passed the senate contained a provision, known
as " Clayton's amendment," restricting the right of suffrage in the
territories to citizens and those who had declared their intentions
to become such.

On the 21st of March, Mr. Richardson of Illinois, in the house,
moved to refer the bill, as it came from the senate, to the committee
on territories, of which he was the chairman. Mr. Francis b. Cutting
of New York, moved that it be sent to the committee of the whole
where it could be freely discussed. His motion was carried, after a
severe struggle, by a vote of 110 to 95. This was regarded as a
triumph of the enemies of the bill and inspired hopes of its ultimate
defeat in the house.

On the 22d of May, after a most exciting contest, lasting nearly
two months, in committee of the whole, Mr. Alex. II. Stephens of
Georgia, by an extraordinary stratagem in parliamentary tactics-
succeeded in closing the debate and bringing the bill to a vote in the
house, where it finally passed, before adjournment, by a vote of 113
to 100.1

As the bill passed the house it differed from the one that came
from the senate, chiefly, in being divested of Mr. Clayton's amend
ment, excluding aliens from voting. It was therefore necessary that
it should go back to the senate to be again considered and voted upon.

On the 24th of May, two days after it passed the house, the senate,
on motion of Mr. Douglas, proceeded to act upon the bill.

Mr. Pearce of Maryland, renewed Mr. Clayton's amendment, but
it now received only seven votes — Messrs. Bayard, Bell, Brodhead,
Brown, Clayton, Pearce, and Thompson of Kentucky.

The bill was met on its return by Messrs. Seward, Sumner and
Chase with a continued and powerful opposition. But it was all to
no effect. The bill again passed the senate by a vote of 35 to 13 ;
and amid the firing of cannon and the shouting of its friends, it was
sent to the president for his signature, at three o'clock in the morn
ing of May 26, 1854. President Pierce promptly gave it his approval,
and the odious measure became the law of the land.

i Amon£ the Democrats who voted in the minority were Messrs. Banks of Massachusetts,
Davis of Rhode Island, Fcnton of New York, Grow of Pennsylvania, Jones of New York, Went-
worth of Illinois, and several others who have since returned to the democratic party. From,
the south Messrs Benton of Missouri, Cullom, Etheridge and Taylor of Tennessee, Hunt of
Louisiana, Millson of Virginia, Puryear and Rogers of North Carolina, voted against the mea
sures. With these exceptions the bill was supported by the democrats of the north and south
and the southern whigs.

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 27

Thus was abrogated the Missouri compromise — a law enacted thirty
years before with all the solemnity of a compact between the free-
and the slave states — and a territory as large as the thirteen original
states opened to slavery. The act was consummated by the coopera
tion of the north. Originating with a senator from a free state, it
was passed by a congress containing in each branch a majority of
members from the free states, and was sanctioned by the approval
of a free state president.

The friends of this legislation attempted to defend it on the pre
tence that it was not an original act, but only declaratory of the true
intent and significance of the compromise measures of 1850. For
his resistance to those measures, Mr. Seward had been vehemently
denounced. But at the very commencement of the Nebraska strug
gle, the friends of freedom at the north turned their eyes toward
him as their devoted champion. He was beset with appeals on all
sides to awaken the country to the atrocity of the proposed transac
tion. In no quarter were these appeals more urgent than in the city
of New York, where his opposition to the compromise of 1850 had
been most severely condemned. With his usual sagacity and confi
dence in the popular impulse, and faithful to his innate sense of
personal dignity, he kept aloof from these overtures, and was content
with the zealous discharge of his senatorial duties on the floor of
congress. A characteristic letter, in reply to an invitation to address-
a public meeting in the city of New York, in the midst of the excite
ment, will be found in this volume. He closes his letter with these
words :

" I beg you to be assured that, while declining to go into popular assemblies as an
agitator, I shall endeavor to do my duty here, with as many true men as shall be
found in a delegation which, if all were firm and united in the maintenance of
public right and justice, would be able to control the decision of this question.
But the measure of success and effect which shall crown our exertions must depend
now, as heretofore, on the fidelity with which the people whom we represent shall
adhere to the policy and principles which are the foundation of their own unri
valled prosperity and greatness."

The pledges given in this letter were nobly fulfilled. The first
of his speeches on the Nebraska bill was a profound and dispassion
ate statement of the whole argument against the measure, alike
remarkable for compact narrative and logical arrangement. Though

28 MEMOIR.

it failed of preventing the accomplishment of the measure in con
gress, it acted with magnetic power on the people of the free states,
arousing them to a spirit of unconquerable resistance to the aggres
sions of shivery. The conclusion of this speech, as we read it now,
seems like the prophecy of inspiration. Its last words were : " There
" is a Superior Power that overrules all your actions and all your
" refusals to act, and I fondly hope and trust overrules them to the
"k advancement of the happiness, greatness and glory of our country—
" that overrules, I know, not only all your actions and all your refu-
" sals to act, but all human events, to the distant but inevitable result
" of the equal and universal liberty of all men."

It was a gloomy night for the lovers of freedom when the tele
graphic despatches flashed throughout the country, announcing that
the ill-omened bill was on its final reading in the senate. Mr. Sew-
ard chose that hour of intense excitement to close the debate on his
part. The commencement of his speech was solemn and impressive.
He reviewed the sophistries which had been offered in defense of
the bill with a clearness and power that might almost have arrested
its progress even on the verge of enactment. Presenting to the free
states the evidences of their ability to procure a repeal of the law,
he urged, by conclusive arguments, the importance of such a step,
and, at the same time, luminously expounded the methods of exclu
ding slavery from Nebraska, Kansas, and the vast unsettled regions
of the west, by aiding and promoting a rapid and systematic emigra
tion into the territories in question. The effect of this speech was
cheering in the extreme. It threw a rainbow across the dark cloud
that hung over the country. The auspicious omen was accepted ;
and the faith of the people has since been rewarded by the most
gratifying results.1

Besides these two important speeches, Mr. Seward made several
other elaborate efforts in the senate during this eventful session.
One, on the bill granting lands to the several states for the relief of
the indigent insane, is deserving of especial notice. This measure
(known as " Miss Dix's bill for the insane") had passed both houses,3
and been returned to the senate by the president with a veto message

i An Emigrant Aid Society was immediately formed in Washington among members of con
gress, and others soon sprang up in New England and various parts of the country.

* In the senate it received 35 votes, with but 12 against it. In the house the yeas were 81, the
nays 93.

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE. 29

Mr. Seward's remarks were devoted mainly to a review of the presi
dent's message, which he characterized as desultory, illogical and
confused. He concludes with an eloquent and pertinent vindication
of the rights and interests of the individual states of the Union. He
desired " not to abate the federal strength and diminish the majesty
of the Union, but to invigorate and aggrandize the states, and to-
enable them to maintain their just equilibrium in one grand but
exquisitely contrived political system." The bill failed to pass over
the president's veto, and has never since been successfully revived.

Mr. Seward advocated, at different times during the session, a
system of postal reform. But this, like other measures of public
benefit, was lost amid the general wreck. He was especially desi
rous of securing greater expedition and safety in the transmission
of the mails between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. A proposition
to give one hundred thousand dollars to the brave sailors who res
cued the survivors of the wreck of the steamer San Francisco, lost,
at sea with two hundred and forty lives on the 5th of January, 1854r
received his support. His speech in its behalf was characterized by
a generous humanity as well as by sound views of public policy.

The project of acquiring Cuba was broached in the senate soon
after the passage of the Nebraska bill. Mr. Seward sp*ke at some
length on the Africanization of the island. He opposed the bill to-
suspend the duties on railroad iron, as contrary to a wise and sound
policy.

The homestead bill always found in Mr. Seward a steady supporter*
In a speech made on the 12th of July, 1854, in defense of this
measure, he took occasion to express his views very freely on what
was then called *' know nothingism."

In the debate on " appropriations for the improvement of rivers
and harbors," Mr. Seward energetically contended for the interests
of commerce and navigation on the great lakes, reviewing severely
the president's veto of a previous bill.

During the discussion of the Kansas and Nebraska bill in the
house of representatives, a memorial remonstrating against the repeal
of the Missouri compromise signed by three thousand and fifty
clergymen of New England, was presented to the senate by Edward
Everett. Mr. Douglas and other senators attacked this memorial
with great violence, severely criticising its language, questioning its
propriety and denying the claim of its authors to a hearing in the

30 MEMOIR.

senate. Mr. Seward, maintaining the right of petition on its broadest
grounds, defended the course of the memorialists, and in a brief
speech sustained his positions with his accustomed vigor and acumen.
After a spirited debate the petition was received in the usual manner
and laid on the table. But the dignified defense of the remonstrants,
made by Mr. Seward, was remembered with favor by the lovers of
justice and freedom of conscience in all parts of the country.

Two unusually important treaties were ratified by the senate, in
executive or secret session, during this meeting of congress. One is
known as the " Gadsden treaty " for the settlement of our relations
with Mexico, and the other as the " reciprocity treaty " for the regu
lation of trade between Canada and the United States. Mr. Seward
is understood to have opposed the former, while he gave his support
to the latter.

Just before the adjournment of congress (on the 26th of July,
1854) Mr. Seward delivered the annual oration before the Phi Beta
Kappa society of Yale college, on which occasion he received the
honorary degree of doctor of laws. The subject of his discourse
was, "the physical, moral and intellectual development of the
American people,"1 which he treated with great discrimination and
vigorous eloquence, commanding the admiration of a highly intellec
tual audience and strengthening his well earned title to oratorical fame.

After an arduous session of more than eight months, congress
adjourned on the 7th of August, 1854. In October, following, Mr.
Seward made an elaborate argument in the circuit court of the
United States at Albany, in the celebrated McCormick reaper case.

The state elections, in the autumn, in all the free states, resulted
in a decided verdict against the extraordinary legislation of congress
and the action of the administration. Only seventy-nine members
were elected, in all the states, to the next congress who were known
as friends of the president's policy,2 while one hundred and seventeen
were chosen as decided opponents of the repeal of the Missouri com
promise. The remaining thirty-seven members, classed as whigs or
Americans, were generally supposed to sympathize with the admin
istration in its pro-slavery character, although unwilling to be classed
as its friends.

1 See present volume for this oration and the speeches before noticed.

2 At the election for speaker the administration candidate, Mr. Richardson, the father of the
Nebraska bill in the house, at the previous session, received on the first ballot 74 votes.

\

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE. 31

The second and last session of the thirty- third congress met on the
first Monday in December, 1854. A manifestly subdued temper on
the part of the majority and the absence of any exciting topic for
discussion gave hopes of much healthful legislation, only however
to be disappointed.

Mr. Seward, with his accustomed assiduity, turned his attention to
the task of rescuing from the ruins some of the beneficent measures
sacrificed to the interests of slavery at the last session. Among
these the Pacific railroad, the improvement of rivers and harbors
and the revision of the tariff may be especially mentioned. Mr.
Seward was the author of a bill, introduced by him at the pre
vious session, for the construction of a railroad to the Pacific ocean,
which seemed more practical in its character than any yet con
sidered.

A bill to increase the compensation of members of congress and
to raise the salaries of the judges of the supreme court was intro
duced early in the session. Mr. Seward opposed both propositions.
In a speech on the " extension of the bounty land law " he paid an
eloquent tribute to the volunteers and militia who had served in the
wars of the United States, and advocated an amendment providing
that they should be included in the benefits of the law the same as
officers and soldiers of the regular army. On presenting a memorial
from the unemployed workmen of the city of New York in favor
of a homestead law, Mr. Seward feelingly portrayed the distress
he had himself recently witnessed among the industrial classes in the
large cities, and urged the passage of the homestead bill as a wise and
inexpensive measure of relief.

His remarks on internal improvements, during the debate on the
bill making appropriations for the improvement of rivers and har
bors, and his speeches in favor of the Pacific railroad all abound
with the most liberal and statesmanlike ideas ; while those in opposi
tion to reducing the tariff on American products and manufactures
are consistent with the principles he has always maintained.

Mr. Seward insisted on the payment of the Texas debts as an obli
gation entered into by our government which could not now be
honorably repudiated, however unwise that obligation may have
been when it was assumed.

He was the early and steadfast friend of mail steamers on the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans. His speech on the 27th of February,

32 MEMOIR.

1855, although brief, clearly presents the reasons why our govern
ment should continue to employ first class steamships in its mail
service. Mr. Seward opposed the bill granting three years' credit on
duties on railroad iron. He maintained that it was impolitic and
wrong to stimulate an enterprise already unduly expanded. The
wisdom of his words has been verified by the remarkable deprecia
tion of railroad shares.

A misunderstanding having arisen among the merchants of New
York in regard to a bill introduced at the last session, by Senator
Fish, relating to immigrant passenger ships, Mr. Seward in a grace
ful speech defended his colleague from any negligence in the matter,
Mr. Fish being then absent from the country seeking the restoration
of his health.

Near the close of the session, Senator Toucey introduced a bill
designed to strengthen the already rigid features of the fugitive slave
act of 1850. It provided that all suits growing out of the enforce
ment of that act might be removed from any state court, in which
they had been commenced, to the federal courts. On the 26th of
May, 1854, the day on which the Nebraska bill passed, Anthony
Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, had been arrested in Boston by
the officers of the federal government. In an unsuccessful attempt by
the people to rescue him from the hands of the marshal and his depu
ties, one of the latter was killed. The fugitive, having been declared
by the commissioner to be a slave, was conducted from the court house
to a revenue cutter in the harbor by a company of marines and
"United States soldiers, assisted by the volunteer militia of the city of
Boston. Cannon loaded with grape shot were planted in command
ing positions to preserve order, and the court house, surrounded by
chains, was guarded by an armed police. During this extraordinary
scene many acts of tyranny were practiced by the federal officers on the
people occupying or passing through the streets. The civil and
criminal prosecutions growing out of such acts were commenced in
the courts of Massachusetts. One of the objects of Mr. Toucey's
bill was to change the jurisdiction from these tribunals to the courts
of the United States.

Mr. Seward aroused the attention of the senate and of the country
to the enormous usurpation which the bill proposed, in a speech of
stirring eloquence ; reviewing the recent startling encroachments of

RE-ELECTION TO THE SENATE. S3

despotism and characterising the present one as more bold and alarm
ing than any that had preceded it.1 Other senators from the free
states followed him in denouncing it, in terms no less severe and
decided.

Mr. Sumner, at the close of an eloquent speech against the bill,
moved, as an amendment, a substitute for the whole bill, repealing the
fugitive slave act of 1850. Mr. Seward gladly availed himself of
the opportunity to record his vote in favor of the repeal of that
odious act; but the proposition could then command only nine
affirmative votes, Messrs. Brainerd of Vermont, Chase of Ohio,
Cooper of Pennsylvania, Fessenden of Maine, Gillette of Connecti
cut, Seward of New York, Sumner of Massachusetts, Wade of Ohio,
and Wilson of Massachusetts.

Mr. Toucey's bill, after a most animated discussion, passed the
senate at midnight by a vote of 29 to 9. Owing to the lateness of
the session its consideration in the house was never reached ; nor
has it since been revived. The days of the thirty-third congress
were now numbered, and on the 3d of March, 1855, both houses
adjourned sine die.

This congress, the first under Mr. Pierce's administration, will long
be memorable not only for its entire failure to accomplish any great
and beneficent acts of legislation, but also for having deliberately
re-opened a discussion of the slavery question whose ultimate con
sequences and collateral results no prophet can foresee.

With this congress, Mr. Seward's first senatorial term expired.
His individual interests and personal feelings led him to prefer a re
turn to private life. But higher considerations prevailed, and he
consented to be a candidate for reelection. His views on this subject
were well expressed in a letter to John Quincy Adams in 1841, and
substantially repeated to those who now felt, as he thought, an undue
anxiety that he should be reflected. He says in his letter to his
venerable friend : "As for the future, I await its developments with
out concern, conscious that if my services are needed, they will be
demanded, if not needed that it would be neither patriotic nor con
ducive to my own happiness to be in public life ; " sentiments whose
unaffected modesty of utterance, yet epigrammatic beauty, would, if
found in Roman history, attract the admiration of the world.

i Mr. Seward's speeches on this, and other bills hefore noticed, will be found in succeeding
pages of the present volume.

VOL. IV 5

34 MEMOIR.

The election of members of the legislature in the state of New
York in the autumn of 1854, was held in view of the fact that they
would be called at the coming session to elect a senator of the United
States.

The reelection of Mr. Seward, of course, formed a prominent ques
tion in the canvass. The element of "kfiow nothingism" or
"Americanism," also greatly influenced the election of the members
of the Assembly as well as of the various state officers chosen at the
same time. To some extent the issue was, from this cause, confused
and the result uncertain. Mr. Seward's whole life had been in op
position to secret societies and to any limitation of the political rights
of the people. The new party, now at its height, was founded as he
believed, substantially, on ideas directly in conflict with his matured
convictions. At a time when other statesmen were courting the new
element or being reticent before its influence, Mr. Seward, in the
senate, frankly expressed his opposition to these secret political
organizations. With such circumstances and antagonisms to over
come, with a combination of democrats and Americans against him,
his past services, his devotion to the cause of freedom and hu
manity, and his fidelity to all the great interests of his native state
and the country, were submitted to the people of New York for their
verdict.

The election took place on the first Tuesday in November, and was
contested with unusual vigor throughout the state. Although the
democrats succeeded in electing but forty -two members of the assem
bly out of one hundred and twenty-eight, loud boasts were made by
the opponents of Mr. Seward that he could not be reflected. The
most industrious efforts were made to excite new animosities and
revive old prejudices against him in order to defeat his reelection.
The authors of these efforts and the character of their weapons were
various. One spirit, however, animated the whole. The slave power
projected or applauded every shaft of calumny that was directed at
the object of its greatest fear.

The legislature met on the first Tuesday in January, 1855. The
assembly chose Mr. Littlejohn speaker, eighty to thirty-eight. The
senate, which held over from the last year, was divided, whigs eigh
teen, democrats ten, know nothings four. Before the day appointed
for the election of senator, a discussion arose in the assembly, in

RE-ELECTED SENATOR. 35

which Mr. Seward's public life was subjected to a searching review.
As this debate proceeded his friends felt an increasing confidence in
his success. At the same time his opponents, with apparent sincerity,
continued to assert that his election by the present legislature was
impossible. Under these circumstances the excitement rose to a great
height. Throughout the Union the contest was regarded as one be
tween freedom and slavery.

On the first Tuesday in February the election took place. In the
senate Mr. Seward received eighteen votes, Daniel S. Dickinson five,
W. F. Allen two, Millard Fillmore, Ogden Hoffman, Preston King,
Daniel Ullman, George K. Babcock, and S. E. Church one each.

In the assembly the vote stood, for Mr. Seward sixty-nine, Mr.
Dickinson fourteen, Horatio Seymour twelve, Washington Hunt nine,
John A. Dix seven, Mr. Fillmore four, and eleven others one each.

The senate and assembly then in joint session compared nomina
tions and the lieutenant-governor declared William H. Seward duly
elected a senator of the United States for six years from the 4th of
March, 1855.

This announcement soon reached every part of the Union, and in
all the free states it was received with demonstrations of joy and
approval. In Washington the rejoicing among Mr. Seward's politi
cal and personal friends, in congress, and among the people of that
city, was no less enthusiastic and sincere than in other portions of
the country.

On his return to his home in Auburn, Mr. Seward was everywhere
greeted with the hearty congratulations of his friends. He, however,
declined the various public ovations tendered to him in different
places.

During the canvass for the annual state election in the autumn of
1855, Mr. Seward, at the earnest solicitation of his political friends,
addressed the people at Albany, Auburn and Buffalo. These
speeches are standard political dissertations. They produced a
marked effect, not only in his own state but throughout the country.
President Pierce in his annual message to congress saw fit to allude
to some of the sentiments contained in the one delivered in the
capitol at Albany. This speech' entitled " The danger of extending
slavery," or " The privileged class," and the one delivered at Buffalo,

36 MEMOIR.

" The contest and the crisis," were very widely circulated in news
papers and pamphlets.

On the 22d of December, 1855, Mr. Seward delivered the annual
oration at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in commemoration of the land
ing of the pilgrims. At the dinner table he also made a brief but
eloquent speech in response to a complimentary sentiment. His
large and cultivated audience gave repeated expressions of their
sympathy and delight, with the sentiments of the oration' and the
speech.1

The summer of 1855 seemed to be marked by a number of occur
rences showing the aggressive and tyrannical spirit of the slave power.
On the 27th of July, Passmore Williamson, a respectable and benevolent
citizen of Philadelphia, was thrown into prison in that city and con
fined fourteen weeks. He was charged with a "contempt of court."
The facts of the case were, briefly, these : a Mr. Wheeler came from
a slave state into Pennsylvania, bringing with him a slave woman,
who became, by the laws of Pennsylvania, free on being brought
into the state. This fact was communicated to her by Mr. William
son, and she immediately left her master, never to return. In a suit
growing out of these circumstances, Mr. Williamson, in his answer
to a writ of habeas corpus, stated what he deemed to be the truth in
the case. Judge Kane pronounced his reply a contempt of court,
and sent him to prison.

A similar case occurred in New York some time previous, show
ing the same determination of the south to extend slavery over the
free states of the north. A Mr. Lernmon, traveling from Virginia

1 The following notice of the celebration and oration is taken from one of the newspapers of
the day : Plymouth was thronged on the 21st of December. The celebration was the most im
pressive and spirited of any which the descendants of those valiant men have made. The
" Rock " was carefully dug out for the occasion. The relics of the Mayflower and the memen
toes of her passage across the ocean, and her priceless freight and great mission, were displayed
in pilgrims1 hall. The streets were filled with strangers, arrived from the vicinity of Plymouth
not only, but from remote states.

A procession with music, religious exercises in a church, an oration, a costly and most gen
erous dinner-feast with toasts and speeches, and a ball in the evening constituted the celebration.
Of the oration delivered by Governor Seward, we need but to say that it is the expression of
that statesman's philosophy and policy.

Among the incidents of the dinner table, Wendell Phillips declared that he would not ac
knowledge the right of Plymouth to the " Rock." " It underlies " said he " the whole country
and only crops out here. It cropped out where Putnam said—" Don't fire, boys, until you see the
whites of their eyes." It showed itself where Ingraham rescued Martin Kotsza from Austrian
despotism. Jeflerson used it for his writing-desk, and Lovejoy levelled his musket across it at
Alton. I recognized the clink of it to-day when the great apostle of the higher law laid his
beautiful garland upon the sacred altar." [Mr. Seward remarked that he was not a descendant
of the pilgrims of the Mayflower.] " He says he is not descended from the Mayflower," resumed
Mr. Phillips; " that is a mistake. There is such a thing as pedigree of mind as well as of body."

THE AGGRESSIVE ACTS OF SLAVERY. 37

to Texas, with eight slaves, sailed from Norfolk to the city of New
York, intending there to tranship his family and property to Texas.
His slaves were, like the woman in Philadelphia, restored to free
dom by the laws of the state in which they were domiciled. An.
expensive litigation was immediately commenced by the state of
Virginia against the state of New York, which is not yet con
cluded.1

The state courts of primary and final resort have confirmed the
right of the slaves to their freedom, but an appeal has been entered
to the supreme court of the United States. The democratic judges de
livered dissenting opinions accepting the new dogma that slaves are
property under the constitution. Their ideas were foreshadowed by
the counsel for Virginia,2 who reiterated in the court room the
.same plea for the justice and beneficence of African slavery which
he had a month before presented at a public meeting in New York.

But the country was soon agitated by acts of yet greater atrocity
and of more public interest. Soon after the adjournment of congress
.systematic efforts began to be made by the south to make Kansas a
slave state. The means adopted, and the outrages, arsons and mur
ders committed in the attempt, are still recent and well impressed on
the public mind.

At the first election in the territory (March 30, 1855), large par
ties of armed intruders from Missouri took possession of the polls
and returned such members to the territorial legislature as would
carry out the pro-slavery plans. Of the 2,905 voters in the territory
.according to the census, only 831 voted, while 4,908 illegal votes
were polled by the Missourians.

Governor Keeder, appointed by President Pierce, was removed
from his office by the same power that had appointed him, for refus
ing to countenance the frauds and outrages of the pro-slavery mob.

The legislature, chosen in this fraudulent manner, passed acts,
among others, making it a capital offense to assist slaves either in
escaping into the territory or out of it ; and felony, punishable with
imprisonment for from two to five years, to circulate anti-slavery
publications or to deny the right to ,hold slaves in the territory ;
requiring all voters, officers and attorneys to take an oath to support

1 These cases seem to warrant sufficiently Mr. Seward's apprehension that the result of the
.slavery aggressions unchecked, will be, the spread of slavery over all the free states, as expressed
in his Rochester speech. See present volume.

2 Charles O' Conor, Esq.

38 MEMOIR.

the fugitive slave law and all the acts of this pretended legislature;
giving the selection of jurors to the sheriff; and admitting any person
to vote who should pay one dollar, poll tax, whether a resident of
the territory or not. They also adopted, in gross, the Missouri code
of laws.

A convention of delegates, chosen by the real inhabitants of the
territory, was held at Topeka in October, 1855, which adopted a free
state constitution to be submitted to the people for approval. This
constitution was subsequently adopted by the almost unanimous vote
of the settlers. Under this constitution Charles Eobinson was
elected governor and a state government organized. President
Pierce, however, in a special message to congress in January, 1856r
indorsed the fraudulent legislature and denounced the formation of
the Topeka government as an act of rebellion.

Innumerable outrages' continued to be perpetrated on the persons
and property of the free state settlers by Missourians and others,
although the president declared in his annual message, on the 28th
of December, " that nothing had occurred in Kansas to warrant his
interference."

The thirty -fourth congress assembled on its usual day, in Decem
ber, 1855. The senate was organized without delay. In the house
there was a protracted and extraordinary contest in the election of
a speaker. Ballotings were continued almost daily, without sue-
cess, until the 2d day of February, 1856, when the plurality rule, by
a vote of one hundred and thirteen to one hundred and four, was
adopted.

On the one hundred and thirty-fourth ballot, after ineffectual at
tempts to rescind the plurality rule, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massa
chusetts, was elected speaker, having received one hundred and three-
votes to one hundred for William Aiken, of South Carolina. There
were also eleven scattering votes, nine of which were cast by north
ern men hitherto counted as opponents of the Nebraska and Kansas
measures. Nineteen members were absent or did not vote, and
there was one vacancy. Twelve of the nineteen not voting were
from northern states. A resolution declaring Mr. Banks duly elected
was passed by ayes one hundred and fifty-five, nays forty.

One of the first acts of the house of representatives after its organ
ization, was to appoint a committee to proceed to Kansas to inquire
into the validity of the election of the pretended legislature and

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS PEOPOSED. 39

delegate to congress. Their report completely established the fraud
ulent character of the election and the truth of all the outrages com
plained of by the free state inhabitants.

In the senate a debate of considerable interest, on the " Clayton
and Bulwer treaty," occupied the first weeks of the session. Mr.
Seward in several able speeches defended the rights and interests of
his own country and clearly defined the nature and provisions of the
treaty.

On the 24th of January, 1856, the president brought the affairs
of Kansas before congress in a special message which gave rise to a
protracted discussion in both houses. In the senate the subject was
debated for nearly six months with little interruption.

Mr. Seward at the earliest opportunity introduced a bill for the
immediate admission of Kansas into the Union. " In offering this pro
position," says Mr. Sumner, in his famous speech of the 20th of May,
the senator from New York has entitled himself to the gratitude
of the country. He has, throughout a life of unsurpassed industry
and of eminent ability, done much for freedom which the world will
not let die ; but he has done nothing more opportune than this,
and he has uttered no words more effective than the speech, so
masterly and ingenious, by which he has vindicated it."

On the 12th of March, Mr. Douglas, from the committee on terri
tories, submitted a report extenuating the outrages committed in the
territory and severely denouncing the action of the New England
Emigrant Aid Society.

Mr. Collamer from the minority of the same committee at the
same time presented an able report, taking entirely different views ;
views that have since been fully substantiated. On the 7th of April,
Senator Cass presented the memorial of the Topeka legislature, ask
ing for the admission of Kansas into the Union. A number of reso
lutions and bills were introduced at different times, by senators of
both parties, providing for a settlement of the serious difficulties ex
isting in the territory. On the 3d of July a bill passed the house for
the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Topeka constitu
tion by a vote of ninety -nine to ninety-seven. It was sent to the
senate on the following Monday and referred to the committee on
territories. On the 8th of July Mr. Douglas, chairman of the com
mittee, reported a substitute for the bill, authorizing the people of
Kansas, under certain restrictions, to form a state constitution.

40 MEMOIR.

The substitute passed the senate on the same day, ayes thirty,
nays thirteen. The house refused to recede from its previous
action. The senate declined to pass Mr. Seward's bill or the one
which came from the house, substantially similar, and in this man
ner all relief to Kansas was denied. Mr. Seward's speeches at
various stages of the extended debate are given in full in this vol
ume. His eloquent and masterly statements of the subject will be
read with equal pleasure and instruction, as t&£ best history of the
great transaction.

On the 22d day of May, 1856, a violent assault was committed in
the senate chamber, immediately after the adjournment, upon Charles
Simmer, by Preston S. Brooks, a representative from South Carolina.
The blows were inflicted with a heavy cane while Mr. Suinner was
sitting at his desk in the act of writing. A number of Mr. Brooks'
friends were present, including Mr. Douglas, witnesses of the attack,
none of whom attempted to prevent or arrest it. On the next
morning Senator Wilson (Mr. Sumner's colleague), briefly stated the
facts to the senate. Without making any motion, he said, "I leave
it to older senators whose character, whose position in this body and
before the country eminently fit them for the task of devising
means to redress the wrongs of a member of this body and to vindi
cate the honor and dignity of the senate." Mr. Seward waited a
reasonable time for some senator in the majority to offer a resolution
on the subject. He then moved that a committee of five be appointed
by the president of the senate to inquire into the circumstances of
the case and to report thereon to the senate. Under parliamentary
usage Mr. Seward would have been placed on this committee as its
chairman. To avoid doing this, the senate changed their custom and
elected the committee by ballot. Neither Mr. Seward nor any per
sonal or political friend of Mr. Sumner's was chosen a member of
the committee. The committee reported that the senate had no
jurisdiction in the case,1 and their report was adopted.

Mr. Seward, as the intimate associate and cherished friend of Mr.
Sumner, was deeply moved by the whole transaction. He, never
theless, so *HsQiplined his feelings that his speeches on the subject,
although full of eloquent denunciation of the outrage, were charac
terized by his usual dignity of tone and moderation of language.

1 The house voted to expel Mr. Brooks, one hundred and twenty-one to ninety-five. The mo-
JanuaryX27ei^7VOte tw°-third8' Mr" Brook8 resigned, and was re-elected. He died suddenly

OKGAXIZATIOX OF THE KEPUBLICAX PARTY. 4i

The state of Massachusetts having sent to the senate a series of reso
lutions relating to this serious attack upon one of her senators, Mr.
Seward, in a very appropriate and feeling speech, reviewed the
whole affair, and vindicated the legislature of that state in the course
it had adopted.

" Every one knew," said Mr. Seward, " that the sufferer in that scene was my
cherished personal friend and political associate. Every one knew that he had
fallen senseless and, for all that was at first known, lifeless, on the floor of the
senate of the United States, for utterances which, whether discreet or indiscreet,
were utterances made in the cause of truth, humanity, and justice — a cause in
which he was a distinguished fellow-laborer with myself."

Besides the speeches made by Mr. Seward on " Kansas affairs,"
the " Clayton and Bulwer treaty," and the " Sumner assault," he also
spoke at considerable length on the naval retiring board ; the origi
nation of appropriation bills ; Senator Trumbull's seat ; the Danish
Sound dues ; Nicaragua ; the compensation bill ; military and civic
officers; and mail steamers. He also delivered a brief eulogium on
the Hon. T. H. Bayley, late a representative from Virginia and for
merly governor of that state.

Congress adjourned on the 18th of August, 1856. But it having
failed to grant the required supplies for carrying on the Indian wars,
the president convened an extra session, which met on the 23d of
the same month. Mr. Seward's speeches at this session, on the army
bill and its relation to the affairs of Kansas, throw new light on the
subject. The extra session terminated on the 30th of August.

On the 22d day of February, 1856, a convention, representing the
people of various sections of the country, opposed to the recent
repeal of the Missouri compromise, the invasion of Kansas, and the
aggressions of slavery, assembled at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

At this meeting the initiative steps were taken for the national
organization of the republican party. Delegates from every free
state, and from Kentucky, Maryland, and Virginia, were present.
The venerable Francis P. Blair, of Maryland, presided; and among
the members present were some of the most distinguished leaders of
the whig and democratic parties.

The convention issued an eloquent and stirring address1 to the peo
ple, and called a national convention to meet in Philadelphia, on the

i This address was written by Hon. H. J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times and lieu
tenant-governor of New York.

VOL. IV. 6

42 MEMOIR.

17th of June ensuing, to nominate candidates for the offices of presi
dent and vice-president of the United States. State conventions of a
similar kind had been held in most of the free states. One, at Saratoga
Springs, in the state of New York, in August, 1854, was remarka
ble alike for its great numbers and respectable character.1

On the 17th of June, 1856, in pursuance of the call adopted at
'Pittsburgh, a convention of the opponents of the recent aggressions
of the slave power, and friends of the admission of Kansas as a free
state and the restoration of the action of the federal government to
the principles of Washington and Jefferson, assembled in Philadel
phia to nominate candidates for the offices of president and vice-
president of the United States.

A democratic convention, held at Cincinnati on the 2d day of the
same month, nominated James Buchanan for the presidency ; and the
Americans had nominated Mr. Fillmore as early as February pre
ceding.

The Philadelphia convention presented the names of John C. Fre
mont, of California, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, as their
candidates,2 and adopted a resolution in its platform inviteg: the
affiliation and cooperation of all freemen supporting its principles,
however differing in other respects. The supporters of this ticket
became known throughout the Union as the " Republican Party," and
entered upon the contest with a zeal inspired by their devotion to the
cause of human nature. The following extracts from the platform
adopted by this convention contain the essential principles of the new
party :

"Resolved, That, with our republican fathers, we hold it to be a
self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the
primary object and ulterior designs of our federal government were,
to secure these rights to all persons within its exclusive jurisdiction;
that, as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in
all our national territory, ordained that no person should be deprived
of life, liberty or property without due process of law, it becomes

i Among the distinguished men of all parties who participated in its proceedings were Preston
King, John A. King, William T. MoConn, Robert Emmett, John Jay. Horace Greeley, and Henry
J. Raymond.

- On the first ballot. Colonel Fremont had three hundred and fifty-eight votes and Judge McLean
one hundred and ninety-nine. On the second, the vote stood five hundred and thirty-four to thirtv-
eeven tor the same candidates. The names of Messrs. Seward. Chase and others were withdrawn
Wfore any ballot was taken. For vice-president, on an informal ballot. Mr. Dayton received two
hundred and fifty-nine, Abraham Lincoln one hundred and ten, David Wilmot forty-three, Charles
Bumner thirty-six.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1856. 48

our duty to maintain this provision of the constitution against all
attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing slavery in any
territory of the United States, by positive legislation, prohibiting
its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority
of congress, of a territorial legislature, of any individual or asso
ciation of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any
territory of the United States, while the present constitution shall
be maintained."

11 Resolved, That the constitution confers upon congress sovereign
power over the territories of the United States for their govern
ment, and that, in the exercise of this power, it is both the right
and the duty of congress to prohibit in the territories those twin
relics of barbarism — polygamy and slavery."

Mr. Seward engaged in the presidential canvass with his accus
tomed zeal and ability. His speeches at Auburn, Detroit, and Os-
wego are consummate statements of the questions at issue, and mas
terly expositions of the republican creed. Like nearly all his
speeches, they possess an interest and value beyond the occasion that
produced them.

The election resulted in the choice of Mr. Buchanan, and in the
success of the democratic party in the nation. In thirteen of the
sixteen free states, however, the republicans elected their state tickets
and gave Colonel Fremont a majority, in those states, of more than
two hundred thousand votes over Mr. Buchanan. In New York,
the republicans elected twenty-five members of Congress and the
entire state administration. Colonel Fremont's plurality in the
state over Mr. Buchanan was eighty thousand — over Mr. Fill-
more one hundred and fifty-two thousand. Only two free states
(Pennsylvania and Indiana) cast a majority of their popular votes
for Mr. Buchanan.

In the slaveholding states, the republicans were not allowed to
maintain an organization. Individuals expressing sentiments in favor
of the republican party were driven from their homes, and became
exiles in the free north. A few republican votes, less than twelve
hundred in all, were given in the more favored portions of Maryland,
Delaware, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Although failing of complete success, the "friends of human lib
erty " had now organized a party of more than thirteen hundred

44 MEMOIR.

thousand intelligent freemen, never to be disbanded until a triumph
over slavery has been achieved.

Such a party had long existed in the prophetic vision of Mr.
Seward. He had himself planted the acorn from which this vigorous
tree had sprung, nearly twenty years ago, when he was governor of
his native state; and his life may be said to have been spent in
watching and cultivating its growth. In 1845, in a private letter
to a friend, Mr. Seward, in full view of the then recent triumph
of the slave power in the annexation of Texas and the election of
President Polk, thus clearly indicated the rallying of this new
party :

'Friends of human liberty," he wrote, " may for ft season be divided, and range
themselves under different banners, but time will speedily indicate a rallying
ground, and that ground being once gained, they will be invincible.

" There is no enchantment against them — neither is there any divination against
their sublime and benevolent mission.

" Let it be pursued in a spirit of patriotism and Christian charity — let our motto
be uncompromising hostility to human slavery — peace and security to the slave
holder, and perpetual support of the American Union."

The third session of the thirty-fourth congress assembled on the
first Monday in December, 1856.

Among its earliest proceedings was the announcement of the death
of John M. Clayton. Mr. Seward's eulogium on the character of
this eminent statesman was an eloquent and feeling tribute to an old
political associate and personal friend.

The claims of the officers of the revolutionary army were ably advo
cated by Mr. Seward in a speech of great research and power. He
showed by abundant evidence that the bill before the senate rested
on the policy established by General Washington himself, while at
the head of the army, and throughout the war ; and that its enact
ment would be the fulfillment of his promises and more acceptable
to his serene and awful shade than all the tributes which have been
paid, and all that are yet to be paid, by a redeemed nation and grate
ful world.

Among the new republican senators who appeared in the senate at
the present session was James Harlan, of Iowa. His right to his
seat, however, was disputed by the majority and was arbitrarily
denied to him, by a vote of twenty-eight to eighteen. Mr. Seward,
in a lucid argument, conclusively established the validity of Mr

THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 45

Harlan's election, and the legislature of Iowa confirmed it at their
next session by a decisive majority. On the 23d of December,
1856, Mr. Seward submitted a resolution to the senate, which was-
unanimously adopted, requesting the president to communicate to
the senate such information as he might have, concerning the
present condition and prospects of a proposed plan for connect
ing, by submarine wires, the magnetic telegraph lines on this con
tinent and Europe. On the 7th of January the president replied,
transmitting a report from the secretary of state. Mr. Seward,
on the 9th of the same month, introduced a bill to expedite tel
egraph communication for the use of the government in foreign
intercourse. The senate proceeded to the consideration of the bill
after it had been reported upon, favorably, by a committee, without
amendment, and after an interesting debate passed it by a vote of
twenty-nine to eighteen. Mr. Seward's remarks on the subject, dur
ing its discussion, were eloquent and timely.

After the wires had been laid between the coast of Ireland and
Newfoundland, there was a spontaneous gathering of people in Au
burn, as in many other places, to rejoice over the happy event. Mr.
Seward, and Governor King, who was then on a visit to Auburn,
delivered enthusiastic and eloquent speeches. In the course of his
remarks, Mr. Seward related the following incidents in the passage
of the telegraph bill through congress :

" Cyrus W. Field, by assiduity and patience, first secured consent and con
ditional engagement on the part of Great Britain, and then, less than two years
ago, repaired to Washington. The president and secretary of state individually
favored his proposition, but the jealousies of parties and sections in congress
forbade them to lend it their efficient aid and sanction. He appealed to me. I
drew the necessary bill. With the generous aid of others, northern representa
tives, and the indispensable aid of the late Thomas J. Rusk, a senator from Texas,
that bill, after a severe contest, was carried through the senate of the United
States by a bare majority. It escaped defeat in the house of representatives with
equal difficulty. I have said the aid of Mr. Rusk was indispensable. If any one
has wondered why I, an extreme northern man, loved and lamented Thomas J.
Rusk, an equally extreme southern man, they have here an explanation. There
was no good thing which, as it seemed to me, I could not do in congress with
his aid. When he died, it seemed to me that no good thing could be done by
any one.

1 On the death of Senator Rusk, Mr. Seward delivered an eloquent eulogium on his life and
services.

46 MEMOIR.

" But so vehement were the prejudices against Mr. Field for what was then
regarded as presumption and officiousness on his part, although he is the most
modest of all men, that the great bill was only saved by his withdrawing at the
request of Mr. Rusk and myself from the senate chamber, its lobbies and even from
the capitol grounds, and remaining unobtrusive and unseen in his own lodgings.
But Cyrus W. Field, at last, fortified with capital derived from New York and
London, and with the navies of Great Britain and the United States at his com
mand, has after trials that would have discouraged any other than a true discoverer,
brought the great work to a felicitous consummation."

General rejoicing spread over the country upon the announce
ment that the cable was laid and that messages between the two
worlds had actually been transmitted. Mr. Seward's services, in
securing the aid of the government to the project, were everywhere
remembered, and will be still more cordially acknowledged when the
communication shall be again established.

Mr. Seward supported with equal zeal, in the senate, the project
of a line of telegraphs to the Pacific ocean, connecting California
and Oregon with the Atlantic seaboard.1

Near the close of the session, amendments were proposed to the
existing tariff laws. Mr. Seward opposed them as still further em
barrassing the interests of the iron manufacturers and the wool
growers of this country. The amendments proposed in the senate
by Mr. Hunter were adopted, ayes thirty-three, nays twelve, viz.,
Messrs. Bell, Bigler, Brodhead, Collamer, Dnrkee, Foot, Greyer,
Nourse, Seward, Thompson, Trumbull and Wade. The senate and
house disagreeing, a committee of conference, of which Mr. Seward
was one, reported a series of amendments, which were less detrimen
tal to American interests. Their report was concurred in by both
houses ; in the senate by thirty -three to eight ; in the house by one
hundred and twenty-three to seventy-two.

A bill which proposed to restore peace in Kansas by annulling
all laws of disputed validity and enabling the people of the terri-

1 The following correspondence is copied from the St. Paul Times of August 30th, 1860:
" The despatches below are the first ever sent over the wire in due form, and it is eminently
proper that this inaugural dispatch should have been transmitted to and by Wm. II. Seward."

To Gov. Seward, Auburn. N. Y.

ST. PAUL, Au£. 29, 1:45 p. M.— Through the courtesy of Mr. Winslow, proprietor, we are ena
bled to send this the first dispatch ever transmitted by lightning from St. Paul to the east, as
complimentary to you. (Signed) M. S. WILKINSON,

AAKON GOODRICH.
Senator SewarcTs Reply.

AUBURN, Aug. 29, 8:30, p. M.— To M. S. Wilkinson and A. Goodrich : You have grappled New
York, now lay hold on San Francisco. (Signed) WILLIAM II. SEWARD.

THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 47

tory to establish a government for themselves, passed the house
on the 17th of Februar}^ by a vote of ninety-eight to seventy-nine.
In the senate it was laid on the table, ayes thirty, nays twenty ;
Messrs. Bell, Brodhead, Houston, James, Pugh and Stuart voting ia.
the negative with the republicans.

Mr. Seward's speeches, during the session, on the admission of
Minnesota, the Indiana senators, post office appropriations, and other
measures were practical and effective.

On the 4th of March, 1857, Mr. Buchanan became president of
the United States. His inaugural address abounded with plausible
professions of devotion to the public welfare. He especially depre
cated the further agitation of the slavery question, although a large
portion of his remarks were upon that subject. He expressed him
self in favor of the admission of Kansas into the Union with a
constitution approved by a majority of the voters in the territory.
He alluded also to a decision of the supreme court, soon to be made,
counseling acquiesence in it, whatever might be its character and
effect.

A special session of the senate was called to consider the nomina
tions of the new president. Several subjects of interest were con
sidered in open session. The committees were reorganized after
some opposition from several senators in the minority, who deemed
the composition of the committees unequal and unfair. Mr. Seward
remarked that he had been in the senate when no place was allowed
to him or his political associates on any committee. He did not
then complain. He thought he best served the country by foregoing
all personal considerations on such questions. He preferred to leave
it to the people to substitute for this majority a better majority.1

Scarcely had the echo of the president's inaugural speech died
away when2 the supreme court rendered its decision in the "Dred
Scott case." Its announcement produced a profound sensation
throughout the country, and awakened a feeling of indignation that
has not yet subsided. This was the decision to which the president
had referred, in his inaugural address, and to which the people were
expected to submit. The case is briefly as follows : an action was
commenced in the circuit court of the United States, for the district

1 Mr. Seward was placed on the committee of foreign relations ; Mr. King on pensions : Messrs.
Snmner and Wade on territories, and two republicans on most of the other committees.

2 March 6th, 1857.

48 MEMOIR.

of Missouri, in 1854, by Dred Scott, to establish his freedom, and
that of his wife and their two daughters, who were claimed and held
as slaves by one Sanford, the defendant. Sanford placed his
defense on two grounds : First, that Dred Scott was not a citizen of
Missouri because he was a negro of African descent ; and, second,
that Dred and his family were the defendant's slaves. Scott relied
on facts mutually admitted— that he was formerly a slave in Mis
souri ; was taken in 1884, by his then master, to Illinois, and held
there in servitude two years, and was thence taken to the territory
west of the Mississippi, and north of the Missouri compromise liner
where he was also held in servitude until the year 1838, when he
was brought back to the state of Missouri and sold as a slave to
the defendant before this suit was commenced.

The circuit court decided in Scott's favor as to the jurisdiction of
the court, but against him on the question of his freedom. He then
appealed to the supreme court. His case was twice elaborately
argued before that tribunal. The court decided substantially thatr
Dred Scott was not a citizen, and for that reason the courts of the
United States had no jurisdiction in the case; and expressed the
opinion that free colored persons whose ancestors were imported into
this country and sold as slaves, " had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect," and were not citizens of the United States ; that
there is no difference between property in a slave and other property ;
that congress has no power to prohibit slavery in the territories ; that
the Missouri compromise act was unconstitutional and void ; and
that the taking of a slave, by his master, into a free state or a ter
ritory does not entitle the slave to his freedom.1 Two judges, Messrs.
McLean and Curtis, dissented from the majority of the court in their
decision and opinions.

The people of the free states, greatly shocked by the action of the
supreme court, gave expression to their feelings in various ways.
The legislature of the state of New York passed resolutions declar
ing that the supreme court of the United States, by its action in this
matter, " has impaired the confidence and respect of the people of
this state" ; and that " this state will not allow slavery within her
borders, in any form, or under any pretence, or for any time."

Vrf **!? deci"'0" ?n eminent advocate of New York, Wm. M. Evarts, Esq., remarked in a
public address, that if it had been rendered before the presidential election of 1856, no democrat
would have Htimuided; and that if Mr. Buchanan had not been chosen the opinions never would

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT. 49

Mr. Seward took occasion, in the senate, in his speech1 on the
admission of Kansas, to review the decision, and the connection of
the president with its announcement. His dramatic description, in
this speech, of the inauguration ceremonies ; his vivid exhibition of
the insincerity of the president's professions ; and his clear exposi
tion of the fatal connection of the decision with the tyrannies and
outrages in Kansas, arrested the attention of the senate and the
country

At a subsequent date he proposed a reconstruction of the supreme
court and the courts of the United States, "so that the states shall
be represented by judges in said courts more nearly on the basis of
their federal population, while the administration of justice shall be
made more speedy and efficient." These amendments he proposed
to make in accordance with the letter and spirit of the constitution,
without injustice to any interest or section of the Union.

The thirty-fifth congress, elected mainly at the same time with Mr.
Buchanan, commenced its first session on the 7th of December, 1857.
The administration, like that which preceded it, claimed a decisive
majority in both houses. In the senate there were thirty-seven
democrats, twenty republicans, and five whigs or Americans. The
house stood — democrats one hundred and twenty-eight, republicans
ninety-two, Americans fourteen. Mr. Seward's speeches at this ses
sion were numerous, and on a great variety of subjects.2

Early in the autumn of 1857, signs of a severe and general revulsion
in the trade and industry of the country began to appear. During the
month of October all the banks suspended specie payments, and a
most alarming prostration of business ensued. More than five thou
sand failures occurred, involving liabilities to the amount of three
hundred millions of dollars. The winter opened with a universal
complaint of distress, especially among the working classes in the
cities and large towns. Probably no interest was more seriously
impaired than railroad stocks. In the short space of thirty days,
shares in many of the leading corporations depreciated more than
fifty per cent, becoming, in some instances, valueless. The treasury

1 March 3, 1858. See present volume.

2 The following are the titles, as given in the Congressional Globe: The President's Message;
Eulogy on James Bell ; Treasury Notes ; William Walker : Paying for Slaves out of the Trea
sury ; Eulogy on Thomas J. Rusk ; Increase of the Army ; Admission of Minnesota ; Kansas and
Lecompton; Slavery in New York; Pacific Railroad; Admission of Oregon; The Fisheries;
British Aggressions ; Rivers and Harbor* ; Coast Survey ; Eulogy on the late Senator Hender
son ; MaifSteamers ; and Washington City Schools.

VOL. IV. V

50 M E M O I B .

of the United States, which, a short time ago, was overflowing, was
now suffering from depletion, and immediate legislation was required
to meet the wants of the government.

Among the first acts of the president, after the assembling of
congress, was to call for an issue of treasury notes. Mr. Seward,
while admitting the necessity of such means of relief, proposed to
limit the issue, in amount, rate of interest, and length of time.

In a speech, already noticed, made by Mr. Seward, in February,
1853, on removing the duties from railroad iron,1 a prophetic warn
ing of the present embarrassments may be found. His statesman
like counsels had been unheeded, and seven years had been sufficient
to consummate his predictions.

The people of Kansas saw no improvement in their affairs under
the administration of Mr. Buchanan. President Pierce had removed
from office, two governors of Kansas, Keeder and Shannon, because
they had manifested an unwillingness to submit wholly and unre
servedly to the pro-slavery party in the territory. John W. Geary
succeeded Governor Shannon, and was soon compelled, by persecu
tion in Kansas and neglect at Washington, to resign. President
Buchanan then appointed Kobert J. Walker, of Mississippi, to suc
ceed Mr. Geary. Mr. Walker also resigned, after striving for a few
months, without success, to administer the government of the terri
tory with some degree of justice to the people, without, at the same
time, offending the administration at Washington. F. P. Stan-
ton, the secretary of the territory, who acted as governor during
the absence of Walker, encountered the displeasure of the pro-
slavery party, and was removed from office by the president.
Governor Walker and Mr. Stanton, like their predecessors, failed to
secure either order or fairness in the elections or government of Kan
sas ; and the people were forced to submit to the usurpations of their
oppressors. A legislature, composed of pro-slavery members, assem
bled at Lecompton, in January, 1857, and ordered a convention to
be called to frame a state constitution. The legislature and the
convention were thus both placed in the hands of the enemies
of Kansas, having been chosen almost entirely by fraudulent
votes.

i See p. 623, vol. in.

KAXSAS — LECOMPTON — 1857-58. 51

By the act calling this convention, a census of voters was to be
taken, on the basis of which, previous to the choice of delegates, an
apportionment was to be made. This census, falling into the hands
of the pro-slavery sheriffs, was grossly unjust, most of the free state
voters being unenumerated, and some counties entirely omitted.
The apportionment and all the arrangments for the election of dele
gates were made, so as to perfectly ensure the return of a pro-slavery
majority in the convention. Under these circumstances the free
state men again refused to vote and the whole number of votes cast
was only about two thousand.

The election took place on the 15th of June, and the delegates
thus chosen met in convention at Lecompton on the 4th of Septem
ber, 1857.1 After organizing they adjourned until October. In the
meantime an election for members to the territorial legislature was
held, in which the free state men participated, some show of fairness
having been secured. The result of this election, notwithstanding
many gross attempts at fraud, secured a legislature of thirty-six free
state members to sixteen pro-slavery. The free state delegate to
congress was chosen at the same time by seven thousand six hun
dred votes, against three thousand seven hundred for the pro-slavery
candidate, showing the free state settlers to be in a large majority in
the territory.

i Since the above was written, Governor Walker, himself, has testified to the following facts :
44 Shortly after I arrived at Lecompton," says Mr. Walker, " the county of Douglas, of which
Lecompton is the capital, held a democratic meeting, and nominated eight gentlemen, I think, as
delegates to the Lecompton convention, of which John Calhoun, then the surveyor-general of
the territory, was at the head. The resolutions of the meeting required them to sustain the
submission of the constitution to the vote of the people. They published a written pledge to
that effect. Rumors were circulated by their opponents that they would not submit the whole
constitution to the people. They published a second circular, a day or two before the election,
denouncing these rumors as falsehoods, and reaffirming their determination, if elected, to sub
mit the constitution to the people. But for these assurances it is universally conceded they had
no chance whatever of being elected — not the slightest.

'• I still continued to entertain not the shadow of a doubt that the constitution would be sub
mitted to a vote of the people by the convention, nor do I believe the slightest doubt existed in
the territory. I deem it due to frankness to say, that from my long residence in the south,
and my general views on the subject of slavery, I should have greatly preferred that a majority
of the people of Kansas would have made it a slave state. I avowed these views very fully in
my public communications in Kansas. I never disguised my opinions upon this subject. But
at the same time it was perfectly obvious to myself and to every person that it was possible to
accomplish that object by no fair means in Kansas. I was determined that, so far as my action
was concerned, there should be a fair vote of the people, and that I would countenance no frauds,
or forgeries, or villainy of any kind, in connection with a question so solemn as that. This at
tempt to make Kansas a slave state developed itself in the fall of 1857. It first was fully de
veloped by the terrible forgeries in the pretended returns. They were not legal returns that
were sent to me as governor of the territory, and which I rejected, although that rejection gave
a majority of the territorial legislature to my political opponents, the republicans. The first
forgery presented to me was the case at Oxford, which was a forgery upon its face, and that it
\vas so has since been acknowledged by one of the judges whose names were signed to it. In a
public document he declares that he never did affix his signature to it. In Oxford, some six
teen hundred votes were attempted to be given in a village of six houses, where there were not
fifty voters, and it is now ascertained that not thirty votes were really given. The rest were all
forgeries.

" The next return presented was from McGee county, where there certainly were not twenty
voters, but which was returned as over twelve hundred voters, given at three different precincts,
and where it is now ascertained that there was no election holden at all— not a vote given."

52 MEMOIR.

The convention reassembled at Lecompton, and framed a constitu
tion recognizing slavery and declaring the right of property in slaves
to be higher than any law or constitution. Notwithstanding the-
members had pledged themselves to submit the constitution they
were to frame, to the suffrages of the people, no such provision was
adopted by the convention. Only the section relating to slavery
was to be so submitted, and it was by an artful precaution made
impossible to vote for or against that section without, at the same
time, voting for the whole constitution. The free state settlers
refusing to vote, the slavery permission was adopted by a vote of
six thousand one hundred forty-three to five hundred and sixty-nine.
Three-fourths of the affirmative votes were proved to be fraudulent.

Early in February, 1858, the president sent to congress a special
message, with the constitution thus formed at Lecompton, recom
mending the admission of Kansas into the Union under that con
stitution. In the house the subject was referred to a select commit
tee, on motion of Mr. Harris, of Illinois, by a vote of one hun
dred and fourteen to one hundred and eleven. The speaker, con
trary to usage, appointed a committee opposed to the object of the
mover.

In the senate, after a debate of several weeks duration, a bill was
passed to admit Kansas under the Lecompton constitution ; ayes
thirty-three, nays twenty-five. Bell, Broderick, Crittenden, Douglas,
Pugh and Stuart voted nay with the republicans. Previous to the
final passage of the bill Mr. Crittenden moved a substitute pro
viding that the Lecompton constitution should be submitted to the
people of Kansas ; if approved, the president should by procla
mation admit Kansas into the Union; if rejected by the people,
a new convention might be called to frame another constitution.
Mr. Crittenden's substitute was rejected in the senate by a vote of
twenty-four to thirty-two — Bell, Broderick, Douglas and Stuart
voting aye with the republicans.

The bill as it passed the senate was taken up in the house on
the first day of April. A motion to reject it was lost — ayes ninety-
five, nays one hundred and thirty-seven. Besides the republicans
voting to reject the bill were Harris, of Illinois, and Hickman, of
Pennsylvania. Mr. Montgomery, of Pennsylvania, immediately
moved to substitute Mr. Crittenden's amendment for the senate bill.
His motion was carried, and the house, by a vote of one hundred

KANSAS — LECOMPTON — 1858. 53

and twenty to one hundred and twelve, adopted, substantially, the
bill offered as a substitute in the senate by Mr. Crittenden.1

The bill, thus amended, was returned to the senate, where it was
rejected by thirty -four to twenty -two. The house for several days
maintained its position arid refused to recede. The senate, equally
obstinate, at length proposed a conference. The house, after one
day's deliberation, by the close vote of one hundred and nine to
one hundred and eight, accepted the proposition, and a conference
committee was appointed — Green, Hunter and Seward, of the
senate, with English, Stephens and Howard, of the house. Mr.
English, who had voted in the house for the substitute, was the
chairman. On the 23d of April, he reported to the house a com
promise, Seward and Howard dissenting. This compromising bill
of which Mr. English was the reputed author, was prevarica
ting and double dealing in its terms, and a virtual surrender of the
principle contained in Mr. Critten den's substitute, which the house
had just adopted by eight majority. While professing to submit
the constitution to the people of Kansas, the bill provided that in
ease of an adverse vote, the territory should not be admitted until
it contained ninety-three thousand three hundred and forty inhab
itants, and also that it should thereby forfeit its right to large allot
ments of the public lands heretofore set apart for internal improve
ment and education in the territory. It nevertheless passed the
house by one hundred and twelve to one hundred and three,2 and
the senate by thirty to twenty-two, Broderick, Crittenden, Douglas
and Stuart persisting in their opposition. It was promptly signed
by the president, and under its provisions the constitution was sub
mitted to the people of Kansas. They rejected it by a large majority,
only one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight voting in its
favor and eleven thousand three hundred against it. Mr. Seward's
speeches during this contest in the senate, are remarkable for their
ability and comprehensive views. They trace with historical accu
racy and striking effect the various acts of the pro-slavery party,

1 The democrats who voted for the " Crittenden amendment," as it was called, were Messrs.
McKibbin of California ; Morris, Harris, Shaw, Smith and Marshall, of Illinois; English. Foley
and Davis, of Indiana ; Adrian, of New Jersey ; Haskin and Clark, of New York ; Pendleton.
Groesbeck, Cockerill, Hall, Lawrence and Cox , of Ohio ; Jones, Hickman, Montgomery and
Chapman, of Pennsylvania. Messrs. Underwood, Marshall, Davis, Ricaud, Harris and Gilmer,
representatives of slaveholdine states, also voted with the republicans.

2 Among those who receded irom their former positions were Messrs. English, Foley, Gilmer-
Cockerill, Cox, Groesbeck, Hall, Lawrence, Pendleton and Jones.

54 MEMOIR.

in congress and in Kansas, in its persevering efforts to establish sla
very in that territory.

During the session, Mr. Seward advocated and voted for the ad
mission of Oregon and Minnesota into the Union. He, at the same
time, opposed the prescriptive features contained in the constitution
of Oregon, and protested against any indorsement of the prejudice
on which the proscriptions rested. Minnesota was admitted, but
the bill for the admission of Oregon, after passing the senate, failed
in the house of representatives.

One of the most remarkable pages in the history of Mr. Buchan
an's administration will be that which relates to his management of
affairs in the territory of Utah. Having formally removed Brigham
Young from the office of governor and appointed Alfred Gumming
as his successor, the president determined to send a body of troops
to Utah with the new governor, to act as his posse comitatus. This
little army, only three hundred strong, with a train of wagons six
miles in length, started on its long and dangerous march in the
autumn of 1857. During its tedious journey the train was attacked
by the Indians on the route, robbed of its cattle, overtaken by Si
berian snows and despoiled of a large portion of its supplies. Five
hundred of its animals died in one night of cold and hunger, and
fifty wagons were captured and burned by emissaries of Brigham
Young. After repeated hardships, and losses amounting to millions
of dollars, the train reduced to a fragment of its original proportions,
arrived within one hundred miles of Salt Lake city and there went
into winter quarters. A serious abridgment of rations was necessary
to save the army from starvation. Brigham Young resolutely for
bade the entrance of Governor Gumming and his forces into the
city, and it was only by a mortifying submission that they were
allowed to remain in their encampment without destruction. Thus,.
for several months, the rebellious people of Utah were suffered to
harass and destroy the army of the United States and put its au
thority at defiance. Fortunately for humanity, an actual conflict was
avoided by the interposition of a private gentleman of influence and
practical benevolence.1 The dishonor of the administration's con
duct, however, remains. A bill, introduced in the senate, increasing

1 Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania.

THE MORMONS AND THE FILIBUSTERS. 55

the army of the United States in view of the then threatened rebel
lion in Utah, was debated at much length and with great vigor.

Mr. Seward, with that patriotic regard for the honor of his country
which characterizes all his acts and speeches, supported the bill and
advocated the most efficient measures for suppressing the rebellion
and restoring the supremacy of law and order. His speeches on the
subject in the senate created not a little excitement in that body and
among the people. In this instance as in others he did not hesitate,
in view of all the circumstances, to separate himself, for the time,
from some of his political friends. He believed it to be his duty to
sustain the honor and dignity of the government even if he thereby
gave aid and comfort to Mr. Buchanan's administration. And already
it is generally conceded that Mr. Seward, in merging the partizan in
the patriot, has strengthened his position before the country as a
statesman.

An adventurer, named William Walker, during President Pierce's
administration, made several expeditions, in violation of our neutra
lity laws, to the Central American States on the isthmus, with the
evident design of revolutionizing their governments and preparing
the way for their becoming slaveholding states. President Bucha
nan, like his predecessor, made a show of preventing these maraud
ing expeditions, and Walker was repeatedly arrested ; but his schemes
seemed never to be thwarted.

On the 24th of November, 1857, he landed, with four hundred
men, on the shores of Nicaragua, at Greytown, in full view of an
armed vessel sent there by our government to watch and intercept
him. Commodore Paulding, who was in the vicinity, knowing the
unlawful nature of Walker's enterprises, soon arrested him and sent
him back to the United States, a prisoner. Walker was subsequently
indicted and tried at New Orleans, but the jury failed to agree, and
the prosecution was abandoned. Commodore Paulding, on the other
hand, was treated with marked coldness by the administration, and
resolutions were introduced in the senate and in the house, by the
president's friends, condemning his course. Mr. Seward defended
the arrest, and supported a resolution to present Commodore Pauld
ing with a gold medal.

The first session of the thirty-fifth congress was brought to a close
on the 16th of June, 1858.

66 MEM OIK.

After the adjournment, Mr. Seward was engaged for several weeks
in the circuit court of the United States at New York. His argu
ment before that court, in favor of a bridge over the Hudson river
at Albany, is remarkable for its originality and for its extensive
knowledge of the subject of navigation.

The elections in the autumn of 1858 resulted in a decided rebuke
of the president and his Kansas-Lecompton policy. In the state of
New York, only four members of congress favoring that policy were
elected; and the republican candidate for governor (Hon. E. D.
Morgan) was chosen by nearly twenty thousand majority. The
struggle in the state was nevertheless severe, and the result seemed
to many to be doubtful. In this emergency, Mr. Seward appeared
before the people, and by his speeches at Rochester, Rome, and Au
burn, rallied the strength of the republicans, and at the same time
destroyed the hopes of the opposition. His speech at Rochester,
especially, gave a new aspect to the contest, and turned the tide in
favor of the republican party. The following passage has acquired
an enduring fame :

" Hitherto, the two systems (slave and free labor) have existed in different
states, but side by side, within the American Union. This has happened because
the Union is a confederation of states. But, in another aspect, the United States
constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the states out
to their very borders, together with a new and extended net-work of railroads
and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate,
are rapidly bringing the states into a higher and more perfect social unity or con
solidation. Thus these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer
contact, and collision results.

" Shall I tell you what this collision means ? They who think that it is acci
dental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore
ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between
opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will,
sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-
labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar
plantation's of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and
New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields
and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by
their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New
York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is
the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts
at final compromise between the slave and free states, and it is the existence of
thiis great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and
ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow citizens, it is by no

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 57

Cleans an original or even a modern one. Our forefathers knew it to be true, and
unanimously acted upon it when they framed the constitution of the United States.
They regarded the existence of the servile system in so many of the states with
sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, and they looked "upon the colli
sion between them, which was then just revealing itself, and which we are now
accustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that either the one or
the other system must exclusively prevail.

" It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against misapprehen
sion. If these states are to again become universally slaveholding, I do not pre
tend to say with what violations of the constitution that end shall be accom
plished. On the other hand, while I do confidently believe and hope that my
country will yet become a land of universal freedom, I do not expect that it
will be made so otherwise than through the action of the several states co-operat
ing with the federal government, and all acting in strict conformity with their
respective constitutions.

" The strife and contentions concerning slavery, which gently-disposed persons
8O habitually deprecate, are nothing more than the ripening of the conflict which
the fathers themselves not only thus regarded with favor, but which they may be
said to have instituted."

Congress again assembled on the first Monday in December, 1858.
On the first day of the session, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the senate,
called up the bill to indemnify the owners of the Spanish schooner
Amistead for the loss of its cargo of slaves. Mr. Seward remarked
that he did not consider it a meritorious bill, and moved a postpone
ment of its consideration. The subject was suffered to rest during
the remainder of the thirty-fifth congress

Mr. Seward's speeches during the session were upon the Pacific
railroad bill ; the expenses and revenues of government ; the bill to
facilitate the acquisition of Cuba; the Indiana senatorial question ;
the consular and diplomatic appropriations ; the homestead bill ; the
protection of American citizens abroad ; and the post office, civil and
naval appropriations. In the discussion of one of the latter bills,
the affairs of Kansas were briefly alluded to by Mr. Seward. He
expressed his satisfaction with the prospect that Kansas was soon to
be admitted into the Union as a free state ; and hailed the approach
of the time when no successful attempt would be made in congress
to bind down any future territory to come into the Union as a slave-
holding state.

In the debate on the Pacific railroad bill, Mr. Seward advocated
an amendment providing that preference should be given, in the

VOL. IV.

58 MEMOIR.

construction of the road, to iron of American manufacture. He gave
his assent to the route proposed by the committee, although he pre*
ferred one less southern. He discarded the policy of giving the
public lands to a company to build the road, preferring that the land
in its vicinity should be surrendered to actual settlers, so as to secure
the speediest possible production of revenue from it. He would
directly employ the capital and credit of the United States, increas
ing the tariff on foreign importations for the purpose of defraying
the cost and providing a sinking fund for the extinguishment of the
debt created in the construction of the road. These view&are very
ably set forth in his speeches, with many practical suggestions, most
of which were incorporated into the bill prepared by the committee.

Mr. Seward, in discussing the act making appropriations for the
civil and diplomatic service of the United States, urged several
important reforms in both departments. He believed that greater
economy might be secured in their administration, without impairing
their efficiency. He named a number of foreign missions that might
be combined, and several that might be safely abolished.

Probably no more important subject occupied the attention of con
gress than that of the disposition of the public lands. " A bill to
secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain" passed the
house, one hundred and twenty to seventy-six. The republicans
voted for the measure. Six northern democrats voted against, and
only three southern members for it. Of the democratic votes in the
house, a large majority were cast against the bill. It having thus-
passed the house, early in February, 1859, Mr. "Wade, in the senate, on
the 17th of that month, moved to take it up. His motion prevailed.1

All that was now desired by the friends of the bill was a vote upon
its final passage, which its opponents were determined to prevent.
Mr. Seward, in brief but energetic terms, urged its friends to stand
firm and insist upon its consideration. But after a desultory debate,
which Senator Mason threatened should be " extended," a motion to
lay aside the bill was carried by the casting vote of the vice-presi
dent. During the contest, Mr. Gwin left the friends of the bill and
roted with its enemies. As in the house, a large majority of the

^ The vote stood as follows (republicans in italics) : Yeas— Messrs. Bright, Broderick, Chan
dler Lollamer, JHron, Doolitfle, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Gwin, Hale, Hamlin, Ifarlan, Johnson
of li'nnessee <Az/w, Puch, Rice, Seward, Shields, Simmon*, Smith, Stuart, Trumbull, Wade,
WUKtnr-'X Arty*— Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benjamin, Biglcr, Brown, Chesnut, f'lay. Clin«*-
rnan, Davis. Pitch lit/patrick, Green, Hammond, Hunter, Iverson, Lane, Mallorv, Mason,
Pearce, Reid, blulell, Toombs, and Ward— 23

THE HOMESTEAD BILL. 59

democrats voted against the bill, while every republican sustained it,
"at every stage. Two days afterwards, Mr. Wade again called up
the bill ; but a motion to take up the Cuba bill, instead, prevailed.1
This was again repeated on the 25th of February. After a debate
on the Cuba project, protracted late into the night, another effort
was made to consider the homestead bill. Mr. Seward remarked :

"After nine hours' yielding to the discussion of the Cuba question, it is time to>
come back to the great question of the day and the age. The senate may as well
meet, face to face, the issue which is before them. It is an issue presented by the
competition between these two questions. One, the homestead bill, is a question
of homes, of lands for the landless freemen of the United States. The Cuba bill
is the question of slaves for the slaveholders of the United States."

All efforts, however, to lay aside the Cuba bill were ineffectual,
and no other opportunity occurred before the adjournment of Con
gress to get a vote on the final passage of one of the most beneficent
measures ever presented to any legislative body. In the senate and
in the house of representatives the republicans voted steadily on the
side of the measure, while the democrats, with a few exceptions,
were as uniformly against it. Mr. Seward's speech in favor of a
homestead law, delivered in the senate as early as 1851, is an elabo
rate defense of the measure, and may be referred to as the best expo
sition of the subject ever made in the senate.2

The legislature of Indiana, in 1857, attempted to elect two United
States senators. The two branches were of opposite politics. The
senate consisted of twenty-three democrats and twenty-seven opposi
tion, while the house numbered sixty-three democrats to thirty-seven
opposition. No law existing in that state prescribing the manner of
electing a senator, the constitution of the United States was the only
guide in the matter. That instrument declares, that senators shall
be elected by the " legislature." The laws of Indiana define the
legislature to be "the senate and house." The senate consists of
fifty members; the house of one hundred. Two-thirds, in each, is-
required to make a quorum.

1 The following is the vote to give the Cuba bill priority of consideration : Yeas — Messrs.
Allen, Bayard, Bell, Benjamin, Bigler, Brown, Chesnut, Clay, Clingman, Davis, Fitch, Fitzpa-
trick, Green, Gwin, Hammond, Houston, Hunter, Iverson, Jones, Lane Mallory, Mason, Polk,
Pugh, .Reid, Eice, Sebastian, Shields, Slidell, Smith, Stuart, Toombs, Ward, Wright, and Yulee
— 35. Nays — Messrs. Broderick, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon. Doolittle, Douglas,.
Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster. Hale, Hamlin, Harlan, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, King,
Pearce, Seward, Simmons, TrtnnbiiU, Wade, and Wilson — 24.

2 See vol. I, p. 156.

60 MEMOIR.

The bouse, with twenty-three senators, on the 4th of February,
in a pretended joint convention, elected Messrs. Bright and Fitch
senators of the United States ; the latter to fill the vacancy then
existing, and the former for the full term, commencing the ensuing
4th of March. This election was deemed invalid for the following
reasons — the senate had never voted for this joint convention, but
on the other hand had adopted a protest, twenty-seven to twenty,
against any such meeting, a few days before it was held. Less
than a quorum of the house were present, and there were several
other gross informalities attending the pretended election, sufficient
to render it palpably illegal and void. Twenty-seven senators and
thirty-six representatives sent a protest to the United States senate,
•declaring that a quorum of neither house had participated in the
election ; that the alleged joint convention was unauthorized by any
law of the state, by any resolution of the legislature, or by any pro
vision of the constitution of Indiana, or of the United States ; and
that to affirm its action would destroy the existence of the senate of
Indiana as a branch of the legislature.1 Bat a majority of the senate
of the United States allowed Messrs. Bright and Fitch to take their
seats and act as members of the senate.

In 1859 the legislature of Indiana, in a legal and formal manner,
chose Messrs. Henry S. Lane and William Monroe McCarty, as
senators, to take the places illegally held by Messrs. Bright and
Fitch. One argument at the previous session of congress had been
that no contestants appeared for the seats claimed by the latter gen
tlemen. Messrs. Lane and McCarty accordingly presented their
credentials to the senate by the hands of the vice-president, with a
memorial from the legislature of Indiana reciting the facts in the case.

Mr. Seward moved that the recently elected senators be allowed
the privileges of the senate until their claims were considered and
decided. His speech in vindication of their rights, and in condem
nation of the usurpations and action of the legislature of Indiana in
1857, is a well reasoned and cogent argument of the whole question.

The senate, however, refused to adopt Mr. Seward's motion allow
ing Messrs. McCarty and Lane the privileges of the floor ; and also

1 Certain state officers are also, by the constitution and laws of Indiana, required to be elected
Dy a joint convention. But, although several vacancies had existed for some time, the members
composing the convention which elected the two senators, did not dare to assume the duty of
electing such officers at that or at any convention similarly constituted.

THE ACQUISITION OF CUBA. 61

declined to consider their claims, on the ground that the question
had been closed by previous action of the senate.

On the 24th of January, 1857, Mr. Slidell, of Louisiana, from the
committee on foreign relations, reported to the senate a bill for the
acquisition of the island of Cuba. The project had been ushered
into the senate by a special message from the president and was con
sidered an Executive measure. It provided for the immediate
appropriation of thirty millions of dollars, to be placed under the
control of the president, to be used in his discretion for the acquisi
tion of the island, without requiring the ratification by the senate
of any treaty he might make. Neither was the president limited in*
the amount to be paid, ultimately — the thirty millions of dollars
being for the preliminary arrangements to the actual purchase. Mr.
Se ward's views in regard to the acquisition of Cuba were expressed
in his speech in the senate on the 26th of January, 1853, as follows:

" While I do not desire the immediate or early annexation of Cuba, nor see how
I could vote for it at all until slavery shall have ceased to counteract the workings
of nature in that beautiful island, nor even then, unless it could come into the Union,
without injustice to Spain, without aggressive war, and without producing inter
nal dissensions among ourselves, I nevertheless yield my full acquiescence to the
views of John Quincy Adams, that this nation can never safely allow that island
to pass under the dominion of any power that is already, or can become, a for
midable rival or enemy."1

The bill now before the senate met with Mr. Seward's persistent
opposition. His speeches and remarks during the debate were full
of warning and denunciation of the dangerous provisions contained
in the bill. It also encountered the opposition of the other repub
lican senators, and was finally dropped by its friends, without a vote
being taken on its passage. A motion to lay the bill on the table
was made in the senate at midnight on the 25th of February, which
was lost, eighteen to thirty. This was the last action had upon the
measure during the session.

By the 10th section of an act passed March 3d, 1857, congress
provided for the establishment of an overland mail to San Francisco
in these words :

" SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That the postmaster-general be, and he is
lereby, authorized to contract for the conveyance of the entire letter mail, from

1 Sae Vol. Ill, page 605.

£2 MEMOIR.

euch point on the Mississippi river as the contractors may select, to San Francisco,
in the state of California, for six years, at a cost not exceeding three hundred thous
and dollars per annum for semi-monthly, four hundred and fifty thousand dollars
for weekly, or six hundred thousand dollars for semi-weekly service ; to be performed
semi-monthly, weekly or semi-weekly, at the option of the postmaster-general."

The bids made for tins contract specified the route to be traversed
as it was contemplated they should, by the act. But none of the
routes proposed were sufficiently southern to satisfy the president
and his cabinet. By an extraordinary exercise of power the success
ful contractors were made to adopt a route agreed upon by the ad
ministration and its southern advisers, described as follows :

" From St. Louis, Missouri, and from Memphis, Tennessee, converging at Little
Rock, Arkansas ; thence, via Preston, Texas, or as nearly so as may be found ad
visable, to the best point of crossing the Rio Grande, above El Paso, and not far
from Fort Fillmore ; ftience along the new road, being opened and constructed
under the direction of the secretary of the interior, to Fort Yumas, California ;
thence through the best passes and along the best valleys for safe and expeditious
staging, to San Francisco."

One of the objects in compelling the contractors to take this ex
tremely southern and circuitous route seems to have been to favor
the gulf states and to populate with immigrants the territory of
Arizona, at the expense of the more central and northern portions
of the country. An effort was made in congress in February, 1859,
to change the action of the post office department in regard to this
matter, and to restore the spirit and letter of the act of March 3d,
1857. The route forced upon the contractors neither accommodated
the transmission of letters nor the conveyance of passengers from
the Mississippi river to San Francisco, while it involved an expense
of over six hundred thousand dollars. On the 1st of March, 1859,
an amendment to the post office appropriation bill was lost, as
follows :

" And be it further enacted, That the contract with Butterfield & Co., for carry
ing the mails from the Mississippi river to San Francisco, in California, shall be so
construed as to allow said contractors to carry the mail by any route they may select."

YEAS — Messrs. Broderick, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doc-little,
Durkee, Foot, Foster Harlan, King, Polk, Pugh, Seward, Shields, Simmons, Trum-
bull, Wade and Wilson — 20. NAYS — Messrs. Allen, Bell, Benjamin, Bigler,
Brown, Chesnut, Clay, Clingman, Crittenden, Fitch, Fitzpatrick, 6-reen, G-win,

VISIT TO EUKOPE AND THE HOLY LAND. 63

Hammond, Houston, Hunter, Iverson, Johnson of Arkansas, Johnson of Ten
nessee. Jones, Lane, Mason, Pearce, Reid, Rice, Slidell, Stuart, Toombs, Ward
and Yulee— 30.

It will be seen that this vote was almost entirely sectional, Mr.
Polk of Missouri being the only senator from a slave state in the
affirmative.

Further efforts were made in the senate and in the house by Mr.
Seward and others, to give to the north and west a just and equi
table share in the advantages to be derived from an overland mail
route to the Pacific. One provision of this character, adopted by con
gress, was defeated by the president's refusing to sign the bill con
taining it, and another was lost with the post office appropriation
bill to which it was attached.

Mr. Seward advocated the most practicable measures that came
before the senate for affording mail facilities to the people living be
tween the Mississippi river and the Pacific ocean. In the same spirit
he favored the best attainable projects for a railroad; and a line of
telegraphs, through the same territory. No sectional prejudices mar
any of his speeches on these great subjects nor appear in any of the
votes he cast.

A bill giving to the several states portions of the public lands for
the support of colleges devoted specially to agricultural and me
chanical sciences, having passed the house at the previous session,
came up in the senate and was passed: ayes twenty -five, nays
twenty- two. It was vetoed by the president. Mr. Seward with
other republican senators zealously supported this bill while the neg
ative votes were cast entirely by democrats.

The efforts of the administration to increase the rates of postage
on letters were opposed by Mr. Seward, and by the republicans in
the senate and house of representatives, and were finally defeated.

On the 3d of March, 1859, the thirty-fifth congress adjourned sine
die. The president immediately called an extra session of the sen
ate to meet at noon on the next day. After a week spent chiefly in
executive sessions the senate again adjourned.

After the adjournment of the senate (March 10, 1859), Mr. Seward
determined to gratify his long-cherished desire for an extensive for
eign tour. He had made a brief and hurried visit to Europe in 1833,
in company with his father. He designed now to make a more pro

64 MEMOIR.

tracted stay in the countries he then visited, and to examine more
thoroughly into the condition of their inhabitants and the working
of their governments ; and also to extend his journey into Asia and
Africa.

He accordingly sailed from New York on the 7th of May, in the
steamship Ariel. His departure was, unexpectedly to Him, made a
public event. He was waited upon at the Astor House by the two
republican central committees, and, after a brief interchange of com
pliments, the committees, with their guest, proceeded in carriages to
Castle Garden, where they were received by several hundred repub
licans, and escorted on board the steamer which was waiting to con
vey the party down the bay. A salute was fired, and the band
played " Hail to the Chief," while the boat left the wharf, amid hearty
cheers from men on board and on shore.

On parting with his company at the Narrows, Mr. Seward ad
dressed them as follows :

"GKNTLKMKX: It would of course be impossible for me to persuade you that
anybody could be insensible to the manifestations of such hospitality as I am
receiving at your hands. I will, with your leave, however, undertake to interpret
it, leaving out all its political bearings and relations, and will regard you, not as
politicians, not as republicans, but as fellow citizens and as friends who, against
my will, followed me to the house of my friends, where I was entertained, took
me up at the door of my hotel, unwilling to leave me alone in your city, and who
will not part from me now until you separate from me at the gates of the ocean.
Gentlemen, the sky is bright, the sun is auspicious; all the indications promise a
pleasant and prosperous voyage, and it will depend upon my own temper whether
out of it I am able or not to make the material for which I go abroad — the know
ledge derived from the sufferings and strivings of humanity in foreign countries —
to teach me how to improve and elevate the condition of my own countrymen.
I will only say, gentlemen, in expressing my thanks to you, now that we are at
the point of separation, that I trust it may be my good fortune to return among
you, and resume the duties now temporarily suspended, in the great cause of
freedom and humanity. But no one knows the casualties of life; and two voya
ges separate me from you. What may happen in that space and time, no one but
a beneficent Providence knows. If it is my lot not to return among you, I trust
I shall be remembered as one who accomplished in his own life the laudable ends
of an honorable ambition, and died far away from his native land — without an
enemy to be recalled and without a regretful remembrance, and with a conviction
that he had tried to deserve the good opinion which his friends entertained of him.
Fellow citizens, friends, I am entirely taken by surprise by these manifestations
of your good will and attention. I have not taxed myself to consider whether
there can be anything in what I have done to deserve it. I had hoped, as I had

A SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE. 65

thought, that I could pass out of the country in silence, to seek strength, health,
vigor and knowledge in foreign lands, unattended, unnoticed, if not unknown.
I need not say it is a pleasant surprise. But as we near the place where we must
part, sad thoughts, rather than exciting ones, enter into my mind. You will
excuse me, therefore, if I turn aside altogether from political questions and con
siderations, which it is my duty to forego, and follow the scenes which it is my
object to study and contemplate. I do so the more readily, because I know that
at last the great questions of justice and humanity before the American people
are destined to be decided, and that they may be safely left to your hands, even
if the instructor never returns. If Providence restores me with health and vigor,
it shall be devoted to the establishment and supremacy of the same principles.
But we do not know the casualties which await us. We do know only that our
welfare is the object of the care of a beneficent Providence. And we do know,
too, that a life which has been devoted to humanity, and has endeavored to avoid
doing injustice to mankind, is a life which can leave no other than a harmless, if
not a satisfactory reputation. Such, if I know my own heart, I hope will be the
reputation which I shall leave And now, kindest of friends, whose liberality,
courtesy, and attention have attended my passage from my country to the very
£ates of the ocean, farewell. God be with you."

The closing sentences were uttered with much emotion.

Mr. Seward remained abroad about eight months. During this
time he traversed no small portions of Europe, Africa and Asia,
visiting Egypt and the Holy Land. Probably no other American
was ever received, wherever he went, so cordially and with such
distinguished respect. The monarchs and ruling classes of Europe
spontaneously offered him all the opportunities he could desire for
improving the great object of his journey, and such as are only
extended to recognized statesmen of the world. He enjoyed, no
less, the company and respect of Kossuth, Lamartine, Mrs. Marti-
neau, Mackay, and other friends of liberty in England and on the
continent.

Mr. Seward's return to his native land, oh the 29th of December,
1859, was signalized by public demonstrations and rejoicing. At
New York, the common council tendered him the civilities of the
city, and made arrangements for his public reception. On his arri
val in the city, the mayor waited upon him and accompanied him to
the City Hall, where a dense crowd of people were waiting to receive
him. In response to Mayor Tiemann's address, Mr. Seward spoke
as follows :

" MR. MAYOR, GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMON COUNCIL, AND FELLOW CITIZENS : I do
not mean to yield to the impulses of feeling on this occasion, although I can
scarcely conceive what would be more flattering to me than this reception in the

VOL. IV. 9

66 MEMOIR.

metropolis of my native country, and under the auspices of the municipal authori
ties of this flourishing city. Nevertheless, I answer that my seeming indifference
to the cordial welcome would argue me guilty, not merely of caprice in regard to
my fellow citizens, but of ingratitude to the Divine Being whose goodness has
permitted me again to enter the circle of true patriots and of endeared and life-
tried friends.

" In the eastern regions, from which we have derived the revelations of divine
truth, a paralysis rests upon society, which leaves little else to be noted than those
monuments of Christian laith which none can study without grateful emotions.
I have been able on many occasions to compare the existing condition of society
in Europe with what existed there twenty-five years ago, when I had the fortune
to visit the eastern continent.

" I think that I can safely say that society — all the nations — on that continent
are more prosperous now than they have ever been before, and are making deci
ded progress in all substantial improvements. But it is manifest that the institu
tions of government existing there are either too ancient, or were founded on
ancient principles, and are not adapted to the exigencies of the present day.

" Therefore it is that every country in Europe is balancing between the desire
for beneficial changes and the fear of innovation. Our own system, constructed
later and under better and happier auspices, alone seems to afford its citizens free
dom from such difficulties and such apprehensions.

" It must always be difficult to determine how far we can lend encouragement
to those who seek to reform the institutions of their own country, even when
there is hope of benefit to them as a people. But this we can always do : we can
conduct our internal affairs and our foreign relations with truth, candor, justice and
moderation, and thus commend our better system to other nations. This republic
may prove to them that its system of government is founded upon public virtue,
that as a people we are at unity among ourselves, and that we are seeking only by
lawful means to promote the welfare of mankind."

Addressing the committees and the citizens generally, in reply to
an address by Judge Peabody on their behalf, he said :

" My memory gives back the recollections of May last, when you accompanied
me to the steamer on the occasion of my departure abroad. I know not how
much I am indebted to that manifestation of cordiality for the friendly reception
which met me in all the countries which I visited, which was so grateful to my
feelings. But no day was so pleasant to me as the one which brought me to
my native country

"In the Old World I saw much to admire, much to appreciate; but not so
much as there is to admire in the prosperity of my native land. I had visited
England a quarter of a century ago. I was asked on this visit whether I had seen
signs of change and improvement. To this I replied that I had ; and was asked
whether there had not been changes and improvements in my own country. I
replied, with pride, ' Yes.' Twenty-six years ago, I left London built of stone,
and New York was built of brick. Now, London and Paris are indeed both of
etone — New York of marble."

ME. SEWARD'S RECEPTION AT AUBURN. 67

His route home was a triumphal procession. At every place on.
the way, from New York to Auburn, bonfires, cannon, and speeches
Si waited his arrival. His reception in Auburn was such as could
have been prepared and given only by sincere and devoted friends to
a loved fellow citizen and cherished benefactor. The railroad depot
and the streets of the city through which he passed, were thronged
with people. The military, the city officials, and the children of the
public schools, bearing banners — " Welcome to Senator Seward " —
-accompanied him to his house.

At the gates of his residence, he met the clergymen of every de
nomination in the town, waiting to take him by the hand and
welcome him home. Mr. Seward, it was observed, was more deeply
affected by this scene than any through which he had passed. He
was able to return their hearty greeting only in silence, as he passed
through the line they had formed, into his house.

His reply to an address made to him by Michael S. Myers, Esq.,
on behalf of the people, at the railroad depot, was a spontaneous
and familiar talk with his friends.

"It is true," he said, "as you have reminded me, that I have reached another
stage in a journey that has occupied eight months of time and covered ten thou
sand miles of space — the last stage — a stage beyond which I can go no further.
Although in this journey I have traversed no small portions of four continents —
Europe, Africa, Asia and America — it is not until now, that I have found the
place which, above all others, I admire the most and love the best. This place,
this very spot on which you stand, and I stand among you, is indeed the one point
on the globe, which, wherever else I may be, draws me back by an irresistible
spell ; the place where, when I rest, I must dwell — the only place where I can
be content to live, and content, when life's fitful fever shall be over, to die.

" It is the spot cherished in my affections above and beyond all others — above
and beyond the spot where I was born — above and beyond the scenes in which I
was educated — adorned and marked as those localities of my early life are, by
mountain and river, by blue skies and genial climes — it is a spot cherished by me
above and beyond the scenes of any severe labor — of any arduous achievement —
and if I may use the expression without offense, of any personal successes. I
love it more than the capital of my native state, although in that capital I have
borne the baton of civil authority, confided to me by three millions of a free, brave
and enlightened people. I love it more than even the senate chamber of the
great confederate Republic of which we are all citizens — although in that senate
chamber I am authorized with one other representative to pronounce the will of
the leading member of that confederacy. I should not despair of vindicating this
preference by comparing the natural advantages, and the social development of

tf 8 MEMOIR.

the valley of the Owasco, with those of any other place you or I have ever known.
Lakes, meadows, waterfalls, fields, forests are here, which are nowhere surpassed ;
and comfort, ease, intelligence, enterprise and morals, that may justly challenge-
comparison in any part of the globe.

" But I will be candid, and confess that my partiality stands upon a simpler and
more natural logic. I prefer this place because it is my place. You may as well
be candid, also, and confess that you like it best, because it is your place. It is
true, my excellent friends, that persons abroad who do not know this attractive
spot so familiarly as we do, criticise it sometimes with severity. They point to-
those dark, massive prison walls, which are just before me, and tell us that they
mar the beauty and detract from the graces of our city. But you and I never see
those walls, or, if we do, they appear to us only as the boundaries of a field of
active labor, productive industry, and benevolent instruction. So, sometimes these-
distant critics are pleased to say that they think that I, who now stand before-
you, am not an object worthy of any such consideration as you are now bestow
ing on me, and you, I am sorry to say, do not seem to be much affected by that
objection.

"I prefer this place, because it is the only one where I am left free to act in an
individual and not in a representative and public character. Whatever I may be
elsewhere, here I am never either a magistrate or a legislator, but simply a citizen
— a man — your equal and your like — nothing more, nor less, nor different."

During Mr. Seward's absence (on the 16th of October, 1859),
Captain John Brown with twenty-one men, armed with muskets and
pikes, invaded the state of Virginia and took possession of the town
of Harper's Ferry. Their avowed object was to liberate the slaves
of Virginia. After getting control of the railroad passing through
the town, and of the United States armory established there, Brown
was compelled to surrender to a detachment of United States marines,
with a loss of thirteen of his men. He and six others were cap
tured, severely wounded and forthwith tried and executed foi murder
and treason.

This strange event caused a deep excitement throughout the
country. The enemies of Mr. Seward and of the republican party
endeavored to make him and the party responsible for the acts of
Captain Brown. But the attempt most signally failed.

Immediately, on the assembling of Congress, Mr. Mason, of Vir
ginia, in the senate, moved for a committee, with almost unlimited
authority and power, to investigate the whole transaction. After a
protracted examination of numerous witnesses, the committee, con
sisting of Senators Mason, Fitch, Jefferson Davis, Doolittle and
Collamer, made a report absolving all persons, except Brown and

JOHN BROWN — STATE ELECTIONS. 69

his men, from any connection with the invasion. The following is
an extract from the majority report, signed by Messrs. Mason, Fitch
and Davis:

l< On the whole testimony, there can be no doubt that Brown's plan was to
-commence a servile war on the borders of Virginia, which he expected to extend,
and which he believed his means and resources were sufficient to extend through
that state and the entire south. It does not seem that he entrusted even his inti
mate friends with his plans fully, even after they were out for execution."

The elections in all the free states, except California, in the au
tumn of 1859, resulted favorably to the republicans, notwithstanding
the efforts of their opponents to excite odium and prejudice against
the party by alleging its complicity with the raid of John Brown.
In New York, the republicans succeeded in electing a legislature
nearly three to one in their favor, and most of their state ticket by
flattering majorities. Pennsylvania also chose an opposition legisla
ture and opposition state officers. Minnesota, for the first time, was
republican, securing an additional republican senator in the United
States senate. Ohio also reversed the majority in her legislature,
which chose Salmon P. Chase, senator, at its ensuing session. In
Kansas the people, having rejected the Lecompton constitution, de
cided by a large majority to call a convention to frame a new state
constitution. This convention met at Wyandotte, in July, and adopted
a constitution which was submitted to and approved by the people
of Kansas in October following. At the state election held under
this constitution, in December, Charles Robinson, the republican
candidate, was elected governor, with a representative to congress
and other officers of the same politics.

The territorial legislature having previously repealed the spurious
and offensive laws of the territory, passed an amnesty act for politi
cal offenses, and a bill abolishing slavery in Kansas. The last
named act was defeated by the failure of Governor Medary to sign
it.1 On the night of the adjournment a bonfire was made of all
the odious laws repealed during the session.

In the territory of Nebraska, the republicans elected their candi-
cLate for delegate to congress by a majority of the legal votes. The
territorial legislature passed an act, in the words of the ordinance of
1787, prohibiting slavery in the territory, forever. This act was

lAt the next session, in January, 1860, a similar act was passed over the governor's veto.

70 ME MO IK.

vetoed by the federal governor. In Oregon the result was so close
that the majority was claimed by both parties.

In California, only, were the friends of the administration suc
cessful. In that state, the election was contested with unusual bit
terness. Senator Broderick addressed the people at various times
during the canvass, severely denouncing the policy and conduct of
the president and his supporters. Among the latter was Judge
Terry, who, on the close of the election, challenged Senator Brode
rick to fight a duel. A hostile meeting took place on the 13th of
September, and on the first fire Mr. Broderick was fatally wounded.
His untimely death produced a very deep and wide-spread feeling
of sorrow and regret. A large portion of the people believed his
dying declaration :

" They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery
and a corrupt administration"

No notice of his -death was taken in either house of congress-
until after Mr. Seward had returned from Europe and resumed his
seat in the senate. His brief eulogium on Senator Broderick, pro
nounced in the senate on the 13th of February, 1860, adds another
to his several eloquent memorials of deceased associates in the senate
of the United States, that have been previously commented on in
these volumes.

The thirty-sixth congress assembled on its usual day in December,
1859. But an organization was not completed until the first week
in February, 1860.

On the first ballot for speaker, it was apparent that neither party
had then a clear majority of the members. The relative strength r
as exhibited on several occasions, was nearly as follows : republicans,,
one hundred and twelve; democrats, ninety -one; all others, thirty.1
Soon after the first ballot, Mr. Clark, of Missouri, offered a resolu
tion declaring, as unfit to be speaker of the house, any member who
had signed a recommendation of a pamphlet known as " Helpei's
Compendium of the Impending Crisis." On this a long and excited
debate ensued, continuing until the election of a speaker, but with
out coming to a vote upon the resolution. On the 1st day of Feb-

i On the first ballot, Sherman received sixty-six votes, Grow forty-three, Bocock eighty-six
and scattering thirty-five. The republicans then united on Mr. Sherman, giving him one hun
dred and twelve votes. The democrats changed their candidate several times, varying in the
number of votes they cast from eighty-six to ninety-one. They repeatedly united with the Ame
ricans, carrying their combined vote on the thirty-ninth ballot up to one hundred and twelve.

GKEAT SPEECH IN THE SENATE. 71

ruary, and on the forty-fourth ballot, ex-governor William Penning-
ton, of New Jersey, the republican candidate, was chosen speaker,
receiving one hundred and seventeen votes to one hundred and six
teen for all others. The republican candidates for clerk, printer, and
the minor officers were subsequently elected by small majorities.
The committees also, appointed by the speaker, were republican, or
opposed to the policy of the administration.

In the senate, no delay occurred. Immediately after its organiza
tion, Mr. Mason, as already stated, moved the appointment of a com
mittee to inquire into the facts connected with the late seizure of the
United States armory at Harper's Ferry, by John Brown and his
confederates. Mr. Trumbull moved to include in the investigation
the seizure of the arsenal at Franklin, Missouri, by the invaders of
Kansas, in 1855. Mr. Mason's resolution was unanimously adopted,
after the rejection of Mr. Trumbull's amendment.

Subsequently, Mr. Douglas, who had been detained from the senate
by illness for several weeks, offered a resolution in favor of a law to
protect the slave states against invasions and conspiracies. The
measure proposed was denounced as a " sedition act," aiming at the
liberty of the press and at free speech. It gave rise to a heated dis
cussion, involving the question of slavery in its various relations to
the government. The president transmitted his message to the senate
on the 27th of December, before the house had organized. He dis
cussed at length the Harper's Ferry affair, the slave trade, the acqui
sition of Cuba, and recommended an appropriation to pay for the
Amistad negroes.

Mr. Seward took his seat in the senate on the 9th of January,
1860. On the 14th of February, the president of the senate pre
sented the constitution of Kansas, framed at Wyandotte. Mr.
Seward moved its reference to the committee on territories, and
that it be printed. On the 29th. he delivered his great speech in
favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union, and on
" the state of the country."

" The audience assembled to hear Governor Seward's speech," says a writer who
listened to it, " filled every available spot in the senate galleries, and overflowed
into all the adjacent lobbies and passages, croAvding them with throngs eager to fol
low the argument of the senator, or even to catch an occasional sentence or word;
while, throughout its delivery, a constant stream of life flowed up and down the

72 MEMOIR.

gorgeous staircases of the chamber, vainly beating against the compact masses who
had been so fortunate as. to get early possession of the ground; and, thence re
coiling and deflecting, the disappointed current would glide into eddies around the
hall, and linger in groups beyond ear-shot of the speaker, unwilling to abandon
all hope of ultimately catching a glimpse of the scene transpiring below.

" It was on the floor itself that the most interesting spectacle was presented.
every senator seemed to be in his seat. Hunter, Davis, Toombs, Mason, Ham
mond. Slidell, Clingman, Benjamin and Brown, paid the closest attention to the
speaker. Crittenden listened to every word. Douglas affected to be self-pos
sessed ; but his nervousness of mien gave token that the truths now uttered
awakened unpleasant memories of the Lecompton contest, when he, Seward and
Crittenden, the famous triumvirate, led the allies in their attacks upon a corrupt and
despotic administration.

" The members of the house streamed over to the north wing of the capitol, al
most in a body, leaving Mr. Reagan of Texas, to discourse to empty benches,
while Seward held his levee in the senate.

" Many prominent men, from various parts of the Union, occupied the reserved
seats in and around the chamber. There was an unusally large attendance of the
diplomatic corps. This was due in part, doubtless, to the reputation of the orator
as a statesman and a leader of a great party soon to take the control of the Fed
eral Government ; but more, perhaps, to the fact that, during his recent foreign
tour, Governor Seward was received with marked respect, and seemed sometimes
to be confidently consulted by the most eminent crowned heads and the most dis
tinguished statesmen of Europe.

" This attention was due in a large degree to the train of profound reflection,
the vein of original thought, the graphic historical sketches, the tasteful rhetorical
ornaments, the occasional apt quotations and allusions, in fine, to the mental mag
netism which permeated his speech from the beginning to the end. But it was
owing more, doubtless, to the intrinsic character of the subject and the man, than
to any mere display of the arts of the logician or the rhetorician. It was upon
the theme of American politics; upon the problem awaiting solution by the whole
body of our people. It was the utterance of a man whose sharply-defined opin
ions upon that theme, pronounced twenty years ago, then found feeble echoes, but
which have been reiterated until they have become the creed and rallying cry of
a party on the eve of assuming the jontrol of the National Government.

" His exposition of the relation of the constitution to slavery contained, in a
few lucid sentences, all that is valuable upon that subject in Marshall, Story and
Kent, The historic sketch of parties and policies, and the influence of slavery
upon both, from the rise of the Missouri compromise onward to its fall, exhibited
all of Hallam's fidelity to fact, lighted up with the warm coloring of Bancroft.
The episodical outline of the Kansas controversy, and of the doctrinal heresy and
dangerous tendency of the Dred Scott pronunciamento, have never been com
pressed into words so few and weighty. Nothing could be more triumphant than
his vindication of the republican party from the charge of sectionalism; nothing
more felicitous than his invitation to the south to come to New York and pro
claim its doctrines from lake Erie to Sag Harbor, assuring its champions of safe
conduct in their raid upon his constituents ; while the suggestion, that if the south

REPUBLICAN SUCCESS IN THE STATE ELECTIONS. 73

would allow republicans the like access to its people, the party would soon cast as
many votes below the Potomac as it now does north of that river, was one of
those happy retorts, whose visible effect upon senators from the slave states must
have been seen to be appreciated and enjoyed. His implied rebuke of the tirade
against Helper's book, by quoting Jefferson's commendatory letter to Price, the
Helper of his day, and his comparison of the attempt to implicate, by inuendoes,
others than Brown and his companions, in their attack upon Harper's Ferry, wilh
like attempts to implicate innocent persons in the Salem witchcraft, the Guy
Fawkes plot, and the old colonial negro plot, produced a salutary effect upon an
appreciating auditory, though uttered in the calm and measured language so cha
racteristic of the senator. And, finally, this masterly and successful speech was
closed by an elaborate and impressive exposition, alike original, sincere and hearty,
of the manifold advantages of the Federal Union, the firm hold it has upon the
affections of the people, the solid basis upon which its pillars rest, and the cer
tainty that it will survive the rudest shocks of fanaticism and faction."1

The spring elections of 1860, throughout the north, were eminently
favorable to the republican cause. Nearly every northern city elected
republican officers. The state elections in New Hampshire and Con
necticut and the city elections in Chicago (the home of Senator
Douglas) and in Philadelphia were each hotly contested. The ad
ministration made every exertion that pecuniary aid and class terror
ism could employ. But the friends of freedom proved true, and
were everywhere successful. In Rhode Island a division among the
republicans on local issues resulted in the election of the irregular
republican ticket, which had been supported by the administration
forces who made no peculiar nomination. In the state of New York,
the counties of Cayuga and St. Lawrence, (the homes of Senators
Seward and Preston King,) elected unanimous republican boards of
supervisors, and there were large gains in other counties. It was
estimated that prior to the occurrence of most of these elections one
million copies of Mr. Seward's last speech had been printed and cir
culated in the various localities.

Soon after the rash raid at Harper's Ferry, some public meetings
had been held in a few cities, under the name of Union meetings,
composed mainly of citizens who had not as yet been received fully
into either of the two parties of the country. The speeches and res
olutions at these meetings denied the necessity of any agitation of
the slavery question and deprecated what was called the forcing of
an issue upon the people, which they did not wish to discuss.

i Correspondence of the New York Tribune.

VOL. IV. 10

74 MEMOIR.

Although five territories were about to be organized by congressional
action ; although Kansas was not yet admitted ; and notwithstand
ing many southern congressmen were daily urging a slave code for the
territories, or that the slave trade be reopened, a few presses and
many timid citizens seemed contented to ignore the issues of the day
and to be satisfied with vague resolutions concerning the integrity
of the Union.

The meetings resulted in a gathering of very respectable citizens
from many states at Baltimore on the 10th day of May, 1860, who
organizing a convention, resolved, in substance, that the constitution
of the United States was their only platform of principles ; and pro
ceeded to nominate for president of the United States John Bell
of Tennessee, and for Yice-President Edward Everett of Massachu
setts. The convention assumed the name of the "constitutional
union party."

On the 23d uay of May, 1860, the delegates to the national dem
ocratic convention assembled at Charleston, South Carolina. Caleb
Gushing of Massachusetts was made permanent chairman, and for
more than a week the most violent debates and ingenious parliamen
tary tactics were had over the question of resolutions for a platform.
The delegates wore seemingly divided into three classes ; one repre
senting the extreme southern views upon slavery, in regard to slaves
being property under — ttre~~constitution andT protected by its terms
in territories^ another upholding the ..popular-Sovereignty doctrines
of Mr. Douglas ; and a third anxious to promote partizan success by
saying as little as_ possible on the engrossing topic of the day, except
in the most ambiguous and obscure manner. A combination of the
two latter classes resulted in adopting a platform which reaffirmed
that adopted at Cincinnati in 1856, with the addition of a resolution re
ferring the question of slave property under the constitution to the
supreme court of the United States ; and two other resolutions con
cerning the acquisition of Cuba and the rights of citizens in foreign
countries, which were not remarkable for definite expression. Upon
the adoption of this platform, the delegates from seven slave states
seceded and organized a separate convention.

The first convention, after four days of unsuccessful balloting, ad
journed in considerable disorder to meet again in Baltimore on the
18th of June.

PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS AND PLATFORMS. 75

The seceding convention adopted resolutions in its platform affirm
ing the right of property in slaves in the territories, under the con
stitution of the United States, and the duty of congress to protect
such property in the territories and on the high seas. This con
vention then adjourned to meet in Eichmond on the llth day of
June — one week previous to the meeting of the other convention
in Baltimore.

During the recess of the two conventions, the senate of the United
States adopted a series of resolutions, introduced by Senator Davis,
of Mississippi, embodying the principles of the seceders' platform —
all the democrats voting aye. excepting Mr. Pugh. Mr. Douglas
was absent, on account of illness. The administration, also, was-
understood to favor the seceders ; and the conflict which raged at
Charleston soon spread throughout the democratic party. In the
meantime, new delegates were chosen to fill the vacancies caused by
the secession, which served to increase the feud between the con
tending factions.

The northern democrats were nearly unanimous in favor of the
platform adopted by the majority convention, and of Mr. Douglas
as the candidate for president ; while the party in the south was-
almost a unit in favor of the seceders' platform, but divided as
to a candidate, although bitterly opposed to Mr. Douglas. In
striking contrast with this distracted condition of the democratic
party, the republicans were entirely harmonious in sentiment,
and with no irreconcilable differences as to their candidate for
president.

The two factions of the democratic convention assembled again,
pursuant to adjournment — one at Eichmond, on the llth of June,
and the other, on the 18th, at Baltimore. The former adjourned from
day to day, without transacting any business. In the latter, the old
conflict between those who would protect slavery everywhere, and
those who would not, was renewed. After a stormy debate, inter
rupted by personal collisions, those who favored slavery protection
again seceded, and organized a separate convention. They were
joined by Caleb Gushing, the chairman of the original convention.
The remaining members, with a new presiding officer, proceeded to
nominate candidates for president and vice-president of the United
States.

76 MEMOIR.

Stephen A. Douglas was nominated for president on the second bal
lot, receiving one hundred and eighty-one and a half votes of the one
hundred and ninety-four and a half cast. Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of
Alabama, was named for vice-president He, however, declined the
nomination, after the convention had adjourned, and Herschel V.
Johnson, of Georgia, was substituted by the national democratic
committee. The platform, as adopted by this convention at its
session in Charleston, reflects the sentiments of Senator Douglas
and that portion of the democratic party in the northern states
who no longer support all the demands of the slave power.

The seceders, who held their convention at the same time in another
part of the city, nominated for president of the United States, John
C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and for vice-president, Joseph Lane,
of Oregon,1 and adopted as their platform, substantially, the one
rejected at Charleston by the original convention. It boldly denies
the power of any territorial legislature to exclude slavery from its
domain ; and maintains that it is the duty of congress to protect
slavery, to the fullest extent, on the high seas, in the territories, and
wherever its constitutional power extends.

The second national convention of the republican party, met at
Chicago on the 16th day of May, 1860 — the fifty-ninth birthday of
Mr. Seward. The convention was called to order at noon by Gov
ernor Morgan, of New York, the chairman of the national committee.
David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, was chosen temporary chairman
by a unanimous vote. At a subsequent session a permanent or
ganization was completed by the election of George Ashmun, of
Massachusetts, as president, with twenty-seven vice-presidents,
and as many secretaries, representing each state and territory in
convention.2

A platform of principles was adopted by the convention with
great enthusiasm and unanimity.3 It recognizes the great doctrine
of the declaration of independence "that all men are created equal,"

1 Mr. Breckinridge received eighty-one votes, and Daniel S. Dickinson twenty-four. Mr.
Lane's vote was unanimous, one hundred and five.

2 The following table show? the number of delegates in attendance, entitled to votes, from
each state and territory: Maine, 1(>; New Hampshire, 10; Vermont, 10 ; Massachusetts, 9H;
Rhode Island, 8; Connecticut. 12: New York, 70; New Jersey. 14 ; Pennsylvania 54 • Marvland
11; Delaware, <>: Virginia. 23; Kentucky, 23 ; Ohio, 40; Indiana, 26 ; Missouri, 18; Michigan]
12; Illinois, 22; Wisconsin. 10: Iowa. 8; California, 8: Minnesota, 8; Oregon. 5: Texas, 6-
Kansas, (i ; Nebraska, <> : District Columbia, 2. Total. 4(i(5. Pennsylvania, Iowa and New Jersey
eent a larger number of delegates, but were only entitled to vote as stated above.

3 See Appendix.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION — NOMINATIONS.

and declares that the normal condition of all the territories is that
of freedom ; and denies the authority of congress, of a territorial
legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery
in any territory of the United States.

On the third day of the session the convention proceeded to ballot
for candidates for president and vice-president of the United States.
On the first ballot for president, the votes were divided as follows :

For William H. Seward, of New York,

" Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, ................................... 102

" Edward Bates, of Missouri, .................................... 48

" Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania ............................... 50}

" John McLean, of Ohio, ......................................... 12

" Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, ...................................... 49

" Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, .' ................ ................... 3

" William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, .............................. 14

" John M. Read, of Pennsylvania, ................................. 1

" Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, .................................... 1Q

u Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, ............................... 1

" John C. Fremont, of California, .................................. 1

Whole number of votes cast, 465; necessary to a choice, 233.

The following table exhibits the vote of each state on the first ballot :

STATES.

Seward.

Lincoln.

Wade.

Cameron.

«
1

McLean.

OS
£

<o
0

1
£>>

OS

Q

Sumner.

Fremont.

Collamer.

Maine .

10

H

New Hampshire . ...

1

7

1

1

10

Massachusetts,

9,1

4

Rhode Island

1

5

1

1

Connecticut

9

1

7

<>

New York

70

New Jersey,

14

Pennsylvania,
Maryland

V

4

47#

-8

1

g

Virginia,

8

14

1

Kentucky,
Ohio . . . .

5

6

8

2

••

1
4

•

8
<VI

••

1

%

Missouri,

18

Alichio-an

19,

Illinois

99

Texas

4

2

10

'

Iowa,

2

2

1

1

1

1

California .

8

Minnesota,

8

5

Kansas,

fi

Nebraska,

9,

1

1

0

District Columbia,

9,

There being no choice a second ballot was taken, Mr. Seward
receiving one hundred and eighty-four and one- half votes, and Mr.

78 MEMOIR.

Lincoln one hundred and eighty-one; scattering, ninety-nine and
one-half. A third ballot resulted in the nomination of Mr. Lincoln.
Mr. Seward received on this ballot one hundred and eighty votes ;
Mr. Lincoln two hundred and thirty-one and one-half; Mr. Bates
twenty-two ; Mr. Chase twenty-four and one-half; Mr. McLean five ;
Mr. Dayton one ; C. M. Clay one. Before the result of the voting
was announced Mr. Lincoln's vote was increased, by changes, to three
hundred and sixty four.

The states which cast a majority of their respective votes for Mr.
Seward on the last ballot were Maine, Massachusetts, New York,
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Texas, Kansas territory
and the District of Columbia.

At the close of the third ballot, when the result had been an
nounced, Mr. Evarts, chairman of the New York delegation, moved
that the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, as the repub
lican candidate for president of the United States, be made unani
mous. His motion was seconded by Mr. John A. Andrew, of
Massachusetts, Mr. Carl Schurz, of Wisconsin, and Mr. Austin Blair,
of Michigan, and adopted by the convention.1

Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was nominated for vice-president.
On the first ballot he received one hundred and ninety-four votes ;
Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, one hundred and one and one-half;
John Hickman, of Pennsylvania, fifty-eight ; A. H. Reeder, of Penn
sylvania, fifty-one; 1ST. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, thirty-eight and
one-half; H. Winter Davis, of Maryland, eight; Sam Houston, of
Texas, six ; W. L. Dayton, of New Jersey, three ; John M. Eead,
of Pennsylvania, on.e. On the second and last ballot, Mr. Hamlin
received three hundred and sixty -seven votes ; Mr. Clay eighty-six ,
Mr. Hickman thirteen. Mr. Hamlin's nomination was then made
unanimous.

These nominations, as well as the platform adopted by the conven
tion, received the cordial approval of Mr. Seward. In private and
in public he promptly gave them his hearty indorsement. On the
day on which the nominations were made he wrote for the Auburn
Daily Advertiser, as follows :

1 For the eloquent remarks made by these gentlemen, and others, at the time, see Ap-

PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS — 1860. 79

" Xo truer exposition of the republican creed could be given, than the platform
adopted by the convention contains. No truer or firmer defenders of the repub
lican faith could have been found in the Union, than the distinguished and esteemed
citizens on whom the honors of the nomination have fallen. Their election, we
trust, by a decisive majority, will restore the government of the United States to
its constitutional and ancient course. Let the watchword of the republican party,
then, be Union and Liberty, and onward to victory."

Two days afterwards lie addressed the following reply to a letter
from the central republican committee of the city of New York :'

" AUBURN, May 21, 1860.

" GENTLEMEN : I will not affect to conceal the sensibility with which I have
received the letters in which you and so many other respected friends have ten
dered to me expressions of renewed and enduring confidence. These letters will
remain witb me as assurances in future years that, although I was not unwilling
to await, even for another age, the vindication of my political principles, yet that
they did nevertheless receive the generous support of many good, wise and patri
otic men of my own time.

" Such assurances, however made, under the circumstances now existing, derive
their priceless value largely from the fact that they steal upon me through the
channels of private correspondence, and altogether unknown to the world. You
will at once perceive that such expressions would become painful to me, and justly
offensive to the community, if they should be allowed to take on any public or
conventional form of manifestation. For this reason, if it were respectful and con
sistent with your own public purposes, I would have delayed my reply to you
until I could have had an opportunity of making it verbally next week on my
way to Washington, after completing the arrangements for the repairs upon my
dwelling here, rendered necessary by a recent fire.

The same reason determines me also to decline your kind invitation to attend
the meeting in which you propose some demonstrations of respect to myself, while
so justly considering the nominations which have been made by the recent na
tional convention at Chicago. At the same time, it is your right to have a frank
and candid exposition of my own opinions and sentiments on that important
subject.

My friends know very well that, while they have always generously made my
promotion to public trusts their own exclusive care, mine has only been to execute
them faithfully, so as to be able, at the close of their assigned terms, to resign
them into the hands of the people without forfeiture of the public confidence.
The presentation of my name to the Chicago convention was thus their act,
not mine. The disappointment, therefore, is their disappointment, not mine. It
may have found them unprepared. On the other hand, I have no sentiment either
of disappointment or discontent; for who, in any possible case, could, without
presumption, claim that a great national party ought to choose him for its candi
date for the first office in the gift of the American people ? I find in the resolu-

1 See Appendix for the committee's letter.

80 MEMOIR.

tions of the convention a platform as satisfactory to me as if it had been framed
with my own hands, and in the candidates adopted by it, eminent and able repub
licans, with whom I have cordially co-operated in maintaining the principles
embodied in that excellent creed. I cheerfully give them a sincere and earnest
support.

I trust, moreover, that those with whom I have labored so long that common
service in a noble cause has created between them and myself relations of per
sonal friendship unsurpassed in the experience of political men, will indulge me in
a confident belief that no sense of disappointment will be allowed by them to
hinder or delay, or in any way embarrass, the progress of that cause to the con
summation which is demanded by a patriotic regard to the safety and welfare of
the country and the best interests of mankind. I am, sincerely and respectfully,
your friend and obedient servant, WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

Congress adjourned on the 25th June, 1860, refusing to admit Kansas
into the Union, to enact a proper tariff, or to pass a homestead act.1

Mr. Seward labored diligently to secure all these great measures.
His speech on the admission of Kansas has already been noticed.
In a brief speech on the tariif, he especially protested against a post
ponement of the question, remarking that —

" The proposition to postpone involves the question of the true value of our
present time, and also leads us to consider the prospects of 'a more favorable sea
son at the next session of congress. We are here," he said, " in the middle of the
month of June, which is yet one, or two, or even three months earlier than con
gress has been accustomed to adjourn. Before the adoption of the present salary
system, no man would have felt himself bound to put off this question of a tariff,
at this season of the year, because of a want of time. It is now of no conse
quence, as a question of economy, to the public at all whether we sit here till
August or adjourn to-day. If we have not time enough to consider this question,
somebody is responsible for that lack of time. Who is responsible ? We were at
liberty to sit here till the month of December next. But ten days ago a majority
of the senate — a majority of whom were understood to be opposed to this princi
ple of protection — fixed an arbitrary period, and shortened up the time of con
gress until Monday next, with the full knowledge that this question was to be
acted upon."

But his counsels, joined with those of Mr. Cameron and other
republican senators, were unheeded, and the subject was postponed.

The attention of congress was, several times and in various ways,
called to the alarming increase of the African slave trade. A pro-

i A compromise homestead bill passed both houses, but was vetoed by the president. The
vote in the senate, by which Kansas was kept, out of the Union, stood twenty-seven tc thirty-
two—Messrs. Bigler and Pujjh voting with the republicans. Messrs. Douglas and Crittendeu
\vcre absent — the former having paired with Mr. Clay, of Alabama. The house voted to admit,
by ayes one hundred and thirty-four, nays seventy-three.

VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND — RECEPTION AT BOSTON. 81

position was made in the senate to amend the naval appropriation
bill so as to provide three steam vessels for its suppression. Mr.
Seward warmly advocated the motion, but it failed, by yeas eighteen/
nays twenty-five. He availed himself of the occasion, however, to
call the attention of the country to an elaborate bill that he had
submitted to the senate, at a previous session, for arresting the slave
trade, which he pledged himself to bring to the consideration of the
senate at the next meeting of congress.

Congress also neglected to adopt any decisive measures for con
structing a railroad to the Pacific ocean, and curtailed the mail facili
ties already existing between California and the eastern states. A
large portion of the time of the senate, as well as that of the house,
was occupied in debates on the subject of slavery. The resolutions
of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and those of Mr. Douglas, consumed several
weeks of the session in the senate, while the delay in electing a
speaker, and the discussion of the resolution offered by Mr. Clark,
of Missouri, in the house, seemed to leave little opportunity for the
consideration and disposal of various important practical measures,
awaiting the action of congress.

Avoiding the usual summer resorts, Mr. Seward sought recreation
during the month of July (1860), in brief visits to cherished friends
in "Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. He was unable to escape
public attentions on the way, but was interrupted at various places
with popular demonstrations of respect and affection. At Windsor
and Bellows Falls, in Yermont ; Keene and Dover, in New Hampshire ;
Bangor and Portland, in Maine, and many lesser places, large crowds
of people assembled to greet him. The public authorities of the
states, cities and towns welcomed his appearance among them. Mr.
Seward spoke briefly in response to the addresses that were made to
him, eliciting hearty applause. After a brief stay with his friend,
Israel Washburn, Jr.,1 Mr. Seward proceeded homeward through the
state of Massachusetts. At Boston he was received with distin
guished honor. The governor of the state2 presented him to the
people, in a complimentary speech, which was received by them with
repeated expressions of cordial sympathy. Brief addresses were also
made by Charles Francis Adams and Henry Wilson, who had accom
panied Mr. Seward from the depot to the Revere House. A band

•

i Since elected governor of the state of Maine. 2 Nathaniel P. Banks. See Appendix.

VOL. IV. 11

82 MEMOIR.

of music played several national airs ; and, although it was nearly
midnight, the crowd listened to Mr. Seward's speech with singular
enthusiasm. Mr. Seward spoke as follows :

" CITIZENS OF BOSTON— OF MASSACHUSETTS : I have heard your explanation from
my excellent arid esteemed friend, the chief magistrate of your state. Something,
however, seems to me to be due from myself, to you and to the country, for the
unexpected surprise which has overtaken me. It is so contrary to the habit of
my whole life to be arrested on a journey which had for its object but the per
formance of a duty of friendship, and was commenced and prosecuted, and hoped
to be ended, in a manner entirely private, that I am sure some explanation will
be expected of me. That explanation is a very simple one. I have made a great
mistake. I have committed a great blunder. I have been very weak. My first
mistake was in supposing that it was safe to trust myself on a railroad through
New England and down east, instead of the telegraph. I found out my mistake
only when it was too late ; for although I succeeded in finding the wide-awakes
at Bangor fast asleep in the middle of the day, yet I very quickly discovered that
they woke up quite too soon for the convenience of a quiet traveler. I certainly
have not besought, and have not desired, any demonstration of consideration at
the hands of my fellow citizens. There are many reasons why I prefer to seek the
satisfaction of the attempt to perform my duty, in my own conscience and not in
the acclamations of my fellow men ; but it is God's will that we must be over
ruled and disappointed, and I have submitted with such graciousness as I can.

" Fellow citizens, I have endeavored, all along the road — for this, I think, is the
seventh or eighth time that I have been called out to meet a kind and cordial
welcome on this day only — I have endeavored to accommodate myself to this
form of reception by treating it as a light and trivial affair, trusting that those who
have been so exceedingly kind to me would believe, after all, that there was grati
tude, unexpressed and strong, concealed under the face of a simple, honest good
nature. But, fellow citizens, the case is altered when I come upon the soil of
Massachusetts. I cannot say that I have a veneration, though I have a profound
affection, for Vermont. Her statesmen are not my teachers — her people are but
my equals. Although I honor them and respect and love them for their fidelity to
the interests of their country and to the cause of justice and humanity, they are
still but my fellow laborers in the vineyard. I can say the same of New Hamp
shire, that I know none of her statesmen or her sons who were earlier in the field
than the statesmen and sons of New York. I can say the same of the state of
Maine, which I have visited— great and honorable as the works are which have
been done in those states by the champions of human rights. I am their equal ;
I have received their cordial welcome as an expression of esteem and kindness.
But it is altogether different in the state of Massachusetts. Here I can play no
part ; I can affect no disguise ; because, although not a son of Massachusetts, nor
even of Mew England born, I feel and know it my duty to confess that if I have
ever studied the interests of my country, and of humanity, I have studied in the
sdiool of Massachusetts. If I have ever conceived a resolution to maintain the
rights and interests of these free states in the union of the confederacy, I learned
it from Massachusetts.

SPEECH AT BOSTON — VISIT TO QUINCY. 83

( "It was twenty-two years ago, not far from this season, when a distinguished
and venerable statesman of Massachusetts had retired to his home, a few miles in
the suburbs of your city, under the censure of his fellow citizens, driven home by
the peltings of remorseless pro-slavery people, that I, younger then, of course,
than I am now, made a pilgrimage, which was not molested on my way, to the
Sage of Quincy, there to learn from him what became a citizen of the United
States, in view of the deplorable condition of the intelligence and sentiment ot
the country, demoralized by the power of slavery. Thence I have derived every
resolution, every sentiment, that has animated and inspired me in the performance
of my duty as a citizen of the United States, all the intervening time. I know,
-'ndeed, that those sentiments have not always been popular, even in the state of
Massachusetts. I know that citizens of Massachusetts, as well as citizens of other
states, have attempted to drive the disciples of that illustrious teacher from their
policy. But it is to-night that I am free to confess that whenever any man,
wherever he might be found, whether he was of northern or southern birth,
whether he was of the 'solid men of Boston,' or of the light men of Mississippi,
has assailed me for the maintenance of those doctrines, I have sought to com
mune with his spirit, and to learn from him whether the thing in which I was
engaged was worthy to be done. What a commentary upon the wisdom of man
is given in this single fact, that fifteen years only after the death of John Quincy
Adams the people of the United States, who hurled him from power and from
place, are calling to the head of the nation, to the very seat from which he was
-expelled, Abraham Lincoln, whose claim to that seat is that he confesses the obli
gation of that higher law which the Sage of Quincy proclaimed, and that he avows
himself, for weal or wo, for life or death, a soldier on the side of freedom in the
irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery. ,

" This, gentlemen, is my simple confession. I desire, now, only to say to you,
that you have arrived at the last stage of this conflict before you reach the tri
umph which is to inaugurate this great policy into the government of the United
States. You will bear yourselves manfully. It behooves you, solid men of Bos
ton, if such are here — and if the solid men are not here, then the lighter men of
Massachusetts — to bear onward and forward, first in the ranks, the flag of freedom.

"But let not your thoughts or expectations be confined to the present hour.
I tell you, fellow citizens, that with this victory comes the end of the power of
slavery in the United States. I think I may assume that a democrat is a man
who maintains the creed of one or the other branch of the democratic party, as
it is confessed at the present day. Assuming this to be correct, I tell you, in all
sincerity, that the last democrat in the United States has been already born.

" Gentlemen, it remains only to thank you for this kind reception, and to express
my best wishes for your individual health and happiness, and for the prosperity
and greatness of your noble city and most ancient and honored state."

Mr. Seward passed a day at Quincy with Charles Francis Adams,
visiting the old homestead and the tombs of John Quincy Adams and
John Adams. The remainder of his journey homeward was inter
rupted only by the hearty greetings of the people.

84 MEMOIR

As the presidential canvass advanced, a universal apathy seemed
to prevail, and the democratic party began to be sanguine of success.
Invitations now pressed upon Mr. Seward, chiefly from his most
devoted friends, to enter the campaign. Influenced by these appeals,
he left home on the last day of August. At Lockport, at Niagara
Falls, and at other places, both in New York and in Canada, on his
way to Michigan, he met with a variety of public demonstrations, to
which he responded in brief acknowledgments. At Detroit, where
he arrived on the evening of the 3d of September, great preparations
had been made for his reception. He was escorted from the boat to
his lodgings by a grand torchlight procession. The display was-
brilliant and imposing, and the entire population of the city seemed
to be in the streets. On reaching the house of Senator Chandler,
Mr. Seward was introduced to the people, who had gathered there,
by his associate, in a few appropriate remarks. After some playful
talk about the absurdity of his requiring any introduction to the
citizens of Detroit, Mr. Seward said :

" It is a surprise, fellow citizens, to be received in this city, which I honor and
love so much, with demonstrations of kindness — I had almost said affection — such
as could not have been surpassed, I think, in the province through which I have
passed to-day, on the visit of its hereditary prince and governor. If I do not say
how much I am gratified, how deeply this welcome affects me, please to under
stand that I can find no words in which to express my acknowledgments ; so take
what the tongue seems to suppress for what the heart confesses. I have said, in
my inmost soul, long ago, that the wishes of the republican people of Michigan
should be with me, in all practical points, equivalent to a command. You have
called me here, not to speak of yourselves nor of myself, but to discuss the great
interests of our country involved in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the office
of President of the United States. I have come, cheerfully, gladly, proudly, in
obedience to your command. To-morrow I will hear from you what you think
of that important question, and then I will, to those who may choose to listen to
me, explain my view of the condition and prospects and hopes of the republican
party of the country. Until then, fellow citizens, I hope that my respected and
esteemed brethren of the wide-awake association1, who have done me the com
pliment of electing me a member, will allow me to go to sleep, whatever they
may do for the rest of the night ; and to-morrow I promise to perform a soldier's
duty in their association."

i The " Wide- A wakes," of whom mention is frequently made in these pages, were an associa
tion peculiar to the campaign of 1860, originating early "in that year in Hartford, Connecticut.
Composed mostly of young men, they organized with uniforms and military discipline, bearing
in their evening parades, each man, a torch. Wherever the republican party existed, the wide
awakes were a certain element.

KECEPTIOX AND SPEECHES AT DETROIT. 85

On the following day, Mr. Seward delivered an able and elaborate
speech to one of the largest audiences ever assembled in the United
States. This speech was published simultaneously the next morning
in the newspapers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati,
Chicago, and Detroit, and afterward copied into all the principal
republican journals in the Union, and, both in tone and argument,
gave to the whole canvass its marked characteristics of dignity and
patriotism, unknown in any previous presidential election. It will
be found in this volume, under the title of " The National Diverg
ence and Eeturn."

In the evening of the same day, Mr. Seward was honored with
another grand procession of wide-awakes gathered from the inte
rior of the state and the shores of lake Erie. Halting in front of
his lodgings, they were addressed by him as follows :

" FELLOW CITIZENS : If I appear in obedience to your call to-night, I hope it
will only be a new illustration of an old practice of mine, never to give up an
honest and virtuous attempt, though I may fail in it the first time. I tried to-day
and utterly failed to make the republicans of Michigan hear, and now, in obedi
ence to your call to-night, renew the effort. The end of a great national debate
:s at hand. It is now upon us, and the simple reason is that the people have
become at last attentive, willing to be convinced, and satisfied of the soundness
of the republican faith. It has been a task. We had first to reach the young
through the prejudices of the old. I have never expected my own age and gene
ration to relinquish the.prejudices in which they and I were born. I have ex
pected, as has been the case heretofore in the history of mankind, that the old
would remain unconverted, and that the great work of reformation and progress
would rest with the young. That has come at last ; for though the democratic
party have denied the ascendency and obligations of the ' higher law,' still they
bear testimony to it in their persons, if not in their conversation. Democrats die
in obedience to 'higher law,' and republicans are born, and will be born, and none
but republicans will be born in the United States after the year of 1860. The
first generation of the young men of the country educated in the republican faith
has appeared in your presence, by a strong and bold demonstrative representation
to-night. It is the young men who constitute the wide-awake force. Ten years
.ago, and twenty years ago, the young men were incapable of being organized.
Four years ago they were organized for the distraction of the country and the
republican cause. To-day the young men of the United States are for the first
time on the side of freedom against slavery. Go on, then, and do your work.
Put this great cause into the keeping of your great, honest, worthy leader, Abra
ham Lincoln. Believe me sincere when I say, that if it had devolved upon me
to select from all men in the United States a man to whom I should confide the
standard of this cause — which is the object for which I have lived and laborc d
.and for which I would be willing to die — that man would have been Abraham
Lincoln.''

86 MEMOIR.

From Detroit, Mr. Seward went to Lansing, the capital of the
state. At Fontiac, Owosso, and St. Johns, on the route, the people
came together in great numbers to greet him. At De Witt he was
met by a cavalcade of wide-awakes and citizens, who escorted him
into Lansing. As the procession, with music and banners, entered
the city, it presented a highly imposing appearance. The citizens
had assembled in front of the capitol, awaiting the arrival of their
guest. Mr. Seward was there met by the committee of reception,
and. welcomed to the city. In reply to an eloquent address1 from
J. M. Longyear, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Seward said :

" That his errand at Lansing was not wholly that of a politician — that he had
come among them well knowing that the access must be through a new country,
and over rough roads, to enjoy in part the pleasure of looking upon a city, now in
ks beginning, the capital of a flourishing state, which, within the lives of his chil
dren, was destined to become a populous and powerful metropolis. He saw around
him the elements and assurances of its growth and ultimate greatness, and he felt
that his time had not been wasted, nor his labor lost, in making this visit ; he
hoped the citizens of Lansing, of all parties, for that day might look upon him
as a private man, their personal friend, their invited guest — to-morrow would be
soon enough for them to regard him as the politician, or for him to employ his
time in talking upon political matters.

In reply to the reminiscence of Mr. Longyear, in reference to G-ov. Seward's
reception of John Quincy Adams under similar circumstances, Mr. Seward said :
" I had arisen that morning at five o'clock, and I found Mr. Adams already up and
writing. He asked me who was to address him that day. I answered that that
duty had been assigned to me. He said that it would be a favor to him if I could
show him the address I proposed to make. I repaired to my library, and having
hastily written my speech, I returned and gave the manuscript to him. The ' old
man eloquent' read it over by himself; then, handing it back to me, he said:
'Ah, Governor Seward, seeing your speech only increases my embarrassment.
I cannot answer that speech.' You will not hesitate to believe me," said Mr. Sew
ard, "when I confess that now, when you have applied the address to myself, I find
it, as my own speech, unanswerable, as John Quincy Adams did when it was
submitted to him." 2

The next day, the population of that new region gathered to wel
come him. Mr. Seward addressed them at length, but only a sketch
of his speech has been preserved. He said :

" I know errors, but not enemies. I shall, therefore, speak of principles, and
not of men. While you think 1 have come here to instruct you, I have, in fact,
come to complete my own education. I wanted to see for myself how an

i See Appendix. 2 See Vol. III., p. 236.

THE SPEECH AT LANSING. 87

American state is planted, organized, perfected — a vigorous American state. I
see it all now, and here, before me.

/ " The founders of Michigan were not all of one state or country, but of many
states and countries. They came from Vermont and New York, Virginia and
South Carolina, and other American states, as well as from England, Ireland,
Holland, Norway, and other European countries. They were of various religious
faiths, and of many differing political habits and opinions. The immigrants from
Europe were voluntary citizens, not native citizens, like those who came from
American states. They, of course, all were free, for only freemen can emigrate.
This is just what would have occurred in every state now in this Union, and
what must be the case in every state hereafter to come in, if the natural course of
events were not, and should not, be overruled by government. But powers foreign
from this continent, although ruling in it early, employed themselves in distracting
and defeating that natural course of things. Spain, Great Britain and France
extended their sway over different parts of the continent, and established aristo-
"racies which were only removed by revolutions. When that political phase had
passed away, it left many of the states slave states. Boston and New York con
tinued busily plying the African slave trade. African slavery being thus established
and continually enlarged, voluntary white free emigration practically ceased. The
states afterwards divided on the two systems of slavery and of freedom. Some
have preferred to retain the former. Its consequences are seen in exhausted soils,
sickly states, and fretful and discontented peoples. You have chosen the wiser
and better system. My policy — that policy which I have maintained so strenu
ously and, strange to say, through so much opposition — that policy which I have
come to commend to your favor — ig your own policy of freedom, instead of
slavery, as the basis of all future states to be formed on the American continent
and admitted into the Union. It is not only most conducive to the general wel
fare, but is the most conducive to the public safety and virtue. What does a
great free state on this continent need a standing army and a navy for ? It has
no enemies abroad. It can have no enemies within its own borders. Is not our
present army (excepting its temporary office of holding the predatory Indian
tribes under constraint) chiefly kept up, with our navy, for the protection of the
slave states in possible emergencies ? Granting its necessity for that purpose, may
I not, as a statesman as well as patriot, say I want no increase of army and navy
rendered necessary by increasing the area of human bondage ?

" How simple, then, and yet how wise and how felicitous, is the policy of the
republican party. All it proposes is that all future states shall be just such free,
enlightened, contented, and prosperous states, as Michigan is ; and. further, that
they shall be made so exactly as Michigan was made such a state. That process
is to keep slavery out of the territory while it is a territory, and then it must and
will be a free state when it comes to be a state. Let everybody go into a new ter
ritory who will, be he native or foreign born. Let nobody be carried by force
into a new territory, be he white or black, native or imported from Africa or other
tropical or oriental climes. If no slaves are ever carried there, no slaves can ever
be born there. To say nothing of the condition of the slaves, are the white men
politically equal in a slaveholding state? What is the condition of the non-slave-
holding white man in a slave state, contrasted with the slaveholder? Let the
codes and politics of the slave states show. Let the great emigration of the non-

88 MEMOIR.

Blaveholding white men to newer regions, while the slaveholder remains in the
native state of both, answer.

"Many of you profess to accept this policy, and yet refuse to join the one
party that maintains it. The Breckinridge party stand on a platform directly oppo
site. You will not, of course, support that. But the Douglas party, you think,
will do, because it offers popular sovereignty in the territories, so that the people
there are, at least, left free to choose freedom. If, indeed, a fair trial could be
guaranteed, it might, perhaps, be well enough. But what the prospects of a fair trial
for freedom under the auspices of a democratic administration are, let the history
of oppressed, harassed, and still ostracised Kansas, answer. The Douglas popular
sovereignty creed, moreover, must be taken together with the Dred Scott decree
of the supreme court, which, if it be allowed to have the virtue of a decree,
declares that slavery is the constitutional condition of the territories of the United
States, unchangeable by any popular sovereignty within them, or even by the
national authority without. The Douglas creed assumes that slavery and freedom
are equally just and wise, or, at least, that there is no public interest and no moral
right involved in the contest between them. Slavery will never be shut out of a
territory by those who are indifferent whether it is voted up or voted down.
The republican party, on the contrary, entertain a conscientious conviction that
slavery is wrong, and, acting on that conviction, they, and they alone, will save
the territories from its blight, and so make sure that they become ultimately free
states." ;

The occasion brought out a grand republican display and mass
meeting. The people from all the surrounding country came, in
unprecedented numbers. In the immense procession, which formed
a part of the ceremonies, were the faculty and students of the state
agricultural college, with appropriate emblems. They presented to
Mr. Seward the following address, which was said to be the expres
sion of the public sentiment of Michigan :

" In common with the young men of Michigan, we take pride in welcoming
you to our state. We have learned to admire you for your talents, love you for
your devotion to the cause of truth and humanity, and look to you for instruction
in the great principles of civil liberty and equal rights.

" We believe in a ' higher law ;' we believe that slavery and freedom are in
compatible, and that the conflict must be ' irrepressible ' so long as they are ele
ments of the same government. We believe that right must finally triumph ; that
oppression must cease, and we look to the success of republican principles to
restore our government to its original purity and foster the true spirit of national
prosperity. |

" We take pleasure in addressing you from the halls of the first State Agricul
tural College in our land, and as a champion of human progress you cannot fail to
be an earnest and sincere friend to the cause of education. We should have re
joiced to labor to secure your election to the chief magistracy of the nation, but
we honor you none the less as the great expounder of the rights of man, and

SPEECH AT KALAMAZOO. 89

while, in the past, you have presented so clearly before our minds the truths which
are at the foundation of every just and stable government, may you be spared
many years to bless our common country with your counsels and efforts for the
good of the race. Be assured that you live in the hearts of the freedom-loving
young men of America."

In the evening, Mr. Seward was serenaded by a German band,
attended by a brilliant parade of wide-awakes.

Mr. Seward's next appointment was at Kalamazoo. Proceeding-
there by private conveyance, he received at Jackson and other places
on the road the hearty salutations of the people. His stay in Kala
mazoo was necessarily brief. A meeting had been called, which,
notwithstanding a heavy rain, was large and full of enthusiasm. He
spoke substantially as follows :

" FELLOW CITIZENS : I am here in obedience to the command of the people of
Michigan, and yet I am inclined to think that your commands and my compliance
were a great mistake. You summoned me here because you thought that your
courage or your patience were flagging in the cause of freedom, and yet at every
step of my progress from the time that I landed at Detroit, I have found nothing
but enthusiasm unexampled and unanimity unsurpassed. I have not long to speak
to you, and I will tell you why I want to go to Kansas. I want to go to Kansas
before I die ; I want to see the Saratoga in the cause of freedom. I am on my
way there now, and unless I leave at half-past two I shall fail of that purpose.
Have I your leave to go? [Aye, Aye, go to Kansas.] Thank you friends; I
know how to win your consent." After paying a handsome compliment to the
wide-awakes, Mr. S. proceeded : " I have been much affected by the kind and cor
dial greetings of my old democratic friends and neighbors, emigrants from the
banks of the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Genesee. But I am struck with the
fact, that while they have lost none of their kindness or respect for me, they
yet seem to persevere in a hopeless, desperate, useless, unworthy cause.

" There is indeed no end to their kindness to an old friend when he comes among
them. I thank them with all my heart. Nevertheless, I confess that, it excites
my sorrow and sympathy to see so many, and such good men, wasting themselves
in a cause which can neither bring them nor their country safety, honor or renown.

" I meet them on the by-ways and pathways and in an honest, outspoken,
hearty manner, they greet me, as they pass, with 'Hurrah for Douglas! ' I think
that nearly every Douglas man in town has come to tender me his hand, and to
express at the same time his determination to vote for Douglas.

"Well, now, fellow citizens, it is honorable to Mr. Douglas that he has such
friends, and honorable to them that they persevere in their fidelity to him. Still,
it is not wise for mere personal attachments or pride of consistency, to waste our
votes, because every vote tells, or ought to tell, on the happiness, the honor and
the prosperity of the country for centuries to come.

I " Of the four candidates in the field, the only man who, in any possible case,
and after every combination, cannot be elected president of the United States, is

VOL. IV. 12

90 M E M O I K .

my excellent friend Stephen A. Douglas; because every vote given for him in the
north is a vote for Breckinridge, and every vote given for him in the south is a
vote for Lincoln or for Bell, to be counted in the canvass. If you ask your own
heart, or inquire of your neighbor, you will find the reason why you republicans
are going to vote for Abraham Lincoln, is simply and exclusively because he is, as
you understand it, the representative of human liberty. If you go to the south,
the great question is brought by the irrepressible conflict of debate to the issue
between freedom and slavery, and every man in the south is going to vote, not for
Lincoln and liberty, but for the man who can most effectually protect, defend and
extend human slavery ! On that great issue the republican party occupies the side
of liberty, while the democratic party no side, or. if any, the side of slavery.
The democratic party is indeed divided into two, one holding that slavery is right,
and the other attempting to compromise, and saying that they are indifferent whether
it is voted up or voted down. Indifference to liberty is toleration of slavery.
Theie is no neutrality of this kind practicable now. When this election shall have
closed you will find this out, because you will then find that the only other man
in the universe who was further from the presidency than Mr. Douglas was the
man in the moon." *

On leaving Kalamazoo, Mr. Seward learned that the steamboat
Lady Elgin, with nearly three hundred passengers on board, had
been lost the night before, on lake Michigan, on her way from Chi
cago to Milwaukee. This sad event cast a deep gloom over those
two cities, whose citizens were engaged in inquiries and searches for
the dead. Mr. Seward, with his party, passed through Chicago,
avoiding all observation, and arrived in Milwaukee on the evening
of the eighth. In consequence of the melancholy disaster, he declined
to deliver any speech, or to allow any demonstration whatever to be
made, or even to receive any public visits, during his stay in the
city. He remained quietly, at a private house, until Tuesday morn
ing, when he proceeded to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin.

At Madison, a reception more flattering, if possible, than any he
had }^et met, awaited him. Without distinction of party the autho
rities of the state, the authorities of the city, the military, the fire
department and the civic societies met him and escorted him from the
cars to his lodgings. Governor Randall, on the part of the state, and
Chauncey Abbott for the city, in brief but eloquent speeches,1 welcomed
his appearance among them. The following remarks by Mr. Seward,
in response, were uttered with deep feeling. The sentiments he then
uttered, the essence of his political philosophy, were received with a

1 See Appendix.

KECEPTION SPEECH AT MADISON. 91

hearty enthusiasm, not only by those present but by republicans
everywhere when the speech came to be published, although often
before expressed.

"YOUR EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR, YOUR HONOR THE MAYOR, GENTLEMEN OF THE
STATE AUTHORITY, GENTLEMEN OF THE MILITARY, OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, OF THE WIDE
AWAKES AND FELLOW CITIZENS i As I ascended this beautiful eminence, winding my
way up its graceful declivities until I rested under the shadow of the capitol, it seemed
to me that I had been carried back three hundred years, and that I was moving upon
the soil and within the city of the ancient Aztecs, surrounded by beautiful lakes,
and embowered in the richest vegetation. So long as this capital has existed I
have heard of its beauty, and I am gratified in being able to bear witness that it
fully equals its world-wide reputation. I think that the sun never looked down
upon a fairer location for the elegant capital of a free state.

" You shall not, fellow citizens, tempt me into the indulgence of any such ex
travagant estimation of myself, of my principles, of what little I have done, as to-
make me feel or believe for a moment that this kind reception is more than you
would extend, and might justly extend, to every one of my associates in the pub
lic councils of the nation who has been true and faithful to the interests of human
liberty, while he has not been unmindful of the duty of developing the resources
of the material prosperity of the country.

"It has been by a simple rule of interpretation that I have studied the constitu
tion of my country. That rule has been simply this : That by no word, no act, no-
combination into which I might enter, should any one human being of the gene
ration to which I belong, much less any class of human beings, of any nation,
race or kindred, be repressed and kept down in the least degree in their efforts to
rise to a higher state of liberty and happiness. Amid all the glosses of the times,
amid all the essays and discussions to which the constitution of the United States
has been subjected, this has been the simple, plain, broad light in which I have
read every article and every section of that great instrument. Whenever it re
quires of me that this hand shall keep down the humblest of the human race, then
I will lay down power, place, position, fame, everything, rather than adopt such a
construction or such a rule. If, therefore, in this land there are any that would
rise, I extend to them, in God's name, a good speed. If there are any in foreign
lands who would improve their condition by emigration, or if there be any here
who would go abroad in the search of happiness, in the improvement of their condi
tion, or in their elevation to a higher state of dignity and happiness, they have
always had, and always shall have, a cheering word and such efforts as I can con
sistently make in their behalf.

' Fellow citizens, words would fail me if I should attempt to express the grati
tude I feel for this agreeable surprise. I am here compulsorily, not seeking honor
or consideration at your hands. I am here, I regret to confess it, as a partisan.
But I acknowledge myself here and elsewhere a partisan only, because the habits-
and customs of a free state allow no man to be a patriot unless in the ranks of some
party in the land. To the extent that the party of freedom to which I belong
shall require me to go in its service, never asking me to trample on the rights or
to withhold the respect and consideration due to the motives of those who differ

92 MEMOIR.

from me, I shall endeavor to-morrow to set forth my views of the national objects
and end of the great political discussion in which we are engaged. Until then I
beg your indulgence for rest and repose, so necessary after a long journey, hoping
that I may greet you with smiling faces and leave you with no less favorable im
pressions when the time for our separation shall have come."

The next day (September 12) was set apart for a gathering of the
people, in Madison, from all the surrounding country. Mr. Seward
spoke from the steps of the capitol, on " The duty and responsibility
of the northwest." He began his speech with the following impres
sive words :

•' FELLOW CITIZENS : It is a bright September sun that is shining down upon
us, such a sun as nature, pleased with the remembrance of her own beneficence,
«eems to delight in sending forth to grace the close of a season which has been
crowned with abundance and luxuriance, unknown even to her own habitual pro-
fuseness. It is such a sun as nature, pleased with seeing the growth of a noble
capital in a great state, may be supposed to send out to illuminate and to make
more effulgent for a special occasion the magnificent beauties of the place in which
•we are assembled. It is such a September sun as we might almost suppose nature,
sympathizing with the efforts of good men, lovers of liberty, anxious to secure
their own freedom, to perpetuate that freedom for the enjoyment of their posterity',
and to extend its blessings throughout the whole world, and for all generations,
may have sent forth in token of sympathy with such a noble race. But, fellow
citizens, bright and cheerful as this hour is, my heart is oppressed, and I am unable
at once to lift myself above the sadness of recent scenes and ppinful recollections.
I obeyed the command of the republican people of Wisconsin to appear before
them, on this the 12th day of September; and as I approached their beautiful sea
port, if I may so call the city that crowns the shores of lake Michigan, and affords
-entrance to this magnificent state, I had anticipated, because I had become habi
tuated to, a welcome that should be distinguished by the light of a thousand
torches, and by the voices of multitudes, of music and of cannon. But the angel
of death passed just before me on the way, and instead of the greeting of thou
sands of my fellow citizens, I found only a thick darkness, increased in effect as
only nature's blackness can be, by the weeping and wailing of mothers for the loss
of children, and refusing to be comforted. I have been quite unable to rise from
that sudden shock; to forget that instead of the voice of a kind and merry and
genial welcome, I heard only mournings and lamentations in the streets.

"To you, perhaps, that sad occurrence seems somewhat foreign, because it oc
curred in your beautiful seaport, but it was not merely a municipal calamity. It
is a calamity and disaster that befalls the state, and strikes home dismay and hor
ror into the bosoms of all its people ; for those who perished were citizens of the
state, and those who survive are the mourners, the desolate widows and orphans
•who are bereaved. Let me, before I proceed, take the liberty to bring this subject
to the attention of the state authorities of Wisconsin, and to ask and to implore
that nothing may be left undone, if there is yet anything that can be done, to res-

KECEPTION AND SPEECH AT LA CROSSE. 9S

cue every sufferer from that dreadful calamity, and to bring to the comforts of
social life, and of a sound, good, religious, and public education, the orphans who
are left to wander in want on the lake shore."

The whole speech was pervaded by a serious and impressive elo
quence. The fixed attention of the audience was broken only by
occasional bursts of applause. The day closed with a " wide-awake'r
display, in the evening, of great magnificence. Mr. Seward, after
visiting some of the excellent farms in the neighborhood of Madi
son, and admiring its beautiful scenery, left the city the next day for
the Mississippi river where a steamboat was in waiting to convey him
to St. Paul in Minnesota. His progress up the river, from Prairie
du Chien to St. Paul, was frequently delayed by the people of the
towns and villages, on either shore, who eagerly desired to see and
hear him. At La Crosse, extensive preparations were made for his
arrival. A large procession met him early in the morning, as the
boat approached the landing. He was escorted thence to the gym
nasium of the turnvereins, in whose ample grounds a great crowd
of people was gathered. Before leaving the boat an address was
presented to Mr. Seward to which he replied as follows :

"FELLOW CITIZENS: It has always been my purpose to anticipate the progress
of civilization in the west, by visiting the interior portion of the continent before
the Indian and his canoe have given place to the white man, the steamer, the rail
road, and the telegraph. With that view, I explored, in 1856, the banks of lake
Superior, one year only in advance of the establishment of civilization above Sault
St. Marie. It has been my misfortune that I have not been able to execute my
purpose to visit the upper Mississippi until I find that I can no longer trace on its-
shores or bluffs, or among the people who gather around me, a single feature of
tlu' portraits of Catlin, which first made me acquainted with this wonderful and
romantic region. I must take you as I find you. I have come here at last,
attended by a few friends from the eastern states — from Ohio, from New York,.
rom Michigan, from Massachusetts1 — with them to see for ourselves the wonders
of this great civilization which are opening here to herald the establishment of
political ppwer and empire in the northwest. But our anticipations are surpassed
by what we see. None of us could have believed that elegant cities would have-
so rapidly sprung up on these shores ; nor could we have looked for such eviden
ces of improvement and development as would have required a hundred years to
execute in the states from which we come. This is gratifying, because it reveals
to us how rapidly the American people can improve resources, develop wealth,

i Mr. Seward's party included George W. Patterson, of New York; Charles Francis Adams, of
Massachusetts ; James W. Nye, of New York; Rufus King, of Wisconsin, and several other dis
tinguished public men, who were everywhere received with great consideration, and who con
tributed much to the eflect of the journey by their frequent and eloquent addresses to the
people.

94 MEMOIR.

and establish constitutional powers and guaranties for the protection of freedom.
If we had found you isolated and separate communities, distinct from ourselves,
we should still have been obliged to rejoice in such evidences of prosperity and
growing greatness. How much more gratifying it is for us to find, in everything
that we see and hear, abundant evidences that we are, after all, riot separate and
distinct peoples — not distinct peoples of Iowa, Wisconsin, New York and Massa
chusetts, but that we are one people — from Plymouth rock at least to the banks
of the Mississippi and to the foot of the Rocky mountains. It is an assurance
that enables us to trample under our feet every menace, every threat of disunion,
every alarm and apprehension of the dismemberment of this great empire ; for we
find in the sentiments which you have expressed to us to-day precisely the senti
ments which were kindled two hundred years ago on Plymouth rock, and which
are spreading wider and wider, taking deeper and deeper roots in the American
soil. They give us the sure and reliable guaranty that, under every possible
change of condition and circumstance, the American people will nowhere forget
the common interests, the common affections, and the common destiny which
make them all one people."

His speech at the turnverein grounds was devoted mainly to the
idea of disunion. 1 Recent events have given additional interest to
the words he then uttered. At several places, as he proceeded up
the river, he addressed the people, briefly, from the deck of the
steamer, in response to their hearty salutations.

It was Sunday morning when the boat reached St. Paul. The
committee appointed to receive him had met him some distance down
the river. With them he proceeded quietly to the hotel, without
publicity or ceremony. On Monday he visited fort Snelling, the
falls of Minnehaha, Minneapolis, and St. Anthony. At the two last
mentioned places, he was received with public demonstrations. To
the appropriate addresses made to him at Minneapolis and St. An
thony, he replied in a few brief but happy remarks.

Returning to St. Paul in the evening, Mr. Seward was serenaded
by a procession of wide-awakes, who, with thousands of citizens,
assembled in front of the hotel at which he stopped. A salute by
a detachment of artillery having been fired, Judge Goodrich ap
peared on the balcony with Mr. Seward, and introduced him to the
people in an eloquent speech,2 which was echoed by the audience in
enthusiastic cheers. Mr. Seward responded as follows :

"JUDGE GOODRICH, GENTLEMEN WIDE-AWAKES, FELLOW CITIZENS: Every plant,
shrub, or tree, whatever its virtue, or its strength, was created not for itself alone ;
but it exists for the benefit and to increase the happiness of mankind. Every

i Sec present Volume. 2 See Appendix.

RECEPTION AND SPEECH AT SAINT PAUL. 95

man lives, not for himself, but for his country ; for the generation to which he
belongs, and for those which shall come after him. Every age brings with it some
peculiar duty to be performed. Wo be to him, who fails to see, or to assume that
duty. His name shall perish. The zeal, the enthusiasm and the energy which
mark your action, in the present national emergency, prove that you have rightly
discerned the duty and have resolutely determined to discharge the responsibility
devolved upon you.

" This kind and generous welcome is recognized, on my part, as another one of
so many acts of hospitality, surpassing claim, or expectation, which have attended
every step of my progress, since I first, far down the river, set my foot upon the
soil of Minnesota. I cannot undertake to express the sensibility which this kind
ness has awakened. It is not my habit to attempt to express the gratitude I feel
on such occasions, at the time and in the place where they occur. Possibly, at
some future times and in some far distant places, when you are least expecting it,
some action, or at least some word, that may not then be out of time, or season,
may show how deeply my memory ever retains the impressions made by the gen
erosity of the citizens of this now youthful state, soon to become, as I be
lieve, by reason of its central position and the intelligence and enterprise of its
people, a dominating power in the American Union.

" For the present, my duty requires me to rise above all considerations of my
self and even of yourselves, of this capital and of this state ; and to think and to
speak only of our country and for mankind. To-morrow, I will try to perform
that duty. Until then, I pray you to allow me to rest ; bidding you, each and all,
kindly and respectfully, a cordial good night. May God bless and reward you
all! "

The meeting on the next day (the 18th of September) was nu
merous beyond precedent. It seemed to be a gathering of the people
of the whole state. John W. North, of St. Paul, in a very appropri
ate speech,1 introduced Mr. Seward to the masses before him. Stand
ing in the portico of the capitol, inspired by the scenes about him,
Mr. Seward spoke with unusual eloquence and fervor,2 while the
men and women who filled the capacious grounds, around, caught
the spirit of his words and at brief intervals interrupted him with
shouts of enthusiasm.

In the evening Mr. Seward was again serenaded, at his lodgings,
by a splendid torchlight procession, consisting, in part, of four hun
dred and fifty Germans. Early on the next day he left the city of
St. Paul, by steamboat, intending to reach Dubuque, in Iowa, in
time to address a meeting, called on the twentieth, in anticipation of
his presence. Unavoidable delays, however, prevented his arrival in
Dubuque until midnight. Nevertheless he was received with a

1 See Appendix. 2 The speech will be found in succeeding pages of this volume.

96 MEMOIR.

national salute of artillery ; and a procession of wide-awakes escorted
him to his hotel, where, having been introduced to the people by
William B. Allison, l he made the following speech :

" FELLOW CITIZENS : Language would fail me if I should attempt to express the
acknowledgments that I owe you for this manifestation of your regard and re
spect. You will excuse me, I know, for passing by what I treasure up in my
heart of hearts, the kind words that have been spoken in my ears concerning my
self alone. That is the place where I always store memories of kindness and of
affection, and there I prefer to let them rest until the season shall come when they
may fructify into some action on my part that shall manifest the gratitude which I
seem to suppress.

" Fellow citizens, passing from what was merely personal, I have to say that we
are here — some half dozen citizens — political pilgrims who were accustomed to
worship at the shrine of freedom in the east, and we have taken our scrip and
staff and come to the west. We stopped first, as we passed, on the shores of the
Niagara river ; then on the shore of Detroit river ; then on the coast of lake
Michigan ; and thence we made our way across to the Mississippi, and ascended
that magnificent river to the head of navigation, where we rested for a day or
two, enjoying the hospitalities of the newest admitted state — the best and
worthiest of the three free states admitted into the Union within the last ten years
as a result of the decisive action of the republican people of the northwest, since
the compromise of 1850. Thence we set our faces downward and southward,
hoping to be here in time to have a full and free conference with you, to give you
the results of our examination, into the condition of our great cause in other parts
of the Union, and to learn from you what may be anticipated as the action of the
people of this yet new but grand western state."

Mr. Seward was persuaded to remain in Dubuque another day.
The people, disappointed the previous day, again gathered in the
public square, eager to hear him speak on the great subjects agitat
ing the country. He spoke for more than an hour of the West, its
destiny and its duty, and of the one idea on which its institutions-
are founded.

Prom Dubuque Mr. Seward was obliged to travel rapidly through
Illinois and Missouri, in order to meet his appointments in Kansas.
His journey through these states was marked by public expressions
no less flattering than those he had received in Iowa, Wisconsin,
Minnesota and Michigan. Wherever the cars stopped, even for a few
minutes, spontaneous crowds of people were in waiting to salute him.

At Qumcy, Illinois, where he crossed the Mississippi river and
entered the state of Missouri, he met with a hearty reception. At

1 For Mr. Allison's speech see Appendix.

MR. SEWARD IN MISSOURI. 97

Brookfield, in Missouri, a collation was prepared for him. Here lie
received a telegraphic dispatch from Chillicothe, the next large town
on the road, requesting him to address the people at that place while
the cars stopped there.1 At first, Mr. Seward was disposed to decline
the invitation, remarking that the people of Missouri could not ex
pect him to speak to them when their laws prevented him from
speaking freely what he thought. On his arrival at Chillicothe,
however, at the urgent solicitation of the committee and a number
of respectable citizens of the state, he consented to make a brief
address. The committee frankly stated to him that they, themselves,
as well as the audience assembled, were pro-slavery in their principles.

" GENTLEMEN : I have been very kindly invited by some citizens of your place
to make you a speech. I would be glad to do so, but it is impossible. To make a
speech, requires a voice ; and I have left mine behind me. But even if my lungs
had not failed me, it would be impossible for another reason — want of time. A
speech has been well defined to be an extended expression, having a beginning, a
middle and an end. I might make a beginning ; but before I could get fairly into
the middle, the train would be off, and you would never hear the end of it.
Politics seems to be the all-absorbing topic with you. As I am supposed to be
something of a politician, it is, perhaps, expected that I should allude to that
subject. Here too is a difficulty which you have not considered. In regard to
the candidates you support here, I feel very much like a man, who, wishing to get
married, applied to the father of a number of girls, for one of two young ladies.
' Well,' said the parent, ' which of them do you propose to take?' 'I declare/
said the suitor, ' I have not thought of that, I had as lief have one as the other,
and on the whole I think a little liever.'1 I feel so in regard to Mr. Bell, Mr.
Douglas, and Mr. Breckinridge. I have, however, not a word to say against either
of them. They are good personal friends of mine — of whom I always speak
well ; and I hope they always speak well of me. But I cannot make up my
choice in favor of either of them. From the variety of banners and mottoes around
me, I think you yourselves are in the same quandary. What, then* would you say,
if I should propose to you to agree on my candidate, Abraham Lincoln? But I
need not ask you ; I know you would not take him. I think too, that I know
the reason. He is famous for splitting rails. Judging from your wide pastures-
with osage orange hedges, and the scarceness of timber about me, I think you
don't use many rails here. So, we may as well eschew politics altogether. I am
glad to be able to say that you are located in a splendid country. Fifteen years
ago, I visited St. Louis, and, at that time, observed that Missouri was destined to
be great and prosperous. I have now come two hundred miles into the interior,
and can say that my former impression of the state has been confirmed. So far
as I am able to judge you are in the best part of it. You ought to be gratified
that such is the fact. I have noticed on my way that you have a custom here
which does not prevail in the east, — shooting for beeves. And it does not surprise

i The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Company extended, freely, to Mr. Seward the courte-
eies of their road.

VOL. IV. 13

98 MEMOIR.

me, for I see that yonr beeves are worth shooting for. You have also fine horses.
But if you could come to an understanding with me, — a black republican, — I think
we could improve them. During my recent visit to Syria, I was presented with
some tine Arabian horses. They are said to be the finest horses in the world.
By uniting them with American horses, I think our stock might be greatly im
proved. [Here the whistle blew, and Governor Seward was obliged to close.]
God bless you all ! I thank you most kindly for your attention. -Good bye."

" As the train moved off, cheers were given out of courtesy to the speaker ; and
were followed by cheers for Douglas, Bell and Breckinridge. The remarks of Mr.
Seward were made in a familiar, good natured style, and had a very happy effect
upon the audience."1

At St. Joseph, in Missouri, where he arrived late on Saturday
evening, he was surprised by a most enthusiastic reception. He
was escorted from the cars to the hotel by a large procession of
wide-awakes and citizens, who insisted upon his addressing them
that evening, as it was known that he would leave the city early on
Monday morning for Kansas. Moved by the cordiality and evident
sincerity of their greetings, he appeared on the balcony of the hotel,
and having been introduced by Mr. T. J. Boynton, of St. Joseph,
spoke as follows :

"Mu. CHAIRMAN, GENTLEMEN AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I think that I have, some
time before this, said that the most interesting and agreeable surprise that ever
human being has had on this earth was that which Columbus felt when — after his
long and tedious voyage in search of a continent, the existence of which was un
known to himself, as to all mankind, and the evidence of whose existence was
nothing but a suggestion of his own philosophy, surrounded as he was by a mu
tinous crew, who were determined on the destruction of his own life if he should
continue the voyage unsuccessfully another day — he went, out at night on the deck
of his little vessel, and there rose up before him, in the dark, the shadow of an
island, with habitations lighted by human beings like himself. That was the most
interesting surprise that ever occurred to any man on earth. And yet I do not
think that Columbus was much more surprised than I and those who are with me
have been to-night.

"We have been traveling in a land of friends and brethren, through many
states from Maine to Missouri ! — along the shores of the ocean, along the shores
of the great lakes and the banks of great rivers — and 1 will not deny that our
footsteps have been made pleasant by kind and friendly and fraternal greetings.
We entered the soil of Missouri this morning, at ten o'clock, feeling that, although
we had a right to regard the people of Missouri as our brethren, and although we
were their brethren and friends, yet we were to be regarded by its citizens as
strangers, if not aliens and enemies ; but this welcome which greets us here sur-

1 The above report of Mr. Seward's remarks is taken from the Free Democrat, published at
St. Joseph, Misaonri.

IN MISSOURI. 99

passes anything that we have experienced in our sojournings from Bangor, in the
state of Maine, to this place. The discovery that here there is so much of kind
ness for us. so much of respect and consideration, takes us by surprise. I will
confess freely that it affects us with deep sensibility, for we did not propose to
visit St. Joseph.. There is a land beyond you — a land redeemed and saved for
freedom, through trials and sufferings that have commended its young and grow
ing people to the respect of mankind and to our peculiar sympathy.

" We proposed to be quiet travelers through the state of Missouri, hoping and
expecting without stopping here, to rest this night on the other side of the Mis
souri, where we knew we would be welcome. [A voice — ' We won't hurt you.']
No, I know you won't hurt me. The man who never wished evil to any human
being, who challenges enemies as well as friends to show the wrong with which
any being made in his own form can accuse him when he comes before the bar of
justice, has no fear of being harmed in the country of his birth and of his affection.
But I stated that, not merely for the purpose of showing how agreeable is this
fraternal welcome. It is full of promise. I pass over all that has been said to me
of consideration for myself. There are subjects on which I take no verdict from
my fellow citizens. I choose to take the approbation, if I can get it, of my own
•conscience, and to wait till a future age for the respect and consideration of man
kind. But I will dwell for one moment on this extraordinary scene, full of assur
ance on many points, and interesting to every one of you as it is to me.

" The most cheering fact, as it is the most striking one in it, is that we who are
visitors and pilgrims to Kansas, beyond you, find that we have reached Kansas
already on the northern shores of the Missouri river. Now come up here — if
there are any such before me — you, who are so accustomed to sound an alarm
about the danger of a dissolution of the Union 5 come up here, and look at the
.scene of Kansas and Missouri, so lately hostile, brought together on either shore
in the bonds of fraternal affection and friendship. That is exactly what will al
ways occur whenever you attempt to divide this people and to set one portion
against another. The moment you have brought the people to the point where
there is the least degree of danger to the national existence felt, then those whom
party malice or party ambition have arrayed against each other as enemies, will
embrace each other as friends and brethren.

" Let me tell you this simple truth ; that though you live in a land of slavery
there is not a man among you who does not love slavery less than he loves the
Union. Nor have I ever met the man who loved freedom so much, under any of
the aspects involved in the present presidential issues, as he loved the Union, for it
is only through the stability and perpetuity of this Union that any blessings what
ever may be expected to descend on the American people.

" And now, fellow citizens, there is another lesson which this occasion and this
demonstration teach. They teach that there is no difference whatever in the na
ture, constitution or character of the people of the several states of this Union, or
of the several sections of this Union. They are all of one nature, even if they
are not all native born, and educated in the same sentiments. Although many of
them came from distant lands, still the very effect of their being American citizens
is to make them all alike.

100 MEMOIR.

" I will tell you why this is so. The reason is simply this : The democratic prin
ciple that every man ought to be the owner of the soil that he cultivates, and the
owner of the limbs and the head that he applies to that culture, has been adopted
in some of the states earlier than in others ; and where it was adopted earliest it
has worked out the fruits of higher advancement, of greater enterprise, of greater
prosperity. Where it has not been adopted, enterprise and industry have lan
guished in proportion. But it is going through ; it is bound to go through. [A
voice — ' It's not going through here.'] Yes, here. As it has already gone through
eighteen states of the Union so it is bound to go through all of the other fifteen.
It is bound to go through all of the thirty-three states of the Union for the simple
reason that it is going through the world."

On Monday (September 24), Mr. Seward reached Kansas. As he
passed down the Missouri river, he was recognized at several places
on the Missouri and Kansas shores of the river, and saluted with
cheers, entering into frank and familiar conversations with the peo
ple. His first step on the soil of Kansas, at Leavenworth, was an
nounced by the firing of cannon and the shouts of thousands of
people. He was escorted to the hotel by a procession of citizens,
including all the mechanics in the city, bearing their various tools
and implements. Mr. A. C. Wilder, in introducing Mr. Seward to
the people, spoke of him as the representative of Kansas in the
senate of the United States.1 Mr. Seward's remarks in response
were, at the time, briefly sketched as follows:

"Mr. Seward began his reply by saying that it was well that he had not the
voice to enable him to speak at length, for the emotions which were crowding
upon him could not be expressed in words. He would not have them think him
wanting in gratitude, if his language failed to express the feelings which oppressed
him. Many years ago, when he visited General Lafayette, the brave Frenchman
who fought for us, he saw, at the entrance of his residence, two brass cannons,
which bore the inscription, ' Presented by the liberty-loving citizens of Paris.'
Here, at his entrance into Kansas, he found two symbols of the spirit of her free-
people. The one was the cannon which was booming on the hill near by. He
had heard that it was captured by the free state men during the commotion which
existed several years ago, when they were struggling for free institutions. An
other evidence of the free impulses by which we were animated was the organi
zation of the wide-awakes whom he saw around him, not in the customary cos
tume of that body, but as an army of free laboring men — carpenters, masons, and
mechanics of all kinds — who had come out, in their working clothes, with their
tools of all kinds, in a body, to welcome him. Mr. Seward proceeded to pay a
handsome compliment to the wide-awake club. He then alluded again to the
subject of free labor, and said that it must be respected as being the foundation of

i See Appendix.

VISIT TO KANSAS — SPEECH AT LAWRENCE. 101

•our strength and prosperity. Whatever of reputation he had acquired was due-
mainly to the fact that he had endeavored, in his public capacity, to lay the foun
dation of free states, and especially the free state of Kansas. He then paid a glow
ing tribute to the people of this territory. He said they had achieved freedom for
themselves; and now it was their duty to aid in securing it to the embryo states
around them. Kansas stood as a sentinel in the pathway to the large region of
country extending from the British possessions on the north to Texas on the south
and west beyond the Rocky mountains. It was our duty to give our influence to
secure freedom to the states which would spring up in that wide domain. Mr.
Seward then apologized for the brevity of his remarks. He could make but one
extended speech in this territory, and that would be at Lawrence, on account of
its central position. He closed by urging the people to cherish the free institutions
for which they had so long contended. Freedom was not only established here,
but would eventually prevail in the whole Union, on the whole continent, and
through the whole world."

Mr. Seward, desirous of learning the actual condition of Kansas,
avoided, as far as possible, any further public notice, and traveled by
private conveyance over as large a portion of the territory as his
limited time would permit, visiting, especially, Lecompton and To-
peka. At the latter place he was, although entirely unexpected,
honored with salutes from cannon. He pertinaciously declined to
address the people, bat received them all, of both sexes, in a free
and easy conversational manner, mingling with them in the streets
"by the light of their bonfires.

It had already been arranged that he should speak at Lawrence on
the twenty-sixth. On that day, as he approached the city, he was
met by an immense cavalcade of citizens, and conducted to the place
.appointed for the meeting. Here he was welcomed to the city and
territory, in eloquent speeches1 by Mayor Deitzler and G-overnor
Eobinson, and by the enthusiastic and hearty cheers of the people.
Mr. Seward's speech, on this occasion, is a condensed but eloquent
review of the struggle for freedom in Kansas, containing vivid pic
tures of its beautiful scenery, with touching allusions to its impend
ing calamity.2 It will be found in another part of this volume, and
should be read in this connection, as a portion of the history of Mr.
Seward's visit to Kansas. Its delivery was hailed with the most
enthusiastic plaudits of the people, who had come from all parts of
the territory, some of them long distances on foot. The day was
-closed with the festivities of a public dinner and ball.

i See Appendix. 2 Kansas, as is well known, was then guttering from a drouth of unparal
leled severity, which had prevented the raising of any kind of grain or vegetable food.

102 MEMOIR.

On the next morning Mr. Seward left Lawrence, turning his steps,
for the first time, eastward and homeward. Hoping to escape any
further attention in Leaven worth, he arrived in that city in the eve
ning. But the wide-awakes and the citizens generally had assembled
in large numbers, awaiting his appearance. With the usual accom
paniments of music and torchlights, he reentered the city. Unable
to resist the demands made upon him, he took the stand which had
been erected in front of the hotel for the occasion, and, after the
cheering had subsided, spoke briefly, as follows :

"FELLOW CITIZENS: I would talk to you until midnight, pouring forth all my
most earnest and hopeful thoughts, if I were sure that the outside world could
know, as you do, that I speak on your compulsion, overcoming more determined
resolutions of silence than I ever before had formed in similar circumstances.

" I sometimes allow myself to indulge speculations concerning the period \vhen
there shall be on this continent no other power than the United States ; and a new
constitution of human society opens itself before me when I contemplate the
influence then to be wrought on Europe and on Asia by the American people,
situated midway between the abodes of western and oriental civilization. One
great, influential state must then exist here, west of the Mississippi and east of
the Rocky mountains. Which would that great and influential state be ? It ought
to be Missouri. It certainly would have been, if her people had. from the first.
been as wise as you are. I do not, indeed, know, nor think it certain, that Mis
souri will not yet be that great and influential state ; for there is hope — there is
assurance — that Missouri, taught, though slowly and reluctantly, by the instructions
and example of Illinois, Iowa, and especially Kansas, will consent to become a
free state. She has, with vast dimensions, a soil as fertile and skies as genial, and
a position for commerce as favorable, as those with which God has blessed any
part of the earth. She has need, however, to study the moral conditions of
national greatness.

"The fundamental moral conditions of a state, or a republic, are simply theser
that every man shall enjoy equal and exact justice, and thus have the fullest oppor
tunity for improving his own condition, his intellect, and his heart, and to win the
rewards of character and of influence on society and on mankind. In this respect,,
you, the people of Kansas, have passed Missouri, and are ahead even of Nebraska,
Iowa, and every other state in the American Union. All other states have com
promised more or less of these conditions. A stern experience of wrong received
from slavery has awakened among you a love of freedom, and a discriminating-
appreciation of its value, that can never admit of demoralization. You alone have
escaped demoralization, which all the other states have, at some times and in some
degrees, undergone. Freedom, and not slavery, in the territories of the United
States, has been, in fact, only an abstract question in other states. But here it
has been a vital, an inspiring, a forming principle. Your territory was made the
active arena of that 'irrepressible conflict' between free labor and slave labor,
where it came to the trial of mind with mind, of voice with voice, of vote with
vote, of bullet against bullet, and of cannon against cannon. You have ac-

RECEPTION AND SPEECH AT ATCHISON CITY. 103

quired, practically, and through dangers and sufferings, the education and the dis-
• upline and the elevation of freedom.

" If there is a people in any part of the world I ought to cherish with enduring
respect, with the warmest gratitude and with the deepest interest, assuredly it is
the people of Kansas; for, but for the practical trial you have given to the system
which I had adopted — but for the vindication, at so much risk and so much cost,
of your highest rights under the law, I must have gone to my grave a disappointed
man, a false teacher, in the estimation of the American people. Yours is the
thirty-first of thirty-four states of the Union which I have visited for the purpose
of knowing their soils their skies, and their people. I have visited, in the course
of my lifetime, more than three-fourths of the civilized nations of the world ; and
of all the states and nations which I have seen, that people which I hold to be the
wisest, the worthiest, and the best, is the people of this little state. The reason
of it is expressed in the old proverb, ' handsome is that handsome does.' If other
nations have higher education and greater refinement, and have cultivated the
virtues and accomplishments of civilized life more than you have, I have yet to see
any other nation or people that has been able, in its infancy, in its very organization,
to meet the shocks of the aristocratic system through which other nations have
been injured or ruined, to repel all attacks, overcome all hindrances, and to come
out before the world in the attitude of a people who will not, under any form of
persuasion, seduction or intimidation, consent, any one of them, to be a slave, any
one of them to make a slave, any one of them to hold a slave, or consent that any
foot of their territory shall be trodden by a slave, or by a man who is not equal
to every other man in the view of the constitution and of the laws."

At Atchison city lie was again detained by the people, who had
prepared for him a most flattering reception. A triumphal arch
formed of oak trees bore the inscription, " Welcome to Seward, the
defender of Kansas and of Freedom." The houses in the city were
covered with festoons made of oak boughs. He was received by
the mayor under a banner, bearing the motto "THE SUBDUERS ARE
THEMSELVES SUBDUED." Apparently, the whole population of the
city and neighborhood had assembled to meet him. After being
introduced to the people, in an appropriate speech by the mayor,1
Mr. Seward addressed them as follows :

" Referring to the apology made by Mr. Martin, for the inadequacy of the re
ception, he said that they might judge of what he himself thought of it, when he
delared to them that his welcome bore all the impress of those that he had seen
given in other countries to hereditary princes. Compared with other demon
strations in the territory, this was unsurpassed.3 He said he had tried to avoid
all such demonstrations which only tend to make him misunderstood, for the world

1 The Mayor was a democrat. General Pomeroy, also made a few remarks, followed by General
Nye in an eloquent speeeh.
3 Atchis-oi) was one of the "border rnflian '' towns on the Missouri river.

104 M E M O I K .

might think that in coming to Kansas he came to receive honors, instead of com
ing to learn what was necessary to enable him to perform his duty to her citizens
and their cause, better than he had heretofore been able to do.

" I find," said he, " the territory of Kansas as rich if not richer, in its soil and in
its resources of material prosperity, than any state with which I have been
acquainted, and I have already visited thirty-one of the thirty-four states of the
Union. In climate, I know of none that seems to be so desirable. It is now suf
fering, in its southern and western counties more especially, the privations of want,
falling very heavily on its latest settlers, resulting from the absence of rain for a
period of ten or twelve months. I go out of the territory of Kansas with a sad
ness that hangs over and depresses me, not because I have not found the country
far surpassing all my expectations of its improvement and cultivation, not because
I have not found here a prosperous and happy people, but because I have found
families, some from my own state, some from other states and some from foreign
countries, who were induced, and justly and wisely induced, to come to this region
within the last year or two, and who, having exhausted all their means and all
their resources in establishing homes for themselves, have been disappointed in
gaining from their labor, provision for the supply of their wants. And all this the
result of a desolating drought which pervades a large portion of the state.

" I hope that the tales which I have heard are exaggerated, and that families
are not actually perishing for want in some of the western counties of Kansas. I
have faith in the complete success of your system, and in the ultimate prosperity
and development of the state of Kansas ; I have it for the most obvious reason,
that if. Kansas is a failure my whole life has been worse than a failure ; but if
Kansas shall prove a success, as I know it will, then I shall stand redeemed, at
least in history, for the interest I have taken in the establishment of civilization
on the banks of the Missouri river upon the principles and policy which you have
laid down. I pray you, you who are rich, you who are prosperous, to appoint
active and careful men to make researches in the territory for those who are suf
fering by this dreadful visitation of Providence ; to take care that the emigrant
who came in last winter and last spring be not suffered, through disappointment
and want, to return to the state whence he came, carrying back a tale of suffering
and privation and distress which might retard for years the development of society
here. I hope you will not regard this advice of mine as being without warrant.
I give it for your own sake, I give it for the sake of the people of Kansas, as well
as because rny sympathies have been moved by the distress I have seen around
me. If this advice shall be taken in good part, then I am free to tell you, that in
m7 judgment, there is not the least necessity for any person leaving this territory,
Both-withstanding the greatness of the calamity that has befallen it, I have seen
whole districts that have produced neither the winter wheat, nor the spring wheat,
nor the rye, nor the buckwheat, nor the potato, nor the root of any kind ; yet I have
seen on all your prairies, upland and bottom land, cattle and horses in great num
bers, and all of them in perfect condition ; and I am sure that there is a surplus
supply of stock in this territory which, if disposed of, would produce all that is
necessary to relieve every one in the territory. What is required, therefore, is
simply that you should seek out want where it exists, and apply your own surplus
means to relieve it. If this should fail, and if you should feel it necessary to ap
ply to your countrymen in the east for aid, I will second that appeal, I and the

CLOSING SPEECH IN KANSAS — ATCHISON. 105

gentlemen who have been visiting the country with me, and it will not be our
fault if we do not send back from the east the material comforts that will cheer
and reanimate those who are depressed and suffering. This state, larger than any
of the old thirteen states, has not one acre that is unsusceptible of cultivation ;
not one foot that may not be made productive of the supplies of the wants of
of human life, comforts and luxuries.

" The question was propounded to me, not of my seeking ; it came before me.
because I was in a position where I must meet all questions of this kind; it came
some six years ago: Do the interests of human society require that this land of
Kansas should be possessed by slaveholders and cultivated with slaves, or possessed
and cultivated by free men, every one of whom shall own the land which he cul
tivates and the muscles with which he tills the earth ? When I look back at that
period, only six or seven years ago, it seems strange to me that any man living on
this continent, himself a free man and having children who are free, himself a free
laborer and having children who must be free laborers, himself earning his own
subsistence and having children who must depend on their own efforts for their
support, should be willing to resign a portion of this continent so great, a soil so rich,
a climate so genial, to the support of African negroes instead of white men.

" Africa was not crowded so as to need that her children should have Kansas.
Africa has never sent to this country one voluntry exile or emigrant, and never will.
The sons of Africa have lands which for them are more productive, have habits
more congenial and skies better tempered than yours are. I have supposed it far
better, therefore, to leave the people of Africa where God planted them, on their
native shores. But the case was different with men of my own race, the white
men, the blue-eyed men, the yellow-haired men of England, of Ireland, of
Scotland, of France, of Germany, of Italy. Ever since this continent was dis
covered, oppression in every form has been driving them from those lands to seek
homes for their subsistence and support on this continent. There is no difference
between us all except this: that my father was driven out of Europe by want
and privation some hundred years ago, and others some hundred years later, and
some have just come, and tens of thousands, aye, millions, have yet to come. We
are all exiles directly, or represent those who were exiles ; all exiles made by op
pression, superstition and tyranny in Europe. We are of one family, race and
kindred, all here in the pursuit of happiness, all seeking to improve our condition,
all seeking to elevate our character. My sympathies have gone with this
class of men. My efforts have been, as they must always be, to lay open before
them the vast regions of this continent, to the end that we may establish here a
higher, a better, and a happier civilization than that from which ourselves or our
ancestors were exiled in foreign lands.

" This land should not only be a land of freedom, a land of knowledge and re
ligion, but it should be, above all, a land, which as yet cannot be said with truth of
any part of Europe or any other part of the world, a land of civil liberty ; and a land
can only be made a land of liberty by adopting the principle which has never yet
obtained in Europe, and which is only to be attained by learning it from ourselves,
that is, that every human being, being necessarily born the subject of a govern
ment, is a member of the state, and has a natural right to be a member of the
state, and that, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, all men are
born equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

VOL. IV. 14

106 MEMOIR.

Some of the states were not established on this principle. They were established
a long time ago, and under circumstances which prevented the adoption of this
principle. For those states, members of our Union, who have been unable or even
unwilling to adopt this principle, I have only to say that I leave them free to en
joy whatever of happiness, and to attain whatever of prosperity, they can enjoy
and attain with their system. But when I am called upon to establish a govern
ment for a new- state, then I demand the application of the principles of the Dec
laration of Independence, that every man ought to be and shall be a free man.
"Society can have but two forms by which the individual can defend himself from
oppression. One is that which puts a musket into his hand and tells him as the last
resort to defend himself and his liberty. The other is that which puts into his
hand the ballot, and tells him in every exigency to defend his rights with the bal
lot. I do maintain that in founding a new state we have the perfect liberty as
well as the perfect right to establish a government which shall secure every man
in his rights; or rather, I do say that you must put into every man's hand, not
the hands of one, the ballot ; or put into every man's hand, arid not into the hands
of a few, the bullet, so that every man shall be equal before the law in his power
as a citizen. All men shall have the ballot, or none; all men shall have the bullet,
or none."

Having engaged to be in Chicago on the second of October, Mr.
Seward was now obliged to pursue his journey with as few delays
as possible. He left St. Joseph early in the morning of Saturday,
the thirtieth of September, and reached St. Louis about midnight.
Here, also, he had hoped to escape any public attention. But the
telegraph had reported his coming an hour before his arrival, and
the usual demonstrations of a procession, music and fireworks had
been quickly prepared for his reception. Notwithstanding the unsea
sonable hour and the fatigue of a long day's travel, Mr. Seward could
not resist the earnest appeals of the multitude to address them. It
was one o'clock in the morning when he began to speak. The peo
ple were, nevertheless, enthusiastic, and attentive in their listening.

"Mr. Seward said that he had come across the Mississippi, not to see St. Louis
or the people of Missouri, but to see Kansas, which was entitled to his gratitude
and respect. Missouri could take care of herself: she did not care for republican
principles, but warred with them altogether. If, forty years ago, Missouri had
chosen to be a free state, she would now have four millions of people, instead of
one million. He was a plain-spoken man, and was here talking treason in the
streets of St. Louis. He could not talk anything else, if he talked as an honest
man ; but he found himself out of place here. Here, said he, are the people of
Missouri, who ask me to make a speech, and, at the same time, have laws regulat
ing what I shall say. The first duty that you owe to your city and to yourselves
is to repeal and abrogate every law on your statute book that prohibits a man from
eaying what his honest judgment and sentiment and heart tell him is the truth.

EECEPTION AT THE HOME OF MR. LINCOLN. 107

Though I have said these hard things about the state of Missouri, I have no hard
sentiments about it or St. Louis, for I have great faith and hope — nay, absolute
trust — in Providence and the American people. What Missouri wants is courager
resolution, spirit, manhood — not consenting to take only that privilege of speech
that slaveholders allow, but insisting on complete freedom of speech.

"But I have full trust that it will all come right in the end; that, in ten yearsr
you will double your population, and that, in fifteen or twenty years, you will
have four millions of people. To secure that, you have but to let every man who*
comes here, from whatever state or nation, speak out what he believes will pro
mote the interests and welfare of mankind. What surprised me in Kansas was
to see the vast improvements made there within six years, with so little wealth OF
strength among the people ; and what surprises me most in Missouri is, that, with
such a vast territory and with such great resources, there is, after so long a settle
ment, so little of population, improvement and strength to be found. I ought notr
perhaps, to talk these things to you. I should have begun at the other end of the
story. But how could I ? It is true, a citizen of any other state has as much
liberty here as the citizens of Missouri ; but he has less liberty than I like. I want
more than you have. I want to speak what I think, instead of what a Missouri an
thinks. I certainly want to speak for myself, or else not to speak at all. Is not
that fair ? I think you are in a fair way of shaming your government into an
enlightened position on this subject of slavery. You are in the way of being
Germanized into it. I would much rather you had got into it by being Ameri
canized instead' of G-ermanized; but it is better to come to it through that way
than not to come to it at all.

" It was through the Germans Germanizing Great Britain that Magna Charta-
was obtained, and that that great charter of English liberty came to be the char
ter of the liberties of the sons of England throughout the whole world. What
ever lies in my power to do to bring into successful and practical operation the
great principle that this government is a government for free men and not for
slaves or slaveholders, and that this country is to be the home of the exile from
every land, I shall do. This, however, can only be done by the exercise of free
speech. You can do little yourselves in the same direction until you have secured
free debate. Therefore, I finish, as I began, by exhorting you to secure freedom
of speech. That on.ce gained, all other freedoms shall be added thereto." l

Mr. Seward resumed his journey early on Monday morning. At
Springfield, Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln, the train stopped
for twenty minutes. Mr. Seward was cordially greeted here by a
great crowd of the citizens, among whom were Mr. Lincoln and
Senator Trumbull. Mr. Seward. in response to the general desire,
made a few remarks to the people assembled. Standing on the plat
form of the car, in company with his distinguished friends, after the
cheers of the multitude and the firing of cannon had ceased, he said :

1 Mr. Seward' s remarks were loudly cheered. It was replied that the laws against free speech
were a dead letter, and that St. Louis was already a free city — " as free as Boston."

108 MEMOIR.

" I am happy to express, on behalf of the party with whom I am traveling, our
gratitude and acknowledgments for this kind and generous reception at the home
of your distinguished fellow citizen, our excellent and honored candidate for the
chief magistracy of the United States. If there k in any part of the country a
•deeper interest felt in his election than there is in any other part, it must of course
be here, where he has lived a life of usefulness; where he is surrounded by the
•companions of his labors and of his public services. We are happy to report to
you, altlrough we have traveled over a large part of the country, we have found
no doubtful states.

" You would naturally expect that I should say something about the temper
.and disposition of the state of New York. The state of New York will give a
generous and cheerful and effective support to your neighbor Abraham Lincoln.
I have heard about combinations and coalitions there, and I have been urged from
the beginning to abandon this journey and turn back on my footsteps. Whenever
I shall iind any reason to suspect that the majority which the state of New York
will give for the republican candidate will be less than sixty thousand votes, I
may do so. The state of New York never fails — never flinches. She has. been
committed from the beginning, as she will be to the end, under all circumstances,
to the great principles of the republican party.

" She voted to establish this a land of freedom for you in 1787. She sustained
the ordinance of '87 till you were able to take care of yourselves. Among the
first acts of her government, she abolished slavery for herself. She has known
nothing of compromises, nothing of condition or qualification in this great prin
ciple, and she never will. She will sustain your distinguished neighbor because
she knows he is true to this great principle, and when she has helped to elect
him, by giving as large a majority as can be given by any half dozen other states,
then you will find that she will ask less, exact less, from him, and support him
more faithfully than any other state can do. That is the way she did with John
Quincy Adams, that is the way she sustained General Taylor, and that is the way
she will sustain Abraham Lincoln."

Mr. Seward reached Chicago about seven o'clock in the evening.
The depot, and the streets around, were crowded with people. An
imposing escort accompanied him to the hotel. The streets through
which the procession passed were thronged with enthusiastic multi
tudes. Fireworks were displayed from many of the public and
private buildings, and the whole scene was a grand ovation. At the
hotel, Mr. Seward, alighting from the carriage, reached the house
only by the efficient intervention of the police, returning the saluta
tions of the people as he passed. He soon appeared on the balcony
in company with John Wentworth, the mayor of Chicago. After
an introductory speech1 from the mayor, Mr. Seward addressed the
large assemblage as follows:

See Appendix.

RECEPTION SPEECH AT CHICAGO.

" MR. MAYOR AND FELLOW CITIZENS : The exaggerated terms in which you have
spoken of such public services, recent or long past, as I have rendered will not
mislead me. I have a stern conscience, the approval of which I must seek, and
which must be the guide for my public conduct. But I should be ungracious to
you, and ungrateful to my fellow citizens, who have honored me with this magnifi
cent manifestation of their respect and esteem, if I did not freely and openly
confess my entire satisfaction with its sincerity and my appreciation of the affec
tion and respect which it testifies. How deeply, how sincerely that respect and
affection touch me, there is nobody but myself can know, and I, unfortunately,
can never tell. [A voice, Louder!'] I beg pardon, my dear friend, I can speak
no louder ; I have been speaking for a month. You must take me as I am. If
I had possessed the power I should have done more than I have already, else
where. Besides I have some duty to perform to-morrow.

MR. MAYOR AND CITIZENS OF CHICAGO : I may say in almost one sentence all that
I can claim for myself. From my earliest experience as a citizen of this country r
I was not ignorant of the advance of empire across the Alleghany mountains and
into the valley of the Mississippi. The number of states, which since my man
hood, have been added to the Federal Union, and their location in the west are-
hardly more certain in my knowledge now than they were in my conjectured
anticipation at that early period.

" And I knew another truth, which has been a guide to me throughout my
experience as a representative man ; I knew that, whereas in other countries
commerce and those engaged in it had been the controlling element and the
controlling power of modern civilization ; yet that in this country and under the
circumstances surrounding us, commerce was not to be the controlling power, but
that I have never been ignorant — nevei for a moment been unconscious — that the
political power which directs the destinies of this nation, is exercised by those of our
countrymen who cultivate the soil, not those who sell its products in the market.

''Even the wayfaring man, though a fool, might know where the mass of those
people who should till the soil would be found. They could be found nowhere
else but westward from the Alleghany mountains, and eastward from the Pacific-
ocean, somewhere between British America on the one side and the gulf of Mex
ico on the other. This being so, it has seemed to me the simplest duty of policy
to take care that those people who were to till the soil — this American soil — and
in the act of cultivating it become the rulers of the destinies of this mighty nationr
should, in the first place, be located, as far as circumstances would allow, not upon
slave soil, but upon free soil — that they should not be owned by masters or
owners, but that they should own themselves. And if my public life, my present
system — that which I commend to the acceptance of my countrymen with such
ability as I may have — need any exposition whatever, this is the simple truth and.
the whole of it.

" Neither you nor I have any power to disturb those of our fellow citizens in
the southern states who maintain a different system ; and having no power there
we have no responsibility. We need not fear that right, and justice, and human
ity, will not prevail in this world, even though we are not in all the fields where
battles are to be fought, or instructions are to be given to secure their triumph,
There have been already six of the thirteen original states of this confederacy
redeemed by the citizens of those states themselves, without interference or inter-

110 MEMOIR.

vention from abroad. All the others that remain may be left under the influence
— the increasing influence of Christianity, to say nothing of policy, to deliver
themselves from that'curse from which we have been saved without any interfer
ence of our own.

/ " Non-intervention in the states by free men is but half, however, of the motto
of the republican party — non-intervention by slaveholders in the territories of
the United States is the residue. )

" And so, having abused your hospitality and kindness by setting forth a creed,
which I had better reserved for another occasion, I beg you to accept my apology
for failing to deliver you a longer address now, and to accept my best wishes that
you may repose in peace and quiet to-night, and to-morrow, although it is said to
be a great loan to ask, I will pray you to lend me your ears and I will try to see
how many of them I can fill."

The trains and steamboats which arrived during the night and
early the following morning brought into Chicago, from all the north
ern portions of Illinois and vicinity, an unprecedented number of
people.1 At noon, a hundred thousand had filled the city. Mr.
Seward spoke, in an open square, to as many as could come within
the reach of his voice, while thousands, at the same time, were lis
tening in other places to James W. Nye and Owen Lovejoy. Mr.
Se ward's speech, which will be found in succeeding pages, is one of
the most interesting of the series made by him during the campaign.
It touched the hearts of the thousands who heard it, and of the mil
lions who have read it. In the evening Mr. Seward was serenaded
by the wide-awakes, in a procession that seemed interminable.

He left Chicago on the following day, arriving in Cleveland on the
morning of the fourth. The day was rainy, but a handsome recep
tion was given to him by the citizens of Cleveland and its neighbor
hood, who, in large numbers, assembled in the city park, where he
was to speak. He commenced with an earnest appeal for the starv
ing population of Kansas :

" We have visited Kansas, and I ask your leave to bring the condition of that
territory before you, for your careful and kind consideration. The soil and the
skies of Kansas are as propitious as any people on earth ever enjoyed — the people
as free, as true, and as brave as any in the world. They are suffering severely
from a drought so great that I think it was scarcely exaggerated when they told
me they had had no rain in a large portion of the territory for a whole year. We
found that whole districts had produced less vegetable support for human life than
are to be found in many a garden which we have passed in coming through the
state of Ohio. Districts in which the winter wheat, sowed last year, was neces-

'». The number was estimated at over fifty thousand.

RECEPTION AND SPEECH AT BUFFALO. Ill

sarily plowed up, and sowed in the spring with spring wheat. The spring wheat
was plowed up, and the ground planted with corn. The corn proved a failure,
and was followed with potatoes. The potatoes were blasted, and followed by
buckwheat, which also proved a failure. I think that this is a true description of
the condition of tillage in perhaps two-thirds of Kansas. Still, there will be no
treat famine or distress there.

" The occupants who have been there for two, three, four or five years are com
fortable and well-to-do, as appears abundantly from their stock, their fences,
their dwelling houses — framed of wood, and very often substantially and
well built of brick and stone. Large portions of the state are as populous, and
exhibit all the signs of comfort and thrift, equal to what are found even in Ohio.
But there are emigrants who have resided there for only a year whose whole
means have been expended in procuring farms and shelter, and planting their
crops, which have successively failed. Many of these are leaving the territory —
some say so many as one hundred a day. They ought to be relieved, and a very
little assistance would enable them to remain there and retain their possessions and
improvements, and resume the culture of their fields, under more favorable auspi
ces, next spring. With much diffidence, I beg to commend this subject to the
citizens of Ohio. Perhaps a larger portion of the republicans of Kansas are emi
grants from Ohio than from any other state. Do not forget that Kansas is the
most important outpost of the republican army; that it is yet, on paper at least,
in a state of siege ; though the enemy has been driven out, a treaty of peace and
independence has not yet been signed."

At Erie, in Pennsylvania, Mr. Seward made a few remarks to the
eager crowd ; and at various places on the way he met with a friendly
and enthusiastic greeting. At Buffalo, where he remained over
night, a brilliant display of wide-awakes and a large gathering of
citizens called from him the following brijf speech :

" FELLOW CITIZENS : I understand this demonstration. [Here there were com
plaints of disorder.] It is only kindness that makes it turbulent. But in order
that you may hear a voice which has been exercised for five weeks, it will be
necessary for you to hold your tongues and open your ears. I am now within a
hundred and fifty miles of my home, and I remember so much of the Scriptures
as this, namely, that ' a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.'
So I am not going to prophesy so near my own place of residence. I thank you
sincerely for this welcome of myself and of the party with whom I have been
traveling in the far west, f I have seen, within a year, all the principal peoples
who inhabit the shores of the Mediterranean ; and within the last five weeks have
journeyed among the population dwelling along the Mediterranean coasts of
America. I have seen those decayed and desolate countries — the sites of the
greatest nations of antiquity — now covered with ruins, and some in a state almost
of semi-barbarism. The chief cause of that decay and desolation I believe to have
been the existence in those countries of human bondage. The one great evil
which could bring down our country to such a level, would be the introduction

112 MEMOIR.

of slavery into the lands surrounding the Mediterranean of America. Therefore
it is that I have devoted what little talent I possess to prevent the ban of slavery
from falling upon the fertile valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri. Having seen
many states, I come back to New York, prouder of her, and prouder that I belong
to her, than I was when I left. I estimate her so highly, not alone for what she
is or has, at home, but also for what she is and has in the great west. While I see
around me here, so many generous and noble men endeavoring to maintain her in
her proud position, I have also found, all along the shores of the great lakes, along
the banks of the great rivers, and even at the foot of the Rocky mountains, chil
dren of the state of New York, almost as numerous as at home. Wisconsin,
Michigan, Illinois, and Kansas, are all daughters of New York ; so is California ;
and more states have been formed under her auspices, than there were at the
beginning of the Union. Emigrants from Erie county, from Chautauqua, from
Cattaraugus, from Oswego, and from all the counties of this great state, people
the west. It was a son of New York who first applied steam to locomotion ; a
citizen of New York, and also its chief magistrate, who began and perfected the
Erie canal, and over that canal the stream of emigration has flowed which has
founded new states. It has carried, sometimes, in a day, the people of a western
town, a county in a few weeks, and a state in two or three years. New York
has built the west. But I am, perhaps, speaking in too general terms. Doubtless
the spirit which animates you at present, is roused in regard to the coming elec
tion. It will gladden you when I say, in relation to the west, that I have had
assurances there which leave no doubt that it will give its vote for Lincoln. I
have seen him at his own home, and I have now to say, as I said before I went
abroad, that he is a man eminently worthy of the support of every honest voter,
and well qualified to discharge the duties of the chief magistracy. Above all, he
is reliable ; and I repeat at the foot of lake Erie what I said at the head of it, that
if it had fallen to me to name a man to be elected as next president of the United
States, I would have chosen Abraham Lincoln. I have promised out west that
the state of New York will give him sixty thousand majority in November.

Now, my friends, I wish to know what you can say for Erie county. What majo
rity will Erie county give ? [Twenty-five hundred out of the city of Buffalo.]
Aye, you count majorities in the rural districts. That is right and safe too. It is
very fortunate that, whatever may be the case with the population on the side
walks, the rural districts are safe for freedom. Why, gentlemen, you couldn't take
any man three months from Main street, out into the free, open country, without
converting him from democracy and making him so that he would never think of
voting for a democratic candidate, or a two-faced candidate, or a candidate with
half-a-dozen principles. Well ! we'll see what we can do with the cities this time.
When the cities begin to find out that they are not going to rule the country, they
will conclude, perhaps, that it is better that they agree with the country. It is
very strange that Irishmen and Germans and Swedes, so long as they remain on
the sidewalks, should wish to be ruled by men in the interest of the slave power.
But you say, it is not so here. I have been west, and have seen foreigners there
also who did not wish to be ruled by slaveholders. But I have already talked
more than I had intended, and must stop. You wish to hear about Kansas ? I
will tell you. Whenever the city of Buffalo shall have come to be inhabited by
one hundred thousand, or one hundred and nine thousand — which is just the

THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN APPROACHING. 113

population of Kansas — as virtuous, as wise, as brave, as fearless as the one hun
dred and nine thousand of Kansas, there will be an end of the ' irrepressible con
flict' here, as there is there."

Mr. Seward reached his home, in Auburn, on Saturday, October
6th, having been absent just five weeks. In a speech to his neigh
bors and fellow citizens of Auburn, on the 5th of November follow
ing, he says :

" I have been a wanderer of late. From our own laughing home here on the
banks of the Owasco, to where the Green mountains cast their lengthened sha
dows over the Connecticut at Windsor. After a stay there too short for rest, but
not for happiness, to the springs of the Penobscot. From the Penobscot escaping
or breaking through nets set for me by not unfriendly hands, to renew my oath of
fealty at the tombs of the elder and the younger Adams, at Quincy. From Mas
sachusetts Bay across green hills and greener valleys, over the Hudson, across the
ISeneca, up and down the G-enesee, and coasting the lakes of Ontario, Erie, Huron
and Michigan, down the Illinois to its confluence with the Mississippi, up the shri
veled river to where it breaks into rapids ; and above them where the fountains
which supply equally the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, gush from the earth.
Across Minnesota and loWa, down to Nebraska and Kansas, where American civi
lization, on its verge, is scaling the Rocky mountains, and bringing forth their pre
cious treasure of silver and gold ; and thence back again with an eager returning
spirit to the Metropolis where sits the soul that sends forth all the mighty energy
of that civilization ; and then by a hurried flight back again in the night to find
my home leafless under the winds of autumn, but already gathering force to put
forth a greener and broader foliage in the coming year.

" These are my travels. You will ask me ' what have you seen ; what have
you learned ? ' Rather, my friends, ask me what I have not seen, and what un
known, or but imperfectly understood before, I have not learned now and fully
understand. I have seen a great nation, a greater nation than I saw last year,
although then I traveled the Old World from the Dead sea to the pillars of Hercu
les ; a greater nation than has existed in ancient or in modern times. I saw not
only the country, its forests, its mountains, its rivers, its lakes, and its prairies, but
I saw its people, men, women and children, many, many millions of every nation
and of every derivation."

As the day of election approached it became evident that the re
sult depended upon the vote of the state of New York. The Oc -
tober elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana indicated a republican
triumph in November, unless the electoral vote of New York could
be wrested from Lincoln. The whole contest, therefore, at once, cen
tered upon the Empire State. The three branches of the opposi
tion, the supporters of Douglas, Bell and Breckinridge, united upon
one electoral ticket. The alarm of disunion was raised. The city

VOL. IV. 15

114 MEMOIR.

of New York was convulsed with a financial panic ; and no efforts
were spared to extend the alarm into all parts of the state. It was
everywhere proclaimed that only the defeat of Lincoln could save
the country from ruin. In this crisis, as heretofore, the people
turned to Mr. Seward. He was pressed to speak in almost every
county in the state. In one of his letters declining an invitation, he
says:

" My friends will ultimately excuse the delinquency I am sure, when they re
flect that since the 25th of November, 1858, I have had only eighty-five days, all
told, for the occupations and duties of home, while I not only enjoy no exemption,
but on the contrary have more than an ordinary burden of domestic cares and
responsibilities."

He found time, however, to address immense assemblages at
several places within the state. At the earnest request of the re
publicans of the city of New York, he visited that city a few days
before the election, and spoke in Palace Garden, to one of the largest
and most enthusiastic audiences ever seen in New York. His re
ception in the metropolis was flattering, indeed. At Binghamton,
Fredonia, Seneca Falls, Lyons, and wherever he appeared, the peo
ple gathered to hear him, in unusual numbers.

On the night before the election, as it was his custom, he addressed
the people of Auburn. His speech on this occasion, although par
taking of the character of a familiar counsel with neighbors and
friends, was full of his usual broad and statesmanlike views. It
fittingly closed the great debate.1

The result of the election is too recent to need remark. Every
free state gave its electoral vote for Abraham Lincoln, except New
Jersey, which voted four for Lincoln, three for Douglas. The re
publican majority in the state of New York was over fifty thousand.
In Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, as in the New England
states the opposition seemed to have abandoned the field. In Penn
sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa the pluralities for Mr.
Lincoln were unexpectedly large. Equally unexpected were the
favorable results in Oregon and California. In the slave states nearly
thirty thousand votes were cast in favor of Lincoln and Hamlin.
As the tidings of the result, spread over the free states, joyous

1 This speech, with those at New York, Seneca Falls, and other places, will be found in subse
quent pages ot this volume.

CELEBRATION OF THE VICTORY. 115

demonstrations, in almost every city and town, burst forth, sponta
neously.

At Auburn the republicans celebrated the national triumph in an
appropriate manner. The enthusiastic procession which paraded
the streets, lighted up with fireworks and illuminations, called upon
Mr. Seward. Gathering within his beautiful grounds in front of his
house they insisted upon his addressing them. The demonstrations
of secession, soon so flagrant, were just then revealing themselves.
After a few humorous remarks in allusion to local incidents and the
result of the election in their city and county,1 he spoke as follows:

V " FELLOW CITIZENS : You have a right to rejoice. I remember that I thought it an
occasion for rejoicing when the good cause we now maintain carried one ward in
the city, one or two, or three towns in the county, and the state of Vermont alone
in the whole country. Who then will deny our right to rejoice now when it
carries all the wards in the city, all the towns in the county, all the counties in the
state where its argument is fairly heard, and practically all the slates in the Union
which allow in law and in fact, free speech, free debates, free mails, and free and
universal suffrage. It is the earnest of its universal acceptance.

'' But there is still greater reason to rejoice in the manner in which this success
has been won. It is the verdict of the people for a principle — the republican
principle — the true democratic principle of equal and exact justice to all men. It
is a verdict rendered purely on conviction, without passion or interest. Not a
republican vote in the United States has been procured through terror, not one by
bribery or corruption. Nay, every vote has been given in resistance of intimida
tion and corruption. I do not charge that the fusion votes or other opposition
votes were largely given under such appliances. But the record of the canvass
remains, and bears its testimony that the main argument of those parties was their
menace of disunion, and the last reliance was money at the polls. \ Who will now
libel the American people ? Who will deny their virtue ?

" But this demonstration of yours has its meaning — its meaning in various
relations. It recalls the past, and tells that the erroneous national policy of forty
years has been retraced, reconsidered, reversed, condemned and renounced/ Let,
then, the passions and the prejudices be buried with the errors of the past. It
bears on the future. It assures us that hereafter the policy of the country will be
the development of its resources, the increase of its strength and its greatness, by
the agencies of freedom and humanity. Dismiss we, then, the future, until some
new election call you again to your council chambers, to renew your efforts in
obedience to the principle that eternal vigilance is the tax we pay for enduring
liberty.

" The immediate question is the bearing of the occasion on the present. What
is our present duty ? It is simply that of magnanimity. We have learned, here
tofore, the practice of patience under political defeat. It now remains to show

1 Cayuga county gave Mr. Lincoln 4.000 majority ; and Auburn 450— an increase over any pre-
rious election. The gain in the state, from 1856, was nearly one hundred thousand.

116 MEMOIR.

the greater virtue of moderation in triumph. That we may do this let us re
member that it is only as a figure of speech that the use of martial terms, such as
* defeat' and ' victory,' obtain in our system of elections. The parties engaged
in an election are not, never can be, never must be, enemies, or even adversaries.
We are all fellow citizens, Americans, brethren. It is a trial of issues by the force
only of reason ; and the contest is carried to its conclusion, with the use only of
suffrage.

" An appeal lies from the people this year to the people themselves next year —
to be argued and determined in the same way and so on forever. This is indeed
a long way to the attainment of rights and the establishment of interests. It is
our way, however, now as it has been heretofore. Let it be our way hereafter.
If there be among us or in the country those who think that marshaling armies
or pulling down the pillars of the republic is a better, because a shorter way, let
us not doubt that if we commend our way by our patience, our gentleness, our
affection towards them, they, too, will, before they shall have gone too far, find out
that our way, the old way, their old way as well as our old way, is not only the
shortest but the best.

"Fellow citizens, I should do injustice to you, and violence to my own feel
ings, if I did not recognize in this visit a warm and most generous demonstration
of your personal kindness to me. You know how deeply I was committed to the
triumph of this presidential ticket more than to any other in times that are past,
and to its triumph more distinct and emphatic, if possible, here than any where
else. How the eyes of patriots in every part of the country were anxiously fixed
on this state, on this county, nay, even on this town, to learn whether we were
true to this crisis, to our cause, our country, and to ourselves. This lent a new and
intense earnestness to your efforts, and our success, therefore, has exceeded all
that we dared to promise, though not what we dared to hope. The year 1860,
how many acts of home kindness has it brought to me from all my neighbors. My
welcome from abroad — sympathy with me in my labors for the country at Wash
ington — the rescue of my dwelling from fire during my absence — co-operation
with me, so earnest, so devoted, so effective in securing the ascendancy of the
republican cause throughout the Union, these congratulations on its success — I
feel them all more deeply, more gratefully, than I dare express. May you all find
your rewards in the increasing happiness and growing greatness of our country.

" And now we part again. You to lay aside the emblems of your political
association, at least for a time, and to return to your industrial pursuits and social
enjoyments. I to return to the theatre of public duty at the national capital
May a kind Providence spare all your lives and continue all the blessings you
enjoy, and when we meet again in the coming spring season, when these now
naked trees shall have resumed their wonted foliage, may our hearts be renewed
in their mutual affections and may all the sullen and angry clouds which seem to
be gathering in the political atmosphere have then given place to those serene and
auspicious skies, which properly belong to the only pure and complete republican
system to be found on the face of the earth."

The triumph in the country of the principles which Mr. Seward,
through his whole public life, has so perseveringlj sustained, was

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 117

not more distinctly announced by the election of Abraham Lincoln
than it was significantly confessed in congress by the prompt admis
sion of Kansas into the Union a Free State.

The bill for the admission of Kansas passed the senate on the
twenty-first day of January, 1861, and received the signature of
President Buchanan on the thirtieth.

Mr. Seward, on moving to take up the bill, and while urging its
immediate passage, pertinently remarked that "If any people have
the right to self-government, it is the people of Kansas."

The senators who voted for admission, were Messrs. Anthony,
Baker, Bigler, Bingham, Bright, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer,
Crittenden, Dixon, Doolittle, Douglas, Durkee, Fessenden, Fitch, Foot,
Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Johnson of Tennessee, King, Latham,
Morrill, Pugh, Rice, Seward, Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Thompson,
Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson and Wilson— 36.

Those who voted against it were Messrs. Benjamin, Bragg, Cling-
man, Green, Hemphill, Hunter, Iverson, Johnson of Arkansas, Ken
nedy, Mason, Nicholson, Polk, Powell, Sebastian, Slidell and Wig-
fall— 16.

As soon as the Electors had formally ratified the choice of the
people, the president elect tendered to Mr. Seward the chief place in
his cabinet, which, after some deliberation, was accepted, and became
known to the public. On the twelfth day of January he expressed
his views in the senate u On the State of the Union}'1 He had pre
viously, in New York, at the " New England Dinner," made some
unpremeditated remarks on the same subject, and subsequently, in
the senate, he delivered a second speech, on the occasion of his pre
senting a mammoth petition from the merchants of New York.
These speeches produced, in congress and throughout the country, a
profound sensation.1 The first speech begins with this declaration :

" I avow my adherence to the Union, in its integrity and with all its parts, with
my friends, with my party, with my state, with my country, or without either, as
they may determine ; in every event, whether of peace or of war, with every con
sequence of honor or dishonor, of life or death."

It closes in the same spirit and with that consistency which marks
all that Mr. Seward says :

" I certainly shall never, directly or indirectly, give my vote to establish or sanc
tion slavery in the common territories of the United States, or anywhere else in
the world."

1 They will be found at the close-of this volume.

118 MEMOIE.

The scenes attending its delivery in the senate, are thus des
cribed by a listener :

'; Mr. Seward's speech was the event of the week, and is the topic of discussion
in all political circles. The scene before and during the delivery of the speech,
was almost unparalleled in the senate. By ten o'clock every seat in the galleries
was filled, and by eleven the cloak rooms and all the passages were choked up,
and a thousand men and women stood outside of the doors waiting to catch the
words of the speaker when he should commence. He did not open his speech til
nearly one o'clock. Several hundred gentlemen come on from Baltimore to hear
it, and the curiosity among all the southern men here to listen to it was intense.
The southern senators and representatives paid the utmost attention, and the gal
leries were as quiet as their suffocating condition would warrant. It was the fullest
house of the session, and by far the most respectful one. During the delivery of
portions of the speech, senators were in tears. When the sad picture of the
country, divided into two confederacies, was presented, Mr. Crittenden, who sat
immediately before the orator, was completely overcome by his emotions, and
bowed his white head to weep."

The eminent Quaker poet and philanthropist, John G. "Whittier, on
reading the speech, addressed the following lines to Mr. Seward :

To William H. Seward.

Statesman, I thank thee! — and, if yet dissent

Mingles, reluctant, with my large content,

I cannot censure what was nobly meant.

Bat, while constrained to hold even Union less

Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness,

I thank thee in the sweet and holy name

Of Peace, for wise calm words that put to shame

Passion and party. Courage may be shown

Not in defiance of the wrong alone ;

He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears

The olive branch, and strong in justice, spares

The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope

To Christian charity and generous hope.

If, without damage to the sacred cause

Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws —

If, without yielding that for which alone

We prize the Union, thou canst save it now

From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow

A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil has known,

Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest ;

And the peacemaker be forever blest I

/£e.a^e<s<f

4*7

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^^L- ^^^^ — ,

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA.1

THIS scene is new to me, a stranger in Ohio, and it must be in a
degree surprising even to yourselves. On these banks of the Scioto,
where the elk, the buffalo, and the hissing serpent haunted not long
ago, I see now mills worked by mute mechanical laborers, and ware
houses rich in the merchandise of many clirnes. Steeds of vapor on
iron roads, and electrical messengers on pathways which divide the
air, attest the concentration of many novel forms of industry, while
academic groves, spacious courts, and majestic domes, exact the rev
erence always eminently due to the chosen seats of philosophy, reli
gion, and government.

What a change, moreover, has, within the same short period, come
over the whole country that we love so justly and so well. High
arcs of latitude and longitude have shrunk into their chords, and
American language, laws, religion, and authority, once confined to
the Atlantic coast, now prevail from the northern lakes to the south
ern gulf, and from the stormy eastern sea to the tranquil western
ocean.

Nevertheless, it is not in man's nature to be content with present
attainment or enjoyment. You say to me, therefore, with excusable
impatience, " Tell us, not what our country is, but what she shall be.
Shall her greatness increase ? Is she immortal ?"

I will answer you according to my poor opinion. But I pray you
first, most worthy friends, to define the greatness and immortality
you so vehemently desire.

1 Oration at the Dedication of Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, September 14, 1853.
VOL. IV. 16

122 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

If the Future which you seek consists in this : that these thirty-
one states shall continue to exist for a period as long as human fore
sight is allowed to anticipate after-coming events ; that they shall be
all the while free ; that they shall remain distinct and independent in
domestic economy, and nevertheless be only one in commerce and
foreign affairs ; that there shall arise from among them and within
their common domain even more than thirty-one other equal states
alike free, independent, and united ; that the borders of the federal
republic, so peculiarly constituted, shall be extended so that it shall
greet the sun when he touches the tropic, and when he sends his
glancing rays toward the polar circle, and shall include even distant
islands in either ocean ; that our population, now counted by tens
of millions, shall ultimately be reckoned by hundreds of millions;
that our wealth shall increase a thousand fold, and our commercial
connections shall be multiplied, and our political influence be enhanced
in proportion with this wide development, and that mankind shall
corne to recognize in us a successor of the few great states which
have alternately borne commanding sway in the world — if this, and
only this, is desired, then I am free to say that if, as you will readily
promise, our public and private virtues shall be preserved, nothing
seems to me more certain than the attainment of this future, so sur
passingly comprehensive and magnificent.

Indeed, such a future seems to be only a natural consequence of
what has already been secured. Why, then, shall it not be attained ?
Is not the field as free for the expansion indicated as it was for that
which has occurred ? Are not the national resources immeasurably
augmented and continually increasing? With telegraphs and rail
roads crossing the Detroit, the Niagara, the St. Johns and the St.
Lawrence rivers, writh steamers on the lakes of Nicaragua, and a rail-
road across the isthmus of Panama, and with negotiations in progress
for passages over Tehuantepec and Darien, with a fleet in Hudson's
bay and another at Bhering's straits, and with yet another exploring
the La Plata, and with an armada at the gates of Japan, with Mexico
ready to divide on the question of annexation, and with the Sand
wich islands suing to us for our sovereignty, it is quite clear to us
that the motives to enlargement are even more active than they ever
were heretofore, and that the public energies, instead of being relaxed,
are gaining new vigor.

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 123

Is the natjon to become suddenly weary, and so to waver and fall
off from the pursuit of its high purposes? When did any vigorous
nation ever become weary even of hazardous and exhausting martial
conquests? Our conquests, on the contrary, are chiefly peaceful,
and thus far have proved productive of new wealth and strength. Is
a paralysis to fall upon the national brain ? On the contrary, what
political constitution has ever, throughout an equal period, exhibited
greater elasticity and capacity for endurance?

la the union, of the states to fa^l? Does its strength indeed grow
less with the multiplication of its bonds ? Or does its value diminish
with the increase of the social and political interests which it defends
and protects ? Far otherwise. For all practical purposes bearing on
the great question, the steam engine, the iron road, the electric tele
graph, all of which are newer than the Union, and the metropolitan
press, which is no less wonderful in its working than they, have
already obliterated state boundaries and produced a physical and
moral centralism more complete and perfect than monarchical ambi
tion ever has forged or can forge. Do you reply, nevertheless, that
the Union rests on the will of the several states, arid that, no matter
what prudence or reason may dictate, popular passion may become
excited and rend it asunder? Then I rejoin, When did the Ameri
can people ever give way to such impulses ? They are, practically,
impassive. You remind me that faction has existed, and that only
recently it was bold and violent. I answer, that it was emboldened
by popular timidity, and yet that even then it succumbed. Loyalty
to the Union is .not, in one or many states only, but in all the states,
the strongest of all public passions. It is stronger, I doubt not, than
the love of justice or even the love of equality, which have acquired
a strength here never known among mankind before. A nation may
well despise threats of sedition thatjias never known but one traitorr
and this will be learned fully by those who shall hereafter attempt
to arrest any great national movement by invoking from their grave
the obsolete terrors of disunion.

But you apprehend foreign resistance. Well, where is our enemy ?
Whence shall he come ? Will he arise on this continent? Canada
has great resources, and begins to give signs of a national spirit.
But Canada is not yet independent of Great Britain. And she will
be quite too weak to be formidable to us when her emancipation shall

124 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

have taken place. Moreover, lier principles, interests, and sympa
thies assimilate to our own just in the degree that she verges toward
separation from the parent country. Canada, although a province
of Great Britain, is already half annexed to the United States. She
will ultimately become a member of this confederacy, if we will
consent — an ally, if we will not allow her to come nearer. At least,
she never can be an adversary. Will Mexico, or Nicaragua, or Gua
temala, or Ecuador, or Peru, all at once become magically cured of
the diseases inherited from aboriginal and Spanish parentage, and
call up armies from under the earth, and navies from the depths of
the sea, and thus become the Rome that shall resist and overthrow
this overspreading Carthage of ours ? Or arejve to receive our death-^
jtrpke at the hand of Brazil, doubly cursed as she js, above aU_other
American states^by her adoption of the two most absurd institutions
remaining among men, European monarchy and American slavery?

Is an enemy to come forth from the islands in adjacent seas ?
Where, then, shall we look for him? On the Antilles, or on the
Bermudas, or on the Bahamas? Which of the conflicting social ele
ments existing together, yet unmixed, there, is ultimately to prevail?
Will it be Caucasian or African ? Can those races not only combine,
but become all at once aggressive and powerful ?

Shall we look for an adversary in Europe? Napoleon said at St
Helena, " America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies
of our European nations." Since when have those nations grown
wise ? If they have at last become wise, how is it that America has
nevertheless not ceased to grow? But what European state will
oppose us ? Will Great Britain ? If she fears to grapple with Rus
sia advancing toward Constantinople on the way to India, though
not only her prestige but even her empire is threatened, will she be
bold enough to come out of her way to seek an encounter with us?
Who will feed and pay her artisans while she shall be engaged in
•destroying her American debtors and the American consumers of her
fabrics? Great Britain has enough to do in replacing in Ireland the
population that island has yielded to us, in subjecting Africa, in
extending her mercantile dominion in Asia, and in perpetually read
justing the crazy balance of power in Europe, so essential to her
safety. We have fraternal relations with Switzerland, the only repub
lic yet lingering on that continent. Which of the despotic powers

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 125

existing there in perpetual terror of the contagion of American prin
ciples will assail us, and thus voluntarily hasten on that universal
war of opinion which is sure to come at some future time, and which,
whenever it shall have come, whether it be sooner or later, can end
only in the subversion of monarchy and the establishment of repub
licanism on its ruins throughout the world ?

Certainly no one expects the nations of Asia to be awakened by
any other influences than our own from the lethargy into which they
sunk nearly three thousand years ago, under the spells of supersti
tion and caste. If they could be. roused and invigorated now,
would they spare their European oppressors and smite their Ameri
can benefactors ? Nor has the time yet come, if indeed it shall come
within many hundred years, when Africa, emerging from her pri
meval barbarism, shall vindicate the equality of her sable races in
the rights of human nature, and visit upon us, the latest, the least
guilty and the most repentant of all offenders, the wrongs she has
so long suffered at the hands of so many of the Caucasian races.

No ! no, we cannot indeed penetrate the Eternal counsels, but,
reasoning from what is seen to what is unseen, deducing from the
past probable conjectures of the future, we are authorized to conclude
that if the national virtue shall prove sufficient the material pro
gress of the United States, which equally excites our own pride and
the admiration of mankind, is destined to indefinite continuance.

But is this material progress, even to the point which has been
indicated, the whole of the future which we desire ? It is seen at
once that it includes no high intellectual achievement, and no extra
ordinary refinement of public virtue, while it leaves entirely out of
view the improvement of mankind. Now there certainly is a politi
cal philosophy which teaches that nations like individuals are equal,
moral, social, responsible persons, existing not for objects of merely
selfish advantage and enjoyment, but for the performance of duty,
which duty consists in elevating themselves and all mankind as high
as possible in knowledge and virtue ; that the human race is one in
its origin, its rights, its duties, and its destiny, that throughout the
rise, progress, and decline of nations, one Divine purpose runs — the
increasing felicity and dignity of human nature — and that true
greatness or glory, whether of individuals or of nations, is justly
measured, not by the territory they compass, or the wealth they

126 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

accumulate, or the fear they inspire, but by the degree in which
they promote the accomplishment of that great and beneficent design
of the Creator of the universe.

" The great end and object of life," said Socrates, " is the perfec
tion of the intellect, the great moral duty of man is knowledge, and
the object of all knowledge is one, namely, Truth, the Good, the
Beautiful, the Divine Reason."

So also Plato taught that " Man ought to strive after and devote
himself to the contemplation of the ONE, the ETERNAL, the INFINITE."

Cicero wrote, " There are those who deny that any bond of law
or of association for purposes of common good exists among citizens.
This opinion subverts all union in a state. There are those who
deny that any such bond exists between themselves and strangers,
and this opinion destroys the community of the Human Race."

Bacon declared that there was in man's nature " a secret love of
others, which if not contracted, would expand and embrace all men."

These maxims proceed on the principle of the unity of the race
and of course of a supreme law regulating the conduct of men and
nations upon the basis of absolute justice and equality. Locke
adopted them when he inculcated that while there is a " law of pop
ular opinion or reputation," which in society is "the measure of
virtue and vice," and while there is a civil law which in the state is
" the measure of crime and innocence," there is also a divine law
which extends over " all society and all states, and which is the only
touchstone of moral rectitude."

Guizot closed his recital of the decline of Roman civilization, with
these equally true and momentous reflections: "Had not the
Christian church existed at this time the whole world must have
fallen a prey to mere brute force. The Christian church alone pos
sessed a moral power. It mairtamed and promulgated the idea of a
precept, of a law superior to all human authority. It proclaimed
that great truth, which forms the only foundation of our hope for
humanity, that there exists a law above all human laws, which by
whatever name it may be called, whether reason, the law of God, or
what not, is at all times and in all places the same, under different
names."

It ought not to excite any surprise when I aver that this philoso
phy worked out the American Revolution. "Can anything," said

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 127

John Adams, in replying to one who had apologized for the stamp
act, — " Can anything not abominable have provoked you to com
mence, an enemy to human nature?"

Alexander Hamilton, though less necessary to the Revolution than
John Adams, was even more necessary to the reconstruction of
society. He directed against the same odious stamp act the autho
rity of British law, as he found it written down by Blackstone:
" The law of nature being coeval with God himself is of course
superior to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all
countries, and at all time. No human laws are of any validity if
contrary to this ; and such of them as are valid derive all their au
thority mediately or immediately from this original." Then, as if
despising to stand on any mere human authority, however high, the
framer of the American constitution proceeded : " The sacred rights
of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or
musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole
volume of human nature, and can never be erased or obscured by
mortal power."

How justly Knox conceived the true character of the chief per
sonage of the Revolution, even at its very beginning: "The great
and good Washington, a name which shall shine with distinguished
lustre in the annals of history, a name dear to the friends of the
liberties of mankind."

La Fayette closed his review of the Revolution when returning to
France with this glowing apostrophe : " May this great temple which
we have just erected to liberty always be an instruction to oppres
sors, an example to the oppressed, a refuge for the rights of the
human race, and an object of delight to the names of its founders."

"Happy," said Washington when announcing the treaty of peace
to the army, " thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who
shall have contributed anything, who shall have performed even the
meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and
empire on the broad basis of independency, who shall have assisted
in protecting the rights of human nature and establishing an asylum
for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions."

You remember well that the Revolutionary Congress in the Dec
laration of Independence placed the momentous controversy between
the colonies of Great Britain on the absolute and inherent equality

128 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

of all men. It is not however so well understood that that body
closed its existence, on the adoption of the federal constitution, with
this solemn injunction, addressed to the people of the United States:
"Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of
America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights
of human nature."

No one will contend that our fathers, after effecting the Revolution
and the independence of their country by proclaiming this system of
beneficent political philosophy, established an entirely different one
in the constitution assigned to its government. This philosophy,
then, is the basis of the American constitution.

It is moreover a true philosophy, deduced from the nature of man
and the character of the Creator. If there were no supreme lawT
then the world would be a scene of universal anarchy, resulting
from the eternal conflict of peculiar institutions and antagonistic
laws. There being such a universal law, if any human constitutions
and laws differing from it could have any authority, then that uni
versal law could not be supreme. That_ ajiprpmp. l^w. is necessarily
based on the equality of nations, of races, and of men. It is a simple,
geJLj^evidentJ&sis^ One nation, race, or individual, may not oppress
or injure another, because the safety and weTTare of eacTTis essential

>S — — •' J

/ to the common safety and welfare of all. ^ ^^ajj^r^sno^aual and
then who is entitled to be free, and what evidence of his superi
ority can he brmgfro^n nature or revelation? All men necessarily
have a common interest in the promulgation and maintenance of
these principles, because it is equally in the nature of men to be con
tent with the enjoyment of their just rights, and to be discontented
under the privation of them. Just so far as these principles prac
tically prevail, the stringency of government is safely relaxed, and
peace and harmony obtained. But men cannot maintain these
principles, or even comprehend them, without a very considerable
advance in knowledge and virtue. The law of nations, designed to
preserve peace among mankind, was unknown to the ancients. It
has been perfected in our own times by means of the more general
dissemination of knowledge and practice of the virtues inculcated
by Christianity. To disseminate knowledge and to increase virtue
therefore among men, is to establish and maintain the principles on
which the recovery and preservation of their inherent natural rights

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 129

depend, and the state that does this most faithfully, advances most
effectually the common cause of human nature.

For myself, I am sure that this cause is not a dream, but a reality.
Have not all men consciousness of a property in the memory of
human transactions available for the same great purposes, the security
of their individual rights and the perfection of their individual hap
piness ? Have not all men a consciousness of the same equal in
terest in the achievements of invention, in the instructions of
philosophy, and in the solaces of music and the arts? And do not
these achievements, instructions, and solaces, exert everywhere the
same influences, and produce the same emotions in the bosoms of all
men? Since all languages are convertible into each other by cor
respondence with the same agents, objects, actions, and emotions,
have not all men practically one common language? Since the con
stitutions and laws of all societies are only so many various defini
tions of the rights and duties of men, as those rights and duties are
learned from nature and revelation, have not all men practically one
code of moral duty? Since the religious of men in their various
climes are only so many different forms of their devotion toward a
Supreme and Almighty Power entitled to their reverence and
receiving it under the various names of Jehovah, Jove, and Lord,
have not all men practically one religion ? Since all men are seek
ing liberty and happiness for a season here, and to deserve and so
to secure more perfect liberty and happiness somewhere in a future
world, and since they all substantially agree that these temporal and
spiritual objects are to be attained only through the knowledge of
truth and the practice of virtue, have not mankind practically one
common pursuit, through one common way, of one common and
equal hope and destiny ?

If there had been no such common humanity as I have insisted
upon, then the American people would not have enjoyed the sym
pathies of mankind when establishing institutions of civil and
religious liberty here, nor would their establishment here have awak
ened in the nations of Europe and of South America desires and
hopes of similar institutions there. If there had been no such
common humanity, then we should not, ever since the American
Revolution, have seen human society throughout the world divided
into two parties, the high and the low — the one perpetually fore

VOL. IV. 17

130 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

boding and earnestly hoping the downfall, and the other as confidently
predicting and as sincerely desiring the durability, of republican
institutions. If there had been no such common humanity, then we
should not have seen this tide of emigration from insular and con
tinental Europe, flowing into our country through the channels of
the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Mississippi — ebbing, how
ever, always with the occasional rise of the hopes of freedom abroad,
and always swelling again into greater volume wuen those prema
ture hopes subside. If there were no such common humanity, then
the peasantry and poor of Great Britain would not be perpetually
appealing to us against the oppression of landlords on their farms
and workmasters in their manufactories and mines ; and so, on the
other hand, we should not be, as we are now, perpetually framing
apologies to mankind for the continuance of African slavery among
ourselves. If there were no such common humanity, then the fame
of Wallace would have long ago died away in his native mountains,
and the name even of Washington would at most have been only a
household word in Virginia, and not, as it is now, a watchword of
hope and progress throughout the world.

If there had been no such common humanity, then when the
civilization of Greece and Home had been consumed by the fires of
human passion, the nations of modern Europe could never have
gathered from among its ashes the philosophy, the arts, and the
religion, which were imperishable, and have reconstructed with
those materials that better civilization which, amid the conflicts and
fall of political and ecclesiastical systems, has been constantly ad
vancing toward perfection in every age. If there had been no such
common humanity, then the dark and massive Egyptian obelisk
would not have every where reappeared in the sepulchral architecture
of our own times, and the light and graceful orders of Greece and
Italy would not, as now, have been the models of our villas and our
dwellings, nor would the simple and lofty arch and the delicate
tracery of Gothic design have been, as it now is, everywhere con
secrated to the service of religion.

If tli ere had been no such common humanity, then would the sense

of the obligation of the Decalogue have been confined to the despised

nation who received it from Mount Sinai, and the prophecies of Jewish

eers and the songs of Jewish bards would have perished forever

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 131

with their temple, and never afterward could they have become, as
they now are, the universal utterance of the spiritual emotions and
hopes of mankind. If there had been no such common humanity,
then certainly Europe and Africa and even new America would not,
After the lapse of centuries, have recognised a common Kedeemer
from all the sufferings and perils of human life in a culprit who had
been ignorniniously executed in the obscure Eoman province of Judea;
nor would Europe have ever gone up in arms to Palestine to wrest
from the unbelieving Turk the tomb where that culprit had slept for
only three days and nights after his descent from the cross; much
less would his traditionary instructions, preserved by fishermen and
publicans, have become the chief agency in the renovation of human
society through after-coming ages.

But although this philosophy is undeniably true, yet it would be
a great error to believe that it has ever been, or is likely soon to be,
universally accepted. Mankind accept philosophy just in proportion
.as intellectual and moral cultivation enable them to look through
proximate to ultimate consequences. While they are deficient in
that cultivation, peace and order, essential to the very existence of
society, are necessarily maintained by force. v/ (Those who employ that
force seek to perpetuate their power, and they do this most effectually
"by dividing classes and castes, races and nations, and arraying them
for mutual injury or destruction against each other.; Despotism
effects and perpetuates this division by unequal laws, subversive of
those of reason and of God. Moreover, /a common instinct of fear
combines the oppressors of all nations in a league against the ad
vance of that political philosophy which comes to liberate mankind^'
Those who inculcate this philosophy, therefore, necessarily encounter
opposition and expose themselves to danger ; and insomuch as they
labor from convictions of duty and motives of benevolence, with
.such hazards of personal safety, their principles and characters are
justly regarded as heroic. Adams, Hamilton, La Fayette, Knox,
and Washington, although they were the champions of human na
ture — a cause dear to all men — were saved from the revolutionary
scaffold only by the success of their treason against a king whom
the very necessities of society required to reign. Milton's "Defence
of the People of England," which was in truth a promulgation of
'uhe same philosophy which we have been examining, was burned by

132 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

the public executioner, and its immortal author only by good fortune
escaped the same punishment. The American colonists derived this
philosophy chiefly from the instructions of Locke, Sidney and Vane^,
Locke fled into exile, arid Sidney and Vane perished as felons.
Cicero, an earlier professor of the same philosophy, fell on the sword
of a public assassin, and Socrates, who first inculcated it, drank the
fatal hemlock, under a judicial sentence in the jail of Athens.

Still this philosophy, although heroic, is by no means, therefore,
to be regarded as unnecessary and visionary. The true heroic in
human thought and conduct is only the useful in the higher regions
of speculation and activity. If republicanism, or purely popular
government, is the only form of political constitution which permits
the development of liberty and equality, which are only other names
for political justice, and if republicanism can only be established by
the overthrow of despotism, then this philosophy is absolutely
necessary to effect the freedom of mankind. All citizens of this
republic agree with us thus far. But with many this is rather a
speculation than a vital faith, and so they hesitate to allow full acti
vity to the principles thus acknowledged, through fear of disturb
ing the harmony of society and the peace of the world. Neverthe
less, it is clear that the same philosophy which brings republican
institutions into existence must be exclusively relied upon to defend
and perpetuate them. A tree may indeed stand and grow and
flourish for many seasons, although it is unsound at the heart; but
just because it is so unsound, its leaves will ultimately wither, its
branches will fall, and its trunk will decay. It is only the house
that is built upon the rock that can surely and forever defy the tem
pests and the waves. The founders of this republic knew this great
truth right well, for they said: "If justice, good faith, honor, grati
tude, and all the other qualities which ennoble a nation and fulfill the
ends of government, shall be the fruits of our establishments, then
the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and a lustre which it has
never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set which cannot but
have the most favorable influence on mankind. If, on the other
side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the re
verse of these cardinal virtues, then the great cause which we have
engaged to vindicate will be dishonored and betrayed. The last and
fairest experiment of human nature will be turned against them, and

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 133

their patrons and friends will be silenced by the insults of the votaries
of tyranny and oppression." '

The example of Rome is often commended to us for our emula
tion. Let us consider it then with becoming care. Rome had indeed
forms of religion and morals, a show of philosophy and the arts, but
in none of these was there more than the faintest recognition of a
universal humanity. Her predecessor, Greece, had, in a brilliant but
brief and precocious career, invented the worship of nature, or, in
other words, the worship of deities, which were only names given
to the discovered forces of nature. This religion did not indeed
exalt the human mind to a just conception of the Divine, but, on the
other hand, it did not altogether consign it to the sphere of sensual
ity. Rome unfortunately rejected even this poor religion, because it
was foreign and because it was too spiritual ; and in its stead she es
tablished one which practically was the worship of the state itself.
The senate elected gods for Rome, and these were expected to re
ward that distinguished partiality by showing peculiar and discrimi
nating favor to the people of Rome, and the same political authority
appointed creed, precepts, ritual and priesthood. Does it need
amplification to show what the character of the creed, the precepts,
the ritual and the priesthood, thus established, necessarily were?
All were equally licentious and corrupt.

As was the religion, so of course were the morals of Rome. Am-
"bition was the sole motive of the state. At first every town in Italy,
and afterwards every nation, however remote, was regarded as an
enemy to be conquered, riot in retaliation for any injuries received,
nor even for the purpose of amending its barbarous institutions and
laws, but to be despoiled and enslaved, that Rome might be rich and
might occupy the world alone. Fraud, duplicity and treachery
might be practised against the foreigner, and every form of cruelty
might be inflicted upon the captive who had resisted in self-defense
or in defense of his county. Military valor not only became the
highest of virtues but exclusively usurped the name of virtue. The
act of parricide was the highest of crimes, not however because of
its gross inhumanity, but because by a legal fiction the father was a
sacred type of the Roman state. The sway of Rome, as it spread
over the world as then known, nevertheless gravitated toward the

1 Address of the Continental Congress, 1789.

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

city and centred in the order of Patricians. The Plebeians were
degraded and despised because their ancestors were immigrants.
Below the Plebeians there was yet a lower order, consisting of pris-
oners-of-war and their offspring, always numerous enough to endanger
the safety of the state. These were slaves, and the code of domestic
servitude established for the captured Africans and their descendants
in some parts of our own country is a meliorated edition of that
which Kome maintained for the government of slaves as various in
nation, language and religion, as the enemies she conquered. These
orders, mutally hostile and aggressive, were kept asunder by dis
criminating laws and carefully-cherished prejudices. The Patricians
divided the public domain among themselves, although Plebeian
blood was shed as profusely as their own in acquiring it. The Pa
tricians alone administered justice, and they even kept the forms of
its administration a profound mj^stery sealed against the knowledge
of those for whose safety and welfare the laws existed. The Plebe
ian could approach the courts only as a client in the footsteps of a
Patrician patron.; and for his aid in obtaining that justice, which of
course was an absolute debt of the state, the Patrician was entitled
to the support of his client in every enterprise of personal interest
and ambition. Thus did Rome, while enslaving the world, blindly
prepare the machinery for her own overthow by the agency of do
mestic factions. Industry in Rome was dishonored. The Plebeians
labored with the slaves. Patricians scorned all employments but
that of agriculture and the service of the state. And so Rome re
jected commerce and the arts. The person of the Patrician was
inviolable, while the Plebeian forfeited liberty and for a long period
even life by the failure to pay debts which his very necessities
obliged him to contract. The slaves held their lives by the tenure
of their masters' forbearance, and what that forbearance was we learn
from the fact that they arrayed the slaves against each other, when
trained as gladiators, in mortal combat for the gratification of their
own pride and the amusement of the people. Punishments were
graduated, not by the inherent turpitude of the crimes committed,
nor by the injury or danger resulting from them to the state, but by
the rank of the offender. What was that Roman liberty of which, in
such general and captivating descriptions, we read so much ? The
Patrician enjoyed a licentious freedom, the Plebeian an uncertain

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 135

and humiliating one. extorted from the higher order by perpetual
practices of sedition. According to the modern understanding of
popular rights and character, there was no people in Kome. So at
least we learn from Cicero: " Non est enim consilium in vulgo. Non
ratio, non discrimen, non diligentia. Semperque sapienter ea quoe pop-
ulusferenda non laudanda"

The domestic affections were stifled in that wild society. The
wife was a slave and might be beaten, transferred to another lord, or
divorced at pleasure. The father slew his children whenever their
care and support became irksome, and the state approved the act.
In such a society the rich and great of course grew always richer
and greater, and the poor and low always poorer and more debased ;
and yet throughout all her long career did Rome never establish one
public charity, nor has history preserved any memorable instances
of private benevolence. Such was the life of Rome under her kings
and consuls. She attained the end of her ambition, and became,
as her historian truly boasts, " Populus Romanus victor dominusque
omnium gentium.'1'1 But at the same time the city trembled always
at the very breathing of popular discontent, and every citizen and
even the senate, generals and consuls, were every hour the slaves of
superstitious fears of the withdrawal of the favor of the gods. The
people, sighing for milder and more genial laws, after the lapse of
many centuries, recovered the lost code which the good king Numa
had received from the goddess Egeria. Do we wonder that the sen
ate interdicted its publication, lest it might produce agitation dan
gerous to the public peace ? Or can we be surprised when we read
that Cicero, whose philosophy was only less than divine, when he
found that the republic was actually falling into ruins, implored his
new academy to be silent?

You know well the prolonged but fearful catastrophe, the civil and
the servile wars, the dictatorship, the usurpation, the empire, the
military despotism, the insurrections in the provinces, the invasion
by barbarians, the division and the dismemberment and the fall of
the state, the extinction of the Roman name, language and laws, and
the destruction of society, and even civilization itself, not only in
Italy, but throughout the world, and the consequent darkness which,
overshadowed the earth throughout seven centuries. Tins is the

136 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

moral of a state whose material life is stimulated and perfected, while
its spiritual life is neglected and extinguished.

And now it is seen that the future which we ought to desire for
our country involves besides merely physical prosperity and aggran
dizement, corresponding intellectual development and advancement
in virtue also. JzLasj^ur spiritual lifejiitbertoimprovedj^qually with
our material growth/

It is not easy to answer the question. We were at first a small
and nearly a homogeneous people. We are now eight times more
numerous, and we have incorporated large and various foreign ele
ments in our society. We were originally a rural and agricultural
people. Now one-seventh of our population is found in manufactur
ing towns and commercial cities. We then were poor, and lived in
constant apprehension of domestic disorder and of foreign danger,
and we were at the same time distrustful of the capacity and stability
of our novel institutions. We are now relatively rich, and all those
doubts and fears have vanished. We must make allowance for this ,
great change of circumstances, and we must remember also that it is
the character of the great mass of society now existing that is to be

\compared with, not the heroic models of the revolutionary age, but
with society at large as it then existed.

It is certain that society has not declined. Religion has, indeed,
lost some of its ancient austerity, but, waiving the question whether
asceticism is a just test of religion, we may safely say that the change
which has occurred is only a compromise with foreign elements of
religion ; for who will deny that those elements are purer and more
spiritual here than the systems existing abroad from which they have
been derived ? Nor can it be denied that, while the ecclesiastical
systems existing among us have been, with even more than our rigor
ous early jealousy, kept distinct and separate from the political con
duct of the state, religious institutions have been multiplied relatively
with the advance of settlement and population, and are everywhere
well and effectually sustained. At the era of independence we had
little intellectual reputation, except what a bold and successful meta
physician and a vigorous explorer in natural philosophy had won for
us. We have now, I think, a recognized and respectable rank in the
republic of letters. It is true, indeed, that we have produced few
great works in speculative science and polite literature ; but those

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA. 137

are not the departments which, during the last half century, have
chiefly engaged the human mind. A long season of political reform
and recovery from exhausting wars has necessarily required intel
lectual activity in reducing into use the discoveries before made ; and
we may justly claim that, in applying the elements of science to the
improvement and advancement of agriculture, art, and commerce,
we have not been surpassed.

I do not seek to disguise from myself, nor from you, the existence
of a growing passion for territorial aggrandizement, which often
exhibits a gross disregard of justice and humanity. Nevertheless, I
am not one of those who think that the temper of the nation has
become already unsettled. Accidents favoring the indulgence of
that passion, have been met with a degree of self-denial that no other
nation ever practised. Aggrandizement has been incidental, while
society has, nevertheless, bestowed its chief care on developments of
natural resources, reforms of political constitutions, melioration of
codes, the diffusion of knowledge, and the cultivation of virtue. If
this benign policy has been chiefly exercised within the domain of state
authority, and has not reached our federal system, the explanation is
obvious in the facts that the popular will is, by virtue of the federal
constitution, slower in reaching that system, and that we inherited
fears which seemed patriotic, of the danger of severance of the Union,
to result from innovation. If we have not, in the federal govern
ment, forsaken, as widely as we ought to have done, systems of
administration borrowed from countries where liberty was either
unknown or was greatly abridged, and so have maintained armies,
and navies, and diplomacy, on a scale of unnecessary grandeur and
ostentation, it can hardly be contended that they have, in any great
degree, corrupted the public virtue. Inquiry is now more active
than it has heretofore been, and it may not be doubted that the fede
ral action will hereafter, though with such moderation as will produce
no danger and justify no alarm, be made to conform to the senti
ments of prudence, enterprise, justice, and humanity, which prevail
among the people.

Looking through the states which formed the confederacy in its
beginning, we find, as general facts, that public order has been effect
ually maintained, public faith has been preserved, and public tran
quillity has been undisturbed, that justice has everywhere been regu-

VOL. IV. 18

138 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

larly administered, and generally with impartiality. We have
established a system of education, which, it is true, is surpassed by
many European institutions in regard to the instruction afforded, but
which, nevertheless, is far more equal and universal in regard to the
masses which are educated ; and we are beginning to see that system
adapted equally to the education of both sexes, and of all races,
which is a feature altogether new even in modern civilization, and
promises the most auspicious results to the cause of liberty and vir
tue. Our literature half a century ago was altogether ephemeralr
and scarcely formed an element of moral or political influence. It
is now marked with our own national principles and sentiments, and
exerts every day an increasing influence on the national mind. The
journalist press, originally a feeble institution, often engaged in excit
ing the passions and alarming the fears of society, and dividing it
into uncompromising and unforgiving factions, has been constantly
assuming a higher tone of morality and more patriotic and humane
principles of action. There are, indeed, gross abuses of the power
of suffrage, but still our popular elections, on the whole, express the
will of the people, and are even less influenced by authority, preju
dice and passion, than heretofore. Slavery, an institution that was
at first quite universal, has now come to be acknowledged as a pecu
liar one, existing in only a portion of the states. And if, as I doubt
not, you, like myself, are impatient of its continuance, then you will
nevertheless find ground for much satisfaction in the fact that the
foreign slave trade has been already, by unanimous consent of all
the states, condemned and repudiated ; that manumission has been
effected in half of the states; and that, notwithstanding the great
political influence which the institution has been able to organize,
a healthful, constant, and growing public sentiment, nourished by the
suggestions of sound economy and the instincts of justice and huma
nity, is leading the way with marked advance toward a complete and
universal, though just and peaceful emancipation.

It must be borne in mind, now, that all this moral and social im
provement has been effected, not by the exercise of any authority
over the people, but by the people themselves, acting with freedom
from all except self-imposed restraints.

Of the new states, it is happily true that they have, almost with
out exception, voluntarily organized their governments according to

THE DESTINY OF AMEKICA. 139

the most perfect models furnished by the elder members of the con
federacy, and that they have uniformly maintained law, order, and
faith, while they have, with wonderful forecast, been even more
munificent than the elder states in laying broad foundations of liberty
and virtue. On the whole, we think that we may claim that, under
the republican system established here, the people have governed
themselves safely and wisely, and have enjoyed a greater amount of
prosperity and happiness than, under any form of constitution, was
ever before or elsewhere vouchsafed to any portion of mankind.

Nevertheless, this review proves only that the measure of know
ledge and virtue we possess is equal to the exigency of the republic
under the circumstances in which it was organized. Those circum
stances are passing away, and we are entering a career of wealth,,
power, and expansion. In that career, it is manifest that we shall
need higher intellectual attainments and greater virtue as a nation
than we have hitherto possessed, or else there is no adaptation of
means to ends in the scheme of the Divine government. Nay, we
shall need, in this new emergency, intellect and virtue surpassing
those of the honored founders of the republic. I am aware that this
proposition will seem to you equally unreasonable and irreverent.
Nevertheless, you will, on a moment's reflection, admit its truth.
Did the invention of the nation stop with the discoveries of Fulton
and Franklin ? On the contrary, those philosophers, if they could
now revisit the earth, would bow to the genius which has perfected
the steam engine and the telegraph with a homage as profound as
that with which we honor their own great memories. So I think
Jefferson, and even Washington, under the same circumstances, in
stead of accusing us of degeneracy, would be lost in admiration of
the extent and perfection to which we have safely carried in practice
the theory of self-government which they established amid so much
uncertainty, and bequeathed to us with so much distrust. Shall we
acquit ourselves of obligation if we rest content with either the
achievements, the intelligence, or the virtue of our ancestors? If so,
then the prospect of mankind is hopeless indeed, for then it must be
true that not only is there an impassable stage of social perfection,
but that we have reached it, and that henceforth, not only we, but
all mankind, must recede from it, and civilization must everywhere
decline. Such a hypothesis does violence to every power of the

140 ORATION'S AND ADDRESSES.

human mind, and every hope of the human heart. Moreover, 'these
energies and aspirations are the forces of a divine nature within us,
and to admit that they can be stifled and suppressed, is to contradict
the manifest purposes of human existence. Yet it will be quite
absurd to claim that we are fulfilling these purposes, if we shall fail
to produce hereafter bunt-factors of our race equal to Fulton, and
Franklin, and Adams, arid even Washington. Let us hold these
honored characters indeed as models, but not of unapproachable
perfection. Let us, on the contrary, weigh and fully understand our
great responsibilities. It is well that we can rejoice in the renown
of a Cooper, an Irving, and a Bancroft ; but we have yet to give
birth to a Shakspeare, a Milton, and a Bacon. The fame of Patrick
Henry and John Adams may suffice for the past ; but the world will
yet demand of us a Burke and a Demosthenes. We may repose for
the present upon the fame of Morse and Fulton and Franklin ; but
human society is entitled to look to us, ere long, for a Des Cartes and
a Newton. If we disappoint these expectations, and acknowledge
ourselves unequal to them, then how shall it be made to appear that
freedom is better than slavery, and republicanism more conducive to
the welfare of mankind than despotism ? To cherish aspirations hum
bler than these, is equally to shrink from our responsibilities and to
dishonor the memory of the ancestors we so justly revere.

And now I am sure that your hearts will sink into some depth of
despondency wheiwLask whether American society now exhibits the
JTJ]iipno,gs^of these higher but necessary aspirations? I think that
everywhere there is confessed a decline from the bold and stern vir
tue which, at some previous time, was inculcated and practised in
•executive councils and in representative chambers. I think that we
all are conscious that recently we have met questions of momentous
responsibility, in the organization of governments over our newly
acquired territories, and appeals to our sympathy and aid for op
pressed nations abroad, in a spirit of timidity and of compromise.
I think that we all are conscious of having abandoned something of
our high morality, in suffering important posts of public service, at
home and abroad, to fall sometimes into the hands of mercenary men,
destitute of true republican spirit, and of generous aspirations to
promote the welfare of our country and of mankind:
'' Souls that no hope of future praise inflame,
Cold and insensible to glorious fume."

THE DESTIXY OF AMERICA. 1-il

I think that we are accustomed to excuse the national demoraliza
tion which has produced these results, on the ground that the prac
tice of a sterner virtue might have disturbed the harmony of society,
and endangered the safety of that fabric of union on which all our
hopes depend. In this, we forget that a nation must always recede
if it be not actually advancing ; that, as hope is the element of pro
gress, so fear, admitted into public counsels, betrays like treason.

But there is, nevertheless, no sufficient reason for the distrust of
the national virtue. Moral forces are, like material forces, subject to-
conflict and reaction. It is only through successive reactions that
knowledge and virtue advance. The great conservative and restora
tive forces of society still remain, and are acquiring, all the whiler
even greater vigor than they have ever heretofore exercised. Whether
I am right or not in this opinion, all will agree that an increase of
popular intelligence and a renewal of public virtue are necessary.
This is saying nothing new, for it is a maxim of political science that
all nations must continually advance in knowledge and renew their
constitutional virtues, or must perish. I am sure that we shall do
this, because I am sure that our great capacity for advancing the
welfare of mankind has not yet been exhausted, and that the promi
ses we have given to the cause of humanity will not be suffered to-
fail by Him who overrules all human events to the promotion of that
cause.

But where is the agency that is to work out these so necessary
results ? Shall we look to the press? Tes, we may ho"pe much from
the press, for it is free. It can safely inculcate truth and expose
prejudice, error, and injustice. The press, moreover, is strong in its
perfect mechanism, and it reaches every mind throughout this vast
and ever- widening confederacy. But the press must have editors-
and authors — men possessing talents, education, and virtue, and so-
qualified to instruct, enlighten, and guide the people.

Shall we look to the sacred desk ? Yes, indeed ; for it is of divine
institution, and is approved by human experience. The ministers-
of Christ, inculcating divine morals, under divine authority, with
divine sanctions, and sustained and aided by special cooperating
influences of the Divine Spirit, are now carrying farther and broadly
onward the great work of the renewal of the civilization of the world,
and its emancipation from superstition and despotism. But the desk,

ORATIONS AXD ADDRESSES.

also, must have ministers — men possessing talents, education, and
virtue, and so qualified to enlighten, instruct, and guide mankind.

But however well the press, the desk, and the popular tribune,
may be qualified to instruct and elevate the people, their success and
consequently their influence must after all depend largely on the
measure of intelligence and virtue possessed by the people when
sufficiently matured to receive their instructions. Editors, authors,
ministers, statesmen, and people, all are qualified for their respective
posts of duty in the institutions of popular education, and the stand
ard of these is established by that which is recognized among us by
the various names of the academy, the college, and the university.
We see, then, that the university holds a chief place among the
institutions of the American Republic.

I may not attempt to specify at large what the university ought to
teach or how it ought to impart its instructions. That has been con
fided to abler and more practical hands. But I may venture to insist
on the necessity of having the standard of moral duty maintained at
its just height by the university. That institution must be rich and
full in the knowledge of the sciences which it imparts, but this is
not of itself enough. It must imbue the national mind with correct
convictions of the greatness and excellence to which it ought to
aspire. To do this it must accustom Jhe public mind to look beyond
the mere temporary consequences of actions and events to their ulti
mate influence on the direction of the republic and on the progress
of mankind. So it will enable men to decide between prejudice and
reason, expediency and duty, the demagogue and the statesman, the
bigot and the Christian.

The standard which the university shall establish must correspond
to the principles of eternal truth and equal justice. The university
must be conservative. It must hold fast every just principle of
moral and political science that the experience of mankind has ap
proved, but it must also be bold, remembering that in every human
system there are always political superstitions upholding physical
slavery in some of its modes, as there are always religious supersti
tions upholding intellectual slavery in some of its forms; that all
these superstitions stand upon prescriptions, and that they can only
be exploded where opinion is left free, and reason is ever active and
vigorous. But the university must nevertheless practice and teach

THE DESTINY OF AMERICA.

moderation and charity even to error, remembering that involuntary
error will necessarily be mingled also even with its own best instruc
tions, that unbridled zeal overreaches and defeats itself, and that he
who would conquer in moral discussion, like him who would prevail
in athletic games, must be temperate in all things.

Reverend Instructors and Benevolent Founders, this new institu
tion, by reason of its location in the centre of Ohio, itself a central
one among these thirty-one united communities, must exert an influ
ence that can scarcely be conceived, now, upon the welfare and fame
of our common country. Devote it then, I pray you, to no mere
partisan or sectarian objects. Remember that the patriot and the
Christian is a partisan or a sectarian, only because the constitution
of society allows him no other mode of efficient and beneficent acti
vity. Let "Capitol University" be dedicated not to the interests of
the beautiful city which it adorns, nor even to the interests of the
great and prosperous state whose patronage I hope it will largely
enjoy, nor even to the republic of which I trust it is destined to
become a tower of strength and support. On the contrary, if you
would make it promote most effectually all these precious interests,
de'dicate it, I enjoin upon you, as our forefathers dedicated all the
institutions which they established, to the cause of Human Nature.

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE/

FELLOW CITIZENS : I do not know how lightly you, who are hur
ried so fast through the ever-changing panorama of metropolitan lifeT
may regard the quiet scenes of this unpretending festival, appointed
and arranged with so much care by the American Institute ; but
I confess for myself, that, coming from a distant and rural home, and
so being never more than an occasional spectator here, I find always
the same first freshness, in these autumnal shows of flowers, and
fruits, and animals of subsistence, fleece and burden, trained and
perfected by hard yet gentle hands ; and that these annual trials of
the skill of emulous, yet unambitious men and women, in the use
of the spade and the plow, the forge and the furnace, the dairy a,nd
the needle, the spindle and the loom, innocent in their nature, yet
beneficent in their effect, by stimulating invention and enterprise,
while they faithfully mark, as years roll on, the progress which our
country is making in arts and civilization, never fail to excite within
me sympathies and emotions more profound and pleasing than any
state pageant which I have witnessed at home, or the most imposing
demonstration of military power that can be seen in any other and
less favored land.

^ Society divides concerning that progress. Those who are occupied
with their own personal cares, and apprehensive of evil in every
change, look upon it with indifference or distrust ; others, knowing
that in a republic, constituted as this is, there exists always a restless
activity toward either peace or war, virtue or vice, greatness or shamer
devote themselves to the duty of regulating that activity, and giving
it a right direction.

^ The members of the American Institute are of this class. Having
constantly sympathized with them heretofore, when their unremitted
labors secured neither rewards nor favor, I rejoice in meeting them
now, under more propitious circumstances. I congratulate your

i An Address before the American Institute, New York, October 20, 1853.

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 145

Messrs. Reese, Livingston and Hall, Stillman, Meigs and Chandler,
and others, associates, that your institution has been adopted as a
model by many towns, and by all the counties in this state, by the
state itself, and by many other states ; and that your instructions and
example, patiently continued through so many years, have at last
induced the nation itself to consent to appear, and to win some sig
nificant trophies, in the Exhibition of Universal Industry, already
held in London, and to inaugurate another and brilliant one in the
world's new capital, which we are founding on this yet rude coast
of a recently impassable ocean.

Nevertheless, I have been for many reasons habitually averse from
mingling in the sometimes excited debates which crowd upon each
other in a great city. There was, however, an authority which I
could not disobey, in the venerable name and almost paternal kind
ness of the eminent citizen, who so recently presided here with dig
nity and serenity all his own ; and who transmitted to me the invita
tion of the Institute, and persuaded its acceptance !

How sudden his death ! Only three weeks ago the morning mail
brought to me his announcement of his arrival to arrange this exhi
bition, and his summons to me to join him here; and the evening
dispatch, on the self-same day, bore the painful intelligence that the
lofty genius which had communed with kindred spirits so long, on
the interests of his country, had departed from the earth, and that
the majestic form which had been animated by it, had disappeared
forever from among living men.

I had disciplined myself when coming here, so as to purpose to
speak no word for the cause of human freedom, lest what might seem
too persistent an advocacy might offend. But must I, therefore,
abridge of its just proportions the eulogiurn which the occasion and
the character of the honored dead alike demand ?

The first ballot which I cast for the chief magistracy of my native
and most beloved state, bore the name of James Tallmadge as the
alternate of De Witt Clinton. If I have never faltered in pursuing
the policy of that immortal statesman, through loud reproach and
vindictive opposition during his life, and amid clamors and conten
tions, often amounting almost to faction, since his death, I have found
as little occasion to hesitate or waver in adhering to the counsels and
example of the illustrious compeer who, after surviving him so many
years, has now been removed, in ripened age, to the companionship

VOL. IV. 19

146 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

of the just. How does not time vindicate fidelity to truth and to
our country ! A vote for Clinton and Tallmadge in 1824, what cen
sures did it not bring then? Who will impeach that ballot now?

A statesman's claim to the gratitude of his country rests on what
were, or what would have been, the results of the policy he has
recommended. If the counsels of James Tallmadge had completely
prevailed, then not only would American forests, mines, soil, inven
tion and industry have rendered our country, now and forever, inde
pendent of all other nations, except for what climate forbids ; but
then, also, no menial hand would ever have guided a plow, and no
footstep of a slave would ever have been tracked on the soil of all
that vast part of our national domain that stretches away from the
banks of the Mississippi to the far western ocean.

This was the policy of James Tallmadge. It was worthy of New
York, in whose name it was promulgated. It would have been
noble, even to have altogether failed in establishing it. He was suc
cessful, however, in part through — only through — unwise delays and
unnecessary compromises, which he strenuously opposed, and which,
therefore, have not impaired his just fame. And so in the end,
he, more nearly than any other citizen of our time, realized the de
scription of the happiest man in the world, given to the frivolous
Croesus by the great Athenian : "He saw his offspring, and they all
survived him. At the close of an honorable and prosperous life, on
the field of civic victory, he was rewarded with the honors of a pub
lic funeral by the 'state that he had enriched, adorned, and enlarged."

Gentlemen of the American Institute, Dr. Johnson truly said, that
the first man who balanced a straw on his nose ; the first man who
rode three horses at a time ; in short, all such men deserved the ap
plause of mankind, on account, not of the use of what they did, but
of the dexterity which they exhibited ; for that everything which
enlarged the sphere of human powers, and showed man that he could
do what he thought he could not do, was valuable. I apprehend
that this is a true exposition of the philosophy of your own most
useful labors.

The increase of personal power and skill diminishes individual
dependence; and individual independence, when it pervades the
•whole state, is national independence. It is only when, through such
individuality of its members, a nation attains a certain independence,
that it passes from that condition of society in which it thinks, moves,

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 147

and acts, whether for peace or for war, for right or for wrong, accord
ing to the interests or caprices of one, or of a few persons (a condi
tion which defines monarchy, or aristocracy), to that better condition
in which it thinks, moves, and acts, in all things, under the direction cf
one common interest, ascertained and determined by the intelligent
consent of a majority, or all of its members ; which condition con
stitutes a republic, or democracy. So democracy, wherever it exists,
is more or less perfect, and, of course, more or less safe and strong,
according to the tone of individuality maintained by its citizens.

Of all men, and of all nations, it seems to rne that Americans, and
this republic, have, at once the least excuse for a want of indepen
dence, and the most need for assuming and maintaining it.

No other nation has equal elements of society arid of empire.
Charlemagne, when founding his kingdom, saw, or might have seen,
that, while it was confined by the ocean and by the Mediterranean
on the west and on the south, it was equally shut in northerly and
eastwardly by river and mountain barriers, which would be success
fully maintained forever, by races as vigorous and as independent as
the Franks themselves. Alfred the Great saw so clearly how his
country was circumscribed by the seas, that he never once thought
of continental empire. The future careers of France and England
may, like the past, be filled up with spasmodic efforts to enlarge fixed
dominions by military conquests and agricultural and commercial
colonies; but all such attempts, even if they should be as gigantic
as those which have heretofore been made, will, like them, be followed
by disastrous reactions, bringing the nations back again, and confin
ing them at last within their natural and earliest borders. No politi
cal system can be held together permanently by force, suspending or
overpowering the laws of political affinity and gravitation. Unlike
those nations, we are a homogeneous people, occupying a compact
and indivisible domain, peculiarly adapted to internal commerce,
seventeen times greater than that of France, and an hundred times
more extended than that of Great Britain. While it spreads east
ward and westward across the continent, nature has not interposed,
nor has man erected, nor can he raise, a barrier on the north or on
the south, that can prevent any expansion that shall be found neces
sary, provided only that our efforts to effect it shall be, as they ought
to be, wise, peaceful, and magnanimous. Only Russia excels us in
territorial greatness. But while all of her vast population are not

\j

148 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

merely willing, but even superstitious subjects, of an unmitigated
despotism, more than four-fifths of them are predial slaves. If such
a population could, within any short period, rise up to a state of
comparative social elevation, such a change would immediately lead
to seditions that must inevitably result in dismemberment of the
empire.

Why should we go abroad for mineral materials, or for metallic
treasures, since this broad domain of ours is, even more plentifully
than any equal portion of the earth, stored with marl, gypsum, salt,
coal, quicksilver, lead, copper, iron, and gold ? Where shall we find
quarries and forests, producing more amply the materials for archi
tecture, whether for the purposes of peace, or of war on land or on
sea? Our cities may be built of our own freestone, marble and gra
nite ; and our southern coasts are fringed with pine and live-oak,
while timber and lumber, diversified and exhaustless, crown our
northern mountains and plains.

Why should we resort to other soils and climates for supplies of
subsistence, if we except spices, dyes, and some not indispensable
tropical fruits, since we have sugar, rice and cotton fields stretching
along the shore of the gulf, long mountain ranges, such as those of
Virginia and Vermont, declivities in which the vine delights, along
the banks of the Ohio, and the endless prairies, fertile in all cereal
grains, tobacco, flax and hemp, that border the lakes and the Mis
sissippi, and their widely-branching and far-reaching inlets and tribu
taries ?

If there is virtue in blood, what nation traces its lineage to purer
and gentler stocks? And what nation increases in numbers, by
either immigration or by native births, more rapidly ? And what
nation, moreover, has risen in intelligence equally or so fast ?

If it be asked whether we have spirit and vigor proportioned to
our natural resources, I answer, look at these thirteen original states.
Their vigor is not only unimpaired, but it is increasing. Then look
at the eighteen others, offshoots of those stocks. They are even more
elastic and thrifty. Consider how small and how recently planted
were the germs of all this political luxuriance, and to what early
hardships and neglect they were exposed. Can we not reasonably
look for a maturity full of strength and majesty?

Moreover, the circumstances of the age are propitious to us. The
nations on this comment are new, youthful and fraternal, while those

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

existing on the other are either lying in hopeless debasement or are
preparing to undergo the convulsions of an indispensable regenera
tion. What power, then, need we fear? What power, if we were
in danger, could yield us protection, or even aid ?

While our constitutions and laws establish political equality, they
operate to produce social equality also, by preventing monopolies of
land and great accumulation of wealth ; and so they afford incentives
to universal activity and emulation. Why, then, should not the
American citizen and the American republic be consciously indepen
dent in all things, as in all things they are safe and free?

Such independence should be attained and preserved, not by a few
only, but, as far as possible, by all citizens. It is not less essential
that the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer shall enjoy it, than
that it shall regulate the action of the merchant, the lawyer, and the
statesman. Every member of the state may become a soldier, and
even a senator. He can never be less than an elector. What does
not the republic owe to Sherman and Franklin ? Yet they were
mechanics. What would not have been its fate but for the indepen
dence of the captors of Andre? Yet, Paulding, Williams, and Van
Wart were mere laboring men.

Virtue is confessedly the vital principle of the republic ; but virtue
cannot exist without courage, which is only the consciousness of in
dependence.

We are bound to recommend republican institutions to the accep
tance of other nations. Can we do so, if we are content to be no
wiser, no more virtuous, no more useful to humanity, than those to
whom such institutions are denied? Eesponsibility is always in
proportion to the talent enjoyed. Neither man nor nation can be
wise or really virtuous, or useful, when dependent on the caprice or
even on the favor of another. Is there one among the tens of thou
sands of inventions in the patent office that was made by a slave, or
even by one whose blood had been recently attainted by slavery ?
Peter the Great, master of so many millions of 'slaves, resorted to
the shop of a free mechanic of Saardam to learn the mystery of ship
building. His successor, Nicholas, employs Whistler, a Massachu
setts engineer, to project his railroads; Eoss Winans, a Baltimore
mechanic, to construct his locomotives; and Orsamus Eaton, a car
riage-maker of Troy, to construct his cars. Do you wonder_tha

150 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

loving freedom for such fruits, I also have set my face firmly
against slavery?

If we act hereafter as we have acted hitherto, we shall be continu
ally changing old things, old laws, old customs and even old consti
tutions, for new ones. Does any one doubt this? Have we not
already a third constitution in this state? Has any one of the states
a constitution older than twenty -five years ? But political progress,
if not regulated with moderation, may move too fast; and if not
wisely guided will lead to ruin. It is the people themselves, and not
any power above or aside from them, that alone must regulate and
direct that progress. Be they never so honest, they cannot discharge
so great a political trust wisely, except they act on such generous
impulses, and with such lofty purposes, as only bold and independent
men can conceive. The people must be independent, or this repub
lic, like the republics that have gone before it, must be ruled and
ruined by demagogues.

I am far from supposing that we are signally deficient in indepen
dence. I know that it is a national, a hereditary and a popular
sentiment ; that we annually celebrate, and always glory in our in
dependence. We do so justly, for nowhere else does even a form
shadow of popular independence exist ; while here it is the very
rock on which our institutions rest. Nevertheless, occasions for the
exercise of this virtue may be neglected.

We hold in contempt, equally just and profound, him who im
poses, and him who wears a menial livery ; and yet, I think, that
we are accustomed to regard with no great severity, the employer
who exacts, or the mechanic, clerk or laborer, who yields political
conformity in consideration of wages. We insist, as we ought, that
every citizen in the state shall be qualified by education for citizen
ship ; but we are by no means unanimous that one citizen, or class
of citizens, shall not prescribe its own creed, in the instruction of the
children of others. We construct and remodel partizan formulas
and platforms with changing circumstances, with almost as much
diligence and versatility as the Mexicans; and we attempt to enforce
conformity to them, with scarcely less of zeal and intolerance, not
indeed by the sword, but by the greater terror of political proscrip
tion. We resist argument, not always with argument, but often with
personal denunciation, and sometimes even with combined violence.
We differ, indeed, as to the particular errors of political faith, that

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 151

shall be corrected by this extreme remedy ; but, nevertheless, the
number of those who altogether deny its necessity and suitableness
in some cases, is very small.

We justly maintain that a free press is the palladium of liberty;
and yet, mutually proscribing all editorial independence that is mani
fested by opposition to our own opinions, we have only attained a
press that is free in the sense that every interest, party, faction, or
sect, can have its own independent organ. If it be still maintained,
notwithstanding these illustrations to the contrary, that entire social
independence prevails, then, I ask, why is it so necessary to preserve
with jealousy, as we justly do, the ballot, in lieu of open suffrage; for
if every citizen is really free from all fear and danger, why should he
mask his vote more than his face. Believe me, fellow citizens, inde
pendence always languishes in the very degree that intolerance pre
vails. We smile at the vanity of the factory girl of Lowell, who,
having spent the secular part of the week in making calicoes for the
use of her unsophisticated countrywomen, disdainfully arrays herself
on Sundays exclusively in the tints of European dyes ; and yet, we
are indifferent to the fact that besides a universal consumption of
foreign silks, excluding the silkworm from our country, we purchase,
in England alone, one hundred and fifty millions of yards of the
same stained muslins. We sustain, here and there, a rickety, or at
best a contracted iron manufactory ; while we import iron to make
railroads over our own endless ore fields, and we carry our prejudices \ //
against our struggling manufacturers and mechanics so far as to
fastidiously avoid wearing on our persons, or using on our tables, or
displaying in our drawing-rooms, any fabric, of whatsoever material,
texture or color, that, in the course of its manufacture, has, to our
best knowledge and belief, ever come in contact with the honest han<
of an American citizen. In all this, we are less in dependent thm
the Englishman, the Frenchman, or even the Siberian.

It is painful to confess the same infirmity in regard to intellectual . L^~ —
productions^ We despise, deeply and universally, the spoiled child
of pretension, who, going abroad for education or observation, with
a mind destitute of the philosophy of travel, returns to us with an
affected tone and gait, sure indications of a craven spirit and a dis
loyal heart. And yet how intently do we not watch to see whether
one of our countrymen obtains in Europe the honor of an aristo
cratic dinner, or of a presentation, in a grotesque costume, at court!

152 OKATIONS AND ADDKESSES.

How do we not suspend our judgment on the merits of the native
artist, be he dancer, singer, actor, limner, or sculptor, and even of
the native author, inventor, orator, bishop or statesman, until by
flattering those who habitually depreciate his country, he passes
safely the ordeal of foreign criticism, and so commends himself to
our own most cautious approbation. How do we not consult foreign
mirrors, for our very virtues and vices, not less than for our fashions,
and think ignorance, bribery, and slavery, quite justified at home,
if they can be matched against oppression, pauperism and crime in
other countries !

On occasions too, we are bold in applauding heroic struggling for
freedom abroad ; and we certainly have hailed with enthusiasm every
republican revolution in South America, in France, in Poland, in
Germany and in Hungary. And yet how does not our sympathy
rise and fall, with every change of the political temperature in
Europe? In just this extent, we are not only not independent, but
we are actually governed by the monarchies and aristocracies of the
Old World.

You may ask impatiently, if I require the American citizen to
throw off all submission to law, all deference to authority, and all
respect to the opinions of mankind, and that the American Kepublic
shall constantly wage an aggressive war against all foreign systems?
I answer, no. There is here, as everywhere, a middle and a safe
way. I would have the American citizen yield always a cheerful
acquiescence, and never a servile adherence, to the opinions of the
majority of his countrymen and of mankind, whether they be en
grossed in the forms of law or not, on all questions involving no
moral principle ; and even in regard to such as do affect the con
science, I would have him avoid not only faction, but even the ap
pearance of it. But I demand, at the same time, that he shall have
his own matured and independent convictions, the result not of any
authority, domestic or foreign, on every measure of public policy,
and so, that while always temperate and courteous, he shall always
be a free and outspeaking censor, upon not only opinions, customs
and administration, but even upon laws and constitutions themselves.
What I thus require of the citizen, I insist, also, that he shall allow
to every one of his fellow-citizens. I would have the nation also,
though moderate and pacific, yet always frank, decided and firm, in
bearing its testimony against error and oppression ; and while ab-

THE TKUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 153

staining from forcible intervention in foreign disputes, yet always
fearlessly rendering to the cause of republicanism everywhere, by
influence and example, all the aid that the laws of nations do not
peremptorily, or, in their true spirit, forbid.

Do I propose in this a heretical, or even a new standard of public
or private duty ? All agree that the customary, and even the legal
standards in other countries are too low. Must we then abide by
them now and forever? That would be to yield our independence,
and to be false towards mankind. Who will maintain that the
standard established at any one time by a majority in our country is
infallible, and therefore final? If it be so, why have we reserved,
by our constitution, freedom of speech, of the press, and of suffrage,
to reverse it ? No, we may change everything, first complying, how
ever, with constitutional conditions. Storms and commotions must
indeed be avoided, but the political waters must nevertheless be agi
tated always, or they will stagnate. Let no one suppose that the
human mind will consent to rest in error. It vibrates, however, only
that it may settle at last in immutable truth and justice. Nor need
we fear that we shall be too bold. Conformity is always easier than
contention ; and imitation is always easier than innovation. There
are many who delight in ease, where there is one who chooses, and
fearlessly pursues, the path of heroic duty.

Moreover, while we are expecting hopefully to see foreign customs
and institutions brought, by the influence of commerce, into confor
mity with our own, it is quite manifest that commerce has recipro
cating influences, tending to demoralize ourselves, and so to assimilate
our opinions, manners and customs, ultimately to those of aristocracy
and despotism. We cannot afford to err at all on that side. We
exist as a free people only by force of our very peculiarities. They
are the legitimate peculiarities of republicanism, and, as such, are
the test of nationality. .^

Nationalij^J It is as just as it is popular. Whatever policy, in- <£/__
terest ormstitutTon is local, sectional, oFToreign, must be zealously
watched and counteracted ; for it tends directly to social derange
ment, and so to the subversion of our democratic constitution.

But it is seen at once that this nationality is identical with that
very political independence which results from a high tone of indi
viduality on the part of the citizen. Let it have free play, then, and
so let every citizen value himself at his just worth, in body and soul;

VOL. IV. 20

154 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

namely, not as a serf or a subject of any human authority, or the
inferior of any class, however great or wise, but as a freeman, who
is so because " Truth has made him free ; " who not only, equally
with all others, rules in the republic, but is also bound, equally with
any other, to exercise designing wisdom and executive vigor and
efficiency in the eternal duty of saving and perfecting the state.
When this nationality shall prevail, we shall no more see fashion,
wealth, social rank, political combination, or even official proscrip
tion, effective in suppressing the utterance of mature opinions and
true convictions ; and so enforcing for brief periods, with long reac
tions, political conformity, at the hazard of the public welfare, and
at the cost of the public virtue.

Let this nationality prevail, and then, instead of keenly watching,
not without sinister wishes, for war or famine, the fitful skies, or the
evermore capricious diplomacy of Europe; and instead of being
hurried into unwise commercial expansion by the rise of credit there,
and then back again into exhausting convulsions and bankruptcy by
its fall, we shall have a steady and a prosperous, because it will be
an independent, internal commerce.

Let this nationality prevail, and then we shall cease to undervalue
our own farmers, mechanics, and manufacturers,' and their produc
tions ; our own science, and literature, and inventions ; our own ora
tors and statesmen ; in short, our own infinite resources and all-com
petent skill, our own virtue, and our own peculiar and justly envied
freedom.

Then, I am sure that, instead of perpetually levying large and
exhausting armies, like Eussia, and without wasting wealth in emu
lating the naval power of England, and without practising a servile
conformity to the diplomacy of courts, and without captiously seeking
frivolous occasions for making the world sensible of our importance,
we shall, by the force of our own genius and virtue, and the dignity
of freedom, take, with the free consent of mankind, the first place in
the great family of nations.

Gentlemen of the Institute: From the earnestness with which the
theory of free trade is perpetually urged in some quarters, one might
suppose that it was thought that the cardinal interest of the country
lay in mere exchanging of merchandise. On the contrary, of the^
three gr^nt. wheg1« <">f "^manl prosperity, agriculture is the main one^
manufacture second, and trade is the last. The cardinal interest of

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 155

this and every country is, and always must be, production. It is not
traffic, but labor alone, that converts the resources of the country into
wealth. The world has yet to see any state become great by mere
trade. It has seen many become so by the exercise of industry.

Where there are rjjvprgjfiprl rpsmirp.^ nr>4- industry is applied to
^mly a few staples, three great interest are neglected, viz. : natural
resources^ which are left unimproved ; kbor^that is left unemployed ;
and internal exchanges, which a diversity of industry would render
necessary. jTh^Eoreign commerce, which is based on such a narrow
system of production, obliges the nation to sell its staples at prices
reduced by competition in foreign markets ; and to buy fabrics at
prices established by monopoly in the same markets. ^

This false economy crowds the culture of the few staples with ex
cessive industry ; thus rendering labor dependent at home, while it
brings the whole nation tributary to the monopolizing manufacturer
abroad. When all, or any of the nations of Europe shall, as well as
ourselves, be found successfully competing with England in manu
factures, then, and not till then, will the free trade she recommends,
be as wise for others, as she now insists. But, when that time shall
come, I venture to predict that England will cease to inculcate that
dogma.

The importance of maintaining such a policy as will result in a
diversified application of industry, seems to rest on these impregnable
grounds, viz. : 1st. That the use of indigenous materials does not
diminish, but on the contrary, increases the public wealth. 2d. That
society is constituted so, that individuals voluntarily classify them
selves in all, and not in a few, departments of industry, by reason
of a distributive congeniality of tastes and adaptation of powers ; and
that while labor so distributed is more profitable, the general content
ment and independence of the people is secured, and preserved, and
their enterprise is stimulated and sustained.

I thmk it must be confessed now, by all candid observers within
our country, that manufactures have become in a degree the exclu
sive employment of the citizens of the Eastern States ; and yet they
are precarious, and comparatively unprofitable, because our own
patronage, so generously discriminating in favor of European manu
factures, enables them to make the desired fabrics sometimes at less
cost : that the citizens of the Middle and Western Stages, are con
fined chiefly to the raising of staple breadstuff's, for which, while

156 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

they have a great excess above the home consumption, resulting
from the neglect of domestic manufactures, they find a market almost
overstocked with similar productions, raised in countries as peculiarly
agricultural as our own ; and that the citizens of the Southern States
restrict themselves chiefly to the culture of cotton, of which, practi
cally, they have' the monopoly ; that the annual enlargement of the
cotton culture tends to depress its price, and that they pay more
dearly for the fabrics which they use, than would be necessary if our
own manufactures could better maintain a competition with those of
Europe.

These inconveniences would indeed become intolerable evils, if
they were not compensated in some measure by the great increase of
wealth resulting from the immigration of foreign labor ; and by the
establishment of a new and prosperous gold trade between the Atlan
tic States and California.

Why should these inconveniences be endured ? Certainly not be
cause we do not know that they are unnecessary. W^e jealously
guard our culture of breadstuffs and sugar against the competition
of the foreign farmer and planter in our own markets. Practically,
our gold mining is equally protected. We also give an exclusive
preference in our internal commerce to our own shipping. No
one questions the advantages derived from these great departments
of production. But it is not easy to see how the equally success
ful opening of other domestic resources should not be equally bene-
>» ficial.

\y .M [ Why should it be less profitable to supply ourselves with copper,
> £ jp iron, glass and paper from our own resources, and by our own in-
\fi A lr^ustry' t^ian ^ *s to suPPty ourselves in the same way with flour,
e(\v»x\ suoar and gold? Why should it not be as economical to manufac-
* F ture our own cotton, wool, iron and gold, as it is to manufacture our
own furniture, wooden clocks and ships? If mining and manufac
tures generally were not profitable in England, they would not be
f prosecuted there. If they are profitable there, they would be profit-
/ able here. You reply that manufacturing labor is cheaper there.
Yes, because you leave it there. If you offer inducements, it will
come here just as freely as agricultural labor now comes. The ocean
\ is reduced to a ferry. If you must depend on foreign skill for fab-
\ rics, I pray 'you bring that skill here, where you can sustain it with
\ greater economy.

THE TKUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 157

The advocates of dependence on foreign manufactures tell us that it
is as well to sell gold and buy iron, as it would be to sell iron to buy
gold. I reply, 1st. That, to the extent of our necessary consumption,
having exhaustless resources and adequate industry or ability to
procure both, we ought to buy neither. 2d. When Boulton, the
associate of the great Watt, showed his iron manufactory, he said,
"I sell here what all men are anxious to buy, Power." It has been
proved that a nation may sell gold for iron without gaining power,
as many a nation has bought iron without securing it. But it is
clear, that the nation that makes its own iron creates its own power.

It seems to be understood by the advocates of foreign manufac
tures here, that only those branches languish which have not suffi
cient vigor to be brought to maturity, by never so much protection.
This is opposed to the experience of all mankind. There is not, in
France or in England, a successful culture or manufacture that has
not been made so by the application of national protection and
patronage. The manufacturers of England are sustained, even now,
by the sacrifice of agricultural labor there. The decline of agricul
ture is proved by a rapidly increasing emigration from the British
islands. What England calls free trade is, indeed, a new form of
protection, but it is protection, nevertheless. She finds it equally
effective and expensive. British commerce and British manufactures"
do indeed flourish, but British empire declines. The decline is seen
in the tameness of England, now, toward Russia, France, and our
own country, compared with the different attitude she maintained
against all offending powers in the age of the elder Pitt and the
younger Pitt.

It is insisted, however, that encouragement yielded to the industry
of one class of citizens is partial and injurious to that of others.
This cannot be in any just sense true, since the prosperity and vigor
of t-ach class depend in a great degree on the prosperity and vigor
of all the industrial classes. But all experience shows, that if govern
ment do not favor domestic enterprise, its negative policy will benefit
some foreign monopoly, which, of all class legislation, is most inju
rious and least excusable.

Once more, it is said that the present system must be right, because
predictions of disasters that should result from it have been falsified.
I do not dwell on the signs which seem now to portend a fearful
fulfillment, nevertheless, of those predictions. Let it suffice to say,

158 OKATIOXS AND ADDRESSES.

that it is as common an error to look prematurely for the blights
which must follow erroneous culture, as it is to expect propitious
fruits from that which is judicious. This nation Js youthful and,
^vigorous. It cannot now suffer long and deeply from any cause, for
it has great recuperative energies. It is not destined to an immedi
ate fall, or even to early decline. It is the part of wisdom, never
theless, not to try how much of erroneous administration it can bear,
but to adapt our policy always so as to favor the most complete and
lasting success of the republic.

Gentlemen of the Institute: I refrain from discussingjjiejdetails
of a protective policy. Circumstances are hastening a necessity for
an examination of them, in another place, where action loTlows de
bate, anc[ is effective. I shall not be absent nor idle there. But
"TwITi not attempt to delude either myself or you into the belief that
the opinions I have expressed, which, I trust, in some degree corres
pond with your own, will soon become fully engrafted into the
policy of the government. I shall perform my duty better by show
ing you that it is not wise to expect, nor even absolutely necessary
to depend on, the exercise of a just patronage of our industry by
the government.

This republic, although constituting one nation, partakes of the
form of a confederation of many states, and, for the purpose of secu
ring acquiescence, allows great power to minorities. Although there
is no real antagonism of interests, there is, nevertheless, a wide diverg
ence of opinion concerning those interests, resulting from the differ
ent degrees of maturity and development reached in the several
states. Massachusetts and Virginia, New York and South Carolina,
scarcely differ in their ages ; but, nevertheless, they differ in their
industrial systems as widely as Pennsylvania and Arkansas. The
old free states have passed through the stages at which the merely
agricultural and planting states have only arrived. It would practi
cally be as impossible to bring these latter states immediately up
to our proper policy, as it would be to carry us backward to the
system which they are pursuing. They will resist all such efforts,
earnestly and perse veringly, so long as they shall feel that they are
unable, like us, to distribute their industry, and so to share in the
benefits of that policy. All that we can expect, under such circum
stances, from the government, is some occasional and partial modifi
cation of its financial policy, so as to favor the success of the efforts

THE TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

159

of the friends of home industry in establishing it on a safe basis,
without the immediate and direct aid of congress. And this will be
sufficient. It is not yet forty years since New York applied in vain
to the United States to construct the Erie canal, which was acknow
ledged to be the incipient measure in a system of internal improve
ments to be coextensive with the republic. Now, not only that canal
has been built, but the whole system is in a train of accomplishment,
although congress has not only never adopted, but has almost con
stantly repudiated it. Private and corporate enterprise, sustained by
the states, has worked on t wVmt, t]ig_fWlp.rnl government has refused

to undertake. _ The sai __^

tern. Capital, labor, science, skill, are augmenting hereL Power" is
cfany becoming cheaper, and consumption more extensive. New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont,
New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and
Ohio, have become manufacturing states. The advantages resulting
from the policy are indicated, not more by the universal improve
ment of the agricultural districts in these states, than by the pros
perity and growth of their towns and cities. Here are Boston,
Lowell, Lawrence, Springfield, Providence, New Haven, Rutland,
Bennington, New York, Albany, Troy, Rochester and Buffalo, Phila
delphia and Pittsburgh, Newark and Paterson, Wilmington and Bal
timore, Cincinnati and Cleveland ; contrast with them the towns and
cities of those states which practically adhere to the policy of em
ploying foreign industry, and you see plainly the results of that
error. This contrast excites inquiry, and inquiry will go on, until
it shall correct the great mistake, and introduce universal emulation.
Persevere, then, (yfntlprnpn. pf fi^^^^oiji^j-^- for? whileypu are
represented as hindering the prosperity of the coun^^^mLand^
none so much as you, are Kecur^^^^^T^ide^^jt

me, you are regardeoas favoring privileges anomonopoiies, you
and none so much as you, are counteracting pauperism and class
legislation. While you are censured for opposing the interests of
commerce, you, and none so much as you, are laying sure founda
tions for a commerce that shall be broad as the limits of the earth,
and lasting as the necessities and the enterprise of mankind. While
you are represented as checking the rising greatness of the nation,
you, and only you, by lifting labor to its rightful rank, are elevating
the republic to true and lasting independence.

. ,
\)^

THE PHYSICAL, MOKAL, AND INTELLECTUAL DE
VELOPMENT OF THE AMEKICAN PEOPLE.1

A POLITICAL discourse may seem out of time and out of place at
a classic festival and in academic groves. Nevertheless, the office
of instructor to a prince brought something more of dignity even to
the learning and piety of Fenelon. To study the forces and ten
dency of a republic which is not obscure, cannot, therefore, at any
time or in any place, be unbecoming an association which regards
universal philosophy as the proper guide of human life.

Nations are intelligent, moral persons, existing for the ends of their
own happiness and the improvement of mankind. They grow,
mature, and decline. Their physical development, being most obvi
ous, always attracts our attention first. Certainly we cannot too well
understand the material condition of our own country. "I think,"
said Burke, sadly, addressing the British house of commons, just
after the American war, " I think I can trace all the calamities of
this country to the single source of not having had steadily before
our eyes a general, comprehensive, well connected, and well propor
tioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their
bearings and relations."

Trace on a map the early boundaries of the United States, as they
were defined by the treaty of Versailles, in 1783. See with what
jealousy Great Britain abridged their enjoyment of the fisheries on
the northeast coast, and how tenaciously she locked up against them
the St. Lawrence, the only possible channel between their inland
regions and the Atlantic ocean. Observe how Spain, while retaining
the vast and varied solitudes which spread out westward from the
Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, at the same time assigned the
thirty-first parallel of north latitude as the southern boundary of
the United States, and thus shut them out from access by that river
or otherwise to the gulf of Mexico. See now how the massive and

1 An Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College : New Haven, July 26, 1854.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 161

anpassable Alleghany mountains traversed the new republic from
north to south, dividing it into two regions — the inner one rich in
agricultural resources, but without markets ; and the outer one
adapted to defense and markets, but wanting the materials for com
merce. Were not the Europeans astute in thus confining the United
States within limits which would probably render an early separa
tion of them inevitable, and would also prevent equally the whole
and each of the future parts from ever becoming a formidable or
even a really independent Atlantic power ? They had cause for their
jealousies. They were monarchies, and they largely divided the
western hemisphere between them. The United States aimed to
become a maritime nation, and their success would tend to make that
hemisphere not only republican, but also independent of Europe.
That success was foreseen. A British statesman, in describing the
American colonies just before the peace, had said to his countrymen :
" Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than
they spread from families to communities, and from villages to na
tions."

The United States, thus confined landward, betook themselves to
the sea, whose broad realm lay unappropriated; and, having fur
nished themselves with shipping and seamen equal to the adventu
rous pursuit of the whale fishery under the poles, they presented
themselves in European ports as a maritime people. Afterwards,
their well-known attitude of neutrality, in a season of general war,
enabled them to become carriers for the world. But they never for
got, for a moment, the importance of improving their position on the
coast. France was now the owner of the province of Louisiana,
which stretched all along the western bank of the Mississippi. She
wisely sold a possession, which she was unable to defend, to the
United States, who thus, only twenty years after the treaty of Ver
sailles, secured the exclusive navigation of the great river; and,
descending from their inland frontier, established themselves on the
coast of the gulf of Mexico. Spain soon saw that her colonies on that
coast, east of the Mississippi, now virtually surrounded by the United
States, were thenceforward untenable. She, therefore, for an equiva
lent, ceded the Floridas, and retired behind the Sabine ; and so the
seacoast of the United States was now seen to begin at that river,
and, passing along the gulf and around the Pensacola, and beyond
the capes, to terminate at the St. Croix, in the bay of Fundy.

VOL IV 21

162 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

The course of the European war showed that Spain was exhausted.
Nearly all her American colonies, inspired by the example of the
United States, and sustained by their sympathy, struck for indepen
dence, established republican systems, and entered into treaties of
amity and commerce with the republic of the north.

But the United States yet needed a northern passage fromtheir
western valleys to the Atlantic ocean. The new channel to be opened
• — mtTsTnecessarily have connections, natural or artificial, with the inland
rivers and lakes. An internal trade, ramifying the country, was a
necessary basis for commerce, and it would constitute the firmest
possible national union. Practically, there was, in the country,
neither a canal to serve for a model nor an engineer competent to
project one. The railroad invention had not yet been perfected in
Europe, nor even conceived in the United States. The federal gov
ernment alone had adequate resources, but, after long consideration
and some unprofitable experiments, it not only disavowed the policy,
but also disclaimed the power of making internal improvements.
Private capital was u n availablejor_£reat national ..enterprises^ The
states were not convinced of the wisdom of undertaking, singly,
works within their own borders which would be wholly or in part
useless, unless extended beyond them by other states, and which,
even although they should be useful to themselves, would be equally
or more beneficial to states which refused or neglected to join in their
construction. Moreover, the only source of revenue in the states
was direct taxation — always unreliable in a popular government —
and they had no established credits at home or abroad. Neverthe
less, the people comprehended the exigency, and their will opened a
way through all these embarrassments. The state of New York
began, and she has hitherto, although sometimes faltering, prosecu
ted this great enterprise with unsurpassed fidelity. The other states,
according to their respective abilities and convictions of interest and
duty, have cooperated. By canals we have extended the navigation
of Chesapeake bay to thecoa^nilds of Maryland at Cumberland,
and also, by the way of Columbia, to the coal fields of Pennsylvania.
By canals we have united Chesapeake bay with the Delaware river,
and have, with alternating railroads, connected that river with the
Ohio river and with lake Erie. By canals we have opened a navi
gation between Philadelphia and New York, mingling the waters of
the Delaware with those of the Earitan. By canals we have given

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 163

access from two several ports on the Hudson to two different coal
fields in Pennsylvania. By canals we have also extended the navi
gation of the Hudson, through lake Champlain and its outlet, to the
St. Lawrence near Montreal. We are just opening a channel from
the Hudson to Cape Vincent, on lake Ontario, near its eastern termi
nation, while we long since have opened one from the same river to
a central harbor on that lake at Oswego. A corresponding improve
ment, made by the Canadian authorities on the opposite shore, pro
longs our navigation from lake Ontario to lake Erie. We have also
connected the Hudson river with the eastern branch of the Susque-
hanna, through the valley of the Chenango, and again with its
western tributaries through the Seneca lake. We are also unit
ing the Hudson with the Alleghany, a tributary of the Missis
sippi, through the valley of the Genesee. One long trunk of canal
receives the trade gathered by most of these tributary channels, while
it directly unites the Hudson with lake Erie at Buffalo. The shores
of that great lake are the basis of a second part of the same system.
Canals connect the Alleghany, in the state of Pennsylvania, with
lake Erie, at Erie ; the Ohio river, at Portage and at Cincinnati ; with
lake Erie, at Cleveland and Toledo ; and again the Ohio river, in the
state of Indiana, with lake Erie, through the valley of the Wabash.
Lake Superior, hitherto secluded from even internal commerce, is
now being connected with the other great lakes by the canal of the
falls of St. Marie; and, to complete the whole, the Illinois canal
unites the lakes and all the extensive system I have described with
the Mississippi. Thus, by substituting works purely artificial, we
have not only dispensed with the navigation of the St. Lawrence,
but have also opened a complete circuit of inland navigation and
traffic between New Orleans, on the gulf, and New York, Philadel
phia, and Baltimore, on the Atlantic. The aggregate length of those
canals is five thousand miles, and that of the inland coasts thus
washed by natural and artificial channels exceeds twenty thousand
miles.

Railroads constitute an auxiliary system of improj££mentsT
more complex and more comprehensive. By railroads we have con
nected, or are in the act of connecting together, all the principal sea
ports on the Atlantic coast and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico,
namely, Portland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Nor
folk, Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans. Again — railroads from

164 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

each or most of these ports proceed inland through important towns,
to great depots on the St. Lawrence, the lakes, the Ohio, and the
Mississippi, namely, Quebec, Montreal, Ogdensburgh, Oswego, Bo-
chester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Monroe, Detroit,
Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Cairo, and
Memphis. Again — there are tributaries which search out agricultu
ral and mineral productions and fabrics, accumulated at less notable
points; and so a complete system is perfected, which leaves no inha
bited region unexplored, while it has for its base the long line of
seaboard. The aggregate length of these railroads is sixteen thou
sand miles, and the total cost is six hundred millions of dollars.

Immediately after the purchase of Louisiana, President Jefferson
having conceived the idea of a national establishment on the Pacific
coast, an exploration of the intervening wastes was made. An
American navigator, about the same time, visited the coast itself,
and thus laid the foundation of a title by discovery. A commercial
settlement, afterwards planted on the Columbia river by the late
John Jacob Astor, perished in the war of 1812. Ten years ago, the
great thought of Pacific colonization revived, under the influence
of the commercial activity resulting from the successful progress of
the system of internal improvements. Oregon was settled. Two
years afterward, its boundaries were defined, and it was politically
organized ; and now it constitutes two prosperous territories.

The social, military, and ecclesiastical institutions of Mexico proved
unfavorable to an immediate success of the republican system. Bev-
olution became a chronic disease there. Texas separated, and prac
tically became independent, although Mexico refused to recognize
her separation. After some years, Texas was admitted as a state into
our Federal Union. A war which ensued resulted, not only in the
relinquishment of Mexican claims upon rCj$as, but in the extension
of her coast frontier to the Bio Grande, and also in the annexation
of New Mexico and Upper California to the United States.

Thqq, in piKtiJ-fiye^yeftre after the peace of Versailles, the United
^States advanced from the ffiBaiaajppf^flTifl occupied a line stretching
through eighteen degrees of latitude on the Pacific coast, overlook
ing the Sandwich islands and Japan, and confronting China (the
Cathay for which Columbus was in search when he encountered the
bewildering vision of San Domingo). The new possession was divi
ded into two territories and the state of California. The simultane-

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 165

ous discovery of native gold in the sands and rocks of that State
resulted in the instantaneous establishment of an active commerce,
not only with our Atlantic cities, but also with the ports of South
America and with the maritime countries of Europe, with the Sand
wich Islands, and even with China. Thus the United States ceased
to be a mere Atlantic nation, and assumed the attitude of a great
continental power, enjoying ocean navigation on either side, and
bearing equal and similar relations to the eastern and to the western
coast of the old world. The national connections between the At
lantic and Pacific regions are yet incomplete ; but the same spirit
which has brought them into political union is at work still, and no
matter what the government may do or may leave undone, the neces
sary routes of commerce, altogether within and across our own
domain, will be yet established.

The number of states has increased, since this aggrandizement
began, from seventeen to thirty-one ; the population from five mil
lions to twenty-four millions; the tonnage employed in commerce
from one million to four and a half millions ; and the national reve
nues from ten millions to sixty millions of dollars. Within that
period, Spain has retired altogether from the continent, and two con
siderable islands in the Antilles are all that remains of the New
World which, hardly four centuries ago, the generous and pious
Genoese navigator, under the patronage of Isabella, gave to the
kingdoms of Castile and Leon. Great Britain tenders us now the
freedom of the fisheries and of the St. Lawrence, on conditions of
favor to the commerce of her colonies, and even deliberates on the
policy of releasing them from their allegiance. The influences of
the United States on the American continent have resulted already
in the establishment of the republican system everywhere, except in
Brazil, and even there in limiting imperial power. In Europe they
have awakened a war of opinion, that, after spreading desolation into
the steppes of Eussia, and to the base of the Carpathian mountains,
has only been suppressed for a time by combination of the capital
and of the political forces of that continent. In Africa, those influ
ences, aided by the benevolent efforts of our citizens, have produced
the establishment of a republic, which, beginning with the abolition
of the traffic in slaves, is going steadily on toward the moral regen
eration of its savage races. In the Sandwich Islands, those influences
have already effected, not only such a regeneration of the natives,

*

/

166 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

but also a political organization, which is bringing that important
commercial station directly under our protection. Those influences
have opened the ports of Japan, and secured an intercourse of com
merce and friendship with its extraordinary people — numbering forty
millions — thus overcoming a policy of isolation which they had prac
tised for a hundred and fifty years. The same influences have not
only procured for us access to the five principal ports of China, but
also have generated a revolution there, which promises to bring the
three hundred millions living within that vast empire into the society
of the western nations.

How magnificent is the scene which the rising curtain discloses to
us here ! and how sublime the pacific part assigned to us !

" The eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends."

But, restraining the imagination from its desire to follow the influ
ences of the United States in their future progress through the Ma
nillas, and along the Indian coast, and beyond the Persian gulf, to
the far-off Mozambique, let us dwell for a moment on the visible
results of the national aggrandizement at home. Wealth has every
where increased, and has been equalized with much success in all the
states, new as well as old. Industry has persevered in opening newly
discovered resources, and bringing forth their treasures, as well as in
the establishment of the productive arts. The capitol, which at first
seemed too pretentious, is extending itself northward and southward
upon its noble terrace, to receive the representatives of new incom
ing states. The departments of executive administration continually
expand under their lofty arches and behind their lengthening colon
nades. The federal city, so recently ridiculed for its ambitious soli
tudes, is extending its broad avenues in all directions, and, under the
hands of native artists, is taking on the graces, as well as the fullness,
of a capital. Where else will you find authority so august as in a
council composed of the representatives of thirty states, attended by
ambassadors from every free city, every republic, and every court,
in the civilized world ? In near proximity, and in intimate connec
tion with that capital, a metropolis has arisen, which gathers, by the
agency of canals, of railroads, and of coastwise navigation, the pro
ducts of industry in every form throughout the North American
states, as wdl those under foreign jurisdiction as those which consti-

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMEKICAN" PEOPLE. 167

tute the Union, and distributes them in exchange over the globe — a
city whose wealth and credit supply or procure the capital employed
in all the great financial movements within the republic, and whose
press, in all its departments of science, literature, religion, philan
thropy, and politics, is a national one. Thus, expansion and aggran
dizement, whose natural tendency is to produce debility and dissolu
tion, have operated here to create, what before was wanting, a social,
political, and commercial centre.

In considering the causesof this material pn-owt.l^ n.llowmiop, n-mst.
h^rrm^ ]ihp.rajjv made, for great advantages of space, climate, and
resources, as well as for the weakness of rm+wnrrl T-^m'stn.-qrif^ fr>r the
vices of foreign governments, and for the disturbed and painful con
dition of society under them — causes which have created and sus
tained a tide of emigration towards the United States unparalleled,
at least in modern times. But when all this allowance shall have

been made, we shall still find thatj'h^ phpn^m^^aJ^^iurfly dn^ to
the operation here of some great ideas, either unknown before, or
not before rendered so effective. These ideas are, first, the ec^ialhy
of men in a state, that is to say, the equality of men constituting a
state ; seconaIyT*the equality of states in a combination, or, in other

, . *^ ^^^-~-2-^---^~i^2^---aP--*-~V|-^ '

words, the equality or states constituting a nation. I3y the consti
tution of every state in the American Union, each citizen is guaran
teed his natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
and he, at the same time, is guaranteed a share of the sovereign
power, equal to that which can be assumed by any other citizen.
This is the equality of men in the state. By the constitution of the
United States, there are no subjects. Every citizen of any one state
is a free and equal citizen of the United States. Again, by the con
stitution of the United States, there are no permanent provinces, or
dependencies. The Union is constituted by states, and all of them
stand upon the same level of political rights. This is the equality
of states in the nation.

The reduction of the two abstractions which I have mentioned into
the concrete, in the constitution of the United States, was, like most
other inventions, mainly due to accident. There were thirteen sev
eral states, in each of which, owing to fortunate circumstances attend
ing their original colonization, each citizen was not only free, but
also practically equal, in his exercise of political power, to every
other citizen of that state. The freedom and equality of the citizen,

168 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

and the inalienability of his natural rights, were solemnly reaffirmed
in the Declaration of Independence. These thirteen states were sev
erally free and independent of each other. They, therefore, were
equal states. Each was a sovereign. They needed free and mutual
commerce among themselves, and some regulations for securing to
each equal facilities of commerce with foreign countries. A union
was necessary to the attainment of these ends. But the citizens of
each state were unwilling to surrender either their natural and ina
lienable rights, or the guardianship of them, to a common government
over them all, even to attain the union which they needed so much.
So a federal central government was established, which is sovereign
only in commerce at home and abroad, and in the necessary commu
nications with other nations ; that is to say, sovereign only in regard
to the mutual internal relations of the states themselves, and in regard
to foreign affairs. In this government the states are practically equal
constituents, although the equality was modified by some limitations
found necessary to secure the assent of some of the states. The
states were not dissolved, nor disorganized, but they remain really
states, just as before, existing independently of each other and of the
Union, and exercising sovereignty in all the municipal departments
of society. The citizen of each state also retains all his natural
rights equally in the Union and in the state to which he belongs, and
the United States are constituted by the whole mass of such citizens
throughout all the several states. There was an unoccupied common
domain, which the several states surrendered to the federal authori
ties, to the end that it might be settled, colonized, and divided into
other states, to be organized and to become members of the Union
on an equal footing with the original states. When additions to this
domain were made from foreign countries, the same principles seemed
to be the only ones upon which the government could be extended
over them, and so, with some qualifications unimportant on the
present occasion, they became universal in their application.

No other nation, pursuing a career of aggrandizement, has adopted
the great ideas thus developed in the United States. The Macedo
nian conquered kingdoms for the mere gratification of conquest, and
they threw off the sway he established1 over them as soon as the
sword dropped from his hand. The Eomans conquered, because the
alien was a barbarian rival and enemy, and because Eome must fill
the world alone. The empire, thus extended, fell under the blows

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 169

of enemies, subjugated but not subdued, as soon as the central power
bad lost its vigor. The Ottoman, although he conquered with the
sword, conciliated the subjected tribes by admitting them to the rites
of a new and attractive religion. The religion, however, was of this
world, and sensual, and therefore it debased its votaries. France
attempted to conquer Europe in retaliation for wrongs committed
against herself; but the bow broke in her hands, just as it was bent
to discharge the last shaft. Spain has planted many colonies and
conquered many states, but the Castilian was proud and haughty ;
he enslaved the native and oppressed the Creole. The Czar wins his
way amid kindred races, as a parent extending protection in the
enjoyment of a common religion. But the paternal relation in
politics is a fiction of despotism, which extinguishes all individual
energy and all social ambition. Great Britain has been distinguished
from all these vulgar conquerors. She is a civilizer and a mission
ary. She has planted many colonies in the west, and conquered
many and vast countries in the east, and has carried English laws
and the English language around the world. But Great Britain at
home is an aristocracy. Her colonies can neither be equal to her,
nor yet independent. Her subjects in those countries may be free,
but they cannot be Britons. Consequently, her dependencies are
always discontented, and insomuch as they are possessed or swayed
by freemen, they are only retained in their connection with the
British throne by the presence of military and naval force. You
identify an American state or colony by the absence of the federal
power. Everywhere, on the contrary, you identify a British colony,
whether in British America, or on the Pacific coast, or on its islands,
or in Bombay, or at Saint Helena, or at Gibraltar, or on the Ionian
isles, by the music of the imperial drum-beat and the frown of royal
battlements. Great Britain always inspires fear, and often commands
respect, but she has no friends in the wide family of nations. So it
has happened, that heretofore nations have either repelled, or
exhausted, or disgusted the colonies they planted and the countries
they conquered. >

The United States, on the contrary, expand, not by force of arms1_ ^r
but by attraction. The native colonist no sooner reaches a new and
distant home, whether in a cleft of the Rocky mountains or on the
seashore, than he proceeds to found a state, in which his natural and
inalienable rights shall be secure, and which shall become an equal

VOL. IV. 22

170 OKATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

member of the federal union, enjoying its protection, and sharing
its growing greatness and renown. Adjacent states, though of foreign
habits, religion and descent, especially if they are defenceless, look
with favor upon the approach of a power that will leave them in full
enjoyment of the rights of nature, and at the same time that it may
absorb them, will spare their corporate existence and individuality.
The attraction increases as commerce widens the circle of the national
influence.

If these positions seern to require qualification at all, the very
modifications -will, nevertheless, serve to illustrate and sustain the
general principles involved. The people of Mexico resist annexa
tion because they fear it would result in their being outnumbered by
Americans, and so lead to the restoration of African slavery, which
they have abolished. The natives of the Sandwich Islands take
alarm lest by annexation they may themselves be reduced to slavery
The people of the Canadas hesitate because they disapprove the
modification of the principles of equality of men and of states in
favor of slaveholding states, which were admitted in the federal con
stitution.

What is the moral to be drawn from the physical progress of the

UniterTStates ? it is, that the strongest bonds of cohesion in society
"" — J^ "tt&&^&' ~~2-^%~~-r~tt~~*^ — »^3&--^-» — i^~^~J
are commerce ana gratitude for urofecteu ireeaom.

/^<<Z'-Z.*-'Z^'*1^--2^---3^--^J'T*^-^-^ ^---^--^'

While the majestic physical progress of the United States is no
longer denied as a fact, it is, nevertheless, too generally regarded as
purely accidental, and likely to cease through a want of correspond
ing intelligence and virtue. The principle assumed in this reasoning
is just. A nation deficient in intelligence and virtue is an ignoble
one, and no ignoble race can enlarge or even retain empire. But
examination will show that the facts assumed are altogether errone
ous. In order to prove that we are deficient in intelligence, the
monuments of ancient and modern nations, all of whom have either
completed their courses or passed the middle point, are arrayed be
fore us, and we are challenged to exhibit similar monuments of equal
merit on the part of the United States ; as if time were not an essen
tial condition of achievement, and as if, also, circumstances exert no
influence in directing the activity of nations. It is true that we can
show no campaigns equal to those of Caesar, or of Frederick, or of
Napoleon; and no inspirations of the divine art equal to the Iliad,
or the Eneid, or the Inferno, or the dramas of Shakspeare. But it

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMEKICAN PEOPLE. 171

is equally true that neither Greece, nor Eome, nor France, nor Eng
land, has erected a tower as high as Babel, or a mausoleum so mas
sive as the grand pyramid.

Eeasoning a priori, it is manifest, that insomuch as the physical
progress of the United States has been unprecedented while it has
followed a method, and insomuch as this progress has been conducted
with magnanimity through many temptations and embarrassments,
it is of itself no unworthy monument of national intelligence.

The constitutions (of the states and of t,V>p. JTnion^ n.rp. confessedly
unsurpassed. Grant, as is true, that all the great political ideas
which are embodied in them, were before known ; grant, moreover,
that a favorable conjuncture for reducing those abstractions to the
concrete had come ; grant, also, that favorable conditions of nature
and human society concurred : nevertheless, even then I may ask,
was ever higher genius, or greater talent, displayed, in conducting
the affairs of men, than were exercised first in framing the many
peculiar and delicate parts of that system of government, with pro- ^
portions so accurate that each might bear the very tension and pres
sure to which it was to be exposed, and then in bringing all those
parts together, and forging them into one great machine with such
wonderful skill, that at the very first touch of the propelling popu
lar spring, it went at once into full and perfect operation, and has
continued its movements for seventy years^ in prosperity as well as
in adversity, amid the factions generated by a long peace, and the dis
turbances of war, not only without interruption or irregularity, but
even without a jar. Consider the sagacity of the people that, amid
the clouds of jealousy and the storms of passion, raised by heated
partisans, deliberately examined, and resolutely adopted, that won
derful yet untried mechanism, so well contrived for their use. and
decided that it should not merely have a trial, but should stand for
ever, the only government of themselves and of their posterity.
Consider, that not only was this vast engine set in motion by the
voluntary act of the people, but it has also been kept in motion by
their own perpetually renewed consent and direct activity ; and that,
although like every other combination of forces, it has its dead points,
yet it passes through them with perfect regularity, and without even
any sensible diminution of motion, owing to the watchful perform
ance by the people at critical moments, of the functions devolved
upon them. Consider how many and various are the human wills,

172 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

which meet and concur, every time a fresh impulse is given to the
great mechanism. A majority of the states, neglecting or refusing
to act on any such occasion, could bring the government to a dead
stand. Consider that the people not only interfere on such critical
occasions, but also that they are continually supplying the necessary
force to sustain the movements of the subordinate parts of the machine.
There are two and a half millions of electors, and every one of
these is charged with the performance, for the most part annually,
of four classes of functions, in as many distinct spheres. Once,
generally in each year, the electors choose a mayor or supervisor,
aldermen or trustees, or selectmen, justices of the peace, police
officers, clerks, assessors of taxes, commissioners of public charities,
commissioners of streets, roads and bridges, and subalterns, or other
officers of the militia, in their respective cities, towns, or other
forms of municipalities. Again, the electors, generally once in each
year, choose officers nearly as numerous, and of a higher grade, to
execute judicial, ministerial, and fiscal powers of a similar nature,
within the counties, which embrace several cities, towns and muni
cipalities. Again, they elect governors, lieutenant-governors, sena
tors and representatives, judges, treasurers and mini3ters of finance,
of education, of public works and of charities, in the states constitu
ted by such counties, states sovereign in all things, except the few
departments they have voluntarily assigned to the Federal Union.
Once more, the citizens choose, once in two years, representatives,
and once in three years, senators, who exercise the legislative powers
of the republic; and once in four years, the vice-president and presi
dent of the United States, its chief executive magistrates. The
peace, order, prosperity, and happiness, and even the safety of society,
rest manifestly on the soundness of judgment with which these many
and various electoral trusts are discharged. Reflect, now, for a
moment, on the perturbations of society, the devices and combina
tions of parties, and the appliances of corruption, to which the
electoral body is at all times exposed. Could these functions be
performed with results so generally auspicious if the people of the
United States did not, as a mass, excel other nations in intelligence,
as much as in the good fortune of inheriting such extraordinary
institutions?

Look at the operation of this system in yet another aspect. ^o_t
onlv the constitutions of the several states, but even the constitution

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 173

of the Union, stands only by the voluntary consent of the peopi
Kypbysical - force, whicJ^J^ieffovernrnent could not suppress, they
could suDv^rT'anyor all of th^consStuSon&jSve^wrffiouTloj^,
^noactingoniy by CL^GemerK^m^m^mornuiy to certain established
conditions, they can change or subvert all these constitutions. There
is indeed no restraining power acting upon them, from within or
from without. Practically, they do change the constitutions of the
several states once in twenty years. Yet they work such changes
generally without commotion, and they have never made one with
out replacing the constitution removed by a better one. A few of
the states inherited the jurisprudence of the civil law, and all the
others the common and statute laws of England. Does any one
deny that they have sagaciously retained all the parts of those
excellent codes which are essential to order and civil liberty, and
have modified others only so far as was required by the changing
circumstances of society and the ever-unfolding sentiments of justice
and humanity ? Let OUT logical amendments of the rules of evi
dence, and our simple processes of pleading and practice in courts
of justice and our meliorations of imprisonment for debt, and of
eleemosynary laws, and of penitentiary systems, vindicate the intel*
lectual vigor and wisdom of the American people.

Modern invention, until the close of the last century, was chiefly
employed in discovering new laws of nature, and in shaping those
discoveries into the forms of theories and maxims. Thus far, in the
present century, invention has employed itself in applying those
theories and maxims, by various devices of mechanism, or otherwise,
to practical use. In Europe, those devices are chiefly such as regard
festhefrc effect. In America, on the other hand, those devices are
such as have for their object the increase of power. Required to
subdue nature through a broad range quickly, and to bring forth her
various resources with haste, and yet having numbers inadequate
and capital quite unequal to such labors, the American studies chiefly
economy and efficiency. He has examined every instrument, and
engine, and combination, and composition, received from his elder
trans-atlantic brother, in the light of those objects, and has either
improved it, or devised a new and better one. He aims at doing the
most that is possible as quickly as possible ; and this characteristic
is manifested equally in his weapons of war and in his instruments
of peace, whether they are to be used in the field, or in the work-

174 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

shop, on the land, or on the sea, the fire-arm, the ax, the plow, the
railroad, the clipper-ship, the steam-engine and the printing-press.
His railroads cost less and are less perfect than those in other coun
tries, but he builds ten miles where they build only three. He
moves passengers and freights on such- roads and in his ships with
less safety, but with greater cheapness and velocity. He prepares
his newspapers, his magazines, and his treatises, with less care, but
he prints a hundred for one. If the European has foiled to give
him necessary principle, or to embody it in a practical machine, he
finds out the one, or constructs the other promptly for himself. He
wanted machines for working up his forests, and he invented the
saw-gang, and the grooving and planing machines; for cleaning
his cotton, and he invented the gin; for harvesting his wheat, and
he invented the reaper. He needed mechanical force to navigate his
long rivers and broad lakes, and he converted the steam engine into
a marine power. He needed dispatch in communicating intelligence,
and he placed his lightning-rod horizontally, and beating it into a
wire, converted it into a writing telegraph.

Fifty years ago there was no American science and no American
literature. Now there is an American tenancy in every intellectual
department, and none acknowledge its presence and usefulness more
freely than those whose fame has least to fear from competition.

It seems to me that this intellectual development of the United
States is due chiefly to the adoption of the great idea of universal
emulation. Our constitutions and laws open every department of
human enterprise and ambition to all citizens without respect to
birth, or class, or condition, and steadily though cautiously exert a
power quite effective in preventing any accidental social inequality
from becoming fixed and permanent.

There still remains the question whether the moral development
is coordinate with those of physical power and mind in the United
States. A republic rnay be safe, even though it be weak, and though
it be in a considerable degree intellectually inactive, as is seen in
Switzerland ; but a republic cannot exist without virtue.

It will not suffice to examine the question through the lens of tra
ditional prejudice. A kind of reverence is paid by all nations to
antiquity. There is no one that does not trace its lineage from the
gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every
people has had its age of gold, or Augustan age, or heroic age — an

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMEKICAN PEOPLE. 175

age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether
unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining
virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at
once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious.
Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue,
that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to refinement, it is
not able to continually surpass itself. We see the present plainly,
distinctly, with all its coarse outlines, its rough inequalities, its dark
blots, and its glaring deformities. We hear all its tumultuous sounds
and jarring discords. We see and hear the past, through a distance
which reduces all its inequalities to a plane, mellows all its shades
into a pleasing hue, arid subdues even its hoarsest voices into har
mony. In our own case, the prej udice is less erroneous than in most
others. The revolutionary age was truly a heroic one. Its exigen
cies called forth the genius and the talents and the virtues of society,
and they ripened amid the hardships of a long and severe trial. But
there were selfishness, and vice, and factions, then, as now, although
comparatively subdued and repressed. You have only to consult
impartial history, to learn that neither public faith, nor public loyalty,
nor private virtue, culminated at that period in our own country,1
while a mere glance at the literature, or at the stage, or at the poli
tics, of any European country, in any previous age, reveals the fact
that it was marked, more distinctly than the present, by licentious
morals and mean ambition.

Reasoning d priori again, as we did in another case, it is only just
to infer in favor of the United States an improvement of morals from
their established progress in knowledge and power ; otherwise, the
philosophy of society is misunderstood, and we must change all our
courses, and henceforth seek safety in imbecility, and virtue in super
stition and ignorance.

What shall be the test of the national morals? Shall it be the
eccentricity of crimes? Certainly not; for then we must compare
the criminal eccentricity of to-day 'with that of yesterday. The
result of the comparison would be only this, that the crimes of
society change with changing circumstances.

1 "I ought not to object to your reverence for your fathers, as you call them, meaning, I pre
sume, the government, and those concerned in the direction of public affairs ; much less could I
be displeased at your numbering me among them. But, to tell you a very great secret, as far as
I am capable of comparing the merits of different periods, I have no reason to believe that we
were better than you are. We had as many poor creatures and selfish beings in proportion,
among us, as you have among you ; nor were there then more enlightened men, or in greater
number in proportion, than there are now."— John Adams's Letter to Josiah Quincy, Feb. 9,1811.

176 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

Loyalty to the state is a public virtue. Was it ever deeper-toned
or more universal than it is now ? I know there are ebullitions of
passion and discontent, sometimes breaking out into disorder and
violence ; but was faction ever more effectually disarmed and harm
less than it is now ? There is a loyalty that springs from the affec
tion that we bear to our native soil. This we have as strong as any
people. But it is not the soil alone, nor yet the soil beneath our feet
and the skies over our heads, that constitute our country. It is its
freedom, equality, justice, greatness and glory. Who among us is
so low as to be insensible of an interest in them? Four hundred
thousand natives of other lands every year voluntarily renounce
their own sovereigns, and swear fealty to our own. Who has ever
known an American to transfer his allegiance permanently to a for
eign power ?

The spirit of the laws, in any country, is a true index to the morals
of the people, just in proportion to the power they exercise in making
them. Who complains, here or elsewhere, that crime or immorality
blots our statute-books with licentious enactments ?

The character of a country's magistrates, legislators, and captains,
chosen by a people, reflect their own. It is true that, in the earnest
canvassing which so frequently recurring elections require, suspicion
often follows the magistrate, and scandal follows in the footsteps of
the statesman. Yet, when his course has been finished, what magis
trate has left a name tarnished by corruption, or what statesman has
left an act or an opinion so erroneous that decent charity cannot
excuse, though it may disapprove ? What chieftain ever tempered
military triumph with so much moderation as he who, when he had
placed our standard on the battlements of the capital of Mexico, not
only received an offer of supreme authority from the conquered
nation, but declined it?

The manners of a nation are the outward form of its inner life.
Where is woman held in so chivalrous respect, and where does she
deserve that eminence better? Where is property more safe, com
mercial honor better sustained, or human life more sacred?

Moderation is a virtue in private and in public life. Has not the
great increase of private wealth manifested itself chiefly in widening
the circle of education and elevating the standard of popular intelli
gence? With forces which, if combined and directed by ambition,
would subjugate this continent at once, we have made only two very

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 177

short wars — the one confessedly a war of defense, and the other ended
by paying for a peace and for a domain already fully conquered.

Where lies the secret of the increase of virtue whir,h ^g tl-mg "h^n
estabT?sired7'~ir think it will be found in the entire emancipation of
the consciences of men from either direct or indirect control by
established ecclesiastical or political systems. Religious classes, like
political parties, have been left to compete in the great work of moral
education, and to entitle themselves to the confidence and affection
of society, by the purity of their faith and of their morals.

I am well aware that some, who may be willing to adopt the gene
ral conclusions of this argument, will object that it is not altogether
sustained by the action of the government itself, however true it may
be that it is sustained by the great action of society. I cannot enter
a field where truth is to be sought among the disputations of passion
and prejudice. I may say, however, in reply, first, that the govern
ments of the United States, although more perfect than any other,
and although they embrace the great ideas of the age more fully than
any other, are, nevertheless, like all other governments, founded on
compromises of some abstract truths and of some natural rights.

As government is impressed by its constitution, so it must neces
sarily act. This may suffice to explain the phenomenon complained
of. But it is true, also, that no government ever did altogether act
out, purely and for a long period, all the virtues of its original consti
tution. Hence it is, that we are so well told by Bolingbroke, that
every nation must perpetually renew its constitution or perish.
Hence, moreover, it is a great excellence of our system that sove
reignty resides, not in congress and the president, nor yet in the
governments of the states, but in the people of the United States.
If the sovereign be just and firm and uncorrupted, the governments
can always be brought back from any aberrations, and even the con
stitutions themselves, if in any degree imperfect, can be amended.
This great idea of the sovereignty of the people over their govern
ernment glimmers in the British system, while it fills our own with
a broad and glowing light.

" Let not your king and parliament in one,
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that
Which is most worthy to be thought upon,
Nor think they are essentially the STATE.
Let them not fancy that the authority

VOL IV 23

178 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

And privileges on them

Conferr'd, are to set up a majesty, .

Or a power or a glory of their own ;

But let them know it was for a deeper life

Which they but represent ;

That there's on earth a yet auguster thing,

Veil'd though it be, than parliament or king."

Gentlemen, you are devoted to the pursuit of knowledge in order
that you may impart it to the state. What Fenelon was to France,
you may be to your country. Before you teach, let me enjoin upon you
to study well the capacity and the disposition of the American peo
ple. I have tried to prove to you only that, while they inherit the
imperfections of humanity, they are yet youthful, apt, vigorous, and
virtuous, and, therefore, that they are worthy, and will make noble
uses of your best instructions.

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY.1

SOCIETY and government are mutually related and inseparable.
The material, intellectual, moral and spiritual conditions of every
people, determine, through either a direct exercise of their will or
their passive consent, the nature and form of their government.
Reasoning from the attributes of the Creator and from the constitu
tion of man, we justly conclude that a high stage of social happiness
is attainable, and that beneficent government is therefore ultimately
possible. Any different theory makes the hopes which sustain virtue
delusive, and the Deity, who inspires them, a demon, equally to be
feared and hated. Experience, however, teaches us that the advances
of mankind toward such happiness and government are very slow.
Poetry, indeed, often presents to us pleasing scenes of national
felicity ; but these are purely imaginary, while history is an almost
unrelieved narrative of political crimes and public dangers and
calamities.

We discover, by induction, moral laws as inflexible as the material
laws of the universe. We know, therefore, that the tardiness of
political progress results from a failure thus far to discover or apply
those moral laws. The failure, at first view, excites surprise. Social
melioration is apparently an object of general and intense desire.
Certainly, the arts which subserve material safety, subsistence and
comfort, have been eminently improved. We construct useful
engines recently conceived ; we search the whole surface of the
round earth with comparative ease ; we know the appointed courses
and seasons of worlds which we can scarcely see. It is doubtful
whether the arts of architecture, painting, sculpture and poetry, are
susceptible of higher perfection. Why, then, does political science
remain obscure, and the art of government uncertain and perplexed.

It happens, in some degree, because material wants have hitherto
exacted excessive care ; in some degree, because the advantages which

1 An oration at Plymouth, December 21, 1855.

180 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

result from political improvements are indirect and diffusive ; but
chiefly because the science is in its nature recondite, and the art
intrinsically difficult.

Metaphysics is a science confessedly abstruse, and generally
regarded as irksome and fruitless. Lord Bacon so pronounces, and
he explains : " For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon mat
ter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh
according to the stuff, and is limited thereby ; but if it work upon
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings
forward, indeed, cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of
thread and work, but of no substance or profit." How could the
study of groups be either easier or more satisfactory than that of
individual man ? The same philosopher confesses that " government
is a part of knowledge, secret and retired."

Consider only one state. Its magnitude is immense, its outlines
are indistinct, it is without symmetry of parts ; its principles and
dispositions are a confused aggregate of the imperfectly understood
principles and dispositions of many thousands or even many millions
of men. The causes which have chiefly given form and direction
to these principles and dispositions are either unknown or forgotten ;
those which are now modifying them are too subtle for our examina
tion. The future of states involves further conditions, which lie
outside of the range of human foresight, and therefore are called
accidents. Human life is short, while the process of induction in
political science reaches through generations, and even ages. Phi
losophers seldom enjoy facilities for that process. Hence, they
" make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their dis
courses are as the stars, which give little light, because they are so
high." Statesmen, on the contrary, " write according to the states
where they live, what is received law, and not what ought to be law."

A constitutional alteration is often necessary to secure a desirable
social improvement ; but such an alteration cannot be made without
a previous change of public opinion in the state, and even of opinion
in surrounding states ; for nations are social persons, and members
of a universal commonwealth. Habit resists such changes. Timi
dity, though looking forward, is short-sighted ; and with far-sighted
veneration, which always looks backward, opposes such changes.
Laws, however erroneous, or however arbitrarily established, acquire
a supposed sanctity from the ceremony of their enactment, and

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 181

derive great strength from protracted acquiescence. In a despotic
state, no subject can move changes. In a free one, each member
may oppose, and opponents more easily combine than advocates.
Ambition is the ruling passion of states. It is blind to defects and
dangers, while hurrying them on in careers of aggression and aggran
dizement. The personal interests and ambitions of many effective
members of the state cling to its institutions, however erroneous or
injurious, and protect them against innovation. Reform can only
appeal to reason and conscience. Conservatism arouses prejudice,
cupidity and fear, and adroitly excites and directs hatred against the
person of the reformer. Retaliation too naturally follows ; and so
the controversy, which properly ought to be a public and dispassionate
one, changes imperceptibly into a heated conflict of factions. Human
ity and benevolence are developed only with increasing knowledge
and refinement. Hence, castes and classes long remain ; and these,
although all equally interested in a proposed melioration, are, by an
artful direction of their mutual antipathies, made to defeat it by their
implacable contentions. Material interests are immediately roused
and combined in opposition, because they suffer from the least dis
turbance. The benefits of a social change are more distant, and
therefore distrusted and undervalued. The law of progress certainly
does not require changes of institutions to be made at the cost of
public calamities, or even of great private inconveniences. But
that law is, nevertheless, inexorable. A necessary reformation will
have its way, peacefully if favored, violently, if resisted. In this
sense, the Founder of Christianity confessed that he had come
upon the earth to bring, not peace, but a sword. Revolutions are
not divinely appointed attendants of progress, nor is liberty necessa
rily born of social convulsion, and baptized with blood. Revolu
tions, on the contrary, are the natural penalties for unwise persistence
in error, and servile acquiescence in injustice and oppression. Such
revolutions, moreover, are of doubtful success. Most men engage
readily enough in civil wars, and for a flash are hot and active ; but
they cool from natural unsteadiness of temper, and abandon their ob
jects, and, destitute alike of principle, honor and true courage, betray
themselves, their associates, and even their cause, however just and
sacred. Happily, however, martial revolutions do not always fail. In
some cases, the tempers and dispositions of the nation undergo a propi
tious change ; it becomes generous, brave and self-denying, and free-

182 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

dom consequently gains substantial and enduring triumphs. It is hard,
in such cases, to separate the share of fortune from that of merit, in
analyzing the characters of heroes. Nor is it absolutely necessary.
The martial heroism of such revolutions is wisely honored, even with
exaggeration, because such honors stimulate a virtuous and healthful
emulation. Mankind seek out the noblest among the successful
champions, and investing him with imaginary excellence in addition
to his real merit, set him apart as an object of universal veneration
to the world's end. We recognize such impersonations in Tell and
Alfred, in Wallace and Washington.

These successful martial revolutions, however, only consummate
changes which were long before projected and prepared by bold,
thoughtful, earnest and persevering reformers. There is justly due,
therefore, to these reformers, at least some of the homage which
redeemed nations award to their benefactors. We shall increase that
tribute, if we reflect that the sagacity which detects the roots and
causes from which national calamities and thraldoms spring, and
proceeds calmly to remove them, and to avert the need of an ulti
mate sanguinary remedy, or prepare that remedy so that it shall be
effectual, combines the merits of genius, of prudence and humanity,
with those of patriotism. Our admiration of these reformers will
rise still higher when we remember that they always are eminently
good men, denied the confidence and sympathies of the country
which they are endeavoring to save. They are necessarily good
men, because only such can love freedom heartily.

" All others love, not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope or
indulgence than under tyrants. Hence it is that tyrants are not often offended,
nor stand much in doubt of bad men. as being all naturally servile ; but in whom
virtue and true worth most is eminent, these they fear in earnest, as by right their
masters. Against these lie all their hatred and suspicion. Consequently, neither
do bad men hate tyrants, but have been always readiest, with their falsified names
of loyalty and obedience, to color over their base compliances."

The devotion of these real authors of all beneficent revolutions to
the melioration of human society is, therefore, the most perfect and
impressive form of magnanimity.

I know very well that this estimate is not generally allowed ; nor
is the injustice of the case peculiar. It occurs in all other depart
ments of activity. We justly honor the name of Watt, who applied
the ascertained mechanical power of steam to the service of the use-

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 183

fill arts of social life — and the memory of Fulton, who converted the
steam engine into a marine power, and sent it abroad on all lakes,
rivers and oceans, an agent of commerce, knowledge, civilization and
freedom. Yet we seldom recall the previous and indispensable
studies of the Marquis of Worcester, who announced his invention
of the steam engine itself in those words, as full of piety and benevo
lence as of joy:

"Thanks to G-od, next to those which are due for creation and redemption, for
having vouchsafed an insight into so great a secret of nature, beneficial to all man
kind, as this water-commanding engine."

We cheerfully accord renown to Morse, who produced the electric
telegraph ; but we are prone to forget that Franklin discovered the
germ of that great invention, JDV boldly questioning the awe-inspiring
lightnings in their native skies.

There is abundant excuse for the popular neglect of peaceful social
reformers. Either they are engaged in apparently idle and visionary
speculations, or else occupied in what seems even more absurd, an
obstinate contention with the prevailing political philosophy of their
age. Those speculations assume the consistency of science — that
contention, the dignity of knowledge — only when, in some later age,
the principles they announced have been established. In the mean
time, they pass for malcontents and fanatics. The rude taste of
society generally delights in themes and characters which are sound
ing, marvelous, and magnificent ; and prefers the march, the camp,
the siege, the surprise, the sortie, the charge, the battle, with its
quickly vibrating fortunes — the victory, the agonies of the night
which follows it, and the pomp amcl revelry of the day which ban
ishes the complaining memories of that fearful night — to the humani
tarian's placid studies, or the bewildering debates of polemic politics.

Excusable, however, as the injustice is, which I have described, it
is, nevertheless, unwise and injurious. It discourages necessary,
noble and generous efforts, and is chief among the bulwarks of super
stition and despotism. The energies of men can never remain sta
tionary. A nation that will not tolerate the activity of intellectual
energy in the pursuit of political truth, must expect the study of that
truth to cease. A nation that has ceased to produce original and
inventive minds, restless in advancing the landmarks of knowledge
and freedom, from that moment has begun to recede towards igno-

184 OKATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

ranee and slavery. Every stage backwards renders its return more
hopeless.

I am sure that this great error will not last always, and yet I do
not think it is near its end. How long it shall endure, is known
only to Him who, although He commands us to sow and to plant
with undoubting faith that we shall reap and gather the fruits of our
culture, reserves to Himself, nevertheless, not only the control, but
even the knowledge, of the forthcoming seasons.

It is because I am unwilling to forego a proper occasion for disa
vowing that error, that I am here to celebrate, over the graves of the
Forefathers, on this day, devoted to their memories, the virtues, the
labors, and the sufferings of the Puritans of New England and Old
England. My interest in the celebration is not, like your own, a
derived, but only a reflected one. I am not native here, nor was I
born to the manner of this high and holy observance. The dogma
tical expositions of the Christian scheme pronounced by the Puritans
have not altogether commanded my acceptance. I shall, therefore,
refrain from even an approach to those finer parts of my great theme,
justly familiar to your accustomed orators, which reach the profound-
est depths of reverence and love in the bosoms of the lineal descend
ants of the founders of New England. A few years after the death
of Napoleon, I stood before the majestic column in the Place Ven-
dome, that lifts his statue high above the capital of France. When
I asked who scattered there a thousand wreaths of flowers, freshly
gathered, that covered its base, the answer came quickly back, " All
the world." So I, one only of the same vast constituency, cheerfully
cast my garland upon the tomb of the Pilgrims, and lend my voice
to aid your noble purpose of erecting here a worthier and more
deserved monument to the memory of the Pilgrims. It is, indeed,
quite unnecessary to their fame ; yet it is, alas, only too necessary to
correct the basis of the world's judgment of heroic worth. Make
its foundations broad as the domain which the adventurers of the
Mayflower peacefully, and without injustice, rescued from the tramp
of savage tribes ! Let its material be of the imperishable substance
of these everlasting hills ! Let its devices and descriptions be colos
sal, as becomes the emblems and tributes which commemorate a
world's ever-upheaving deliverance from civil and religious despo
tism ! Let its shaft rise so high that it shall cast its alternate shadows,
changing with the progress of the sun in his journey, across thj

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 185

Atlantic and over the intervening mountains to the Pacific coast !
It must, even then, borrow majesty from the rock which was the first
foothold of the Pilgrims on these desolate shores, instead of impart
ing to it sublimity.

But I may not touch the domestic story of your ancestors. Only
a Jewish hand could strike the cymbals with the boldness due to the
theme of the march of the host of Israel, under the guidance of its
changeful pillar of cloud and of fire, while pursued by the chariots
and horsemen of Egypt, through the divinely divided floods of the
Arabian sea; or, without temerity almost sacrilegious, lift from the
waving boughs the harps which the daughters of Jerusalem hung
upon the willows, while by the side of the rivers of Assyria they
sat down, and wept the piteous captivity of their nation, beloved,
but temporarily forsaken of God.

It is a sure way of promoting knowledge and virtue, as well as of
rising to greatness and goodness, to study with due care and rever
ence the operation of sublime principles of conduct in advancing the
progress of mankind. I desire so to contemplate the working of the
leading principle of the Puritans.

I confess that the Puritans neither disclosed nor discovered any
new truths of morals or of government. None such have been dis
covered, at least since the Divine Teacher set forth the whole system
of private and public ethics among the olive groves, on that one
which was his favorite among the mountains that look down upon
Jerusalem.

Nor was it their mission to institute a new progress of mankind.
Although the eastern nations, the first to enjoy the light of civiliza
tion, had, long before the age of the Puritans, sunk into that deep
sleep from which there is as yet no awaking, yet Europe was even
then full of energy, enterprise and hope. The better elements of
the oriental and mediterranean civilizations had survived and, coop
erating with the pure influences of Christianity, were enlightening
and refining the southern and western nations. The western church,
which until recently was unpartitioned, had long defended the faith
against the Saracens, and protected feeble states against the
aggressions of ambitious princes. It still held the nations in the
bonds of a common fraternity. Nor had it forgotten to proselyte
after the primitive manner, by inculcating morality and charity.
It had, by its potent command, addressed to the conscience of

VOL. IV. 24

186 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

Christendom, abolished throughout Europe that system of personal
servitude in which a. large, perhaps the largest, portion of every com
munity had been held, under every form of government. It bore
its testimony steadily against that system, everywhere declaring that
"God and nature equally cry out against human slavery; that serfs
and slaves are a part of the human family which Christ died to re
deem ; and that equality is an essential incident of that brotherhood
which he enjoins as a test by which his disciples shall be known."

The foundations of that comprehensive international code, which
is now everywhere accepted, were broadly laid. It was then clearly
taught that "there are in nature certain fountains of justice, from
which all pure civil laws flow, varying only in this, that as waters
take tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they run, so
do civil laws differ according to the regions and governments where
they are planted." Luther had already summoned Europe to a new
and more vigorous morality, and Calvin's sharp voice was ringing
through the continent, calling the faithful away from all ostentatious
ceremonies of worship, to that pure and spiritual one which God
prefers " before all temples." The feudal policy, although founded
in very imperfect conceptions of civil society, had saved, through
the recent decline, many personal and political rights and privileges
which otherwise would have been swept away, as they were in Asia,
by the desolating hand of absolute power. Chivalry, a wild vine,
engrafted upon Christianity, was bearing abundant fruits of courage,
constancy, gallantry, munificence, honor and clemency. The ma
chinery of mercenary armies was not yet perfected, and the security
of government was still held to depend, not on laws and force, but
on the approval and sympathies of the people. Commerce had dis
covered that the oceans were designed, not to separate, but to unite
nations, and was extending its field over all habitable climes, and
taking on the dignity of its new functions as an auxiliary of empire.
Manufactures had been incorporated as a distinct wheel in the en
ginery of national wealth ; and the productive classes had already
attained a position among the ruling elements of states. A wise
policy of liberal naturalization was breaking up local septs and clans,
and distributing the seeds of material and social improvement
throughout both hemispheres. Indolence, expense and faction, had
prepared that decline of aristocratic orders which still continues.
Just notions of the free tenure of lands, and even that great idea of

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 187

the universal freedom of labor, which is now agitating the world,
prevailed quite widely. Italy,

" The dark'ned ages' last remaining light,"

had never failed to present examples of republican institutions. The
monarchical constitutions of that period contained sharply-defined
limitations, and they were vigorously guarded and defended. It was
a general theory, that the subject could not be taxed without con
sent of the legislature, and that princes could only govern in con
formity to laws. England especially had a parliament, the type of
modern legislatures, trial by jury, magna charta and the common
law, constituting one fourfold and majestic arch for the support of
civil liberty. She had, moreover, emancipated herself from the
supremacy of the See of Eome, and the popular. mind was intently
engaged equally in the pursuit of theological truth, and in the appli
cation of the organic laws to the maintenance and defence of public
and private rights.

It was the age of Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon and Milton. Poetry
had risen from lyric beauty to epic dignity ; history, from fabulous
chronicle to philosophical argument ; and learning, from words and
forms, to things and laws. Reasoning from these circumstances, it
seemed that the onward progress of society was assured, and that
civil and religious liberty were about to be established on broad and
enduring foundations.

Nevertheless, a reaction had already begun, whose force is even
yet unspent. The See of Rome took alarm from the movement of
the reformation, and combined with kings against nations. Henry
YIII arrogated to himself the very same spiritual supremacy,
which, with the aid of the people and in the name of Christian lib
erty, he had wrested from the pope ; and with singular caprice em
ployed it in compelling conformity to the obnoxious faith and
worship of Rome, conducted by ecclesiastics who derived their ap
pointments from himself, and held them at his own pleasure. The
reign of Mary inaugurated that relapse to Rome, which the caprices
of Henry had rendered inevitable. Elizabeth reinstalled the refor
mation, but renewed the regal claim to spiritual supremacy. -The
people resisted all these ecclesiastical usurpations of the Tudors, and
they, in retaliation, boldly attempted to subvert the constitutional
authority of parliament. Elizabeth, under the advice of sagacious

188 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

statesmen, and supported by temporizing churchmen, resorted to the
favorite expedient of politicians — compromise. Compromise is a
feasible and often a necessary mode of adjusting conflicting material
interests, but can never justly be extended to the subversion of the
natural rights or the moral duties of subjects or citizens. Even
where a compromise is proper in itself, it derives all its strength
from the fair and full consent of all the parties whom it binds.
Elizabeth caused the Roman Catholic creed, discipline and ritual to
be revised and altogether recast, under the direction of leaders of
some of the conflicting sects ; and thus a new system was produced,
which, as was claimed, stood midway between the uncompromising
church of Rome and equally uncompromising latitudinarian Protes
tantism. The new system was established by law, and a hierarchy
was appointed by the crown, to whose care it was committed. Ab
solute and even active conformity was commanded to be enforced by
pains and penalties in special and unconstitutional tribunals, acting
without appeal, and in derogation of the common law. The new
system, whatever might be its religious and ecclesiastical harmony
with the Divine precepts, was, in its civil aspects, a mere political
institution. It was offensive and odious to a zealous people, who,
though divided into opposing sects, agreed in regarding the political
authority assumed by the state as a sacrilegious usurpation. The
friends of civil liberty also1* condemned it, as a turning of the batte
ries that had been won from the Roman See, in the name of liberty,
against the very fortress of liberty itself. Nevertheless, a portion
of the clergy, who had now become dependent on the state, members
of the privileged classes, always disinclined to political agitation,
placemen and waiters for places, the timid, the venal and the frivo
lous, early gave in their adhesion, and the compromise daily gained
wider acquiescence, through the appliances of political seduction,
proscription and persecution. The Church of England was built oa
that compromise. Incorporated into the constitution with such aux
iliary political powers, it must necessarily augment the influence of
the throne, and be subversive equally of the civil and religious lib
erties of the people.

A conservative power, a new conservative power, was necessary to
prevent that fatal consummation. That power appeared in the form
of a body of obscure religious sectaries, men of monastical devout-
ness, yet retaining the habits of domestic and social life; simple, but

THE . PILGIMMS AND LIBEKTY. 189

not unlearned; unambitious; neither rich enough to forget their
God, nor yet poor enough to debase their souls ; content with mecha
nical and agricultural occupations in villages and rural districts, yet
conscious of the liberty with which Christ had made them free, and
therefore bold enough to confront ecclesiastical and even royal au
thority in the capital. Serious, as became their religious profession,
they grew under persecution to be grave, formal and austere. Cho
sen emissaries of God, as they believed, they willingly became out
casts among men. Divinely constituted depositaries of pure and
abounding truth, as they thought, they announced, as their own rule
of conduct, that no article of faith, no exercise of ecclesiastical au
thority, no rule of discipline, and not even a shred of ceremonial or
sacrament, should be accepted, unless sanctioned by direct warrant
from the Scriptures, as interpreted by themselves, in the free exer
cise of their own consciences, illuminated by the Holy Spirit. God,
although a benevolent Father, was yet, as they believed, jealous
towards disobedience of His revealed will, and would punish con
scious neglect of its commandments. These were the Puritans.
They came into the world to save it from despotism ; and the world
comprehended them not. They refused to acquiesce in the compro
mise, because it involved a surrender of natural rights, and a viola
tion of principles of duty toward God. Nevertheless, they were
true Christians, and, therefore, they declined to set up their own
convictions as a standard for others who subscribed to the Christian
faith, and freely allowed to all their fellow subjects the same broad
religious liberty which they claimed for themselves. They persisted
in non-conformity. The more hardly pressed, the more firmly they
persisted. The more firm their persistence, the more severe and
unrelenting was the persecution they endured. More than a hun
dred years virtually outlawed as citizens and subjects, and outcasts
from the established church, the Puritans bore unflinchingly their
unwavering testimony against the compromise, before magistrates
and councils, in the pillory, under stripes, in marches, in camps, in
prison, in flight, in exile, among licentious soldiery and dissolute
companions in neighboring lands ; on the broad and then unexplored
ocean, when the mariners lost their reckoning, and the ship's supplies
became scanty and her seams opened to the waves ; on unknown
coasts, homeless, houseless, famishing and dying ; in the leafless for
est, surrounded by ice and snow, fearful of savage beasts and con-

190 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

fronting savage men. The compromise policy failed. Civil and
religious liberty was not overborne; it rose erect; it triumphed; it
is still gaining new and wider and more enduring triumphs; and
tyrants have read anew the lesson, so often wasted upon them before,
that where mankind stand upon their convictions of moral right and
duty, in disobedience to civil authority, there is no middle course
of dealing with them between the persecution that exterminates and
the toleration that satisfies. The Puritans were not exterminated —
they were not satisfied.

The Puritans thus persisted and prevailed because they had adopted
one true, singular and sublime principle of civil conduct, namely,
that the subject in every state has a natural right to religious liberty
of conscience. They knew too well the weakness of human guaran
ties of civil liberty, and the frailty of civil barriers against tyranny.
They, therefore, did not affect to derive the right of toleration from
the common law, or the statutes of the realm, or magna charta, or
even from that imaginary contract between the sovereign and the
subject which some publicists had, about that time, invented as a
basis for civil rights. They resorted directly to a law, broader, older
and more stable than all these — a law, universal in its application
and in its obligation, established by the Creator and Judge of all
men, and, therefore, paramount to all human constitutions. Alger
non Sidney, Locke and Bacon, and even Hooker, chosen and ablest
champion of the church of England, demonstrated the existence of
this law, deriving the evidences of it, and of its universal nature and
application, from natural and revealed religion, in the high debates
of the seventeenth century. Blackstone, Yattel and Montesquieu,
have built upon it their respective systems of municipal law, public
law, and government; and our own congress of 1776 sunk into the
same enduring foundation the corner-stone of this vast and towering
structure of American freedom. The Puritans could, therefore, lay
no claim to the discovery of this great principle, or to the promul
gation of it. But the distinguished glory of having first reduced it
from speculation to active and effectual application, as a conventional
rule of political conduct, is all their own.

This great principle was not only a disturbing, but it was also an
offensive and annoying one. It was an appeal from the highest sove
reign power in the state to a sovereign power still higher, and there
fore was thought seditious. It, of course, encountered then the same

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 191

f

ingenious sophistry which, although often overthrown, has not even
yet been silenced. It was argued that, if individual conscience may
rightly refuse to acquiesce in the results of the general conviction
collected by the state and established as law, it may also rightfully
resist the law by force, which would produce disorder and lead to
anarchy. It was argued, also, that, insomuch as civil government is
of divine appointment, it must be competent to act as an arbiter
between conflicting consciences, and that implicit obedience to its
decrees, as such arbiter, is, therefore, a religious duty. As well
might have been foreseen, there arose, on the side of the Puritans,
contestants worthy of the majestic principle they defended — contest
ants, whose voices, then silenced by persecution or drowned by pub
lic clamor, have reached this more congenial age, and are now giving
form and condensation to the whole science of political ethics. Not
again recalling the names of Locke and Sidney, there were Edwards,
profoundest metaphysician of all ages, and Milton, always discon
tented and distrusted among men, but familiar with angels, and
learned in the counsels of Heaven. It was their sufficient reply, that
unenlightened and unsanctified consciences will never disturb despo
tism with their remonstrances, and that consciences illuminated and
purified cannot be perverted to error ; that God has delegated to no
human tribunal authority to interfere between Himself and the inoni-
.tor which He has implanted in the bosom of every moral being, and
which is responsible to its Author alone ; and that the boundaries
of human authority are the boundaries of Eternal justice, ascertained
by the teachings of that monitor which, where it is free and fully
awakened, must always be the same. They answered further, and
with decisive energy, that traditions and compacts subversive of free
dom were altogether void, because the masses of men living at one
time in a state, must always have supreme control over their own
conduct, in all that concerns their duty to God and their own happiness.
Fortunately, the Puritans had keen sagacity. They would not
ask liberty of conscience as a political concession ; because, if granted
as such, it might be revoked. Fortunately they were not purposely
a political or civil body, but a purely religious one ; a church in the
wilderness, as they described themselves ; a church without secular
combinations, interests or ends ; a church with no interest but duty,
no end but to avoid the Divine disfavor, and no head but God. For
tunately, also, the age was as yet a religious one. Skepticism, which

192 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

has since so wildly overrun large portions of Europe, and scattered
its poison even here, had not then entered the world ; and the ple
nary nature and authority of the Holy Scriptures, to which the Puri*
tans appealed, was universally acknowledged. It was especially
felicitous that the lives of the Puritans vindicated their sinceritj^
magnanimity and piety. Equally in domestic and social life, and in
the great transactions of the state in which they became concerned,
their conduct was without fear and without reproach. With all
these advantages, the Puritans, as naturally as wisely, referred them
selves to the Divine revelations for the principle which they pro
mulgated. With effective simplicity, they confined themselves to
the main point in debate. They neither pretended to define nor to
make summaries of all the natural rights of man which tyranny
might invade, nor to trace out the ultimate secular consequences of
the great principle on which they insisted. They rested the defense
of the one natural right which was distinctly invaded, on no grounds
of expediency or of public utility, but on the grounds alone that
God had given it, and that man could not either invade or surrender
it, without sin against the Divine majesty. It was the peculiarity of
the right thus invaded and defended, that lent to the Puritans their
crowning advantage. Keligion is the profoundest and most univer
sal affection of our nature. Apparently the cause of innumerable
differences and endless controversies, it is, nevertheless, the one com
mon and principal element which controls the actions of all men.
It sustained the Puritans. It gradually won for them the respect
and sympathies of men and of nations. The right assailed brought
equally conscience and the love of liberty, the two most elastic and
enduring springs of activity, into resistance. Its invasion was sacri
legious, because it assumed to add to the Divine commandments, and
to take away from disobedience to them the curses that are written
against it in the Book of Life. Primitive apostolical eloquence,
which reminds us of the inspired apology of Paul before Agrippa,
revived in its defense. The Puritans spake from their prisons after
this manner :

"Upon a careful examination of the Holy Scriptures, we find the English hie
rarchy to be different from Christ's institution, and to be derived from Antichrist,
being the same the pope left in this land, to which we dare not subject ourselves.
We farther find that God has commanded all that believe the gospel to walk in that
holy path and order which he has appointed in his church. Wherefore, in the

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 193

reverend fear of his name, we have joined ourselves together, and subjected our
souls and bodies to those laws and ordinances, and have chosen to ourselves such
a ministry of pastors, teachers, elders and deacons, as Christ has given to his
church on earth to the world's end, hoping for the promised assistance of his grace
in our attendance upon him, notwithstanding any prohibition of men, or what by
men can be done unto us. We are ready to prove our church order to be war
ranted by the word of God, allowable by her majesty's laws, and no ways preju
dicial to the sovereign power, and to disprove the public hierarchy, worship and
government, by such evidence as our adversaries shall not be able to withstand,
protesting, if we fail herein, not only willingly to sustain such deserved punish
ment as shall be inflicted upon us, but to become conformable for the future, if we
overthrow not our adversaries. * * * We therefore, in the name of God and
of our sovereign the queen, pray that we may have the benefit of the laws and
of the public charters of the land, namely, that we may be received to bail, till
we be by order of law convicted of some crime deserving of bonds. We plight
our faith unto God, and our allegiance to her majesty, that we will not commit
anything unworthy of the gospel of Christ, or to the disturbance of the common
peace and good order of the land, and that we will be forthcoming at such reason
able warning as your lordship shall command. Oh, let us not perish before trial
and judgment, especially imploring and crying out to you for the same. How
ever, we take the Lord of heaven and earth, and his angels, together with your
own consciences and all persons in all ages, to whom this our supplication may
come, to witness that we have here truly advertised your honors of our case and
maze, and have in all humility offered to come to Christian trial."

How sublimely, and yet with touching effect does this opening of
their cause by the Puritans illustrate the Divine instruction that the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom !

Let us consider now the scope and the full import of the Puritan
principle. That scope is not narrowed by any failure of the Puri
tans themselves to comprehend it, or even by any neglect on their
part to cover it fully in their own political conduct. Christianity is
the same, however narrowed or perverted by erroneous creeds or
practices among the faithful. Nor is the real merit of the Puritans
diminished, because they did not fully comprehend all possible appli
cations of the principle they maintained. Human progress is only
the following of an endless chain, suspended from the throne of God.
The links of that chain are infinite in number. The human hand
can grasp only one of them at once.

The Puritan principle of the inviolability of the right of con
science, necessarily covers the inviolability of all the acknowledged
natural rights of man. as well those which concern his duty to him
self and his duty to others, as those which arise out of his direct
duties toward God. Certainly the Creator and Ruler of the Uni

VOL. IY. 25

194 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

verse, the beneficent Father and Preserver of all life, the universal
Lawgiver and Judge of all moral beings, is not in any human sense
a jealous and exacting God, incensed by the withholding of homage
due to Himself, and yet regardless of the neglect of other human
duties which He has prescribed. Assuredly, when He commands us
not only to walk humbly before Himself, but also to perfect our own
nature, and to do justice, and love mercy toward other men, He
has given us the same absolute right to the free exercise of, our
faculties, in performing these latter duties, that He has given us for
the performance of the first. Nor is there any homage to God so
acceptable as the upright heart and pure. He that loveth not his
brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen ?

The Puritan principle further involves the political equality of all
men. Absolute rights arise out of the moral constitution of man.
There is only one moral constitution of all men. The absolute
rights of all men are therefore the same. Political equality is
nothing else than the full enjoyment, by every member of the state,
of the absolute rights which belong equally to all men. Any
abridgment of that equality, on whatever consideration, except by
discriminating justice in the punishment of crimes, is therefore for
bidden to human government by the Divine authority. The Puritans
so understood their own great principle, in its bearing upon the
right of conscience.

"Liberty of conscience (said one of their earliest organs) is the natural right
of every man. * * * He that will look back on past times, and examine into
the true causes of the subversion and devastation of states and countries, will find
it owing to the tyranny of princes and the persecution of priests. The ministers
of the established church say, ' If we tolerate one sect, we must tolerate all.'
This is true. They have as good a right to their consciences as to their clothes or
estates. No opinions or sentiments of religion are cognizable by the magistrates,
any further than they are inconsistent with the peace of civil government."

But this latitude of the principle of tolerance has been always
vigorously and efficiently opposed by prejudice, pride and bigotry,
in every church, in every sect, in every state and under every form
of government. Each sect has claimed liberty of conscience for it
self as a natural right, but with gross inconsistency, which invali
dated its own argument, has denied that liberty to other sects — as if
the Supreme Kuler had made men to agree, instead of differing, upon

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 195

non-essential as well as upon essential articles of religious faith.
The principle has nevertheless continually gained, and is still gaining
fresh triumphs. After a long contest in England, toleration was
granted to all but Roman Catholics and Jews. One hundred and
fifty years after the organization of the Puritans, the principle
entered into all the American constitutions. Fifty years later, it
emancipated the Roman Catholics throughout Great Britain. Only
a year ago, it removed the disfranchisement of the Jews in the
British dominions. It has thus irrevocably become a part of the con
stitution of that great empire.

The Puritan principle draws closely after it the consequence of
an absolute separation of church and state, for the reason that the
toleration of conscience can in no other way be practically and com
pletely established. That separation has been made in the Ameri
can constitutions, with abundant advantage to both the cause of
religion and the cause of good government. Great Britain is ad
vancing steadily toward the adoption of the same broad, just and
beneficent policy. The separation of church and state may therefore
be regarded as a contribution made by the Puritans towards perfect
ing the art of government.

The political equality of men has also met with obstinate resistance,
and has also achieved many and auspicious triumphs. After one
hundred and fifty years of controversy, it was carried into the
British constitution by the judicial decision in Somerset's case, that a
slave could not breathe the air of England. Ten or fifteen years
later, it was theoretically adopted and promulgated in the declaration
of American independence. The suppression of the African slave
trade, by conventions of the states of Christendom, transferred the
same principle to the law of nations. The abolition of African sla
very by all of the European nations, and, with few exceptions, also
by all of the American states, is indicative of the universal adoption
of the same great principle by all Christian nations, at some period
not far distant.

You are now prepared, I trust, for another and still more compre
hensive view of the Puritan principle, namely : that its full and per
fect development is the pure system of republican government.
Such was its marked tendency in the beginning. "A generous dis
dain of one man's will," says a truly philosophical writer, "is to
republics what chastity is to woman, a conservative principle, not to

196 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

be argued upon or subjected to calculations of utility." Puritanism
was a protest against the will of one man, whether that man was
Pope or King. What form of government, other than the pure re
public, can there be where there is complete separation of church
and state and where absolute political equality prevails ? Abolish
the connection of church and state and all political distinctions be
tween the members of the state, in any of the kingdoms or empires
of Europe, and what would remain, or could exist there, but a pure
republic? If the argument is not yet conclusive, consider then that
the Puritan principle tends to the pure republic, by virtue of its con
servative protection of the individual member of the state against its
corporate oppression ; by virtue, also, of its elevation of individual
conscience, thus bringing down the importance of the aggregate mass,
and raising the personal importance and dignity of the subject or
citizen ; by virtue of the importance it attaches to personal rights,
exalting them above material interests, and so making those rights,
and not property, the primary object of the care of government;
and by virtue, still further, of the openness, directness and frankness
of conduct which it requires. Equal tolerance in religion, and equal
enjoyment of the other absolute rights of man, are inconsistent with
the secrecy and fraud which monarchy and aristocracy necessarily
employ, and cannot endure private councils or cabals. The Puritan
principle tends to the pure republic still more obviously, because it
seeks to abridge the powers of government, and substitute consent
and free acquiescence as the bonds of union between the members of
the state, instead of armed or military force. This operation of the
principle is happily illustrated in our own republic, which, although
constituted by an ever-increasing number of distinct states, has, nev
ertheless, been held together eighty years, and is, I trust, to be held
together forever, without, for that purpose, even the shadow of a
standing army, an anomaly as pleasing as it is full of profitable in
struction.

Let it be confessed that the Puritans, as a body, were slow to dis
cern these consequences and tendencies. They disclaimed them long
and with unquestionable sincerity.

" Although (said they to Elizabeth) Her Majesty be incensed against us, as if
we would obey no laws, we take the Lord of heaven and earth to witness that we
acknowledge, from the bottom of our hearts, Her Majesty to be our lawful Queen
placed over us for our good; and we give God our most humble and hearty thanks

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 197

for her happy government ; and both in public and private we constantly pray for
her prosperity. We renounce all foreign power, and acknowledge Her Majesty's
supremacy to be lawful and just. We detest all error and heresy. Yet we desire
that Her Majesty will not think us disobedient, seeing we suffer ourselves to be
displaced rather than yield to some things required. Our bodies and goods, and
all we have are in Her Majesty's hands ; only our souls which we reserve to our
God, who is able to save and condemn us."

Long afterward, and after the Puritans in America had practically
enjoyed a pure republican government through some generations,
the colony of Massachusetts saluted Charles II. on his restoration,
with this loyal address :

"To enjoy our liberty, and to walk according to the faith and order of the gos
pel, was the cause of us transplanting ourselves with our wives, our little ones and
our substance, choosing the pure Christian worship, with a good conscience in this
remote wilderness, rather than the pleasures of England with submission to the
impositions of the hierarchy, to which we could not yield without an evil conscience.
We are not seditious to the interests of Caesar."

Nevertheless, the reluctance of the Puritans to admit the full ten
dencies of their principle cannot justly excite surprise. We neces
sarily fear, and feel our way. when we are treading on unknown
ground, or in the dark. "Let no one who begins an innovation,"
says Machiavelli, u expect that he shall stop it at his pleasure, or
regulate it according to his intention." The Puritans never aimed
to be, and never consciously were secular or political reformers/
Their field of labor, as they bounded it, lay all within the church of
Christ. They sought not an earthly republic, but only the kingdom
of heaven. When sometimes the thought presented itself, that, by
reason of their fidelity to their profession, a purer and better politi
cal state would arise out of the commotions through which they
were passing, it seemed still to them a merely secondary object, sub
ordinate to the one sole religious purpose for which they had com
bined. We all have learned how slowly the sentiment of indepen
dence, and the principle of republicanism, ripened in these colonies
during the early stages of the revolutionary contest, and how these
free institutions rose suddenly under the hands of a people who
were even yet protesting an enduring loyalty to the throne and par
liament of Great Britain. It was not so, however, with the master
spirits, Adams, Otis and Jefferson. Nor was it so in the case of the
Puritans with Milton.

198 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

" No man (said he), who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men
naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and
were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command and not to obey.
The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what is only derivative,
transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good
of them all, in whom the power yet fundamentally remains and cannot be taken
from them, without a violation of their natural birthright."

How, then, has it happened that civil consequences so vast have
followed the merely religious action of the Puritans ? The apparent
mystery is easily explained. Civil liberty is an object of universal
and intense desire. The cause of the Puritans identified itself with
the cause of civil liberty in England, and ultimately, though on their
part unconsciously, became the leading element of that cause, both
in Europe and America. Thus identified and eminent the Puritan
cause effected the establishment of a republic which endured
through a short but glorious period in England. Though the British
nation soon relapsed, and monarchy was restored, yet the Puritan
principle, nevertheless, modified the constitution, and gave to it the
popular form which it now bears. A throne yet towers above that
edifice, but it is no longer the throne of the Stuarts or of the Tudorsr
or even of the Plantagenets. It is simply ornamental. The lords,
spiritual and temporal, still constitute distinct estates, and retain
their ancient dignity. But their real political power and influence
have passed away, and the commons, no longer contesting inch by
inch for their constitutional rights, are virtually the rulers of the
British empire. France oscillates so uneasily and tremulously be
tween the republic and military despotism, that no one who is hope
ful of progress doubts where the needle will settle at last. It has
become a proverb, that Europe must soon be either republican or
despotic. When the compromise system of limited monarchy shall
have retired, and only the two systems of republicanism and despo
tism are left to confront each other on that continent, in an age of
still increasing intellectual and moral energies, the triumph of the
former, though uncertain in the points of time and manner and in
regard to the field of contest, will nevertheless be assured. The
Puritan principle is shaping, already, future republics on the islands
and continents of the Pacific ocean, and on the heretofore neglected
coasts of Africa, while the American continent is everywhere
crowned with free institutions, due to its still more direct and poten
tial influence. From Plymouth Kock to Labrador, to Magellan, and

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 199

around, by bay, gulf and headland, to ISTootka Sound, the republi
can system, more or less developed, and more or less firmly estab
lished, pervades this hemisphere. Such are the already ripening and
ripened fruits of the vigorous plants of Puritanism, gathered equally
and promiscuously from the parent stock in England, and from the
exotic one so carefully transplanted on this rugged coast, and so
sedulously watered, watched, cherished and reared, by the Pilgrim
Fathers.

Behold how the unfolding, justly and naturally, as I trust, of a
theme primarily local, sectional, and even sectarian, has brought us
to the solution of the great problem of the progress of mankind
toward social happiness and beneficent government. That higher
stage of social happiness, that purer form of republican government,
to which we are tending, are but faintly shadowed forth in the dis
turbed transition scenes through which we are passing, and even in
the most perfect institutions which have yet been framed from the
confused materials of dilapidated and decaying systems. Present
defects and imperfections no more warrant conclusions against that
better future which has been indicated, than the incompleteness of
the development of Christian principles justifies a fear of the ulti
mate failure of Christianity itself.

It is a law of human progress, that no work or structure proceed
ing from human hands shall come forth complete and perfect. Im
provement, at the cost of labor and of trial, and even suffering —
endless improvement, at such cost, is the discipline of human na
ture.

What, then, shall be the rule of our own conduct ? Shall we grasp
and hold fast to existing constitutions, with all their defects and defi
ciencies, and save them from needed amendment, or shall we amend
and complete them, and so prevent reactions, and the need of san
guinary revolutions ? Shall we compromise the principles of justice,
freedom, and humanity, by compliances with the counsels of inte
rested cupidity or slavish fear, or shall we stand fast always in their
defense? I know no better rule of conduct than that of the Puri
tans. Indeed, I know none other that is sure, or even safe. Nor
can even that great rule be followed successfully without adopting
their own noble temper and spirit. They were faithful, patient, and
persevering. They forgot themselves, and their own immediate in
terests and ambitions, and labored and suffered, that afrer-coming

200 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

generations, among which we belong, might be safer and freer and
happier than themselves. It can never be too well understood that
the generations of men, in moral and political culture, sow and plant
for their successors. " Let it not be grievous to you," said Bradford,
the meek but brave arid constant leader, to the small arid forlorn
Pilgrim commonwealth, that he was landing on this rock in mid
winter — " Let it not be grievous to you that you have been made
instruments to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours,
to the world's end." Such was the only worldly encouragement the
truthful founder of the Plymouth colony could give to his guileless
comrades. Happily, the Pilgrims needed no others.

It is a familiar law of nature, that whatever grows rapidly also
declines speedily. Time and trial are necessary to secure the full
vigor without which no enterprise can endure. It was only by long,
perilous and painful endurance and controversy, that the Puritans
acquired the discipline which, without consciousness of their own,
qualified them to be the leaders of the nations.

Need I add, that there can be neither great deeds nor great endu
rance without faith ; and that true, firm, enduring faith can only be
found in generous and noble minds? The true reformer, therefore,
must calculate on frequent and ever-recurring treacheries and deser
tions by allies, such as Milton graphically describes :

" Another sort there is, who, coining in the course of these affairs to have their
share in great actions above the form of law or custom, at least to give their voice
and approbation, begin to swerve and almost shiver at the majesty and grandeur
of some noble deed ; as if they were newly entered into a great sin, disputing
precedents, forms and circumstances, when the commonwealth nigh perishes for
want of deeds in substance done with just and faithful expedition. To these I
wish better instruction and virtue equal to their calling."

Nor will all these qualities suffice, without discretion and gentle
ness as well as firmness of temper. The courageous reformer will
shrink from no controversy, when the field is open, the battle is set,
and the lists are fair. But, on the other hand, he will neither make
nor seek occasions for activity ; and he will be always unimpassioned.
Truth is not aggressive ; but, like the Christian religion, is first pure,
then peaceable. Nor need the reformer fear that occasions for duty
will be wanting. Error and injustice never fail to provoke contest;
because, if unalarmed, they are overbearing and insolent ; if alarmed,
they are rash, passionate and reckless.

THE PILGRIMS AND LIBERTY. 201

The question occurs, Whence shall come the faith, the energy, the
patient perseverance, and the moderation, which are so indispensa
ble? I answer, that all these will be derived from just conceptions
of the great objects of political action. It was so with the Puritans.
Their fixed purpose to retain the right of conscience, fully compre
hended by them, extinguished selfishness and ambition, and called
into activity in their places the fear of God and the love of man.
Let them explain themselves :

" Knowing, therefore, how horrible a thing it is to fall into the hands of the
living God, by doing that which our consciences (grounded upon the truth of
God's Word and the example and doctrine of ancient fathers) do tell us were evil
done, and to the great discrediting of the truth whereof we profess to be teachers,
we have thought good to yield ourselves into the hands of men ; to suffer what
soever God hath appointed us to suffer, for the perfecting of the commandments
of God and a clean conscience before the commandments of men. Not despising
men, therefore, but trusting in God only, we seek to serve Him with a clear con
science so long as we shall live here, assuring ourselves that the things that we
shall suffer for so doing shall be a testimony to the world that great reward is laid
up for us in heaven, where we doubt not but to re.st forever with those that have
before our days suffered for the like."

Contrast these sentiments, so profoundly self- renouncing and rev
erential of God, with the blasphemous egotism of the French revo
lutionists of 1798, and contrast also the slowly formed and slowly
maturing, but always multiplying and ripening fruits of the Puritan
reformation, with the blasted and shriveled benefits of that other
great modern convulsion, and you have an instructive and memora
ble lesson upon the elevation and purity of spirit which alone can
advance human progress.

Increase of wealth and commerce, and, the enlargement of empire,
are not truly primary objects of the American patriot.. These are,
indeed, worthyof his efforts. But the first object isjthe preserver
jion of the spirit" of freedom/which is the soul of the republic itself.
Let that become languid, and the republic itself must languish and*
decline. Let it become extinct, and the republic must disastrously
fall. Let it be preserved and invigorated, and the republic will
spread wider and wider, and its noble institutions will tower higher
and higher. Let it fall, and so its example fail, and the nations will
retrograde. Let it endure, and the world will yet be free, virtuous
and happy. Hitherto, nations have raised monuments to survive
liberty and empire. And they have been successful. Egypt, As-

VOL. IV7. 26

202 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES.

syria, Greece and Italy are full of those monuments. Let our ambi-
tion be the nobler one of establishing liberty n,n^ empire which shall
survive the most stupendous material structures which genius can
devise or art erec'C, with all the facilities .of increasing knowledge an(j

JTTTJJJP, WP.n1t.Tl

Here my reflections on a subject infinitely suggestive come to an
end. They will not be altogether fruitless, if I have been at all
successful in illustrating the truths that, continual meliorations of
society and government are not only possible, but certain; that
human progress is slow, because it is only the unfolding of the
Divine Providence concerning man ; that the task of directing and
aiding that progress is rendered the most difficult of all our labors,
by reason of oar imperfect knowledge of the motives and principles
of human conduct, and of countless unforeseen obstacles to be
encountered ; that this progress, nevertheless, must and will go on,
whether favored or resisted ; that it will go on peacefully, if wisely
favored, and through violence, if unwisely resisted ; that neither
stability nor even safety, can be enjoyed by any state, otherwise than
by rendering exact justice, which is nothing else than pure equality,
to all its members; that the martial heroism, which, invoked after
too long passiveness under oppression and misrule, sometimes achieves
the deliverance of states, is worthy of all the honor it receives ; but •
that the real authors of all benign revolutions, are those who search
out and seek to remove peacefully the roots of social and political
evils, and so avert the necessity for sanguinary remedies ; that the
Puritans of England and America have given the highest and most
beneficent illustration of that conservative heroism which the world
has yet witnessed ; that they have done this by the adoption of a
single, true and noble principle of conduct, and by patient and per
severing fidelity to it; that they thus overcame a demoralizing
political and social reaction, and gave a new and powerful impulse
to human progress; that tyranny is deceitful, and mankind are
credulous, and that therefore political compromises are more danger
ous to liberty than open usurpations ; that the Puritan principle,
which was so sublime and so effective, was nothing else than the
truth, that men retain in every state all the natural rights which are
essential to the performance of personal, social and religious duties ;
that the principle includes the absolute equality of till men, and
therefore tends to a complete development in pure republican sys-

THE PILGKIMS AND LIBERTY. 203

terns ; that it has already modified the institutions of Europe, while
it has brought into existence republican systems, more or less perfect
throughout the American continent, and is fixing and shaping such
institutions wherever civilization is found ; that hindrances, delays
and reactions of political progress are nevertheless unavoidable, but
that they also have corresponding benefits ; that it is our duty to
labor to advance that progress, chiefly by faith, constancy and
perseverance — virtues which can only be acquired by self-renuncia
tion, and by yielding to the motives of the fear of God and the
love of mankind.

Come forward, then, ye nations, states and races — rude, savage,
oppressed and despised — enslaved or mutually warring among
yourselves, as ye are — upon whom the morning star of civilization
hath either not yet dawned or hath only dimly broken amid clouds
and storms, and receive the assurance that its shining shall yet be
complete, and its light be poured down on all alike. Keceive our
pledges that we will wait and watch and strive for the fullness of
that light, by the exercise of faith, with patience and perseverance.
And ye reverend men, whose precious dust is beneath our unworthy
feet, pilgrims and sojourners in this vale of tears no longer, but
kings and princes now at the right hand of the throne of the God
you served so faithfully when on the earth — gather yourselves,
immortal and awful shades, around us, and witness, not the useless
honors we pay to your memories, but our resolves of fidelity to
truth, duty and freedom, which arise out of the contemplation of
the beneficent operation of your own great principle of conduct, and
the ever-widening influence of your holy teachings and Godlike
example.

After the preceding oration had been pronounced the company
sat down to a public dinner,1 at which the following toast was pro
posed :

The Orator of the Day— Eloquent in his tribute to the virtues of the Pilgrims ; faithful, in his
life, to the lessons they taught.

Mr. Seward spoke in response substantially as follows :

LADIES AND G-ENTLEMEN: The Puritans were Protestants, but they were not
protestants against everybody and everything:, right or wrong. They did not
protest indiscriminately against everything they found in England. On the

1 See Memoir, ante page 36.

204 REMARKS AT THE DINNER.

other hand, as we have abundant indications in the works of genius and art
which they left behind them, they had a reverence for all that is good and true •
while they protested against everything that was false and vicious. They had a
reverence for the good taste and the literature, science, eloquence and poetry of
England, and so I trust it is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospi
table, but now rich and prosperous land. They could appreciate poetry, as well
as good sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of a
poet, who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has since. It was
addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey from London to Islington town.
The poet said :

" 'Twas for your pleasure you came here,
You shall go back for mine."

Being a candid and frank man, as one ought to be who addresses the descend
ants of the Puritans, I may say that it was not at all for your pleasure that I came
here. Though I may go back to gratify you. yet I came here for my own pur
poses. The time has. passed away when I could make a distant journey from a
mild climate to a cold, though fair region, without inconvenience ; but there was
one wish, I might almost say there was only one wish of my heart that I was
anxious should be gratified. I had been favored with many occasions to see the
seats of empire in this western world, and had never omitted occasions to see
where the seats of empire were planted, and how they prospered. I had visited
the capital of my own and of many other American states. I had regarded with
admiration the capital of this great republic, in whose destinies, in common with
you all, I feel an interest which can never die. I had seen the capitals of the
British empire, and of many foreign empires, and had endeavored to study for
myself the principles which have prevailed in the foundation of states and
empires. With that view I had beheld a city standing where a migration from
the Netherlands planted an empire on the bay of New York, at Manhattan, or
perhaps more properly at Fort Orange. They sought to plant a commercial
empire, and they did not fail ; but in New York now, although they celebrate the
memories and virtues of fatherland, there is no day dedicated to the colonization
of New York by the original settlers, the immigrants from Holland. I have
visited Wilmington, on Christina creek, in Delaware, where a colony was
planted by the Swedes, about the time of the settlement of Plymouth, and
though the old church built by the colonists still stands there, I learned that there
did not remain in the whole state a family capable of speaking the language, or
conscious of bearing the name of one of the thirty-one original colonists.

I have stood on the spot where a treaty was made by William Penn with the
aborigines of Pennsylvania, where a seat of empire was estaolished by him, and
although the statue of the good man stands in public places, and his memory
remains in the minds of men, yet there is no day set apart for the recollection of
the time and occasion when civil and religious liberty, were planted in that state.
I went still further south, and descending the James river, sought the first colony
of Virginia at Jamestown. There remains nothing but the broken, ruined tower
of a poor church built of brick, in which Pocahontas was married, and over the
ruins of which the ivy now creeps. Not a human being, bond or free, is to be
soen within the circumference of a mile from the spot, nor a town or city as
numerously populated as Plymouth, on the whole shores of the broad, beautiful,

THE PILGRIMS AND PLYMOUTH ROCK. 205

majestic river, between Richmond at the head, and Norfolk, where arms and the
government have established fortifications. Nowhere else in America, then, was
there left a remembrance by the descendants of the founders of colonies, of the
virtues, the sufferings, the bravery, the fidelity to truth and freedom of their
ancestors; and more painful still, nowhere in Europe can be found an acknowledg
ment or even a memory of these colonists. In Holland, in Spain, in Great
Britain, in France, nowhere is there to be found any remembrance of the men
they sent out to plant liberty on this continent. So on the way to the Mississippi,
I saw where De Soto planted the standard of Spain, and in imagination at least,
I followed the march of Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru ; but their memory
has gone out. Civil liberty perishes, and religious liberty was never known in
South America, nor does Spain, any more than other lands, retain the memory
of the apostles she sent out to convert the new world to a purer faith, and raise
the hopes of mankind for the well being of the future.

There was one only place, where a company of outcasts, men despised, con
temned, reproached as malcontents, and fanatics, had planted a colony, and that
colony had grown and flourished ; and there had never been a day since it was
planted, that the very town, and shore and coast, where it was planted had not
grown and spread in population, wealth, prosperity and happiness, richer and
stronger continually. It had not only grown and flourished like a vigorous tree,
rejoicing in its own strength, but had sent out offshoots in all directions. Every
where the descendants of these colonists were found engaged in the struggles for
civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man. I had found them by my side,
the champions of humanity, upon whose stalwart arms I might safely rely.

I came here, then, because the occasion offered, and if I pretermitted this, it
might be the last, and I was unwilling that any friend or any child, who might
lean upon me, who reckoned upon my counsel or advice, should know that I had
been such a truant to the cause of religious liberty and humanity, as never to have
seen the Rock of Plymouth.

My mission being now accomplished, having shed tears in the first church of
the Puritans, when the heartfelt benediction was pronounced over my unworthy
head by that venerable pastor, I have only to ask that I be dismissed from further
service with your kind wishes. I will hold the occasion ever dear to my remem
brance, for it is here I have found the solution of the great political problem.
Like Archimedes, I have found the fulcrum by whose aid I may move the world
— the moral world — and that fulcrum is Plymouth Rock.

DE WITT CLINTON.1

DE WITT CLINTON, son of James Clinton and Mary De Witt, was
born at Little Britain, New Windsor, Orange county, in the colony
of New York, on the second day of March, 1769. His descent on
the father's side was from English ancestors long domiciled in Ireland,
and on the mother's side was of French extraction, through a sojourn
of the family of some duration in Holland. While yet young, he
intermarried with Maria Franklin, who brought him a liberal fortune,
and who died in 1818. In the succeeding year he was married, to
Catharine Jones, who survived him. He had a commanding stature,
highly intellectual features, and a graceful form, set off with severe
arid dignified manners. He combined, in a rare degree, vigor, versa
tility and comprehensiveness of mind with untiring perseverance in
the exercise of a lofty and unconcealed ambition. His ancestors, so
far as they are known to us, were brave, cultivated and enterprising
men. His father, General James Clinton, and his uncle, Governor
George Clinton, mingled in their respective characters the opposite
elements of civil conduct and military command, and throughout
the American Eevolution the latter was the chief popular figure
of the state of New York. De Witt Clinton's education, begun in
a grammar school near his home, continued at the academy in
Kingston, Ulster county, and completed at Columbia College, in the
city of New York, was conducted with great care by very learned
preceptors. He bore away the college honors in 1786, and immedi
ately engaged in the study of the law under the instruction of Samuel
Jones in the city of New York. He was admitted to the bar in
1788. Political affairs at that time absorbed the public attention.
The city of New York, a second rate mercantile and practically a
provincial town, already felt, though it did not understand, the social
impulses which were to push it forward so soon to become the cap
ital city of America. The state of New York, a third rate political

1 A portion of this biography appears in the New American Cyclopedia.

DE WITT CLINTON. 207

power, with a population confined to the shores of its few and short
navigable rivers, undistinguished by either culture or enterprise, and
embarrassed by African slavery, was undergoing the necessary
preparation for that struggle with the moral and physical resistances
which was at no distant day to be crowned with its inauguration as
the leading state in the new Federal Union. The United States
had achieved legal independence of Great Britain, and were per
plexed with the responsibility of adopting an untried and purely
experimental structure of government under which to contest by legis
lation, by diplomacy, and even by war, for that real commercial inde
pendence and that practical political independence which the European
states pertinaciously refused to them. Until that time the several
states had been supreme, and their statesmen had exercised control,
while the confederation was subordinate and its agents powerless.
Centralization was now to begin, and ultimately was to reverse these
relations. The new federal government was to enter the states,
modifying the action of the respective forces, and they were to
struggle as they might for the maintenance and preservation of re
served rights of sovereignty which were indispensable. The equality
and sovereignty of the people were now newly and practically estab
lished, and the arena of public service open to all competitors. George
Clinton differed from Hamilton, Jay and Schuyler concerning the
merits of the federal constitution, and gave to its adoption only a
reluctant and distrustful support. The temper of the time was un
charitable. His confessed integrity, heroic services and practical
wisdom, were held by the friends of the new system insufficient to
excuse this error, nor could he on his part accord his confidence to
those of his compatriots who he thought were rashly subverting
necessary foundations of public liberty. Holding the office of gov
ernor, which then was a station of the greatest dignity and influence,
he became at once the head of the republican or anti-federal party
within the state, and was immediately engaged in a contest which
involved all the stakes of a generous and noble ambition. Numbers
were on his side, but talents and the influences which favored the
new federal government were against him. De Witt Clinton's ardent
temper and earnest ambition carried him at once into the political
field, and his sentiments, sympathies and affections determined his
position under the banner of his kinsman, the chief within the state
of the republican party. While the question of the adoption of the

208 A BIOGRAPHY.

federal constitution was yet a subject of popular discussion, he
proved his zeal and controversial power by writing a series of let
ters signed "A Countryman," in reply to the celebrated letters of
the "Federalist." He attended the state convention which adopted
the constitution and reported its interesting debates for the press,
and forsaking his profession at once and forever, he became the pri
vate secretary of George Clinton, the governor of New York. In
this position he maintained the cause of his kinsman, and that of
the republic, by such a vigorous use of the press that he immedi
ately came to be regarded as its leading and most prominent champion.
Thus early, he established that character of a partisan politician
which he maintained ever afterward. But the official position which
he held, though humble, afforded him an opportunity to devote
himself to measures and policies important to the public safety and
welfare, and the spirit with which he engaged in duties of that kind
procured for him two other appointments, one of secretary of the
newly organized board of regents of the university, and the other
of secretary of the board of commissioners of fortifications of the
state. So it happened, that he laid in the beginning of his public
life the foundations of that superstructure of useful service which
constitutes the enduring monument of his fame.

George Clinton was continued in the office of governor by repeated
elections; but the federal party continually gained ground, and in
1792 a decided majority of votes were cast for John Jay, its candi
date for that office. The returns, however, were held defective in
form, and the credentials were given once more to George Clin
ton. It was manifest, in 1795, that the federalists must prevail.
George Clinton voluntarily retired, and Mr. Jay was chosen his
successor. De Witt Clinton relinquished his offices, but did not
relax his championship of the republican cause, in opposition to
the administration of Mr. Jay in the state, and to the administration
of John Adams at Washington. His opponents insisted then, as
they did ever afterward, that he conducted political controversies
with rancor and bitterness. Doubtlessly his language was often vehe
ment and criminatory, and an aggressive personality marks his
papers, which, if used at this day, would be universally condemned,
and would detract from an otherwise just effect. But Junius was the
model adopted by nearly all political writers at that period, and
scarcely any controversy was conducted, on either political or eccle

DE WITT CLINTON. 209

siastical questions, without the mutual use of unsparing invectives.
We can, therefore, judge but very imperfectly of the relative
demerits of Mr. Clinton in this respect. With all his vehemence of
partizan feelings, however, he nevertheless adhered to the line of patri
otic conduct he had so early marked out for himself. Thus, while
assailing the administration of Mr. Adams and the federalists for
their alleged hostility toward France, he raised, equipped, commanded
and disciplined an artillery company, which was held in readiness
for the defense of the country in the event of the occurrence of war
then so generally anticipated. Besides these occupations, he applied
himself diligently to the studies of natural philosophy, natural
history and other sciences. His adversaries were accustomed, then
and afterward, to disparage his acquisitions as superficial and pre
tentious ; but a candid examination of his writings will induce us to
concede, what then was claimed by his friends, that his proficiency
was such as to qualify him for the chair of a professor in many
departments of academic knowledge. Truly learned men always
cheerfully conceded to him distinguished merit.

The republican party grew rapidly in the state and in the country,
under the embarrassed and unpopular administration of John Adams.
Mr. Clinton was sent to the assembly, the lower house of the legis
lature of New York, by the city of New York, in 1797, and in the
next year he was chosen by the electors of the southern district to
represent them in the senate of the state for a term of four years.
The republican party triumphing in the Union in 1800, carried also
a majority in the state of New York, although John Jay still
remained in office. Official patronage in the state was by its first
constitution committed to the governor, together with a council con
sisting of one senator from each district, chosen by a vote of the
house of assembly. The governor presided in the council, and
habitually exercised exclusively the right of nomination, leaving
only to the council the power to confirm or reject. During the
administration of Greorge Clinton, his opponents, when in a majority
in the council, had claimed for each member a right of nomination
coordinate with that of the governor ; but the pretension was dis
allowed by governor Clinton, and the original practice remained. De
Witt Clinton, in 1801, became a member of the council, backed by
a republican majority. He now challenged the right of nomination
for himself and his associates. The governor denied it, and

VOL. IV. 27

210 A BIOGKAPHY.

adjourned the council, and never afterward reconvened it. He
submitted the subject to the legislature, and appealed to that body
for a declaratory law. Mr. Clinton vigorously defended the position
assumed by him in the council. The legislature referred the matter
to a convention of the people. The republican party predominated
in that body, and the constitution was amended so as to effect the
object at which Mr. Clinton had aimed. It can hardly be denied
that on the question of construction of the constitution, as it origi
nally stood, the position of Mr. Clinton was untenable. Experience
proved that the innovation was unwise. The spirit of party had
now become intense, it must be believed, in charity to both parties,
that each sincerely, though erroneously, doubted the loyalty of the
other to institutions yet new, and to a form of government the ulti
mate stability of which was still deemed uncertain. Proscription
was a natural result of this diseased condition of the public mind.
It broke forth suddenly, and became violent and undiscriminating.
Thenceforth every change of public opinion in the state was followed
by removal of all public officers not protected by the constitution
and laws. The temper of political debate became more than ever
acrimonious. Cupidity and ambition became bold and exacting,
Parties divided into personal factions, and then again centered into
new and disquieting forms of recombination. It was then that the
names of factions and parties became confused and unmeaning ; the
politics of the state became a mystery to observers beyond its limits,
and acquired proverbially the characteristics of intrigue and violence.
Perhaps it is true that De Witt Clinton was justly responsible, in
a considerable degree, for the inauguration of this reign of license, as
his opponents always contended. But, if we judge the parties and
the men of that day by the test of general principles, or even if we
allow them the consideration of the characters which they ultimately
maintained, we must conclude that the faults and errors which thus
brought reproach upon them all was found exclusively on the side
of no individual, nor of any one party or faction, but were, in some
sense, incidents of the times and of a peculiar stage of republican
society. However this may be, it is certain that Mr. Clinton, at
the same time, acted, well and nobly, a higher and more patriotic
part, aside from the partisan transactions in which he was thus en
gaged. It was a season of apprehended invasion. He was active
and efficient in securing the means of public defense. The public

DE WITT CLINTON. 211

health was continually threatened by the approach of contagious
pestilence. He was unremitting and judicious in providing the
necessary sanitary laws and institutions. He urged improvements
of the laws favorable to agriculture, manufactures, and the arts;
labored to stimulate the great and finally successful efforts of the
time to bring steam into use as an agent of navigation ; and employed
all his talents and influence in meliorating the evils of imprisonment
for debt, and in abolishing slavery. At the very early age of thirty-
three, his term of brilliant service in the senate of the state was
crowned by his appointment to a seat in the senate of the United
States. He remained in that body throughout two of its annual
sessions. The period, though short, sufficed to enable him to impress
upon the country a conviction of his great ability, and to augment
as well as enlarge the sphere of his already eminent reputation. His
principal achievement there was an elaborate, exhaustive and im
pressive speech in favor of moderation on the occasion of a high
popular excitement against Spain, resulting from her violation of
treaty stipulations for commercial privileges to the citizens of the
United States on the banks of the Mississippi — the territory of Lou
isiana not yet having been acquired by the United States.

Mr. Clinton resigned his place in the senate of the United States, to
assume the office of mayor of the city of New York, under an appoint
ment made by George Clinton and a republican council of appoint
ment in 1803 — that distinguished man having now again been elevated
to the office of governor of the state. The mayoralty was attractive
to Mr. Clinton, because, under the charter of the city, the powers and
duties belonging to it were manifold ; its responsibilities, in that period
of perplexity in the foreign relations of the country, were great, its
patronage not inconsiderable, and its emoluments large. Nor is it to be
doubted that, in the confused condition of the domestic politics of the
state, when rivalries, dangerous to his distinguished kinsman and him
self, were manifesting themselves in many ways, it was thought impor
tant that he should be at home to defend and protect personal interests
thus exposed. Nevertheless, it was a misfortune to Mr. Clinton to
break up a relation so grave as that of a senator in congress to his
constituency, so suddenly, and upon considerations of personal advan
tage. Nor can it be doubted now, that, having regard to merely indi
vidual interests, the change thus made, from the higher and more
distant national theatre to the lower and nearer municipal one, filled

212 A BIOGKAPHY.

as it was with angry and jealous contentions, was a great error. He
held the mayoralty by the precarious tenure of appointment, liable
to removal with every revolution of the political wheel within the
state. He remained undisturbed in it from 1803 until 1807, when
he was removed. He was reappointed in 1809 ; was displaced
in 1810; was restored in 1811 ; and thenceforward continued
therein until 1815. Within this period of nearly twelve years,
Mr. Ciinton was also a member of the senate of the state from 1805
until 1811, and was lieutenant-governor from 1811 to 1813, and du
ring a portion of that time also held a seat in the council of appoint
ment. These changes of office worked no change in his character,
and were attended by no divergence on his part from his line of
conduct already sharply defined.

George Clinton, who had been known as an aspirant to the presi
dency for many years, was elected vice-president of the United States
in 1804, and soon thereafter, by reason of his advanced years, ceased
to be conspicuous. De Witt Clinton, by an easy transition, rose to
the same eminent consideration which his kinsman had held, and
came to be regarded as the foremost candidate of the republican
party within the state of New York for the office which bounds the
range of ambition in our country. Not at all abating either his per
sonal activity or his prescriptive severity toward others, he encoun
tered at their hands hostility and retaliation, fierce, violent and
apparently relentless. A dangerous rival disappeared when Aaron
Burr sank under the suspicion of intrigues against Mr. Jefferson in
the election of 1800, and the reproaches of malice aforethought in
the duel in which the honored Hamilton had fallen by his hand in
1804; but Mr. Clinton was successively brought into an attitude of
distrust toward Lewis and Tompkins, the successors of George Clin
ton in the office of governor. He was all the time obnoxious to the
federal administration at Washington, because first the ambition of
his uncle, George Clinton, and then his own, were inconvenient to
the Virginia presidents, Jefferson and Madison, He, however, hesi
tated at first, and probably on considerations of a public nature, to
approve the system of commercial restrictions adopted by the former,
as he questioned, perhaps not unjustly, the wisdom of the course of
the latter in the trying hour which preceded the declaration of war
against Great Britain, while no real provision had as yet been made
for the public defense, much less any adequate means prepared for

DE WITT CLINTON. 213

aggression. It is beyond all doubt now, that Mr. Clinton was emi
nently brave, and that he loved his country with a devotion that
knew no hesitation when her safety or welfare required sacrifice at
his hands. Indeed, in every period of anxiety, and at every stage
of the long controversy between the United States and the great
powers of western Europe, he was vigorous, untiring and bold, and
having due regard to the opportunities for efficiency which his
position afforded, he was as effective as any other patriot in the pub
lic service. But there was at that time a portion of the federal party
which condemned the measures of the government so severely that
their own loyalty to the country was not unnaturally questioned, and
their conduct, whatever was their motive, had a tendency to encou
rage the public enemy, and so to embarrass the administration in a
crisis when it had a right to demand the energetic support of all
parties. This misconduct brought suspicion on the whole federal
party, although, as a mass, it was loyal and patriotic, and it suited
the purposes of Mr. Clinton's opponents to impute his hesitation and
reserve manifested on the occasions which have been mentioned, to
the influence of sympathies with the misguided federalists, which were
forbidden equally by his relations to the republican party and a just
sense of the real danger of the country. Day by day, therefore, old re
publican associates and followers separated from him, and intheirplaces
federalists, who saw that there was no longer any hope of effectually
serving their country under their own dilapidated organization, and
who believed him as patriotic as the statesmen who were in power,
and much wiser than they, lent him indirectly their sympathy
and cautious support. It was in this unlucky conjuncture that Mr.
Clinton, whose aspirations to the presidency of the United States
had long been known, concluded that the time had arrived when
they ought to be and could be realized. Mr. Madison's first term
was to expire in 1813, and his successor was to be elected in 1812.
The republican caucus at Washington, which then was the recog
nized nominating body, disallowed Mr. Clinton's pretensions, and
renominated Mr. Madison. Mr. Clinton still retained the confidence
of the republican party in his own state as an organized political
force, though it was sadly demoralized. He received a nomination
at the hands of the republican members of the legislature. The
federalists made no nomination, and indirectly gave him their support.
He received eighty-nine electoral votes, while Mr. Madison took one

214 A BIOGKAPHF.

hundred and twenty-eight votes, and thus was reflected. This de
feat was disastrous to Mr. Clinton. The war which, pending the
canvass, had been declared against Great Britain, was deemed a repub
lican measure, and its successful issue was of vital importance to
the country. Mr. Clinton's attitude was regarded as that of an oppo
nent of the war policy, and of course as a sympathizer with the
public enemy. The republican party of the state of New York
shrunk from his side, and at the first opportunity, in 1813, displaced
him from his office of lieutenant-governor, leaving him only the may
oralty of the city of New York, and even this relatively inferior posi
tion was soon afterward to be taken away. He seemed not only to
have been convicted of betraying his own party when holding a
high command in it, to its adversary, in a crisis when its safety was
identified with that of the country for his own advantage, but also of
being unsuccessful in the treason. But in fact Mr. Clinton had changed
not his principles, policies or sympathies, but only his personal rela
tions. He had attempted to gain the presidency, not to overthrow the
republican party, but to reestablish it as he thought on a better
foundation ; not to favor the public enemy, but to prosecute the war
against him, as he thought, with greater vigor and effect ; not to
betray his country, but to make assurance of her safety doubly sure.
He had erred in judgment, and the result was a complexity of
relations that seemed to render all further ambition hopeless. He
was a republican disowned by his party ; and though not a federal
ist, he was held responsible for all the offenses imputed to them,
without having their confidence, or even enjoying their sympa
thy. His fall seemed irretrievable. Nevertheless, Mr. Clinton had
been fortunate during the period which we have been reviewing,
in laying broad and deep the foundations of a popularity thatr
at no distant day, might be made to maintain a personal party, which
would long perplex and often confound the adversaries who now
exulted over what was thought his final ruin.

The city of New York had now begun to feel the beneficial in
fluence of the centralization of commerce at its wharves, under the
operation of the federal constitution, and public spirit was pro
foundly awakened. The deficiencies of its municipal laws, of its
defenses, of its scientific and literary institutions, of its institutions
of arts, and the absence of most of the elements of a metropolitan
character, were generally felt and confessed. Enlightened, liberal

DE WITT CLINTON. 215

and active men were moving in a hundred ways to make the city
worthy of its high, but newly discovered destiny. Only some high,
genial and comprehensive mind was wanted to give steadiness and
direction to these noble movements. De Witt Clinton supplied this
want. He associated himself on equal terms with other citizens
who engaged in the establishment of schools, designed to afford the
advantages of universal primary education ; with others who founded
institutions for the study of history, for improvement in art, for
melioration of criminal laws, for the encouragement of agriculture,
for the establishment of manufactures, for the relief of all the forms
of suffering so fearfully developed in a state of high civilization, for
the correction of vice, for the improvement of morals, and for the
advancement of religion. In all these associations he subjugated
his ambition, and seemed not a leader but a follower of those who
by their exclusive devotion were entitled to precedence. They de
rived from him, however, not only liberal contributions by his pen,
by his speech and from his purse ; but also the aids of his already
wide and potential influence, and the sanctions of his official station
and character. He carried the same liberal and humane spirit into
his administration as chief magistrate of the city. By virtue of that
office, he was not only the head of the police, charged with the
responsibilities of preserving order and guarding the city from ex
ternal dangers, but he was at once a member and president of the
municipal council, a member and president of the board of health,
a member and president of the court of common pleas, and a mem
ber and president of the criminal court. He appeared in all these
various characters always firm, dignified, intelligent and prepared in
every exigency, the friend of the poor, the defender of the exile,
the guardian of the public health, the scourge of disorder, the aven
ger of crime, the advocate of civil and religious liberty, and the
patron of knowledge and virtue. As a member of the senate of
the state and lieutenant-governor he exercised the functions not only
of a legislator, but also of a judge of the court of dernier resort, and
amid all the intrigues and distractions of party he bore himself in
those high places with the dignity and exercised the spirit of a
sagacious, far-seeing, and benevolent statesman.

He not only favored,. but led in correcting abuses, reforming errors,
simplifying and meliorating laws, laying the foundation of univer
sal education, and of enduring systems of public charity, and

216 A BIOGRAPHY.

removing as fast as possible the yet lingering remains of slavery.
Especially, he corrected the popular prejudice against himself in re
gard to his loyalty, by the utmost liberality and efficiency both as
mayor and legislator, in securing adequate means for public defense,
by procuring loans to the government, by voting supplies of mate
rials and men, and by soliciting the military command to which his
admitted courage, talent and influence seemed to entitle him. But
beyond all this he adopted early and supported ably and efficiently
the policy of the construction of canals from lake Erie and lake
Champlain to the tide water of the Hudson, and showed to his fellow
citizens, with what seemed a spirit of prophecy, the benefits which
would result from those works to the city, the state and the whole
country in regard to defence, to commerce, to increase of wealth and
population and to the stability of the Union. He was so successful
in this that he. was deputed, with others, in the year 1812, by the
legislature of the state, to submit that great project to the federal
government at Washington, and solicit its adoption or patronage of
the policy as a national measure. That government, happily for the
state, and fortunately for him, declined, and the occurrence of the
war of 1812, with its dangers and exactions, put the subject to rest
to be revived at a more propitious season. The intellectual vigor,
the impartial spirit, and the energetic resolution which Mr. Clinton
displayed in these various duties awakened profound and general
admiration, while the manifest beneficence of his system excited
enthusiastic desires for material and moral progress throughout the
state. He had thus become identified, even in the darkest hour of
his political day, with the hopes and ambition of his native state, and
with the hopes and ambitions of all the other states which waited to
be benefited directly by her movement, or to emulate her example.
He had thus won a fame which extended beyond this state, through
out other states, and even reached foreign lands. While sinking out
of view as a political character, not only in the Union, but even in
the state of New York, De Witt Clinton, the private citizen, was
more honored than the chief magistrate of the city ; De Witt Clinton,
the mayor of New York, eclipsed the chief magistrate of the state ;
and De Witt Clinton, the state senator, filled a space in the public
respect which the chief magistrate of the United States might well
envy. By a system chosen and perfected by himself and exclusively
his own, he had gained a moral position similar to and equal to that

DE WITT CLINTON. 217

which Hamilton had won before him when the tide of popular favor
having deserted him and left him destitute of power and influence
he still stood forth an isolated figure on the canvass, attracting an
admiration and exciting an interest which his successful rivals feared
to contemplate. But it was not for Mr. Clinton to reascend the
political ladder until he had released his hold on the lowest step and
had once more touched the ground. His opponents made haste to
dislodge him from that last foothold. In January, 1815, he was
removed from the mayoralty by a council of appointment in the
interest of the republican party.

Fortune had gone with greatness, and he sunk into private life
without even the means of respectable subsistence. The severity of
this proscription, coupled with the greatness of his fall and the ma
jesty of his character, awakened regrets and sympathies among large
classes, who did not stop to consider how rashly he had tempted for
tune, or how ruthlessly he had wielded the ax against those who
had now precipitated him to the ground. Peace had now returned,
and, with it, the aspirations for civil progress which war had for a
short time suppressed. In the autumn of that year, and in the ob
scurity of a retreat to the country, he prepared an argument in favor
of the immediate construction of the Erie and Champlain canals —
demonstrating their feasibility, the ability of the state to construct
them, their certain reimbursement of the cost, their utility and indis-
pensableness as means of natural defense, and their efficiency in open
ing the western portions of the state to civilization and culture, and
containing a glowing but just exposition of the impulse they would
give to the growth of the city of New York and to the aggrandizement
of the state, as well as the advantages which that immense extension of
the internal navigation of the country would confer on the whole
nation, by leading to a development of its yet unproductive resources,
and by cementing the bonds of the American Union. Never has there
appeared, in this or perhaps any other country, a state paper, at once
so vigorous, so genial, so comprehensive, and so conclusive. It was
couched in the form of a memorial from the citizens of New York
to the legislature of the state, and was deferentially submitted to a
public meeting for their adoption. As yet, nations and communities,
by the action of the people, had only sought aggrandizement by wars
and conquests. The people of this country had had some experience
of this svstem of aggrandizement, and were heartily tired of it. But

VOL. IV. 28

218 A BIOGRAPHY.

the enterprise of material improvement was new to them, and full
of benignant promise. If dangers attended it, they were unforeseen
and unconceived. The stroke was electrical. The city adopted the
memorial, and appealed to the citizens of the interior portions of the
state. They responded with enthusiasm. Other states and territo
ries, expecting either direct benefit, or waiting only to follow the lead
of a power so respectable as New York in similar enterprises, lent
their approving and encouraging voices. The policy was, from that
moment, certain of success. It was hindered only by the political
prejudices which hung around its advocate. His opponents called
these prejudices into new activity. With short-sighted malice, they
affected to consider the attractive scheme as not merely a new resort
of a ruined politician, but as one original with and devised by him
self — impracticable, absurd, and visionary — although, for more than
a hundred years, sagacious and enlightened statesmen, connected with
che affairs of the colony and of the state of New York, had, with
various degrees of distinctness, indicated and commended the obnox
ious policy, and the state itself had, at an early day, made demonstra
tions toward its adoption ~by improving some parts of its natural
channels, and had recommended the whole enterprise, before the war,
to the adoption of the federal government. Mr. Clinton, if left to
designate for his adversaries their mode of opposition, could have
preferred no other. It presented him as not merelv the advocate,
but even the inventor of the system whose prospective benefits were
already triumphantly demonstrated. His personality thus stamped
upon it, he must necessarily rise with it into popular favor. Mr.
Clinton appeared at Albany, at the assembling of the legislature, to
commend it. The governor — the organ of the republican party —
was silent on the subject. The republican legislature rendered it
just enough of favor to encourage and strengthen Mr. Clinton, and
too little to make it their own and separate him as a necessary agent
from it. It appointed him, with others, a commissioner to make the
required surveys and estimates, solicit grants and donations, and
report at the next session.

A vacancy in the office of governor was now to occur by the
transfer of the esteemed and popular Tompkins, the chief republican
character in the state, to the post of vice-president of the United
States at Washington. Who could deny that Mr. Clinton's election
to the office of governor would further the adoption of his great

DE WITT CLINTON. 219

scheme of improvements ? Who could deny his claim to that posi
tion for the purpose of securing its adoption and conducting its pro
secution? Who could deny even that his advancement to that
position was absolutely essential to the success of the measure?
When the only popular favorite was relinquishing the office and there
was no other statesman indicated by any general preference for it, why
should it be denied, under the exigent circumstances already men
tioned, to Mr. Clinton ? Spontaneous demonstrations presented him
before the public as a candidate, the party machinery refused to
work in the hands of his adversaries and he was elected in the sum
mer of 1816, to the office of governor, practically by the unanimous
voice of the people. It seemed, for a short time, as if all partisan
organizations had been permanently broken up, and as if party
spirit had been extinguished forever. Notwithstanding all these
pleasing auguries, the period of his administration was filled up, like
former ones, with violent and embittered political controversies,
cherished and fomented by jealousies of parties connected with the
federal administration at Washington. In all these controversies he
was always the subject — desire to advance him at last to the presi
dency of the United States, irrespective of all existing combinations,
constituting the motive of one party ; and determination to rebuke
and punish what was called his unchastened ambition, the motive of
the other. He triumphed in 1819, being reflected, though by a very
small majority, over Daniel D. Tompkins, who, while yet vice-presi
dent, became the opposing candidate and brought into the canvass a
popularity never before overbalanced. His adversaries availed them
selves of just complaints against the constitution to move the call of
a convention for its amendment, and the measure was eminently
popular. Mr. Clinton, perhaps unnecessarily, and at least unfortu-
tunately, hesitated so long as to become identified with the opposition
to it. The convention made reforms which diminished the power of
the executive and judiciary and conceded an enlargement of the
right of suffrage, with other popular rights, while it adopted his canal
policy, which had already been auspiciously begun and might now
be supposed sure to be carried on to a successful conclusion. Mr.
Clinton wisely declined to be a candidate, under such circumstances,
for a reelection as governor under the new constitution, and Joseph C.
Yates was called to the office with a unanimity equal to that which
had attended Mr. Clinton's elevation to the same place. Faction,

220 A BIOGKAPHY.

however, disorganized the triumphant party in 1824. At the same
time, the legislature in its interest abused its triumph over Mr. Clin
ton by removing him without notice arid without cause from the now
obscure office of canal commissioner in which he was serving, as he
had served from the first, only as an adviser and without any com
pensation. Indignation awakened by this injustice and combined
with popular discontents, resulting from other causes, bore him at
the end of the same year back into the office of governor by a very
decided vote ; but the new combination which had secured this re
sult was committed to the support of John Quincy Adams, as its
head in the federal government, while Mr. Clinton's sympathies or
his views of duty or of interest determined his inclination toward,
first William H. Crawford, and then Andrew Jackson as candidates
for the presidency. He was thus once more in his old position, sus
tained by a party from whom he withheld his confidence and sym
pathy, and opposed by the one to which he looked for ultimate sup
port. He was barely reflected in 1826, while the legislature was
opposed to his policy and interests.

His administration of the state government, however, which con
tinued throughout a period of twelve years, with the exception of
an intervening period of two 3^ ears, was one of unequaled dignity
and energy, devoted to just and necessary reforms and to the great
enterprises of moral and social improvement. He had the good for
tune to mature the system of finance which enabled the state, uncon
scious of expense or care, to begin and carry out his policy of internal
improvement, and to break with his own hand the ground in the
beginning of the enterprise on the fourth of July, 1817 ; and overcom
ing constant, unremitting and factious resistances, he had the felicity
of being borne, in October, 1825, in a barge on the artificial river that
he seemed, to all, to have constructed, from lake Erie to the bay of
New York, while bells were rung and cannons saluted him at every
stage of that imposing progress. No sooner had that great work
been undertaken in 1817, than the population of the state began to
swell with augmentation from other states and from abroad, pros
perity became universal, old towns and cities expanded, new ones rose
and multiplied. Agriculture, manufacture and commerce, the three
great wheels of national industry, were quickened in their movement,
and wealth flowed in upon the state from all directions. He inaugu
rated the construction of branches of the Erie canal, by which it was

DE WITT CLIXTOX. 221

ultimately connected with the internal lakes, with Lake Ontario and
with the Susquehanna, the Allegany and the St. Lawrence rivers,
and by his counsel and advice, now sought in all directions, he
hastened the opening of those canals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, which in connection with those of New
York and with natural channels now constitute a system adequate to
the internal commerce of an empire, and is interrupted only by moun
tains which defy the prowess of man.

De Witt Clinton, witnessing the enjoyment of the continually en
larging realization by the public of the benefits of his labors and in
the midst of growing popular perplexities concerning the balanced
probabilities of his yet rising to the highest honors of his country,
or of his sinking once more and irretrievably beneath the heel of
domestic faction, died at Albany, the seat of his authority and the
chief theatre of his active life, on the llth day of February, 1828.
Need it be added that party spirit was hushed into profound silence,
that the legislature provided for his family, bereft as they were of
parent and of fortune, that a grateful people celebrated his departure
from the earth with all the pomp of national sorrow, and that pos
terity, already advancing on the stage, hails his shade with the
homage deserved by a benefactor of mankind. The course of human
nature in similar cases and circumstances is always the same.

NOTE. — In 1839, and again in 1841, Governor Seward, in his annual messages to the legislature,
recommended the erection of a monument, by the state, to the memory of De Witt Clinton, and
at the same time paid an eloquent tribute to his character and distinguished public services.
Mr. Seward's "Notes on New York," also, contain several allusions to Mr. Clinton in the his
tory of the canals and other great enterprises of the state. See Volume II., pp. 87, 210, 296, &c.

POLITICAL SPEECHES.

A

POLITICAL SPEECHES, ./ N

THE ADVENT OF THE REPUBLICAN PAETY.

ALBANY, OCTOBER 12,1855.

HAIL to the capital of New York ! Venerable for its antiquity,
and yet distinguished for its loyalty to progress, liberty and union.
This capital is dear to me. It has more than once sent me abroad
with honorable functions, and even in those adverse seasons which
have happened to me, as they must happen to all representative men,
it has never failed to receive me at home again with sympathy and
kindness. Doubly honored be the banner of the stars and stripes,
which here takes on its highest significance, as it waves over the
halls where equal representatives make the laws which regulate the
lives of equal freemen. Honored be Justice, whose statue surmounts
the dome above us ! Blind, that she may not, through either passion
or prejudice, discriminate between the rich and the poor, the Pro
testant and Catholic, the native born and the exotic, the freeman and
him whose liberties have been cloven down, and weighing with
exact balance the rights of all classes and all races of men. Old
familiar echoes greet my ear from beneath these embowered roofs !
The voices of the Spencers, of Kent, and Van Kensselaer, and Van
Vechten, of the genial Tompkins, of Clinton the great, and the elder
Clinton, of King and Hamilton, of Jay, the pure and benevolent,
and Schuyler, the gallant and inflexible. The very air that lingers
around these arches, breathes inspirations of moral, social, of phy
sical enterprise, and of unconquerable freedom.

You, old, tried, familiar friends, ask my counsel whether to cling
yet longe*1 to traditional controversies and to dissolving parties, or

VOL. IV. '29

226

POLITICAL SPEECHES.

to rise at once to nobler aims, with new and more energetic associa
tions ! I do not wonder at your suspense, nor do I censure caution
or even timidity. Fickleness in political associations is a weakness,
and precipitancy in public action is a crime. Considered by itself,
it is unfortunate to be obliged to separate from an old party and to
institute a new one. The new one may exhibit more enthusiasm for
a time, but it must also for a time lack cohesion and discipline. The
names of parties are generally arbitrary, and not at all indicative of
their characters or purposes. A generous man will, nevertheless,
cling, as if it were a family altar, to a name that has long been a
rallying cry for himself and his compatriots.

The great question before us, however, is to be decided, not by
feeling, but under the counsels of reason and patriotism. It was the
last injunction given by the last one of the revolutionary congresses
to the American people, never to forget that the cause of America
had always been, and that it must ever continue to be, the cause of
human nature. The question then, is, what is the course dictated
to us by our love of country and of humanity ?

The nation was founded on the simple and practically new prin
ciple of the equal and inalienable rights of all men, and therefore it
necessarily became a republic.j Other governments, founded on the
ancient principle of the inequality of men, are, by force of an equal
necessity, monarchies or aristocracies. Whenever either of these
kinds of government loses by lapse of time and change of circum
stances its elementary principle, whether of equality or inequality,
thenceforward it takes a rapid and irresistible course toward a reor
ganization of the opposite kind. No one, here or elsewhere, is so
disloyal to his country or to mankind, as to be willing to see our
republican system fail. All agree that in every case, and through
put alljiazards, _ aristocracy must fce abhorred ~ and avoided, and
^republican institutions must be defended and preserved.

Think it not strange"or extravagantwhen I say that an aristocracy
has already arisen here, and that it is alreadyiindermimn^t1
republic. An^anSocracy co30Tnn^tariseiri any country where
there was no privileged class, and no special foundation on which
such a class could permanently stand. On the contrary, every state,
however republican its constitution may be, is sure to become an
aristocracy, sooner or later, if it has a privileged class standing firmly
on an enduring special foundation ; and if that class is continually

THE PRIVILEGED CLASS. 227

growing stronger and stronger, and the unprivileged classes are con
tinually growing weaker and weaker. It is not at all essential to a
privileged class that it rest on feudal tenures, or on military com
mand, or on ecclesiastical authority, or that its rights be hereditary,
or even that it be distinguished by titles of honor. It may be even
the more insidious and more dangerous for lacking all these things,
because it will be less obnoxious to popular hostility.

A privileged class has existed in this country from an early period
of its settlement. Slaveholders constitute that class. _ They have a
special foundation on which to stand — namely, personal dominion
over slaves. Conscience and sound policy forbid all men alike from
holding slaves, but some citizens disregard the injunction. Some
of the states enforce the inhibition ; other states neglect or refuse to
enforce it. In all of the states there are but three hundred and fifty
thousand citizens who avail themselves of this peculiar indulgence ;
and those, protected by the laws of their states, constitute a privi
leged class. They confess themselves to be such a class, when they
designate the system of slavery as a "peculiar" institution.

The spirit of the revolutionary age was adverse to that privileged
class. America and Europe were firmly engaged then in prosecuting
what was expected to be a speedy, complete and universal abolition
of African slavery. Nearly all of the privileged class admitted that
slavery, as a permanent system, was indefensible, and favored its
removal. They asked only, what seemed by no means unreasonable,
some securities against a sudden, rash and violent removal of the
evil. Under these circumstances, even the most decided opponents
of slavery consented to some provisions of the federal constitution
which were inconsistent with the stern logic of equality that per
vaded all its other parts, and pervaded the whole of the Declaration
of American Independence, on which the constitution itself was
based. We are not to censure the fathers for these concessions ; they
had a union of the states to create, and to their ardent and generous
minds the voluntary removal of slavery, by the action of the seve
ral states themselves, without federal interference, seemed not only
certain, but close at hand.

These provisions of the constitution were :

First: That the foreign slave trade should not be abolished before
1808.

228 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Second: That any law or regulation which any state might estab
lish in favor of freedom, should not impair the legal remedy, then
supposed to exist by common law, for the recapture, by legal pro
cess, in such state, of fugitives from labor or service, escaping from
other states.

Third: That three-fifths of all slaves should be counted, in settling
the basis of representation in the several states.

These three concessions, which in themselves seem very limited
and almost harmless, are all that the fathers consciously made to the
privileged class.

But privileged classes always know

_^

indirect advantages which jthe constitution or laws of a Country
afford Such indirect advantages they acquired from two other
provisions of the constitution: 1st. That provision which makes
the state authority independent and sovereign in municipal affairs,
slavery being understood to be purely municipal in its nature.
2d. That provision which, out of tenderness to the small states, gives
them a representation in the senate equal to that of the largest state.
Freedom builds great states ; slavery multiplies small states, and
even dwarfs great ones.

Thus we see that the American slaveholders_are a privileged class,
standing on a special and permanent foundation, and that they~afe
protected in theirjjjl vantages fay; the organic laws.

I might show a priori that a privileged class, thus established on
an exceptional principle, that is wrong in itself and antagonistic to
the fundamental principle of the government, must necessarily be
dangerous, if it be suffered to expand and aggrandize itself. But
unhappily, we are not left to the necessity of resorting to specula
tion on that subject. The policy of emancipation was set back in
this country during the reaction against revolutionary principles,
which necessarily attended the reorganization of government ; and it
was set back still more effectually by the consternation which fol
lowed the disastrous failure of the first republic in France. The
privileged class promptly seized the advantages which the constitu
tion afforded, to fortify itself in the federal government. The last
federal acts directed against the privileged class were, the abolition
of the foreign slave trade after 1808, and the eternal prohibition of
slavery in the broad and then unsettled region which extends from
the north bank of the Ohio to the eastern shore of the Mississippi.

THE PRIVILEGED CLASS. 229

Even the passage of that ordinance was, by its silence, assumed to
imply a right on the part of the privileged class to colonize with
slaves the region lying south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi.

Unlooked-for events have lent to the privileged class advantages
which have more than counterbalanced the adverse effects of this
early national legislation. The invention of the cotton-gm, which
easily separates the seed from the fibre, has made "cotton an' almost
exclusive agricultural staple in the states of the privileged class, and
an eminent commercial staple of the whole country. Jh P. national
territory has necessarily hp^n enlarged!, from time to time, to accom
modate an overgrowing population, and an ever-increasing commerce.
Favored by these circumstances, the privileged class have at the
same time found, in a home production of slaves in Maryland and
Virginia, and other states, a compensation for the loss of the African
slave trade ; and they have not been slothful in unlearning all the
fears and dismissing all the timidity and conciliation which marked
their conduct during and immediately after the revolutionary war.
The admission of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, as
slaveholding states, into the Union, seemed unavoidable, inasmuch
as they were the overgrowth of some of the old thirteen states ; and
thus these new states south of the Ohio, balancing the growing free
states north of that river, served as a sort of balance between the
privileged and the unprivileged classes, which it was not necessary
to disturb. This was the first final partition of the unsettled terri
tory of the United States between those classes.

In 1804, France ceded to the United States a broad belt, stretch
ing along the western bank of the Mississippi, from the British pos
sessions on the north, to the Spanish province of Texas on the south.
This acquisition, which was equally necessary for the safety of the
country and for the uses of commerce, stimulated the desire of the
privileged class for an extension of their territory and an aggran
dizement of their power. New Orleans, situated practically on the
coast of the gulf of Mexico, was already at once an ancient slave-
holding colony and an important commercial mart. It lay contigu
ous to the slaveholding states. Under these circumstances, it was,
without any resistance, soon organized and admitted into the Union,
with its ancient laws and customs tolerating slavery. St. Louis,
though destined to acquire great commercial importanoe, was as yet
an inconsiderable town, with few slaveholders and slaves. The Mis-

230 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

sissippi only divided it from the northwest territory, which was
already consecrated to freedom. The best interests of the country
required, and humanity demanded, that the ordinance of 1787
should be extended across the Mississippi. The privileged class,
however, took possession of the region around St. Louis, and made
partial settlements lower down on the west bank of the Mississippi.
St. Louis and its environs matured as a state in 1819, and demanded
admission with slavery into the Union. Then, only thirty-two years
after the passage of the ordinance of 1787, and after its unanimous
ratification by the American people, the privileged class made cQJZir
mon cause with the new slaveholding state, and, assuming a tone at
once bold, insolent and menacing, they denied the power of con
gress, although in the territories it was supreme and exclusive, and
equally supreme and exclusive in the admission of new states, to
legislate at all against their privileges in the territories, or to refuse
admission to a new state, on the ground of its refusal to surrender
or abate those privileges ; and they threatened in one loud voice to
subvert the Union, if Missouri should be rejected. The privileged
class were backed then by the Senate of the United States, as they
have been backed on all similar occasions since that time. They
were met, however, with firmness and decision by the unprivileged
class in the house of representatives, and so Missouri failed then to-
be admitted as a slave state. The privileged class resorted to a new
form of strategy— the strategy of compromise. They offered to be
satisfied ii' Missouri only should be admitted as a slave state, while
Congress should prohibit slavery forever in all the residue of that
part of the Louisiana purchase which lay north of the parallel of
36° 30' of north latitude — the territory lying between this parallel
and the province of Texas, and constituting what is now the state
of Arkansas, being left by implication to slavery. This compromise
was accepted, and thus diplomacy obtained for the privileged class
immediate advantages, which had been denied to their clamor and
passion. This compromise, however, could have only the authority
of a repealable act of Congress, so far as the prohibition of slavery
north of 36° 30' was concerned. Wise and great men contrived
extraordinary forms to bind the faith of the privileged class to that
perpetual inhibition. They gave to the compromise the nature and
form of a contract, with mutual equivalents between the privileged
class and the unprivileged class, which it would be dishonorable and

THE PRIVILEGED CLASS. 231

perfidious on the part of the privileged class, at any time, on any
grounds, or under any circumstances, to annul or revoke, or even to
draw in question. They proclaimed it to be a contract proper to be
submitted to the people themselves, for their ratification, in the popu
lar elections. It was so submitted to the people, and so ratified by
them. By virtue of this compromise, Missouri came immediately
into the Union as a slave state, and Arkansas followed soon afterward
as a slave state, while, with the exception of Missouri, the compro
mise of 1787, by virtue of the same compromise, was extended across
the Mississippi, along the parallel of 36° 30', to the Eocky moun
tains. Thus, and with such solemnities, was the strife of the privi
leged class of slaveholders for aggrandizement of territory finally
composed and forever settled.

It is not my purpose to discuss the policy or the justice of that
great settlement. As in the case of the constitution, the responsi
bility for that great measure rests with a generation that has passed
away. We have to deal with it only as a fact, and with the state of
affairs that was established by it.

The occupation of the new region west of the Mis^ipsip]-!, which
had been thus saved for freedom, was artfully postponed indefinitely
by dedicating it as a home for the concentrated but perishing Indian
tribes. It sounds in favor of the humanity of the unprivileged class,
if not of their prudence, that they neither remonstrated nor com
plained of that dedication.

The success of the privileged class, in securing to themselves
immediate possession of Missouri and Arkansas, in exchange for the
reversionary interest of the unprivileged class in the remainder of
the Louisiana purchase, stimulated them to move for new national
purchases of domain, which might yield them further acquisitions.
Spain was unable to retain longer the slaveholding provinces of East
Florida and West Florida, which lay adjacent to the slave states.
They fell to the United States by an easy purchase, and the privi
leged class with due diligence procured their organization as a state,
and its admission into the Union. The spell of territorial aggran
dizement had fallen on the United States of America, and simultane
ously the spell of dissolution had fallen on the United States of
Mexico. The privileged class on our side of the border entered
Texas, established slavery there in violation of Mexican laws, de
tached that territory from Mexico, and organized it as an indepen-

232 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

dent sovereign state. Texas, thus independent and sovereign, sought
annexation to the United States. In the very hour when the virtue
of a sufficient number of the unprivileged classes was giving way
to effect a constitutional annexation of Texas, the president of the
United States, with a senate not less subservient to the privileged
class, executed a coup d'etat by which that state unlawfully, and in
defiance of all precedent, came into the Union under a covenant
stipulating that four new slave states might be created out of its
territory and admitted as slave states, while, by a solemn mockery,
an inconsiderable fragment that lay north of 36P 30' was ostenta
tiously dedicated to freedom. There remained no other new terri
tory within the United States ; and so, by this strange partition of
Texas, there was a third final settlement of the pretensions of the
privileged class ; and it was acquiesced in by the unprivileged class,
who thought themselves secure in the old northwest territory by the
ordinance of 1787, and equally safe in Kansas and Nebraska by the
JMissouri compromise.

The public repose that followed the annexation of Texas was of
short duration. Mexico resented that offense. A war ensued, and
terminated in the transfer of the northern portion of Mexico to the
United States. The Mexican municipal laws forbade slavery every
where, and the new possessions were under that law. Not a whit
the less, for that reason, did the privileged class demand either an
equal partition, or that the whole should be opened to their coloni
zation with slaves. The house of representatives resisted these
pretensions, as it had resisted similar ones before ; but, the senate
seconded the privileged class with its accustomed zeal. So congress
was divided, and failed to organize civil governments for the newly
acquired Mexican territories, and they were left under martial law.
The question raised by the privileged class went down to the elec
tors. The people promptly filled the house of representatives with
a majority sternly opposed to the extension of slavery the breadth
of a single square mile. They increased the force of the unprivileged
class in the senate, while they called to the presidency General Tay
lor, who, although himself a slaveholder, was committed to non-in
tervention on the question in congress, and to execute faithfully
whatever constitutional laws congress should adopt Under these
circumstances, California and New Mexico, youthful communities,
practically free from slavery, and uncorrupted by the seductions of

f-T t *

V

THE PRIVILEGED CLASS. 0J * 233

the privileged class or its political organs, hastened to establish con
stitutions, and applj for admission as free states ; while the eccentric
population of Deseret, indulging latitudinarian principles equally in
matters of religion and of politics, prayed to be received into the
Union as a state or as a territory, and with or without slavery, as
congress should prescribe. The privileged class remonstrated, and a
seditious movement was organized in their behalf in the slavehold-
ing states, to overawe congress, if possible, and to inaugurate revolu
tion if their menaces failed. You all know well the way of that
memorable controversy. How eminent men yielded to the menaces
without waiting for the revolution, and projected and tendered to
the privileged class a new compromise, modeled after the already
time-honored compromise of 1820. You all know how firmly,
notwithstanding this defection of leaders honored and beloved,
the house of representatives, and even the senate, repelled the
compromise, and how firmly the unprivileged class of freemen
throughout the Union demanded the unqualified and unconditional
admission of California into the Union, and refused to allot any
further territories to the privileged class, for the extension of the
system of human bondage. You all remember, too, how in a critical
hour the president sickened and died, and how the hearts of congress
and of all the people swooned at his grave, and thenceforward all
was lost. You remember how the provisional successor of that
lamented president with ominous haste accepted the resignation of
his cabinet, and committed the seals to a new one, pledged like him
self to the adoption of the compromise which the people had
condemned ; and how at last, after a painful struggle, its adoption
was effected. I think, also, that you have* not thus soon forgotten
the terms of that compromise, the fourth final and everlasting settle-^
™gTvj;- of *kp Conflict between^the privileged and the unprivileged
classes of t.Tn'q rppnb]1'0— You have not forgotten how the ordinance
of 1787, which excluded slavery from the region northwest of the
Ohio, was left to stand, as an institution too sacred to be even ques
tioned. How the Missouri compromise, which extended that ordi
nance across the Mississippi, and over all Kansas and Nebraska, was
made at once the authority, precedent, and formula, of the new
compromise, and even declared to be an irrepealable law forever.
How California, which refused to become a slave state, was grudgingly
admitted into the Union as a free one. How the hateful and detest-
VOL. IV. 30

234 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

v

able slave auctions were banished from under the eaves of the capitol,
quite across to the opposite side of the Potomac river. And how,
in consideration of these magnanimous and vast concessions made
by the privileged class, it was stipulated that slavery should be con
tinued in the District of Columbia as long as the privileged class
should require its continuance. New Mexico, with her free consti
tution, was superciliously remanded to her native mountains, while,
without a hearing, her ancient and free territory was dismembered,
and its fairest part transferred to Texas, with the addition of ten
millions of dollars, to win its acceptance by that defiant privileged
state. You remember how it was solemnly stipulated that Utah and
New Mexico, if the slaveholders could corrupt them, should come
into the Union, in due time, as slaveholding states ; and, finally, how
the privileged class, so highly offended and exasperated, were brought
to accept this compromise on their part, by a reenactment of the
then obsolete fugitive slave law of 1793, with the addition of the
revolting features of an attempted suspension of the habeas corpus ;
an absolute prohibition of the trial by jury; an effective repeal of
f vital rales of procedure and evidence, and the substitution of com
missioners in place of courts of justice, in derogation of the consti
tution. You all remember how laboriously and ostentatiously this
compromise was associated with the time-honored forms and solemni
ties of the Missouri compromise ; how it was declared, not the result
of mere legislation, but a contract, with mutual equivalents, by the
privileged with the unprivileged classes, irrepealable and even
unamendable without perfidy and even treason against the constitu
tion and the Union. You all remember how, notwithstanding your
protests and mine, it was urgently, violently, clamorously ratified
and confirmed, as a full, fair, final, and perpetual adjustment, by the
two great political conventions of the country, representing the whole
people of the United States, assembled at Baltimore in 1852 ; and
how the heroic and generous Scott was rejected, to bring into the
presidency one who might more safely be trusted to defend and pre
serve and establish it forever.

Nevertheless, scarcely one year had elapsed, before the privileged
class, using some of our own representatives as their instruments,
broke up not only this compromise of 18cO, but even the compro
mise of 1820 and the ordinance of 1787, and obtained the declaration
of congress, that all these settlements, so far as they were adverse to

THE AGGRESSIONS OF SLAVERY. 235

• • ' T™

the privileged class, were unconstitutional usurpations of legislative
power. I do not stop to stigmatize or even to characterize these
aggressions. Of what use would it be to charge perfidy, when the
losses we deplore have resulted from our own imbecility and cow
ardice ? I do not dwell, as others so often and so justly do, upon the
atrocious usurpation of the government of Kansas by the slave
holders of Missouri, nor even on the barbarous and tyrannical code
which they have established to stifle freedom in that territory, nor
even yet on the fraudulent and nefarious connivance of the president
with the usurpers.

Nor will I draw into this picture, already too darkly shaded,
the personal humiliations which daily come home to yourselves in
the conduct of your own affairs. You are commanded by an
unconstitutional law of congress to_seize and deliver up to the mem
bers of that privileged class their fugitive slaves, under the penalty
of imprisonment and forfeiture of your estates. You may not inter-
pose between the armed slaveholder and the wounded slave, to
prevent his being murdered, without coming under arrest for treason,
nor may you cover his naked and lacerated limbs except by stealth.
You have fought twenty years, and with but partial success, for the
constitutional right to lay your remonstrances on the table of con
gress. You may not tell the freed slave who reaches your borders
that he is free, without being seized by a federal court, and con
demned, without a trial or even an accusation, to an imprisonment
without bail or mainprize, and without limitation of sentence. Your
representatives in either house of congress must speak with bated
breath and humble countenance in presence of the representatives
of the privileged class, lest justice he denied to your old soldiers
when they claim their pensions, or to your laborers when they claim
the performance of their contracts with the government. ^The pres
ident of the United States is reduced to the position of a deputy of
the privileged class, emptying the treasury and marshaling bat
talions and ships of war to dragoon you into the execution of the
fugitive slave law on the one hand, while he removes governors and
judges, at their command, who attempt to maintain lawful and con
stitutional resistance against them in the territory of Kansas, ^he
vice-president of the United States and the speaker of the house "of
representatives are safe men, whom the privileged class can trust in
every case. The care of the judiciary of the territories, and even

236 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of the foreign relations, is intrusted in either house to assured sup
porters of that class. Protection is denied to your wool, while it is.
freely givenmtp the slaveholder's sugar._ Millions of acres of the
public domain are freely, given to Alabama, for railroads, and even
as gratuities, while not a dollar can be obtained to remove the rocks
of Hellgate and the sands of the Overslaugh, or the bars in lake
St. Clair or those in the mouths of your lake harbors. Canada,
lying all along your northern borders, must not even be looked upon,
lest you may lust after it, while millions upon millions are lavished
in war and diplomacy to annex and spread slavery over Louisiana,
Florida, Texas, Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. Your liberty
of speech, where is it ? You may not, without severe rebuke,
speak of despotism in foreign lands, lest the slave overhear you on
the plantations of the privileged class, or the foreign despot visit
them in retaliation for your unavailing sympathy. The national
flag, the emblem of universal liberty, covers cargoes of slaves, not
only in our own view, but flaunts defiance over them in foreign
ports. Judges of United States courts, safe under the protection of
the president and the senate, charge grand juries in advance of any
question, that obnoxious and unequal federal laws are constitutional
and obligatory; they give counsel to legislative bodies how to frame
laws which they will sustain, instead of waiting to review those laws
when enacted. They even convert the writ of freedom to an engine
of slavery, and they pervert the power of punishing irregularities
committed in their presence into the machinery of a tyranny as odious
as that of the star chamber. The privileged class in Virginia
imprison your seamen in their ports, in retaliation for the independ
ence of your executive authorities ; and you are already in a
doubtful struggle for the right to exclude the traffic in slaves from
your own borders.

sk. in concluding- thifi frnrm"Ha,t;imy rehearsal, whether

there is not in this favored country a privileged class ; whether it does
not stand on an enduring foundation ; whether it is not growing
stronger and stronger, while the unprivileged class grows weaker and
weaker ; whether its further growth and extent would not be, not
merely detrimental, but dangerous ; and whether there is any hope to
arrest that growth and extension hereafter, if the attempt shall not be
made now ? The change, that has become at last so necessary, is as
easy to be made as it is necessary. The whole number of slaveholders

A NEW ORGANIZATION NEEDED. 237

is only three hundred and fifty thousand, one-hundredth part of the
entire population of the country. If you add their parents, children,
immediate relatives and dependents, they are two millions — one-
fifteenth part of the American people. Slavery is not, and never can

be, perpetual. It willhe overthrown, either peacefully or lawfully, '
^-. -' *P . — »- <c'>rz< ^-~2^~-xi^*~z<r---2-^~z.~ — a< — 3B*r~T'3t"~" — 2--r»^-
under this constitution, or itwmwork the subversion of the constitu

fion, tofethefwith its own^verthrowr^TThen the slaveholders would
perish in ^^ jh^j^i^gleT^^e^cn^n^ca^n now be made without violence/
)y the agency of the ballot-box. The temper of the nation is
just, liberal, forbearing. It will contribute any money and endure
any sacrifices to effect this great and important change ; indeed, it is
half made already.

The will exists, because the evil has become intolerable, azid the
need of a remedy is universally acknowledged. What, then, is
wanted ? Organization ! Organization! IJothing but organization.

Shall we'orgamzer Wny"notrCan we<enmmtaintnerevolution,
so auspiciously begun, without organization ? Certainly not. Are
you apprehensive of failure, because the revolution is not everywhere
and at all times equally successful ? Was there ever a revolution
that was equally successful at all times and everywhere? Certainly
not. Do you say that you cannot abolish slavery in the privileged I
states ? We have no need, no purpose, no constitutional power, no I
duty, to do so. Providence has devolved that duty on others, and /
the organic law leaves it wisely to them. We have power to avert/
the extension of slavery in the territories of the Union, and that isl
enough. Do you doubt that power ? Did not the statesmen of 1787
know the bounds of constitutional power ? Somebody has municipal
power in the unorganized territories of the Union. Wlio is it? It
is not any foreign state ; it is not any of the American states ; it is
not the people in the territories. It is the congress of the whole
United States, and their power there is supreme. Are you afraid
that the privileged class will not submit ? The privileged class are
human, and they are wise. They know just as well how to submit
to just authority, firmly and constitutionally exercised, as they do
how to extort unequal concessions by terror from timid men. Can
the privileged class live without a Union any better than you can ?
They would not remain and wrangle with you an hour, if they could
do so. Can they ever hope to obtain another Union so favorable to
them as this one, if this should be overthrown ? Will they destroy

238 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

themselves, that they may simply do harm to you ? Did ever any
privileged class commit such an absurd suicide as this ? Are you
alone the keepers of the Union? Have not the privileged class
interests as great to maintain in the Union, and are their obligations
to maintain it different from your own ?

How shall we organize ? The evil is a national one. The power
and the influence and the organization of the privileged class pervade
all parts of the Union. It knows no north, no south, no east, no
west. It is stronger to-day on the bay of San Francisco, surrounded
by freemen, than it is on Chesapeake bay, surrounded by slaves. _It
is not a sectional but a national contest, on which we have entered.
ur organization, therefore, must be a national one. The means of

virtue of the

nation. We must restore the principle of equality among the mem
bers of the state — the principle of the sacredness of the absolute and
inherent rights of man. We want, then, an organization open to all
classes of men, and that excludes none.

We want a boldhi out-spoken, free-spoken or^(ni Cation—- rmp. that
openly proclaims its principles, its purposes, and its objects — in fear
of God, and not of man — like that army, which Cromwell led, that
established the commonwealth of England. This is the organization
we want.

It is best to take an existing organization that answers to these
conditions, if we can find one ; if we cannot find one such, we must
create one. Let us try existing parties by this test. Shall we take
the know-nothing party, or the American party, as it now more
ambitiously names itself? It is a purely sectional organization. In
the privileged states, it scouts the principle of the equality of mao,
and justifies the unbounded claims of the privileged class. In the
unprivileged states, it stifles its voice and suppresses your own free
speech, lest it may be overheard beyond the Potomac. In the privi
leged states, it justifies all the wrongs committed against you. In
the unprivileged states, it affects to condemn them, but protests that
they shall not be redressed. I speak not now of its false and preva
ricating rituals, its unlawful and unchristian oaths, its clandestine
councils and its dark conspiracies, its mobs and its murders, proscrib
ing and slaying men for their conscience' sake and for the sake of
their nativity. I have spoken of them often enough and freely
enough heretofore. I say now only that all these equally unfit this

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 239

so-called American party for any national duty, and qualify it to be
what it has thus far been — an auxiliary Swiss corps, engaging the
friends of freedom in premature skirmishes at one time, and decoying
them into ambushes prepared by their enemies at another. Let it
pass by.

Shall we unite ourselves to the democratic party ? If so, to which
section or faction ? The hards, who are so stern in defending the
aggressions of the privileged class, and in rebuking the administra
tion through whose agency they are committed ? or the softs, who
protest against these aggressions, while they sustain and invigorate
that administration ? Shall we suppose the democratic party reunited
and consolidated ? What is it, then, but the same party which has
led in the commission of all those aggressions, save one, and which
urged, counseled and cooperated in that, and claims exclusively the
political benefits resulting from it? Let the democratic party pass.

Shall we report ourselves to the whig party ? Where is it ? Gen
tle shepherd, tell me where ! Four years ago it was a strong and
vigorous party, honorable for energy, noble achievements, and still
more for noble enterprises. In 1852 it was united and consolidated,
and moved by panics and fears to emulate the democratic party
in its practised subserviency to the privileged class, and it yielded
in spite of your remonstrances and mine. The privileged class,
who had debauched it, abandoned it, because they knew that it
could not vie with its rival in the humiliating service it proffered
them ; and now there is neither whig party no,r whig, south of the
Potomac.

How is it in the unprivileged states ? Out of New York, the
lovers of freedom, disgusted with its prostitution, forsook it, and
marched into any and every other organization. We have main
tained it here, and in its purity, until the aiders and abettors of the
privileged class, in retaliation, have wounded it on all sides, an-d it
is now manifestly no longer able to maintain and carry forward,
alone and unaided, the great revolution that it inaugurated. He is
unfit for a statesman, although he may be a patriot, who will cling
even to an honored and faithful association, when it is reduced so low
in strength and numbers as to be entirely ineffectual amid the con
tests of great parties by which republics are saved. Any party,
when reduced so low, must ultimately dwindle and dwarf into a
mere faction. Let, then, the whig party pass. It , committed a

240 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

fault, and grievously hath Jt answered it^ Let it inarch out
of the field, therefore, with all the honors.

The principles of true democrats and the principles of true whigs
remain throughout all changes of parties and of men, and, so far as
they are sound, they are necessarily the same. Such true democrats
and true whigs are now ready to unite on those sound principles
common to both. Neither of these two classes can or ought to insist
on forcing a defective organization, with a stained banner, upon the
other. The republican organization has sagaciously seen this, and
magnanimously laid anew, sound and liberal platform, broad enough
for both classes to stand upon. Its principles are equal and exact
justice; its speech open, decided and frank. Its banner is untorn
in former battles, and unsullied by past errors. That is the party
for us. I do not know that it will always, or even long, preserve its
courage, its moderation, and its consistency. If it shall do so, it will
rescue and save the country. If it, too, shall become unfaithful,
as all preceding parties have done, it will, without sorrow or regret
on my part, perish as they are perishing, and will give place to
another, truer and better one.

So long as the republican party shrill be firm and faithful to the
constitution, the Union, and the rights of man, I shall serve it with
the reservation of that personal independence which is my birthright,
but, at the same time, with the zeal and devotion that patriotism
allows and enjoins. I do not know, and personally I do not greatly
care, that it shall work out its great ends this year, or the next, or in
my lifetime ; because I know that those ends are ultimately sure,
and that time and trial are the elements which make all great refor
mations sure and lasting. I have not thus far lived for personal ends
or temporary fame, and I shall not begin so late to live or labor for
them. I have hoped that I might leave roy. country somewhat wor
thier of a lofty destiny, and |(fre rightff oj human nature somewhat
jsafer. A reasonable ambitipnmustji^^ with sincere

and prac^alenaeavors. If, amonsr those who shafi^ornearter us.

A**-'"*""^!^*"?^-"''"*' — *-""**"»—'

there snail be any curious inquirer who shall fall upon a name so

obscure as mine, he shall be obliged to confess that, however unsuc
cessfully I labored for generous ends, yet that I nevertheless was
ever faithful, ever hopeful.

THE CONTEST AND THE CRISIS.

BUFFALO, OCTOBER 19, 1855.

I AM always proud of my native state, when I stand in the presence
of the mountains under whose shadow I was born, or on the shores
of the silvery lakes among which I dwell. I am prouder still, when,
looking off from the vestibule of the capitol, I see the mediterranean
waters of the continent, obedient to her command, mingle their floods
with the tides of the world-encircling ocean. No less buoyant is my
pride now, when, standing here in the presence of Niagara, the marvel
of nature itself, I see New York at once unlocking the gates of the
west, and standing sentinel on the frontier of the republic, whose
safety constitutes the hope of the human race. Speaking on such a
stage, how can I do otherwise than speak thoughtfully, sincerely,
earnestly ?

Ye good men of Erie ! The republican party is sounding through
out all our borders a deep-toned alarum for the safety of the consti
tution, of union, and of liberty. Do you hear it ? The republican
party declares, that by means of recent treacherous measures adopted
by congress and the president of the United States, the constitutional
safeguards of citizens, identical with the rights of human nature
itself, are undermined, impaired, and in danger of being overthrown.
It declares that if those safeguards be not immediately renewed and
restored, the government itself, hitherto a fortress of republicanism,
will pass into the hands of an insidious aristocracy, and its batteries
be turned against the cause which it was reared to defend.

The republican party is not deficient, either in intelligence, in
earnest patriotism, in moderation, or in numbers. Its members
everywhere are among those who, in all our political, moral and
religious associations, have been as enlightened and as efficient as
their fellows. Those who constitute its masses have, some for long
periods, and others throughout long lives, been consistent supporters,
not only of the constitution, but also of all those principles of jus-

VOL. IY 31

242 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

tice, equality and liberty, which are the basis of republican govern
ment. Not one of them, so far as we know, has ever counseled
seditious or factious measures. The republican party holds either
paramount or at least respectable rank and authority in thirteen of
the states, with either the whole or a majority of the representatives
of each of those states in the Federal Union.

It is, indeed, popularly regarded as a party of yesterday. But
practically it is old and well known in the field of public affairs.
Its policy is to inculcate perpetual jealousy of the increase and
extension of slavery, and the plantation organization and admis
sion of free states in the common territories of the United States.
This policy is even older than the constitution itself. It was the
policy of Jay, Madison, Jefferson and Washington. It was early
exercised in prohibiting the African slave trade, and devoting the
northwest territory to impartial freedom. Although it has not
always prevailed in the federal government, it has, without change
or even the shadow of turning, been always the policy of the state
of New York, which has continually been the wisest member of the
confederacy, and as loyal as any other member. Those who have
cherished this policy have, however, been divided and distributed
among the many parties which have existed, until, by reason of that
separation alone, the policy itself has been arrested and defeated. De
feated, but not successfully repressed, that policy has at last worked
out a disintegration of all the parties by whom it was so unwisely
and disloyally discarded. Its advocates, thus disengaged and released
, from diverse and uncongenial relations, have come together by means
of a just and natural affinity, and have organized, and they now con
stitute the republican party.

Slavery, contrary to the expectations of the founders of the repub-
still exists in this, the seventy-ninth year of independence ; and
it has at once a purpose to perpetuate itself, and apparently a reason-
able hope of at least a long continuance. On the other hand, the
love of equality, springing alike and all at once from the consciences,
the judgments, and the hearts of the American people, is irrepressi
ble and imperishable, and so there will remain an undying jealousy
of the aggrandizement of slavery. The republican party fosters that
jealousy, and directs it to the proper means of active resistance.
Thus it happens, that as the republican party is not a party of yes-

* , / Sla
jff* I lie, sti

THE CONTEST AND THE CRISIS. 243

terday, it is also^not merehr a party of tft-cfay, ^nf fr dnra-hl^ ppr«
petual organization.

""The slaveholders, always sufficiently united and consolidated,
have so improved their advantages, that their aggressions have b
come at last intolerable. They have rushed into a dead-lock with'
their opponents. The nation's whole breadth is the field of contest.
A changeless sway of the republic, throughout its future existence,
is the object of this majestic strife. So the slaveholders on the one ^
side, and the republican party on the other, are now, and for an i.
indefinite period must continue to be, not merely the chief combat- ^
ants, but practically the only combatants in tne Union. ISucn is the
republican party, and such^areTie circumstances under which it
appeals to you to enlist under its banner, and give it your enlight
ened and effective cooperation. Shall I have on your part a fair
and candid hearing in its behalf?

I am well aware that at this moment large popular masses are at
rest, while others, broken up in the general wreck of former parties,
are moving capriciously, and in divergent directions. I know equally
well that popular masses, at rest, have a sort of vis inertice to over
come; and that popular masses, suddenly and violently disturbed,
cannot all at once compose themselves, and organize. I apprehend,
therefore, that here, as elsewhere, there may be, on the part of some,
a disposition to indolence, and on the part of others a disposition to
avoid the organization which seems to me to have become necessary.
Both of these dispositions persuade to neutrality.

Are you indeed sure, then, that neutrality will be right, even if
you find it possible? Is liberty to be maintained in this republic,
otherwise than through the conflicts of great parties ? Where there
are no great parties, there are either many small factions, or no parties
or factions whatever. A state that surrenders itself to the confused
contests of small parties or factions, is sinking inevitably toward
despotism. A state that has no parties or factions at all is a despo
tism already.

In every conflict between great parties (speaking without reference
to the motives of leaders or of masses), is there not one side that is
absolutely or relatively the right side, and which, because it is the
right side, is the side favorable to the public welfare and the public
•safety ; and also another side that is absolutely or relatively the
wrong side, and therefore the side detrimental to the public welfare,

244 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

and injurious to the public safety ? Are the welfare and safety of
the whole body politic anything else than the welfare and safety
of all its individual members ? Can I justly expect you to defend my
interest, and to assure my safety, if I will not defend and guard them
myself? In an ancient republic, it was made a capital crime to re
fuse to take a side in every political contest that agitated the com
monwealth. The penalty was indeed too severe, but was not the
policy of the law just and wise ? Still you fear agitation, and desire
repose. Was not the British commonwealth free from disturbance
when it so suddenly went down, and the Stuarts renewed their
hateful dominion ? Was not the late French republic distracted by
petty factions, regardless of the constitution and its safety, when the
coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon placed him upon the throne, and sent
the republicans of France to prison, to exile and to death ? Quiet
and repose are indeed desirable, when they can be safely enjoyed ;
but they can be safely enjoyed only when they come at intervals of
great activity, and repair and fit the wearied commonwealth for
renewed watchfulness.

Can you maintain neutrality ? If you enlist into or remain asso
ciated with the democratic party, or either of its sections, that is to
engage directly in the contest. Even if your party or section dis
avow opposition to freedom, all its successes enure to the advantage
of the slaveholders. Is neutrality easy to be maintained, amid the
excitement of political contests ? Zealous men in opposing parties
mutually respect each other, if they are generous , but they agree in
despising the timid and trimming citizen. In every campaign, the
place of greatest danger is the neutral ground lying between the two
lines, because it is raked by the fire of both armies.

Perhaps you think the immunities of neutrality may be secured
by remaining in some independent outside association. How long
do you think any considerable mass of American citizens, enlightened,
open, manly, ardent, as they are, will be amused or interested in the
mummeries of a merely private, secret, selfish, bigoted, prescriptive
cabal, and its stale debates about the proper conditions of naturaliza
tion, and the claims of adopted citizens to the privilege of gracing
the parades of the militia on muster days, and the non-conformity
of Catholic clergy to the approved protestant tenures of churches
and burying grounds, when the discussion of the great question,
whether this shall be a land of freedom or a land of slavery, shall

THE CONTEST AND THE CRISIS. 245

have actually begun, and every popular tribune is occupied ? When
the sea is calm, light and fanciful barks sport safely and gaily on its
surface, among its merchantmen and its ships of war. But when
the storm king lashes the waves, and they rise up to kiss his feet,
the fantastical craft, no matter how broad its streamers, or how sharp
its keel, or how dexterous its navigator, suddenly disappears.

I conclude, therefore, that you all, if not now, yet soon enough^
will take one side or the other in this great controversy.

Which side? It will be the side on which justice, equality and
freedom, shall be found ; and, therefore, on which final success and
triumph shall be found. Which side is that? Even the matbema-_
tician^annot prove a self-eyjr)p,r|t, truth in his sciepra; no? ran T
demonstrate a self-evident truth in politics. To assert that justice,
or freedom, may be found on the side of those who are laboring to
fortify and extend slavery, is one of those paradoxes which pen
sioned error requires us to refute. I may be able to illustrate its
absurdity. Justice, equality and freedom, in political discussions,
relate to individual men and masses of men in the state. The old
Roman state consisted of members constituting three classes : 1st.
Patricians or privileged citizens ; 2d. Plebeians or unprivileged citi
zens ; 3d. Slaves, equally held by both of the other classes. All
the politics of that great and powerful people, whether of peace or
war, domestic or foreign, turned on the ever-changing balances of
these three classes and chiefly on that of the two first. In the
United States, there are also three classes. Slaveholders, non-slave
holders and slaves. From the foundation of our system, and even
from an early period, in the revolutionary war itself, all American
politics, whether of peace or war, and whether domestic or foreign,
have mainly turned, as they are now conspicuously turning, with
the vibrations of the balances between these three classes, and chiefly
those of the balances between the two first. Always the slavehold
ers, apprehensive of danger to property and pretensions anomalous
and obnoxious, seek to fortify themselves, with blind disregard to
the rights and interests of non-slaveholders. Always the non-slave
holders, having an increasing consciousness that slavery in any
degree is injurious to the state, and dangerous in proportion to its
strength, seek to counteract the policy of the slaveholders by diffus
ing the spirit of freedom. The cause of the non-slaveholders is
assumed by the republican party, and by no other party, sect or

246 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

On which side, then, may we expect that justice, equality
and liberty, will be found ?

The opposition, however, tell us they cannot yet see that slave
holders may not possibly have justice on their side. Let us try to
make the matter plain. Slaveholders are men engaged in the occu
pations of society, and they are a power in the state. Non-slave
holders, using only free labor, are human also, and another power in
the state. Their systems clash, their interests conflict, their ambi
tions conflict. The one power strives to extend, the other to circum
scribe, slavery. The republicans, by succession, are the party who
have opposed all the political concessions which have hitherto been
made to slavery. They opposed successfully the introduction of
slavery into the northwest territory. They opposed, with partial
success, the extension of slavery in the territory acquired from
France. They opposed, with partial success, the extension of slavery
in the state of Texas. They opposed, with partial success, the ex
tension of slavery in the territory obtained by conquest from Mexico.
They opposed the abrogation of the restriction in favor of freedom
contained in the Missouri compromise. They now demand the ad
mission, not only of free states, but also of free states only, into the
American Union. The slaveholders are the party by whose power
and influence all the enlargements of slavery within the United States
have been made. On which side, then, are justice, equality and free
dom ? Answer me upon your honors and your consciences.

An immediate issue involves the question whether Kansas shall be
rescued from jeopardy of slavery, aggravated perhaps by the horrors-
of civil war, and brought into the Union as a free state, notwith
standing the dereliction of congress and the treachery of the presi
dent of the United States. This issue is to be decided by the
present congress, or possibly continued before the next congress,
under a new administration. The republican party are committed
to the rescue of Kansas. Is it not just that Kansas shall be a free
state ? Is it not an inherent right of every community to be free,
if it desires to be so ? What does your Declaration of Independence
mean, if it do not mean that ? Was not freedom pledged to Kansas
in 1820, by the slaveholders themselves? Was -not that pledge
surreptitiously and perfidiously broken in 1854, by the Kansas ter
ritorial act ? Was not freedom pledged even by that act to the
people of Kansas, if they should desire to be free ? Is not even

THE CONTEST AND THE CRISIS. 247

that pledge shamefully broken by the usurpation of the Missouri
slaveholders ? Let the republican party prevail in this and in the
next canvass, and Kansas will become a free state. Let the republi
can party fail, and Kansas will inevitably be a slave state. On
which side, then, are justice, equality, and freedom ? Answer me,
as you will expect to answer at the bar of the public opinion of
mankind.

The sophists return to the argument with new and various dilem
mas. They are not satisfied that congress had the power to enact
the restriction contained in the Missouri compromise of 1820. Grant
that they had not. Yet the people of Kansas have the right now
to establish a free state. But congress had constitutional power to
enact that restriction. It was identical with the ordinance of 1787.
That ordinance was established simultaneously with the passing and
adoption of the constitution, and successive constitutional congresses
have ratified and confirmed it. Did not the statesmen of 1787
understand the constitutional powers of congress ?

Again: There is no part of the territory of the United States
over which there is not plenary absolute sovereignty residing some
where? Where does that sovereignty reside ? in the people of the
United States. By whom is the legislative power of that sovereignty
exercised? By congress alone. Congress can make all "needful
rules and regulations " concerning the public lands and other property
of the United States. The prohibition of slavery was the most
needful of all rules and regulations. How pitiful is the quibble
built on a criticism of the terms of this grant, when the constitution
contains no other grant of legislative power over the territories, and
the entire establishment of government in the territories rests on
this one grant only !

The opposition tell us, that if congress could prohibit slavery in
territories, then they might establish it there ; and hence they argue
against the power to prohibit. No ! Congress can establish slavery
nowhere. Slavery was never established rightfully anywhere. Nor
was it ever established by law. It is in violation of every line of
the Declaration of Independence, and of the whole summary of
personal rights contained in the constitution. It is derogatory from
the absolute rights of human nature, and no human power can sub
vert trKHe rights. On which side, then, are justice, equality, and
freedom? Answer, as you would have your constitution stand a

248 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

charter of freedom, or be perverted to the overthrow of the rights
of mankind.

But, granting that justice, freedom, and equality, are on the side
of the republican party, we are asked, what guaranties can it give
of loyalty to the constitution and the Union ? The question is an
insult to your state, to the memories of its founders, and the memo
ries of your fathers. Are loyalty and patriotism peculiar virtues of
slaveholders only ? Are sedition and treason natural vices of men,
who, fearing God and loving liberty for themselves, would therefore
extend its blessings to all mankind ? What is there inherent in the
nature of slavery, to make slaveholders loyal to institutions of free
dom and equality ? "What is there inherent in the nature of freedom,
to make those who possess, cherish, and defend it, disloyal to its
noble and necessary institutions? We give the guaranty of princi
ples identical with the principles of the constitution and the Declara
tion of Independence. We give the guaranties of peaceful, just,
and loyal lives, marked with a patience that has endured as long as
they were tolerable, and without even a ruffling of the temper, not
only the insults of slaveholders, but their menaces of disunion.
Can slaveholders give better guaranties than these? Will they even
give you any guaranties of fidelity to the constitution and the Union ?
No, they argue only in threats of the subversion of both.

The apologists of slavery, thus jnet, change front suddenly, and
ask us whether it jg^gafc tr> J^ra.vp. these menaces of disunion. I
answer— Jfes^jresJ Interests of a thousand kinds — material, social,
moral, and political — affections springing from the very constitution
of our nature — bind us non-slaveholders to this Union. The slave
holders, in spite of all these threats, are bound to it by the same
bonds, and they are bound to it also by a bond peculiarly their own
— that of dependence on it for their own safety. Three millions of
slaves are a hostile force constantly in their presence, in their very
midst. The servile war is always the most fearful form of war.
The world without sympathizes with the servile enemy. Against
that war, the American Union is the only defense of the slavehold
ers — their only protection. If ever they shall, in a season of mad
ness, secede from that Union and provoke that war, they will

soon come back again.

Nor are these threats the threats of slaveholders themselves.
They are arguments of politicians in behalf of the slaveholders. No

THKEATS OF DISUNION CONSIDERED. 249

man, heated by passion or the spirit of controversy, can safely
pledge his future conduct. Reason will decide that for him, when
the contemplated emergency shall have come. Neither can these
politicians pledge the future conduct of the slaveholders. They
will decide for themselves, when the time for their acquiescence
comes. No mass of men in this country are so libeled by their ene
mies as the slaveholders are by their friends. I know many of them
well. I have seen them in their homes, on their plantations, and in
their social circles. I never knew a disloyal man amongst them.
But, even if the case were otherwise, are we always to submit to
threats instead of arguments — to refer everything to the umpirage
of passion — to surrender everything to those who hold us in duress
by our fears? If this is to be the rule, how long shall we have any
thing valuable, in policy, justice, equality, or freedom, to surrender?
I know not how it may affect you, but every nerve and fibre and
element of manhood within me is stretched to its utmost tension
by these perpetual appeals to the ignoble instinct of fear, and not
to the impartial counsel of my conscience and my judgment. Last,
comes one who with seeming meekness asks us to consider whether
it is wise to jeopard the safety and happiness of twenty-five millions
of white men, in a vain effort to mitigate the sufferings of only
three millions of negroes? Humane, cautious, paternal, conscien
tious, man ! I might join issue, and ask where, in the ethics
either of government or of Christianity, you find authority to hold
three millions of men in bondage, to promote the welfare or even to
secure the safety of twenty-five millions of other men. But that
argument belongs to the abolitionists of slavery, who do not reckon
me in their number, and whose objects in this election are far more
comprehensive than those of the republican party which I defend.

I leave the rights and the interests of the slaves in the states to
their own care and that of their advocates ; I simply ask whether
the safety and the interests of twenty-five millions of free non-slave-
holding white men ought to be sacrificed or put in jeopardy for the
convenience or safety of three hundred and fifty thousand slave
holders ? I hear no answer.

There can be no answer, unless the apologists of slavery shall
unblushingly assert that slaveholders, in their intercourse with non-
slaveholders, are calm, tolerant, just. How is the fact? The non-
slaveholder in the slave state is allowed no independence, no

VOL. IV. 32

250 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

neutrality. He must support, maintain and defend slavery. The
non-slaveholders constitute only a second estate in every slavehold-
ing community ; whips, pistols, knives, enforce not merely their
silence, but their active partizanship. The right of free speech is
lost to them, the right of suffrage is valueless to them, the honors
and rewards of public office are denied to them. In Kansas, now
by usurpation a slave territory, the utterance of this speech, calm
and candid although I mean it to be, would be treason ; the reading
and circulation of it in print would be punished with death.

Hitherto, this tyranny of slaveholders over non-slaveholding
citizens has been mainly confined to slaveholding communities. But
slavery has of late arrogantly claimed to be national. Congress is
sanctioning the usurpation, and the federal courts and even state
courts are boldly enforcing it. In violation of the constitution, con
gress compels the non-slaveholders in the free states to capture and
deliver the fugitive slave. Congress at its last session was on the eve
of subverting the original, honored jurisdiction of state courts over
federal officers accused of offenses against the personal rights of the
citizen. The ancient writ of habeas corpus has become a remedy in
the capture of slaves, and the process of punishment for contempt
suffices to imprison a non-slaveholding citizen, without indictment,
trial or conviction, without bail or mainprize, and without limitation
of sentence, where a slaveholder is the prosecutor. Are not these
invasions of state rights fearfully premonitory that slavery is to be
come a universally ruling power throughout the republic ?

Nevertheless, and in view of all these things, the apologists of
slavery ask : Why bring these issues into a merely state election ?
"Who brought them here? What are the platforms of the hards,
the softs and the know-nothings, but issues with the republican
party, by demurrer or by denial, tendered by themselves? Can you
organize a republican national party one year, and dissolve it the
next, and yet restore it in a third year, to accommodate local politics ?
Why have the parties in this state, always competent to control the
action of the federal government, left these national grievances to
reach this intolerable height? Why should not the legislature,
the magistrates, and the ministerial officers, of this state be men who
dare to defend, and will defend, the rights of its citizens? Awayt
then, with these subterfuges.

I dwell briefly on the momentous importance of this crisis. We

IMPORTANCE OF THE CRISIS. 251

are indeed sixteen free states to fifteen slave states, and numerically
we have a majority of representatives in both houses of congress.
So we had when the Missouri compromise restriction was abrogated.
You have no reliable majority in either house, unless you instruct,
support and maintain them at home. If you do this, there is an end
to the extension of slavery ; if you do not, slavery, which is now
firmly planted on the coast of Mexico, and which extends upward to
the border at Kansas, will cross that border and fasten its outposts
on the southern border of British America. Thus the free states
will be shut out from the Pacific coast. Divided by this wall, the
free states become imbecile, and slavery grasps the dominion of the
republic. Dominion over this republic, by whomever exercised, is
dominion over the continent and all its islands. Where will free
dom, impartial freedom, find a refuge? Will it even find one in
British America ? Are you willing to be driven to find it there ? If
it cannot be maintained here, can it be secured there ? Shall this be
the inglorious end of the republican system planted at Plymouth —
this the inglorious end of the republic delivered by Lafayette, organ
ized and consolidated by Washington ?

Tell me not that these are exaggerations. Forbear si^c

ovi can show me when or w'nere I have sounded a, fnlsp

or exaggerated any one of the dangers through which, in the course
of this long strife with the slaveholders, we, have been passing.

I am indeed earnest ! I have seen slavery in the slave states, and
^>^^^?^*^*?^**^^*^^^1~ '~ . i —

freeudm in trie free states ; I have even seen both slavery and free- _

cipm in this state ;_I- know too well the evils of the former to be
willing to spare any effort to prevent their return. The experience
of New York tells the whole argument against slavery extension,
the whole argument for universal freedom. Suppose that, fifty years
ago, New York, like Virginia and Maryland, had clung to slavery,
where now would have been these three composite millions of free
men, the choice and flower of Europe and America? In that case,
would superstition and false national pride have needed to organ
ize a secret cabal, affiliated by unlawful oaths, to proscribe the exile
and his children for their nativity or their conscience' sake ? Where
would, then, have been the Erie canal, the Genesee Valley canal, the
Oswego canal, the Seneca and Cayuga canal, the Crooked Lake
canal, the Chemung canal, the Chenango canal, the Black River
canal, the Champlain canal — where the imperial New York Central

252 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

railroad, the Erie railroad, and the Ogdensburgh railroad, with their
branches penetrating not only every inhabited district in this state,
but every inhabited region also in adjacent states and in British
America? Where would have been the colleges, academies, and
above all, the free common schools, yielding instruction to children
of all sects and in all languages ? Where the asylums and other
public charities, and above all, that noble emigrant charity which
crowns the state with such distinguished honor ? Where these ten
thousand churches and cathedrals, renewing on every recurring
Sabbath day the marvel of Pentecost, when the sojourner from
every land hears the gospel of Christ preached to him in his own
tongue ? Where would have been the steamers, the barges, brigs
and schooners which crowd this harbor of Buffalo, bringing hither
the productions of the Mississippi valley and of the gulf coast, in
exchange for the fabrics of the Atlantic coast and of Europe, and for
the teas and spices of Asia ? Where the coasting vessels, the mer
chant ships, the clippers, the whale ships, and the ocean mail steam
ers, which are rapidly concentrating in our great seaport the commerce
of the world ? Where the American navy, at once the representa
tive and champion of the cause of universal republicanism ? Where
your inventors of steamboats, of electric telegraphs, and of planing
machines — where your ingenious artizans — where your artists — where
your mighty press ? Where your twenty cities — and where, above
all, the merry, laughing agricultural industry of native-born and exotic
laborers, enlivening the whole broad landscape, from the lake coast
to the ocean's side. Go ask Virginia— go ask even noble Maryland, ex
pending as she is a giant's strength in the serpent's coils, to show you
her people, canals, railroads, universities, schools, charities, commerce,
cities, and cultivated acres. Her silence is your expressive answer.
Once more : Spaniards planted slave states in America ; England
planted not only slave states but free ones. Spain planted twice as
many as England, and cultivated them with more assiduous and
maternal care. The Anglo-American free states are all of them strong
and vigorous, and already overshadow the continent. Europe regards
them with respect and admiration. There is not one Spanish Amer
ican state that is truly self-subsisting and independent. Sciolists
talk of Anglo-Saxon blood. ISTo nobler blood than the Iberian ever
coursed through human veins. But the Spaniard planted only slave
states. The Anglo-Saxon planted free ones.

THE DOMINANT CLASS IN THE REPUBLIC.

DETROIT, OCTOBER 2, 1856.

THE PROCESS of empire-building in these United States of Ame
rica is in some respects new and peculiar. We had not here a
state which was compact and complete at its beginning, nor have we
conquered other nations, or planted colonies, near or distant, to be
held as dependencies by force alone. On the contrary, we had a
broad foundation laid, upon which were raised at first only thirteen
columns, a portion of an indefinite number which were to be erected
during a long future, all of one material and equal strength, and all
to be combined inseparably, according to one great original design.

New states, ultimately to become members of the Federal Union,
pass through stages of unorganized colonization, and of dependence
and pupilage under the federal government, or that of some foreign
power, and receive their biases and even form their social institutions
during those early stages. Nevertheless, so intimate is the union of
all these states, that each exerts no measured influence upon every
other, while the fortune of any one is inseparably involved in the
common destiny of all.

You will infer at once from these statements, that the nature and
character of the institutions, of even any one maturing territory in
the United States, are subjects of the highest and possibly even vital
importance. That, although caprice and oppression may be harm
lessly practised by other nations upon their provinces and colonies,
yet such wrongs, committed by our federal government against our
growing territories, are equally injurious to those territories, and
dangerous, if not disastrous, to the whole republic.

Itjs_my purpose to sho.w you, on this occasion, that the slavehold-
ing class of the American people is systematically and^ annfiftflgfi^ly

of the government, especially in regard

to the territories, so as lo change t.hp. constitution and endanger _ the _
stability, welfare and liberty of the tTnion. _

I

254 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

First, insomuch as this propositionjuust seem to you bold, if not
new, I shall show from general_ principles that it may possibly be
true ; and secondly, I shall establish its truth by undeniable demon
stration—

-^$.' The proposition may be true. Property is an essential
element of civil society. So is liberty, which, properly understood,
is only the equal security of all citizens against oppression. How
to adjust the balance between property and liberty in states, is the
great problem of government. Property is always jealous of
enlarged liberty, and especially so when it is based on relations sub
versive of natural justice, which is nothing more than equality
among men. Property, therefore, has always a biasjtoward^pppres-
siorijjmd it derives power to oppress from its own jiajprejfche watch
fulness of its possessors, and the ease with which they can combine.
Liberty is exposed to the danger of such oppression by means of the
inconsiderateness and the jealousies which habitually prevail among
subjects or citizens. In every state all the property classes sympa
thize with each other, through the force of common instincts of fear,
cupidity and ambition, and are easily marshaled under the lead of
one which becomes dominant and represents the whole. Wherever
the rights and duties of the property classes are defined and regu
lated, with sufficient constraints to prevent oppression, and liberty is
at the same time so bounded as to secure property against social or
individual aggression, there the people are free and the state is repub
lican. WligrftjJ2J^_J)fl.1fl.Tip.p> is^ot ^accurately adjusted,_Jib£ity- is
Abridged, and a property class administers the government, in jthe^
form of an aristocracy, or a monarchy, or a despotism. The mere
mention of the names of Switzerland, Venice, France (her various
alternations being remembered), Great Britain and Eussia, furnishes
all needful illustrations of these positions. Human nature and the
physical elements of society are everywhere the same. It is there
fore possible that social and political errors and evils which have
frequently existed elsewhere, may find entrance here.

Secondly : The allegation of the perversion of the government by
the slave property class, which I have made, is true. Firstjet jus.,
see whether such a direction jpf the government, as it describes "was
designed or expected by its founders. On the contrary, they laid
the foundations of the states, not in property — much less in slave
property — but in the natural rights or political equality of men.

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 255

They established few safeguards of property, knowing how apt it is
to take care of itself, while they built strong bulwarks around liberty,
knowing how easily liberty is everywhere overthrown. The Decla
ration of Independence, which no weak or wicked citizen then dared
to pronounce a series of abstractions, recited as the fundamental
truth of the great political society which it ushered into the presence
of nations, that "all men are created equal" — "endowed by their
Creator with the inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness ;" and that " governments are instituted among men to
secure those rights," and derive their powers only "from the consent
of the governed."

The convention which framed the constitution, submitted it to the
American people by a letter bearing the signature of George Wash
ington, in which its character was denned with a steady hand in a
clear light. " Individuals," said the convention, " entering into
society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The
magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and cir
cumstances as on the object to be attained. In all our deliberations
on this subject, the object which the convention has kept steadily in
view was the consolidation of the Union, in which is involved our
prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence. This impor
tant consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, led
each state in the convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magni
tude than might have been otherwise expected." An analysis of the
constitution, especially including its amendment, justifies this decla
ration, that the points on which liberality of concession to property
was exercised, were only those of inferior magnitude, and that neither
prosperity, felicity, safety nor national existence, was intended to be
put at hazard for the preservation of a mere remnant or shadow of
liberty. Xhejjeople? speaking in the constitution, declared their
high objects in that great transaction in words simple, majestic and
comprehensive, "to form a perfect Union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
to our posterity." They boldjj and^ directly laid the axe to the roots
of jjrivileges and of classes,., they broke_ the very mainsprings of
aristocracy, or at . Jeas£_ihey attempi^d^tO-jla-sOy by_ ordaining, that
"no title of nobility shall bev.granted by the United States, or by
any state;" and that "congress shall make no law respecting an

256 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Although the_£eople well, knew that nearly every fourth person in
the new republic was actually a stove* &nd that perhaps one of every
twenty persons was a slaveholder — and so they well understood the
existence among themselves of caste and class — vet they_pertina-
ciously refused to recognize eilher^and, on the contrary, treated of
all the subjects of the government, under the common and promiscu
ous description of " persons," thus confounding classes and recog
nizing only men. While they aimed at an ultimate extinction of
that caste, and the class built upon it, by authorizing congress to
prohibit the importation of " persons " who were slaves, after 1808,
and to tax it severely in the meantime, and while they necessarily
left to the individual states the management of the domestic relations
of all classes and castes existing therein, they especially declared
what should be the rights and relations of all " persons," so far as
they were to be affected by the action of the federal government
which they were establishing. " The privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus shall not be suspended, unless, when, in case of rebellion or
invasion, the public security shall require it." " No bill of attainder
or ex post facto law shall be passed." " No capitation or other direct
tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census." " The United
States shall guaranty to every state in the Union a republican form
of government." " The right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed." " The right of the people to be secure in
their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated." They ordained "trial by jury,1'
prohibited " excessive bail and excessive fines, and cruel and unusual
punishments," and " reserved to the states and to the people all the
powers of government not expressly delegated to the United States."
Among these broad and comprehensive reservations of liberty,
only two inferior and guarded stipulations were made with the slave-
holding class — namely, that " no person held to service or labor in
one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party
to whom such service or labor may be due;" and that "representa
tives and taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which
shall be included within this Union, according to their respective
numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 257

of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years,
and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons"

It is manifest that congress cannot, without violating the rights
of the people reserved by their constitution, grant any favor or pri
vilege or advantage to the slaveholding class, or even ordain or
permit slavery to exist within the exclusive sphere of the federal

jurisdiction. The spirit of the Declaration of Independence ___and_of

the constitution of the United States, thus flagrantly hostile to_classes,
and especfally to the slaveholding cTass^ entered largely into the
contemporaneous constitution and jawsL.of. iiLO^LQ|Li^rst.ajgs- ^-11
of them established republican forms of governmentTTlost of them
asserted the political equality of men. All of them prohibited
orders of nobility and ecclesiastical classes, estates in mortmain, and
estates by primogeniture. Seven states immediately or speedily
prohibited slavery, and all of the others earnestly debated the same
great and benign reform. Finally, though unable thus early to
abolish slavery in six of the states where it already existed, the
people in the revolutionary congress effectually provided for exclu
ding it forever in that part of the national domain which laid northwest
of the Ohio, and in the states which were thereafter to be established
there.

I think, fellow citizens, that I have shown to your abundant satis
faction that_^uch a direction of the administration to the establish- ^~
ment and a^^an jizftmftnt Of the, slaveholding class, as I have charged,
if it indeed exisjs, is a perversion of the constitution of the United
States.

Seventy years of our national history have been fulfilled. Fix
your attention for a moment now on the slaveholding class, as it now
exists. Although it has been abolished by state legislation in seven
of the first thirteen states, and although nine free states which exclude
it have since been admitted into the Union, yet the slaveholding
class nevertheless stands erect and firm in fifteen of the present
thirty-one states, numbering three hundred and forty-seven thousand
** persons," on the basis of three millions two hundred and four
thousand other " persons " held to labor or service by the laws
thereof, valued at twelve hundred millions of dollars, combined
practically with all the real estates in those states. This class spreads
itself on the one bank of the Mississippi to the Kansas river, and on
the other to the Ohio, and along the Atlantic coast from the banks

VOL. IY. 33

258 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of the Delaware to those of the Eio Grande. In the states where
this class exists, it is not merely secure — it is permanent and com
pletely dominant, to the exclusion not merely of all civil rights on
the part of the "persons who are held to labor or service " by it,
but to the inhibition of voluntary emancipation by the owners of
slaves, to the practical exclusion of free labor from the state, and with
it freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the ballot
box, freedom of education, freedom of literature, and freedom of
popular assemblies. Thus established by municipal institutions, the
slaveholding class has become the governing power in each of the
slaveholding states, and it practically chooses thirty of the sixty-two
members of the senate, ninety of the two hundred and thirty -three
members of the house of representatives, and one hundred and five
of the two hundred and ninety -five electors of president and vice-
president of the United States.

Let us now repair to the federal capital. You see, that although
it is sadly wanting in the elements of industry and enterprise, which
distinguish the hundred cities of the free states, yet it is a respecta
ble metropolis, rich in costly national structures, monuments and
gardens. This elegant and tasteful edifice is the palace of the presi
dent of the United States. Its incumbent, you know him right well
(for he has acquired a painful notoriety), is a confessed apologist of
the slave-property class, a libeler of freemen and free states, which
resist the aggressions of that class, an abettor of the extension of
slavery, and of the enlargement of the domain of that class, by the
violation of time-honored compacts, by armed usurpations, conquest
and judicial corruption. You remember his history. He had been
equally obscure among civilians and generals, but he was deemed reli
able by the slave-property class to suppress debate on its high pre
tensions, and he was therefore advanced to the chief magistracy, to
the exclusion of the most heroic, magnanimous, and successful mili
tary chief the country has produced.

This broad highway is Pennsylvania avenue ; it leads between
stately storehouses and dwellings, occupied by slaveholders with
their slaves, to the capitol. We ascend the terrace, through groves
embellished with statues and fountains, and enter the senate chamber.
The senate is before us. It is an august assembly of ambassadors,
deputed by thirty-one equal states. It is august by reason of its
functions. It is an executive council, and exercises a negative voice

THE DOMINANT CLASS IN THE SENATE. 259

on all appointments to all places of trust, honor or profit, in the
republic, and a negative also on all treaties of the republic with
foreign nations. As a court of impeachment, it tries all political
crimes committed by public agents, and as a legislative body its con
currence is necessary to the passage of all the laws of the Union.
The age, experience and dignity of its members, together with the
facility for transacting business which it derives from the smallness
of its numbers, has enabled it to become the dominating political
power in the republic. The chair belongs to the vice-president of
the United States. He who was last advanced to that office is now
dead. You remember him. He was chosen from a slave state.
The senate elected in his place David E. Atchison. You know him
well. He was chief statesman and captain in the usurpation and
conquest recently effected by the slaveholding class in Kansas.
When his duties in that relation called him away from the capital,
his place there was assigned to Jesse D. Bright of Indiana. You
know him also. He is acceptable and approved by the slave-property
class, and he has deserved to be.

At the feet of the presiding officer you see three secretaries, while
his chair is surrounded by printers, sergeants- at arms, door-keepers
and pages. Each of them is either an active or passive advocate of
the policy of the slaveholding class.

The business of the day opens with a debate on the relations of
the country toward Great Britain and Central America — a theme
involving not merely immediate peace or war, but ultimately the
continental ascendancy of the republic. The debate is instituted on
the motion of the committee on foreign relations. The chairman of
that committee is Mr. James M. Mason of Virginia, author of the
last and most notorious of the fugitive slave laws. The other mem
bers are, Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, the founder of that curious and
evanescent system of territorial government, whilom known by the
name of Popular Sovereignty, but now recognized as Executive
Usurpation ; Mr. John A. Slidell of Louisiana, the same who has
proposed a withdrawal of the naval squadron employed in suppress
ing the slave trade on the coast of Africa; Mr. John M. Clayton
of Delaware, who pronounces the prohibition of slavery forever,
contained in the Missouri compromise, unconstitutional ; Mr. John
B. Weller, of California, who upholds the executive usurpation and
conquest in Kansas ; and with these gentlemen is associated one

260 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

opponent of the slaveholding class, namely, my honorable and excel
lent colleague, Mr. Hamilton Fish of New York.

The debate has ended while we have been canvassing the com
mittee by which it was instituted. And now the question has
changed to one of hardly less grave importance, namely, whether
the president of the United States shall be inhibited from employ
ing the army as a police to enforce the tyrannical laws of the slave-
holding conquerors of Kansas. This proposition of the house of
representatives is opposed by the committee on finance. That com
mittee has for its chairman Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter, also of Vir
ginia. He is the same senator who has just now proposed to rescind
that vote of the senate which rather admitted than declared that the
assault made by Preston S. Brooks, a representative of South Caro
lina, in the senate chamber, on Mr. Charles Sumner, a senator of
Massachusetts, for words spoken in debate, was a breach of the
privileges of the senate. The other members of this great commit
tee are Mr. James A. Pearce of Maryland, whom you see in his
place, franking for circulation his declaration in favor of the slave
holders' candidate for the presidency ; Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky r
the same senator who, as attorney-general, removed Mr. Fillm ore's
scruples concerning the suspension of the habeas corpus in the new
fugitive slave law; Mr. Stuart of Michigan; Mr. Brodhead of
Pennsylvania ; and Mr. Toucey of Connecticut, all of whom are
denouncers of that agitation which consists in exposing the aggres
sions of the slaveholding class upon the liberties of the American
people.

The senate needs but little time on a question so simple as that
which has thus been raised. It has already vindicated the president's
prerogative, and has now reached the third among the orders of the
day, namely, the improvement of the navigation of the Mississippi, a
measure introduced by the committee on commerce. This commit
tee has an aspect of unusual equality. For although it embraces Mr.
Clay of Alabama, and Mr. Benjamin of Louisiana, who are emi
nent champions of the rights of slaveholders, it nevertheless has for
its other members Mr. Hamlin, the newly elected governor of Maine,
the very ultra opponent of the slaveholding class who is now ad
dressing you, and Mr. Dodge of Wisconsin, who is its chairman.
But this equality is in part accidental. The chairman votes against
the slaveholding class, under the plea of instructions given him by

THE DOMINANT CLASS IN THE SENATE. 261

the state which he represents. Mr. Ilamlin was yet in full commu
nion with the slaveholding democracy when he was appointed to this
committee, and my own place on it was assigned to me while as yet
I was a national whig, and not, as now, a republican.

The debates in the senate interrupt us. Let us therefore forget
them, and proceed with our examination of the constitution of its
committees. The committee on manufactures seems to have been
framed with decided impartiality. At its head is Mr. Wright of
New Jersey, a supporter of the policy of the slaveholding class,
while its other members are Mr. Allen of Khode Island, a moderate
opponent of the Nebraska and Kansas law, and Mr. Harlan of Iowa,
Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts, and Mr. Trumbull of Illinois, three
distinguished and effective advocates of freedom.

I admit a similar equality in the constitution of the committee on
agriculture, for it consists of the same Mr. Allen and Mr. Harlan,
together with the indomitable Mr. Wade of Ohio, who are friends
of freedom, and also Mr. Thomson of New Jersey, and Mr. Hunter
of Virginia, who are defenders of the rights of slaveholders.

Glad to be just to that class, I acknowledge with pleasure that
equal liberality has been manifested in the organization of the com
mittee on the militia. Its chairman is Mr. Houston of Texas, and
with him is associated Mr. Bell, a true representative of New Hamp
shire, as she was of old, is now and always ought to be ; and these
certainly are not overbalanced by Mr. Dodge of Wisconsin, Mr.
Biggs of North Carolina, and Mr. Thompson of Kentucky.

I must nevertheless claim as a drawback on the magnanimity of
the senate, that these three last committees, namely, those " on manu
factures," "on agriculture," and "on the militia," have charge of
public interests which have long since been renounced by the federal
government in favor of the states, and that consequently those com
mittees are understood to be merely nominal, and that in fact they
never submit any measures for the consideration of congress.

On the other hand we see prudence, if not jealousy, visibly mani
fested in the constitution of the committee on the army and the navy,
the two great physical forces of the republic. The first of these
consists of Mr. Weller of California, Mr. Fitzpatrick of Alabama,
Mr. Jones of Tennessee, Mr. Iverson of Georgia, and Mr. Pratt of
Maryland, all of whom favor the largest liberty to the slaveholding
class ; and the other is composed of Mr. Mallory of Florida, Mr.

262 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Slidell of Louisiana, Mr. Thompson of New Jersey, Mr. James of
Rhode Island, all reliable supporters of that class, together with the-
independent, upright, and candid John Bell of Tennessee.

The slaveholding class is a careful guardian of the public domain.
Mr. Stuart, of Michigan, is chairman of the committee on public
lands. He is, as you well know, of the opinion that the agitation
of slavery is the prolific cause of the unhappy overthrow of free
dom in Kansas, and his associates are Mr. Johnson of Arkansas, Mr.
Clayton of Delaware, Mr. Mallory of Florida and Mr. Pugh of Ohior
who all are tolerant of that overthrow, and Mr. Foot, who so faith
fully represents the ever-reliable freemen of Vermont.

Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, presides over the committee on private
claims upon the public domain, supported by Mr. Biggs of North
Carolina and Mr. Thompson of Kentucky, with whom are associated
Mr. Foster, a senator of redeemed Connecticut, and Mr. Wilson of
Massachusetts.

Negotiations with the Indian tribes are continually required, to
provide room for the migration of the slaveholder with his slaves.
The committee on Indian affairs, excluding all senators from free
states, consists of Mr. Sebastian of Arkansas, Mr. Rusk of Texas,
Mr. Toombs of Georgia, Mr. Brown of Mississippi, Mr. Reid of
North Carolina and Mr. Bell of Tennessee.

Two representatives of the interests of freedom, Mr. Wade of
Ohio, and Mr. Fessenden of Maine, hold places on the committee on
claims against the government; but they are quite overbalanced by
Mr. Brodhead of Pennsylvania, Mr. Geyer of Missouri, Mr. Iverson
of Georgia, and Mr. Yulee of Florida.

The post office in its transactions is more nearly domestic and
municipal than any other department of the government, and comes
home to the business and bosoms of the whole people. Mr. Rusk
of Texas, is chairman of the committee on the post office and post
roads, and his associates are Mr. Yulee of Florida, Mr. Adams of
Mississippi, Mr. Jones of Iowa, balanced by Mr. Collamer of Ver
mont, and Mr. Durkee of Wisconsin.

No inconsiderate legislation favorable to freemen must be allowed
in the senate, no constitutional legislation necessary to the security
of slavery must be spared. The committee on the judiciary, charged
with the care of the public jurisprudence, consists of Mr. Butler of
South Carolina, Mr. Bayard of Delaware, Mr. Geyer of Missouri,

THE DOMINANT CLASS IN THE SENATE. 263

Mr. Toombs of Georgia, Mr. Toucey of Connecticut, and Mr. Pugh
of Ohio. It was the committee on the judiciary which, in 1845, re
ported the bill for removing from the state courts into the federal
courts private actions brought against federal officers for injuries
committed by them under color of their authority.

The slaveholding class watches with paternal jealousy over the
slaveholding capital of the United States. The committee on the
District of Columbia consists of Mr. Brown of Mississippi, Mr. Pratt
of Maryland, Mr. Mason of Virginia, and Mr. Eeid of North Caro
lina, together with Mr. Allen of Rhode Island.

The committee on territories has care of the colonization, organi
zation, and admission of new states, and so is in fact the most impor
tant of all the committees in the senate. Mr. Douglas, of Illinois,
is its chairman, and his associates are his willing supporters, Mr.
Jones of Iowa, Mr. Sebastian of Arkansas, Mr. Biggs of North
Carolina, together with Mr. Bell of Tennessee, and the able and
faithful Mr. Collamer of Vermont.

Finally, the science and literature of the country must not be
unduly directed to the prejudice of the interest:' of shiver;.'. The
committee on the library take charge of this great intellectual inte
rest, and it consists of Mr. Pearce of Maryland, Mr. Cass, the emi
nent senator from Michigan, and Mr. Bayard of Delaware.

You will say that my review of the committees of the senate is
unjust, because you have not heard me mention the names of those
distinguished champions of freedom in the senate, John P. Hale of
New Hampshire, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Behold
the places assigned to them ! Mr. Hale graces the committees on
" revolutionary claims " and on "public buildings," and Mr. Sumner
fills a seat in the " committee on pensions."

Do not think for a moment that I impeach the justice of the senate
in the construction of its committees. When you learn how strong
the slaveholding interest in the senate really is, you will perceive at
once that its representatives are more than just — they are even liberal
and generous to its adversaries. You shall decide the question for
yourselves, when I shall have called the roll. Taking the admission
of Kansas into the Union, under the Topeka constitution, as a test,
the classification of the senate is as follows : Rhode Island, two
voices for slavery; Connecticut, one; New Jersey, one; Pennsyl
vania, two; Delaware,, two; Maryland, two; Virginia, two; North

264 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Carolina, two ; South Carolina, two ; Georgia, two ; Alabama, two ;
Mississippi, two ; Louisiana, two ; Ohio, one ; Kentucky, two ; Ten
nessee, two ; Indiana, one ; Illinois, one ; Missouri, one ; Arkansas,
two ; Michigan, two ; Florida, two ; Texas, two ; Iowa, one ; Wis
consin, one ; California, one ; in all, twenty-six states, giving forty -three
voices for slavery. For freedom — Maine, two; New Hampshire,
two ; Vermont, two ; Massachusetts, two ; Connecticut, one ; New
York, two ; Ohio, one ; Illinois, one ; Iowa, one ; only nine states,
giving only fourteen voices for freedom.

Freemen of Michigan, I think I perceive that you are oppressed
with the atmosphere of the senate of the United States. I cheer
fully leave it. We have crossed the rotunda, so rich in memorials of
the patriotism and valor of our ancestors, and now we are in the
hall of representatives. Tbe_ house of representatives consists of
two hundred and thirty-three members, chosen severally by the peo
ple in representative districts. One hundred and forty -three of them
are chosen by the people of the free states. This house virtually
holds a controlling power over the senate and the president, through
its exclusive right to originate bills for raising public revenue. It is
in fact the, commons of America. But, alas ! if the senate is a strong
citadel of slavery, the house of representatives is by no means an
impregnable bulwark of freedom. The slaveholding class enjoys
no advantages which have not at some time been surrendered to it
by the house of representatives. To-day, indeed, we boast of a
regenerated house of representatives, faithful to the interests of
human freedom. But, after all, our boast is founded less on any
vantage ground actually gained by the house of representatives,
than on a retreat safely effected from the late legislative contest,
instead of an absolute capitulation. God knows that I do not under
value the brave and true champions of freedom who have honored
humanity so long in the house of representatives ; John Quincy
Adams, Giddings, Thaddeus Stevens, Preston King, David Wilmot,
John A. King, heretofore ; and now, Grow, and Banks, and Burlin-
game, and Howard, and Sherman, and Morgan, and Colfax, and the
Washburnes all. But I ask, nevertheless, what have we saved in
this last, our only successful contest in the house of representatives?
Whitfield, the representative of the Missouri borderers in Kansas, only
expelled, and Eeeder, the true representative of that territory,
rejected ; a speaker, faithful to justice and humanity, barely chosen

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 265

by a plurality ; an investigation into the atrocious crimes of Kansas,
barely sustained ; a meager plurality vote for the admission of Kan
sas, under the Topeka constitution, rendered half worthless by an
embarrassment of the question with an incongruous vote for a
reorganization of the territorial government ; and an eight months'
struggle for the equal independence of the house of representatives,
closed with a concession of absolute independence to the senate, by
consenting to its dictation in a bill directing the supplies for the sup
port of the civil authorities and the army of the United States.

Enough of the house of representatives. Come along with me,
fellow citizens. This passage, circuitous and descending, leads us
into the chamber of the supreme court of the United States. It is
an imposing tribunal ; a great conservative department of the govern
ment. It regulates the administration of justice between citizens of
the different states, and between states themselves. Its members
are independent of the legislature and of the president, and it has
the power of setting aside even laws and treaties, if it find them
subversive of the constitution of the United States. The court is
just opened for the business of the day. How fitly does the pro
clamation of its opening close with the invocation, " God save the
United States and this honorable court." See, also, how the memories
of the benefactors of mankind are held in honor here. There is the
statue of John Jay, the author of emancipation in New York. Alas,
our imagination has quite deluded us. The court consists of a chief
justice and eight associate justices. Of these, five were called from
slave states, and four from free states. The opinions and bias of
each of them were carefully considered by the president and senate
when he was appointed. Not one of them was found wanting in
soundness of politics, according to the slaveholder's exposition of
the constitution, and those who were called from the free states were
even more distinguished in that respect than their brethren from the
slaveholding states.

We have thus completed our survey of the supreme authorities
of the republic. Let us now leave the capitol, and look into the
subordinate departments.

In this modest edifice is the department of state. It is the deposi
tory of the seals of the republicf^ Tt^irecte and regulates the merely
executive operations of government at home, and all its foreign
relations. Its agents are numbered by the hundred, and they are

VOL. IV 34

266 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

dispersed in all civilized countries throughout the world. From the
chief here in his bureau to the secretaries of legation in South
America, Great Britain, France, Russia, Turkey, and China, there i».
not one of these agents who has ever rebuked or Condemned the
extension or aggrandizement of slavery. There is not one who does
not even defend and justify it. There is not one who does not
maintain that the flag of the United States covers with its protec
tion the slaves of the slaveholding class on the high seas.

In the majestic pile behind this unique but graceful colonnade, sits
the secretary of the tj^asuiy. He manages the revenues and expen
ditures of the United States, and guards arid improves their sources,
commerce and the public lands. Seventy millions of dollars
annually pass through his hands into those of other public agents,
contractors, creditors, and foreign powers. He directs the move
ments of agents who, scattered abroad in all the seaports and in all
the states and territories, are counted by the thousands. His wand
contracts or opens banks, and frees or embargoes the merchant ships
which carry on a trade, domestic and foreign, greater than that which
any other nation but one has ever maintained. All the national
revenues are raised in such a way as to favor most the purely agri
cultural labor of slaves, and to afford the least impulse to the great
wheel of manufacture, which is turned only by the hands of free
men. The custom-houses and the public lands pour forth two golden
streams — one into the elections, to procure votes for the slaveholding
class ; and the other into the treasury, to be enjoyed by those whom
it shall see fit to reward with places in the public service.

A walk of half a mile brings us to the portico of a great edifice,
faultlessly conforming to the best style of Grecian architecture. This
is the department of the interior, and here is its secretary. He is
charged with the ministerial part of the administration of justice,
with the disposition of the public lands, the construction of build
ings, the granting of patents, and the payment of pensions. His
agents abound especially in the territories and states, built on the
public domain. You see them here among yourselves, and know
them well. Did you ever know one of them whose devotion to the
slaveholding class could be shaken by any miracle less than that
which converted Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of saints, into a
preacher of righteousness ?

Merely turning a short corner, we reach the general post office.

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 267

This is the great domiciliary inquisition of the government. It
reaches, by long arms, with insinuating fingers, every settlement,
village, city, and state capital, in forest, prairie, mountain, and plain,
among the lakes and rivers of our own country, and pervades with
its presence the seas throughout the whole earth. There is not one,
of its more than twenty thousand agents, who is false to the slave-
holding interest, unless indeed he is so obscure as to have escaped,
not merely the notice of the chief of the department itself but also
the envy of stimulated avarice and ambition in his own neighbor
hood.

A circuit of half a mile has now brought us to the departments of
" War" and thq ""N^vy " Here two energetic and far-sighted min
isters, brought from the slaveholding states, and identified with their
policy, wield the two great physical forces of the republic, each
ready, on receiving a despatch by telegraph to subdue resistance to-
reclairnants of fugitive slaves in Boston, to disfranchising statutes in
Kansas, or to slave coursers on the high seas.

Finally, in the most unpretending of all the public edifices sits
the attorney-general of the United States. It belongs to the office
of an attorney -general to be a willing adviser and cunning execu
tioner of the policy of the power by whom he was appointed.
When or where, in all the memorable struggles of liberty with
prerogative, in this country or in Europe, has this character been
more successfully illustrated than it has been by the present attorney-
general, in his efforts to establish the interests of the slaveholding
class, and crush out its opponents in the free states ?

Fellow citizens, you start with astonishment at the picture I have
made, by simply bringing together well-known and familiar, but
distant, objects into one group, and in a clear lignt. You say that it
cannot be truthful. I reply, if it be not truthful, then let any one
here, whatever may be his political bias or associations, point out a
single figure that is wrongly placed on the canvas, or show a spot
where the cold and passionless shadowing I have given to it ought
to be mellowed.

You are impatient of my theme, but I cannot release you yet.
Mark, if you please, that thus far I have only shown you the mere
governmental organization of the slaveholding class in the United
States, and pointed out its badges of supremacy, suggestive of your
own debasement and humiliation. Contemplate now the reality of

268 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

the power of that class, and the condition to which the cause of human
nature has been reduced. In all the free states, the slaveholder
argues and debates the pretensions of his class, and even prosecutes
his claim for his slave before the delegate of the federal government,
with safety and boldness, as he ought. He exhorts the citizens of
the free states to acquiesce, and even threatens them, in their very
homes, with the terrors of disunion, if that acquiescence is withheld ;
and he does all this with safety, as he ought, if it be done at all.
He is listened to with patience, and replied to with decorum, even
in his most arrogant declamations, in the halls of congress. Through
the effective sympathy of other property classes, the slaveholding
power maintains with entire safety presses and permanent political
organizations in all the free states. On the contrary, if you except
the northern border of Delaware, there is nowhere in any slavehold
ing state personal safety for a citizen, even of that state itself, who
questions the rightful national domination of the slaveholding class.
Debate of its pretensions, in the halls of congress, is carried on at

• the perils of limb and life. A free press is no sooner set up in a
slaveholding state, than it is demolished, and citizens who assemble
peacefully to discuss even the extremest claims of slavery are at
first cautioned, and, if that is ineffectual, banished or slain, even
more surely than the resistants of military despotism in the French
empire. Nor, except just now, has the case been much better, even

, in the free states. It is only as of yesterday, when the free citizens,
assembled to discuss the exactions of the slaveholding class, were
dispersed in Boston, Utica, Philadelphia, and New York. It is only

' as of yesterday, that when I rose, on request of citizens of Michi
gan, at Marshall, to speak of the great political questions of the
day, I was enjoined not to make disturbance or to give offence by
speaking of free soil, and this was when I was standing as I am now
on the very ground which the ordinance of 1787 had saved to free-

1 dom. It was only as of yesterday, that protestant churches and
theological seminaries, built on Puritan foundations, vied with the
organs of the slaveholding class in denouncing a legislator who, in
the act of making laws affecting its interests, declared that all human
laws ought to be conformed to the standard of eternal justice. The
day has even not yet passed when the press, employed in the service
of education and morality, expurgates from the books which are
put into the hands of the young all reflections on slavery. The

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 269

day yet lasts when the flag of the United States flaunts defiance on
the high seas, over cargoes of human merchandise. Nor is there an
American representative anywhere, in any one of the four quarters
of the globe, that does not labor to suppress even there the discus
sion of American slavery, lest it may possibly affect the safety of
the slaveholding class at home. If, in a generous burst of sympathy
with the struggling protestant democracy of Europe, we bring off
the field one of their fallen champions, to condole with and comfort
him, we suddenly discern that the mere agitation of the principles
of freedom tends to alarm the slaveholding class, and we cast him
off again as a waif, not merely worthless, but dangerous to ourselves.
The natural and ancient order of things is reversed ; (freedom hasV
become subordinate, sectional, and local ; slavery in its influences ]
and combinations has become predominant, national, and general.
Free, direct, and manly utterance in the cause of freedom, even in
the free states themselves, leads to ostracism, while superservice-
ability to the slaveholding class alone secures preferment in the
national councils. The descendants of Franklin, and Hamilton, and
Jay, and King, are unprized —

" till they learn to betray,

Undistinguish'd they live, if they shame not their sires,

And the torch that would light them to dignity's way,
Must be caught from the pile when their country expires."

In this course of rapid public demoralization, what wonder is it
that the action of the government tends continually with fearfully
augmenting force to the aggrandizement of the slaveholding class ?
A government can never be better or wiserf or even so

wise as the PeQPJg_gve5 whom it presides ? Who can wonder, then,
that the congress of the United States, in 1820, gave to slavery the ;?
west bank of the Mississippi quite up to the present line of Kansas, .
and was content to save for freedom, out of the vast region of .
Louisiana, only Kansas and Nebraska ? Who can wonder that itj>
consented to annex and admit Texas, with power to subdivide her
self into five slave states, so as to secure the slaveholding class a
balance against the free states then expected to be ultimately organ
ized in Kansas and Nebraska? Who can wonder, that when this
annexation of Texas brought on a war with Mexico, which ended
in the annexation of Upper California and New Mexico, every foot

270 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of which was free from African slavery, congress divided that vast
territory, admitting the new state of California reluctantly as a free
state, oecause she would not consent to establish slavery, dismem
bered New Mexico, transferred a large portion of it to slaveholding
Texas, and stipulated that what remained of New Mexico, together
with Utah, should be received as slave states, if the people thereof
should so demand ? Who can wonder that the president, without
any reproof by congress, simultaneously offered to Spain two hun
dred millions of dollars for the purchase of Cuba, that it might be
divided into two slaveholding states, to be admitted as members of
the Federal Union, and at the same time menaced the European
powers with war if they should interfere to prevent the consumma
tion of the purchase? Who can wonder that, emboldened with
these concessions of the people, congress at last sanctioned a reprisal
by the slaveholding class upon the regions of Kansas and Nebraska,
not on the ground of justice or for an equivalent, but simply on the
pretence that the original concession of them to freedom was ex
torted by injustice and unconstitutional oppression by the free
states ? Who can wonder that the slaveholding class, when it had
obtained the sanction of congress to that reprisal, by giving a pledge
that the people of those territories should be perfectly free never
theless to establish freedom therein, invaded the territory of Kansas
with armed forces, inaugurated a usurpation, and established slavery
there, and disfranchised the supporters of freedom by tyrannical laws,
enforced by fire and sword, and that the president and senate now
maintain and uphold the slaveholding interests in these culminating
demonstrations of their power, while the house of representatives
lacks the power, because it is wanting in the virtue, to rescue the
interests of justice, freedom, and humanity? Who can wonder that
federal courts in Massachusetts indict defenders of freedom for sedi-
tition, and in Pennsylvania subvert the state tribunals, and pervert
the habeas corpus, the great writ of liberty, into a process for arrest
ing fugitive slaves, and construe into contempt, punishable by
imprisonment without bail or mainprize, the simple and truthful
denial of personal control over a fugitive female slave, who has
made her own voluntary escape from bondage T Who can wonder
tjmt in_Kansas lawyers may not plead or juries be impanneled in

1 See Memoir, ante, page 36.

THE DOMINANT CLASS. 271

the federal courts, nor can even citizens vote, without first swearing
to support the fugitive slave lawjindLthe Kansas* and Nebraska act, '
"wEile citizens ^who discuss through the press the right of slavehold
ers to domineer there, are punished with imprisonment or death;
free bridges over which citizens who advocate free institutions, may
pass, free taverns where they may rest, and free presses through
which they may speak, are destroyed under indictments for nuisances ;
and those who peacefully assemble to debate the grievances of that
class, and petition congress for relief, are indicted for high treason ?

Just now, the wind sets with some apparent steadiness in the
north, and you will readily confess therefore that I do not exagge
rate the growing aggrandizement of the slaveholding class, but jou_
will nevertheless insist that that aggrandizement is now andLjnay be
merely temporary and occasional. A moment's reflection, however,
will satisfy you that this opinion is^jofoum^l^^tmeT^Wnatis
now' seen 'is only the legitimate maturing of errors unresisted
through a period of nearly forty years. All the fearful evils now
upon us are only the inevitable results of efforts to extinguish, by
delays, concession, and compromises, a discussion to which justice,
reason, and humanity, are continually lending their elemental fires.

What, then, is the tendency of this aggrandizement of the slave in
terest, and what must be its end. if it be not now or speedily arrested ?
Immediate consequences are distinctly in view. The admission of C
Kansas into the Union as a slave state, the subsequent introduction
of slavery by means equally flagrant into Nebraska, and the admjs-
sion of Utah _jwith- the twin, patriarchal institutions of legalized
adultery and slav^tyT and these three achievements crowned with the
incorporation of Cuba into the republic. Beyond these visible fields
lies a region of fearful speculation — the restoration of the Airican
slave trade, and the desecration of all Mexico and Central America,
by the infliction upon the half-civilized Spanish and Indian races
dwelling there, by our hands, of a curse from which, inferior as they
are to ourselves, they have had the virtue once to redeem themselves.
Beyond this area last surveyed lies that of civil and servile wars^
national decline and — nmNT~

I fear to open up these distant views, because I know that you
will attribute my apprehensions to a morbid condition of mind. But
confining myself to the immediate future which is so fearfully palpa
ble, I ask you in all candor, first, whether I have ever before

272 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

exaggerated the aggrandizement of the slaveholding class. Secondly,
whether the movement that I now forbode is really more improbable
than the evils once seemed, which are now a startling reality.

How are these immediate evils, and whatever of greater evils that
are behind them, to be prevented? Do you expect that those who
have heretofore counseled compromise, acquiescence, and submis
sion, will change their course, and come to the rescue of liberty?
Even if this were a reasonable hope, are Cass, and Douglas, and
Buchanan, greater or better than the statesmen who have opened
the way of compromise, and led these modern statesmen into it?
And if they indeed are so much greater and so much better, do you
expect them to live forever ?

Perhaps you expect the slaveholding class will abate its pretension,
and practice voluntarily the moderation which you wish, but dare
not demand at its hands. How long, and with what success, have
you waited already for that reformation ? Did any property class
ever so reform itself ? Did the patricians in old Eome, the noblesse
or the clergy in France ? the landholders in Ireland ? the landed aris
tocracy in England? Does the slaveholding class even seek to
beguile you with such a hope ? Has it not become rapacious, arro
gant, defiant? Is it not waging civil war against freedom, wherever
it encounters real resistance ? No ! no ! you have let the lion and
the spotted leopard into the sheep-fold. They certainly will not die
of hunger there, nor retire from disgust with satiety. They will
remain there so long as renewed appetite shall find multiplied prey.
Be not self-deceived. Whenever a property class of any ^Tvj_jft_
in vitejjj^ society to oppressT it will continue^ to oppress. 5OieiL-
eyer a slavekoldiug class finds the nQn--fi1aveholding classes yielding
it will continue its, work of subjugation.

People of Michigan, I know full well that it seems ungracious in
me to dwell on this painful theme. It is not such an acknowledg
ment of your manifold hospitalities as you expected. It is hard for
the weary mariner to look steadily on the newly revealed rocks
toward which he has too long been carelessly drifting. It is not easy
for the prodigal to look with contentment on the rags and husks
which meet him as he retires from the house of his harlotry. Never
theless, there is no way of escaping any imminent danger, without
first calmly and steadily looking it fully in the face and ascertaining
its real nature and magnitude.

WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 273

Here again you will deny the justice of my parallels ; you will
claim to be merely innocent and unfortunate, and will upbraid the
slaveholding class as the builders of this impending ruin. But you
cannot escape in that way. The fault is not at all with that class,
but with yourselves. The slaveholders only act according to their
constitutions, education and training. It is the non-slaveholding
classes in the free states who are recreant to their own constitutions,
and false to their own instincts and impulses, and even to their own
true interests. Who taught the slaveholding class that freedom,
which could not be wholly conquered at once, could be yielded in
successive halves by successive compromises? Who taught the
slaveholding class the specious theories of non-intervention and
popular sovereignty, and the absolute obligation of tyrannical laws
enacted by armed usurpation ? Your own Cass, and Douglas, and
Pierce, and Buchanan. Who established Cass, Douglas, Pierce and
Buchanan at Washington, and gave them the power to march the>r
slaveholding armies into Kansas ? The non-slaveholding society in
the free states, and no portion of that society more willingly and
more recklessly than you, the people of Michigan.

You admit all this, and you ask how are these great evils, now so
apparent, to be corrected — these great dangers, now so manifest, to
be avoided. I answer, it is to be done, not as some of you have ?
supposed, by heated debates sustained by rifles or revolvers at -
Washington, nor yet by sending armies with supplies and Sharpe's J-
rifles into Kansas ; I condemn no necessary exercise of the right of '
self-defence anywhere. Public safety is necessary to the practice of the
real duties of champions of freedom. But this is a contest in which the
race is not to the physically swift, nor the battle to those who have most
muscular strength. ^Least of all is it to be won by retaliation and.
revengey The victory will be to those who shall practise the highest
moral courage, with. simple fidelity to the princirjles of humanity
and justice. Notwithstanding all the heroism of your champions in
Washington and Kansas, the contest will be fearfully endangered if
the slaveholding class shall win the president and the congress in
this great national canvass. Even although every one of these \
champions should perish in his proper field, yet the rights of man \
will be saved, and the tide of oppression will be rolled back from
our northern plains, if a president and a congress shall be chosen ]

who are true to freedom. The people, and the people only, are J
VOL. IV. 35 /

274 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

/sovereign and irresistible, whether they will the ascendancy of sla-
\very, or the triumph of liberty.

Harsh as my words may have seemed, I do my kinsmen and
brethren of the free states no such injustice as to deny that great
allowances are to be made for the demoralization I have described.
We inherited complicity with the slaveholding class, and with it
prejudices of caste. We inherited confidence and affection toward
our southern brethren — and with these, our political organizations
and our profound reverence for political authorities, all adverse to
the needful discussion of slavery. Above all, we inherited a fear of
the dissolution of the Union, which can only be unwholesome when
it ceases equally to affect the conduct of all the great parties to that
sacred compact. All these inheritances have created influences upon
our political conduct, which are rather to be deplored than con
demned. I trust that at last these influences are about to cease. I
trust so, because, if we have inherited the demoralization of slavery,
we have also attained the virtue required for emancipation. If we
have inherited prejudices of caste, we have also risen to the know
ledge that political safety is dependent on the rendering of equal and
exact justice to all men. And if we have suffered our love for the
Union to be abused so as to make us tolerate the evils that more
than all others endanger it, we have discerned that great error at
last. If we should see a citizen, who had erected a noble edifice, sit
down inactively in its chambers, avoiding all duty and enterprise,
lest he might provoke enemies to pull it down over his head ; or one
who had built a majestic vessel, moor it to the wharf, through fear
that he might peradventure run it upon the rocks, we should con
demn his fatuity and folly. We have learned at last that the Ameri
can people labor not only under the responsibility of preserving this
Union, but also under the responsibility of making it subserve the
advancement of justice and humanity, and that neglect of this last re
sponsibility involves the chief peril to which the Union itself is exposed.

I shall waste little time on the newly -invented apologies for con
tinued demoralization. The question now to be decided is, whether
a slaveholding class exclusively shall govern America, or whether
it shall only bear divided sway with non-slaveholding citizens.
It concerns all persons equally, whether they are protestants or
catholics, native-born or exotic citizens. And therefore it seems to
me that this is no time for trials of strength between the native-born

THE TKUE CONSERVATISM. 275

and the adopted freemen, or between any two branches of one com
mon Ch ristian brotherhood.

As little shall I dwell on merely personal partialities or prejudices
affecting the candidates for public trusts. Each fitly personates the
cause he represents. Beyond a doubt, Mr. Buchanan is faithful to
the slaveholding class, as Mr. Fillmore vascillates between it and its
opponents. I Vrmw IVf r FrpTnqnt_well ; and when I say that I know
that he combines extraordinary genius and unquestionable sincerity
of pnrpnsp.^ with nnnqual modesty, I am sure that you will admit <
that he is a true representative of the cause of freedom.

Discarding sectionalism, and loving my country and all its parts,
and bearing an affection even to the slaveholding class, none the less
sincere because it repels me, I cordially adopt the motto which it
too often hangs out to delude us. I know no north, no south, no
east and no west ; for I know that he who would offer an acceptable
sacrifice in the present crisis must conform himself to the divine f
instructions, that neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, I
shall we worship the Father ; but the hour cometh, and now is, when /
the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,.

Last of all, I stop not to argue with those who decry agitation and
extol conservatism, not knowing that conservatism is of two kinds —
that one which, yielding to cowardly fear of present inconvenience
or danger, covers even political leprosy with protecting folds ; and
that other and better conservatism, that heals, in order that the body
of the commonwealth may be healthful and immortal.

Fellow citizens, I am aware that I have spoken with seriousness
amounting to solemnity. Do not infer from thence that I am despon
dent and distrustful of present triumph and ultimate regeneration.
It has required a strong pressure upon the main-spring of the public
virtue to awaken its elasticity. Such pressure has reached the center
of the spring at last. They who have reckoned that its elasticity
was lost, are now discovering their profound mistake. The people
of the United States have dallied long with the flowers of the acac-
tus, and floated carelessly on the calm seas that always reflect summer
skies, but they have not lost their preference for their own change
less fleur de Us, and they consult no other guidance, in their course
over the waters, than that of their own bright, particular and con
stant star, the harbinger of liberty.

'.

:

THE POLITICAL PARTIES OF THE DAY.

AUBURN, OCTOBER 21, 1856.

are neighbors and friends. We know each other well. I
know that you are sincere, and you know, as I trust, that I am a
man of not ungrateful disposition. We have a common memory of
many long and inclement political storms through which we have
passed, not altogether without occasional alienations and separations.
You, therefore, can readily conceive, without amplification on my part,
how profoundly gratifying it is to me now to see not only a general
brightening of the skies, auspicious of the triumph of the political
principles which I have cherished through so many trials, but also
troops and crowds and clouds of friends, more numerous, more ear
nest and more confiding than those by whom I was surrounded in
the most successful and happiest periods of my earlier life.

If politics were indeed, as many seem to suppose, merely an uncer
tain sea, bounded on all sides by rich ports and havens tempting
private adventure, I should not be one of those who, standing on
the beach, would be inciting my fellow citizens to commit them
selves on board this party craft or of the other. If politics were, as
others seem to think, merely a game cunningly compounded of
courage, accident and skill, in which prizes and crowns were to be
won by the victors for their own glory and the excitement of the
multitude, I certainly should not be found among the heralds of the
contestants on either side. If, again, politics were only a forum in
which social theories, without immediate bearing on the welfare and
safety of the country, were discussed, I might then be a listener, but
I should not be a disputant.

But, although politics present these aspects to superficial obser
vers, they are nevertheless far more serious and practical in their real
character. They are the regulation and direction of the actual life
of the American people. How much of individual, domestic and

THE PAETIES OF THE DAY. 277

social happiness depends on the regulation and conduct of only one
single human life ! How vastly more of human happiness depends
then on the regulation and conduct of the whole nation's thousand
fold longer life !

Since I have come before you on this occasion under the influence
of these sentiments, you will not expect from me either humorous,
exaggerated, passionate or prejudiced speech, but will rather calcu
late on an examination of the merits of candidates for public favor,
and of the parties by whom those candidates are respectively sustained.

It is not my habit to speak largely of candidates. I refrain for
two reasons ; First, because being necessarily brought into personal
combination or conflict with public men, my judgment concerning
them is liable to the bias of partiality or of jealousy; secondly,
because it is not the habit of parties in our country to select unfit,
unworthy or unreliable men to be their representatives. Whatever
may be the personal merits or demerits of a candidate, he cannot
act otherwise, if he be chosen, than as an agent of the majority to
whom he owes his place. The real question, therefore, in every
canvass, is, what are the merits of a party by whom a candidate is
preferred? — and inquiries concerning the personal characters and
dispositions of candidates are wasted on a false and delusive issue.
You can try the truth of this position at once, by inquiring of
whomsoever assails the candidate of your choice, whether he would
give his support to that candidate, abandoning his own, if all his
objections could at once be removed. Your opponent, if a candid
man, would probably answer in the negative.

But the case is quite different with political parties or masses of
citizens. A nation acts at any one time through the consent and
activity, not of all its members, but of only a majority, who deter
mine what shall be done, not only for themselves, but for all the citi
zens. By our individual suffrages, we express our choice whether
one class of citizens, with a peculiar policy and peculiar principles,
shall rule the country directing it in a course of their own, or whether
a different mass with different policy and principles shall conduct it
in a different direction. I shall therefore discuss the existing parties
freely. You shall judge whether I perform this duty with modera
tion and candor.

In the first place, I must ask you to notice the fact that society is
now in a transition state or stage so far as political parties are con-

278 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

cerned. Two or three years ago, the American people were divided
into two well denned, distinct and organized parties, the whigs and
the democrats. To-day, instead of these two parties, we see three
masses uncertainly denned, and apparently at least quite unorganized,
namely, Americans, democrats and republicans ; and we see portions
of each of these easily detached and passing over to the others, while
a very considerable number of citizens stand hesitating whether to
join one or the other, or to stand aloof still longer from all.

Such a transition stage, although unusual, is not unnatural. Estab
lished parties are built on certain policies and principles, and they
will stand and remain so long as those policies and principles are of
paramount importance and no longer.

They must break asunder and dissolve when new exigencies bring
up new and different policies and principles, and the transition stage
will last until the paramount importance of these new policies and
principles shall be generally felt and confessed, and no longer.

In a healthy and vigorous republic, the transition stage I have
described cannot last long, because in the absence of a firm and de
cided majority to direct its course, its would fall under the manage
ment of feeble and corrupt factions, under whose sway it would
rapidly decline, and speedily perish. Our republic, God be thanked,
is yet healthy and vigorous, and we already see that society is pass
ing out of the transition stage into the ancient and proper condi
tion. This condition is one which tolerates two firm and enduring
parties, no less and no more. There must be two parties, because at
every stage of national life some one question of national conduct par
amount to all others, presents itself to be decided. Such a question
always has two sides, a right side and a wrong side, but no third or
middle side. All masses which affect neutrality, as well as all
masses which seek to stand independently on questions which have
already passed and become obsolete, or on questions which have not
yet attained paramount importance, are crowded and crushed in the
conflicts between the two which occupy, for the time being, the
whole field of contest.

If such an emergency has now occurred presenting a vital ques
tion, on which society must divide into two parties, and if those par
ties are found already present in the political arena, then we are now
individually to decide whether to identify ourselves with a mass
which will exist "iselessly for only a short period; or unite with one

AN ANCIENT AND ETERNAL CONFLICT. 279

of two parties which will be enduring, and on the fortunes of whose
conflict depends the welfare of the republic ; and as between these
parties whether we shall attach ourselves to the party which will
maintain the wrong and perish with it, or to that which shall main
tain the right and immediately or ultimately triumph with it.

You yourselves, shall prove by your responses that emergency
has occurred, and that question is upon us. What has producecLthe__
disorgqjiization and confusion which we have all seen and wondered
at, the dissolution of the whig party, and the disorganization of the
democratic party, and given room and verge for the American or
know-nothing party? You all answer, the agitation of slavery.
And you answer truly. Answer again. What shall I discourse
upon? The contest of the American colonies with Great Britain,
and the characters of the whigs and tories ? No, that is a subject
for the fourth of July. The adoption of the constitution, and the
disputes between federalists and republicans ? No, let them sleep.
The tariff, National Bank and internal improvements, and the con
troversies of the whigs and democrats ? No, they are past and gone.
What then, of Knnsp,?, the admission of Kmisas ns a firo s^nte or a
slave state, the extension of slavery in the territories of the United
States ? Ah, yes, that is the theme, the extension of slavery, and
nothing else. Now of what is it that the Americans in the north
and in the south are debating in their councils, so far as their debates
are suffered to transpire? The abrogation and restoration of the
Missouri compromise and nothing else. The democrats also in the
north and south, they speak of nothing else but saving the Union
from destruction, by means of suppressing this very debate about
the extension of slavery.

Isjthis question about the extension of slavery new^ unreal, and
imaginary, the mere illusion of an hour ? Is it a wind that " bloweth
where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell
whence it cometh and whither it goeth." No, it. is. an ancignt and
eternal conflict between_twq entirel^^ntn,£pni^9_sy^ma of human ~JL_
labor existing in American society, not unequal in their forces; a
conflict for not merely toleration, but for absolute political sway in the
republic, between the system of free labor with equal and universal
suffrage, free speech free thought, and free action, and the system of
slave labor with unequal franchises secured by arbitrary, oppressive
and tyrannical laws. It is as old as the republic itself, although it has

280 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

never ripened before. It presented itself when the constitution was
adopted, and was only temporarily repressed by a compromise which
allowed to slaveholding communities three votes for every five
slaves, while it provided at the same time for the abolition of the
African slave trade. It presented itself in the continental congress
of 1787, and was then put aside only by the passage of the ordinance
of 1787, dedicating all the northwest territory to free labor. It
occurred again in 1820, threatening to distract the Union, as was
thought, and was then again put to rest by another compromise
which relinquished Missouri to slave labor, and gave over the terri
tory which now constitutes Kansas and Nebraska to free labor. It
occurred again in 1844, when Texas was annexed and was put to
sleep for only a short space by the division of Texas, very unequally
indeed, into slave soil and free soil. It arose again during the war
with Mexico, and was quieted by the memorable compromise of
1850, whose details I need not repeat. It occurred again in 1854,
on the opening of Kansas and Nebraska territories to civilization,
and was attempted to be put to sleep once more by the adoption in
congress of the specious delusion of popular sovereignty. The
question that is so old, has presented itself so often and never with
out disturbing, as it seemed, the very foundations of society, and
that has deranged and disorganized all the political combinations of
the country, fortified as they were by so many interests, ambitions,
and traditions, must be confessed to be a real and enduring if not a
vital question. But a moment's examination will serve to satisfy
you that it is also a vital question. It is really one in which the
parties are a sectional, local class of slaveholders, standing on the
unnatural principle of property in human beings, on the one side,
and the greater mass of society on the other, who, whether from
choice or necessity, are not, cannot, and will not be either slaves or
the owners of slaves.

It is a question between a small minority which cannot even
maintain itself, except by means of continually increasing conces
sions and new and more liberal guarantees, and a majority that
could never have been induced to grant even any guaranties except
by threats of disunion and that can expect no return for new and
further concessions and guaranties, but increasing exactions and
ultimate aggressions or secessions. The slaveholders can never be
content without dominion which abridges personal freedom as well

NEW COMPEOMISES CONSIDERED. 281

as circumscribes the domain of the non-slaveholding freemen. Non-
slaveholding freemen can never permanently submit to such domin
ion. Nor can the competition or contention cease, for the reason
that the general conscience of mankind throws its weight on the
side of freedom and presses onward the resistants to oppose the
solicitations and aggressions of the slaveholding class. Heretofore
opposing political combinations long established, and firmly en
trenched in traditions and popular affections, have concurred in the
policy of suppressing this great and important question, but they
have broken under its pressure at last. Henceforth, the antagonistical
elements will be left to clash without hindrance. Heretofore the
broad field of the national territories allowed each of the contending
interests ample room without coming into direct conflict with the
other. Henceforth, the two interests will be found contending for
common ground claimed by both, and which can be occupied only
by one of them.

One other condition remains to be settled, namelj3 that.JJiig_great__
question is .imminent andjirgent ; in other words^ tbaLiLrnnst, be
settled and determined without further postponement or delay..
How can it bej&irther postponed ? If it could be postponed at all,

^2 ^^2--^-^5>-2- — ^i-— »>-— Z--*-

it could be only by the same means which have been used success
fully for that purpose heretofore, namely, compromise. Where are
the agents for new compromises? The agents of the past com
promises are gone. Although they sleep in honored graves, and the
mourners over them have not yet quitted the streets, no new com
promisers arise to occupy their places. A compromise involves
mutual equivalents, something^to give and^sojiipthinr to -take in
exchange. Will slavery give you anything? No, it insists on _a_
free right to all the territories. What have you to give in exchange?
When you have given up Kansas, you will have relinquished all
the territories, for the principle of the relinquishment is that
slavery may constitutionally take them all. When compromise_Jg_^y
exhausted, what follows ? Dispute, contention, contest, conflict

No~!~tKe question is imminent? and must be met now. Kansas, at
the last session of congress, voluntarily offered itself as a free state,
and 'demanded to be admitted into the Union, and was rejected.
Since that time, the territory has been subjugated by slaveholders,
and they having usurped its sovereignty, are organizing a slave state
there which will apply for admission into the Union at the next

VOL. IV. 36

282 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

session of congress. Utah, already organized as a slave state, with
her incestuous social system, is lying concealed and waiting, ready to
demand admission so soon as Kansas shall have been received into
the Union. The adoption of both, or even one, of these states will
bear innuentially, perhaps conclusively, on the fortunes of the entire
conflict between freedom and slavery.

Insomuch as the question that is henceforth to divide society into
two parties, is thus seen to be a vital and imminent one, let us fully
possess ourselves of its magnitude. We have a sluggish, turbid and
desolating stream of slave labor issuing from fifteen slave states.
We have an ever increasing volume of free labor issuing from
sixteen free states, swollen by a stream scarcely less full, from
European and Asiatic fountains. These two variant floods cannot
be mingled, but one necessarily repels and excludes the other. We
have half a continent yet to be opened to the flow of the one or of
the other. Shall we diffuse slavery over it to react upon and destroy
ourselves, or shall we extend freedom over it covering it with hap
piness throughout all its mountains and plains, and thus forever
establish our own safety and happiness ?

If this great question were disembarrassed of all personal and
partisan interests and prejudices, the universal voice of the American
people would be pronounced for freedom and against slavery. Free
dom is nothing more than equality of political right or power
among all the members of a state. It is natural, just, useful and
beneficent. All men instinctively choose the side on which these
advantages lie. How true this is you may infer from the fact that
every one of the banners borne to this field by one of the great con
tending masses wears as its inscription a tribute to freedom, while
no banner borne by either of the other parties is ever defiled with
homages to slavery.

Nevertheless, while all avow themselves favorable to freedom, we
have to choose between the three political masses, the one which
will effectually secure its predominance in the republic.
, Shall we join ourselves to the know-nothing or American organ-
' ization ? What are its creed and its polic}'- ? Its creed is that the
• political franchises of alien immigrants and Roman catholics in our
country are too great, and its policy is to abridge them.

Now I might for argument's sake concede that this creed and this
policy are just and wise, still I could not unite with the know-

THE EPHEMERAL FACTION. 283

nothings even in that case, because their movement is out of season
and out of place. The question of Jhejday.Jajopt_ about natives and
foreigners, nor about protestants and JRpman catholics, but about
freemen and slaves. " The practical and immediately urgent question
is, shall Kansas be admitted into the Union as a free state, or shall
she be made a slave state and so admitted. "What have the fran
chises of alien immigrants and Roman catholics to do with that ?
If the American people declare for freedom, Kansas will be free.
If the American people declare for slavery, Kansas will be a slave
state. If the American people divide and one portion, being a
minority, declare for freedom ; while another portion, being also a
minority, declare against foreigners and catholics ; and a third, larger
than either, declare for slavery, nothing is obtained against foreigners
and catholics, nothing against slavery, and yet Kansas becomes a
slave state. Thus it is apparent that the issue raised by the know-
nothings, whatever may be its merit, is an immaterial, irrelevant and
false issue. A false issue always tends to divert and mislead the
people from the true one, and of course to prejudice the judgment
to be rendered upon it. I do not accuse the know-nothings of
designing so to mislead, because, first, I know nothing of the mo
tives of others ; and, secondly, because the question is never upon
motives but always upon effects. What have been the effects thus
far? The know-nothing members of congress divided between the
advocates of freedom in the territories and its opponents. Their
votes combined with either party would have given it a complete
triumph. Those votes reserved and cast as some peculiar interest
dictated have left the question of freedom in Kansas to the ordeal
of the sword in civil strife.

What is the effect upon the present canvass on which depends the
question of the admission of Kansas and of Utah as slave states in the
next congress ? Distraction of the public mind. Such effects are
inevitable. Whoever seeks to interpose an unreal or false issue
must necessarily, in order to gain even a hearing, affect neutrality on
the real one. At the same time no party can practice neutrality
on a vital issue with fairness. It will necessarily sympathise with
the weaker of the two contestants, and in some degree cooperate
with it to overthrow the stronger, which is the common adversary
of both. Of course, as the two great contestants exhibit unequal
strength in different states, it will favor one in some of the states,

284 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

and favor the other in other states. By virtue of a law that is irre
sistible, it will sooner or later betray each party when its own pecu
liar ends require that course. The experience of the whig and
democratic parties has proved how impossible it is to practise neu
trality on the great question of slavery. The former has broken
into pieces and perished in the effort. The latter has been crowded
from a neutral position, and with crumbled ranks has taken that of
the extension and fortification of slavery. The know-nothing mass
can expect no better success. The effort will cost its life. Crowded
and jostled between the two combatants, it will and must dissolve,
giving up portions of its men here to freedom and there to slavery,
but possibly not until it is too late to secure the triumph of freedom.
Thus you see that the know-nothing mass is not really a political
party. It is only an ephemeral and evanescent faction, as useless
and as injurious as a third blade in the shears, or a third stone which
an ignorant artizan might attempt to gear in between the upper and
the nether millstone.

By another sign you shall know it to be not a party but a faction.
From the day of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth until now,
every one of the great parties which have been engaged in directing
the life of the American people has recognized, from necessity, the
political system which exists and which must continue to exist here
as a republican one, based on the principles of the rightful political
equality of all the members of the state, and has acted on the prin
ciple that directness, publicity and equality of voices are necessary
in the conduct of public affairs. The know-nothings reject these
principles, and seek to exclude a large and considerable portion of
the members of the state from all participation in the conduct of its
affairs, and to obtain control and carry on the operations of the gov
ernment of all by secret machinery inconsistent with the constitution
of a republic, and appropriate only to a conspiracy either for or
against despotism. It will, I think, be hereafter regarded as one of
the caprices of politics that a system of combination so puerile was
ever attempted in the United States. The absurdity of the attempt
is rendered still more glaring when it is considered that the grounds
of persecution assumed against the class to be excluded are those of
nativity and religious belief — grounds directly in conflict with that
elementary truth announced by the Declaration of Independence,
that all men are created equal, and are by nature endowed with cer-

THE DEMOCRATIC PAKTY. 285

tain inalienable rights, to secure which governments ' are instituted
among men ; and with that fundamental article of the constitution
which declares that no system of religion shall ever be established.

Who, then, will choose to enroll himself under the banner of an
ephemeral, evanescent and injurious faction like this, to be compro
mised in its frauds for a day or a year, or two years, and then to be
left by it to the pity and scorn of the nation whose confidence it had
sought to abuse ? Certainly, no one who values at its just worth the
great interests of freedom and humanity, which are staked on the
present contest, nor even any one who values at its just worth his own
influence, or even his own vote, or his own character as a citizen.

Our choice between parties, fellow citizens, is thus connned to the
democratic and rgfijiblican parties._ On what principle could we
attach ourselves to the democratic party ? Let us look full in the
face the actual state of things. Seven years ago, when I entered
congress as a senator from this state, there was not one acre of soil
within the national domain from which slavery was not excluded by
law. It was excluded from Minnesota by the ordinance of 1787,
which was then of fully acknowledged obligation and effect. It was
excluded from Kansas and Nebraska by the Missouri compromise
restriction, which also was then in full effect. It was equally excluded
from California, including New Mexico and Utah, by Mexican laws
which had never been impaired, and were of confessed obligation.

It was excluded from Oregon by the organic law of that territory.
Now there is not an acre of the public domain which congress has
not opened to the entrance of slavery. It has expressly abrogated
the Missouri compromise, on the ground that it was void, for want
of power in congress under the constitution to exclude slavery, and
also on the ground that the compromise of 1850 had already settled
its invalidity. This legislation, if acquiesced in by the people, and
so confirmed, will henceforth be irresistibly claimed as abrogating
alike the ordinance of 1787, the Missouri compromise restriction, and
the organic law of Oregon, and the Mexican laws. Thus the whole
of the territories has been already lost to freedom by the legislation
of the last seven years , and the controversy before us is one not to
save, but to reclaim. During the first six years of that period, there
were only two parties — the democratic and the whig parties — in
congress and in the country. During the last year there were three,
the democratic, know-nothing and republican parties. Every one

286 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

will at once acquit the republican party, and those who now consti
tute it, of all agency in the betrayal and surrender of freedom which
have thus been made. The responsibility for them, therefore, belongs
to the democratic party and to the whig party. Now you may
divide this responsibility between the democratic and whig parties,
just as you like. The whig party has perished under its weight,
but a still greater responsibility lies upon the democratic party. It
was the democratic party that refused to admit California, without
condition or compromise, in 1850 ; that forced on the whig party the
compromise of that year, and adopted it as its own permanent policy,
and elected Franklin Pierce the present president of the United
States. It was the democratic joarty that invented the new, plausible,
deceptive and ruinous policy of abnegation of federal authority over
slavery in the territories, and the suBstitution of the theory of popu-

/'"lar sovereignty^; arid- it was thie democratic party that,_with the
cooperation of a portion of the know-nothings, rejected the appeal
of oppressed and" subjugated Kansas for relief and restoration to
freedom, by admission into the Union as a free state. The demo
cratic party did, indeed, in some of its conventions in northern states,
for a time hesitate to commit itself to the policy of slavery propagand-
isrn by breach of public faith, fraud and force, but it has finally re
nounced all resistance, and it now stands boldly forth, avowing its
entire approval of that odious and ruinous determination to carry it
to its end, whatever that end may be.

Nor will any candid person claim that anything better is to be
$ hoped from the democratic party in the future. It is a party_essen-

/-tially built on tfrf. intftr^pt of the slaveholding clas&.. Deprived of
»vthat support, it would instantly cease to exist. The principle of this
fck class is, that property in man is sanctioned by the constitution of the
\ United States and is inviolate. All that has been won by this class
from freedom, has been won on that principle. The decisions of
Judge Kane and other federal judges, and the odious and tyrannical
laws of the usurpers in Kansas, are legitimate fruits of that principle-
To that principle the democratic party must adhere or perish, and it
accepts it as the least fearful of two alternatives. But the principle,
when established in the territories, will then be with equal plausi
bility extended to the states, and thenceforward we are to contend for
the right of the free states to exclude slavery within their own bor
ders.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 287

If-t^ese arguments be sound, we are shut up to the necessity of
rt, to the republican partyT as the only means of

maintaining the cause of freedom and humanity. Why, then, shall
we stand aloof from it, in this election, or for a day or an hour ? I
will review the argument urged from all quarters, and you shall see
in the first place that every one of them is frivolous and' puerile ;
and, secondly, that it involves nothing less than a surrender of the
entire question in issue, and acquiescence in the unrestricted domina
tion of slavery.

First: We are conjured by those who, in Boston, New York and
elsewhere, call themselves straight-out whigs, to wait for a reorgani
zation of the national whig party, to rescue the cause of freedom.
But is it written in any book of political revelation that a resurrec
tion on this earth awaits parties which have fulfilled the course of
nature ?

Secondly: The whig party perished through a lack of virtue to
maintain the cause of freedom. Amongst all of those who are wait
ing and praying for its resurrection, there is not one that to-day
yields his support to that cause. What, then, but new betrayals can
be expected, if it is destined to a resurrection ?

We are told on all sides that the republican party is new and
partially organized, and merely experimental. It is, indeed, new,
and as yet imperfectly organized. But so once was the ancient
whig party, that gave to the country independence. So once was
the federal party, that gave to the country its constitution. So once
was the* ancient republican party, that gave to the country a complete
emancipation of the masses from the combination of classes. So
once was the whig and the democratic party. It is the destiny of
associations of men to have a beginning and an end. If an associa
tion is born of an enduring political necessity, it will endure and
wax in vigor and power until it supplants other and superfluous,
though more aged combinations. That such is to be the case with
the republican party, is seen in the fact that all existing combinations
are now uniting against it, on the ground that such a union is neces
sary to prevent its immediate and overwhelming ascendancy. This
union is an effective answer to the former argument, that the repub
lican party is an ephemeral and evanescent one.

Thirdly: We are favored with criticisms by the democrats and
know-nothings on the course of the republican members of the house

288 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of representatives, by voting for Mr. Dunn's bill to restore the Mis
souri compromise, and against Mr. Toombs' bill, for pacifying Kan
sas, which votes, it is said, prove the republicans insincere in their
devotion to freedom. These are the same class of arguments with
those which are urged by infidels against the Christian church, on
the ground of the short-comings of its members.
^Suppose we abandon the republican party for its^short-comin^Sj
will freedom then have any party left? and if so, what party, and
\yliere 'shall we find it? Certainly no other party but the democratic
party, of which Franklin Pierce and Stephen A. Douglas are the
apostles. But that is the party of slavery.

citizens7 I have discussed parties with no asperity and with

no partiality, for I know that masses and individuals are affie honest
well meaning and patriotic. I have no animosities and no griefs.
While I have tried to pursue always that one steady course which
my conscience has approved, my friends have often been alienated,
and adversaries have become friends. The charity of judgment, to
which I feel that I am entitled — that is the charity I extend to others.
I do not predict the times and seasons when one or other of the
contending political elements shall prevail. I know, nevertheless,
that this state, this nation, and this earth are to be the abode and
happy home of freemen. Its hills and valleys are to be fields of
free labor, free thought and free suffrages. That consummation will
come when society is prepared for it. My labors are devoted to that
preparation. I leave others to cling to obsolete traditions and decay
ing systems, and perish with them if they must ; but in politics, as
in religion, I desire for myself to be always with that portion of my
fellow men who hold fast to the truth, with hope and confidence
enduring through all trials in its complete and eternal triumph.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

ROCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1858.

THE unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me,
show that you are earnest men — and such a man am I. Let us
therefore, at least for a time, pass by all secondary and collateral
questions, whether of a personal or of a general nature, and consider
the main subject of the present canvass. The democratic party— or,
to speak more accurately, the party which wears that attractive
name — is in possession of the federal government. The republicans
propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss it from its high trust.

The main subject, then, is, whether the democratic party deserves
to retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to
prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices
against that party, or by prepossessions in favor of its adversary ;
for I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism,
vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less
in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in full operation, two
radically different political systems ; the one resting on the basis of
servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of
freemen.

The laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or
less purely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The
principle of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomso
ever performed, is necessarily unintellectual, groveling and base;
and that the laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare
of the state, ought to be enslaved The white laboring man, whether
native or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet,
be reduced to bondage.

You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the
two, and that once it was universal.

VOL. IV. 37

290 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

The emancipation of oar own ancestors, Caucasians and Europeans
as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of five hundred years.
The great melioration of human society which modern times exhibit,
is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the system of volun
tary labor for the old one of servile labor, which has already taken
place. This African slave system is one which, in its origin and in
its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habits of the races
which colonized these states, and established civilization here. It
was introduced on this new continent as an engine of conquest, and
for the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and
the Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South
America, Central America, Louisiana and Mexico. Its legitimate
fruits are seen in the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy, which now
pervade all Portuguese and Spanish America. The free-labor sys
tem is of German extraction, and it was established in our country
by emigrants from Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain and
Ireland.

We justly ascribe to its influences the strength, wealth, greatness,
intelligence, and freedom, which the whole American people now
enjoy. One of the chief elements of the value of human life is free
dom in the pursuit of happiness. The slave system is not only in
tolerable, unjust, and inhuman, towards the laborer, whom, only
because he is a laborer, it loads down with chains and converts into
merchandise, but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom,
only because he is a laborer from necessity, it denies facilities for
employment, and whom it expels from the community because it
cannot enslave and convert him into merchandise also. It is neces
sarily improvident and ruinous, because, as a general truth, commu
nities prosper and flourish or droop and decline in just the degree
that they practise or neglect, to practise the primary duties of justice
and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of
equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and
therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.

The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and
watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth
and resources for defense, to the lowest degree of which human nature
is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes
energies which otherwise might be employed in national develop
ment and aggrandizement.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 291

The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the
fields of industrial employment, and all the departments of authority,
to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once
secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible
activity all the physical, moral and social energies of the whole state.
In states where the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or
indirectly, secure all political power, and constitute a ruling aristo
cracy. In states where the free-labor system prevails, universal suf
frage necessarily obtains, and the state inevitably becomes, sooner or
later, a republic or democracy.

Eussia yet maintains slavery, and is a despotism. Most of the
other European states have abolished slavery, and adopted the sys
tem of free labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the
two systems which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he
predicted that Europe would ultimately be either all Cossack or all
republican. Never did human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth.
The. two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But they
are more than incongruous — they are incompatible. They never
have permanently existed together in one country, and they never
can. It would be easy to demonstrate this impossibility, from the
irreconcilable contrast between their great principles and character
istics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established
it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every state in
Europe. Free labor has supplanted it everywhere except in Russia
and Turkey. State necessities developed in modern times, are now
obliging even those two nations to encourage and employ free labor ;
and already, despotic as they are, we find them engaged in abolish
ing slavery. In the United States, slavery came into collision with
free labor at the close of the last century, and fell before it in New
England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but triumphed
over it effectually, and excluded it for a period yet undetermined,
from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible
are the two systems, that every new state which is organized within
our ever extending domain makes its first political act a choice of
the one and the exclusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war, if
necessary. The slave states, without law, at the last national election,
successfully forbade, within their own limits, even the casting of votes
for a candidate for president of the United States supposed to be
favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system in new states.

292 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different states, but side
by side within the American Union. This has happened because the
Union is a confederation of states. But in another aspect the United
States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is
filling the states out to their very borders, together with a new and ex
tended net- work of railroads and other avenues, and an internal com
merce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the
states into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation.
/"Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer
contact, and collision results.

Shall I tell you what this collision means ? They who think that
it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agi
tators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It_is
an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and
it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, be
come either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor
nation. Either the cotton and rice-fields of South Carolina and the
sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor,
and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate mer
chandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts
and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave
culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York
become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men.
It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many
unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the slave and free
states, and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such
pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral. Startling
as this saying may appear to you, fellow citizens, it is by no means
an original or even a moderate one. Our forefathers knew it to be
true, and unanimously acted upon it when they framed the constitu
tion of the United States. They regarded the existence of the servile
system in so many of the states with sorrow and shame, which they
openly confessed, and they looked upon the collision between themr
which was then just revealing itself, and which we are now accus
tomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that either the
one or the other system must exclusively prevail.

Unlike top many of those who in modern time invoke their autho
rity, they had a choice between the two. They preferred the system
of free labor, and they determined to organize the government, and

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 293

so to direct its activity, that that system should surely and certainly
prevail. For this purpose, and no other, they based the whole struc
ture of government broadly on the principle that all men are created
equal, and therefore free — little dreaming that, within the short
period of one hundred years, their descendants would bear to be
told by any orator, however popular, that the utterance of that prin
ciple was merely a rhetorical rhapsody; or by any judge, however
venerated, that it was attended by mental reservations, which ren
dered it hypocritical and false. By the ordinance of 1787, they
dedicated all of the national domain not yet polluted by slavery to
free labor immediately, thenceforth and forever ; while by the new
constitution and laws they invited foreign free labor from all lands
under the sun, and interdicted the importation of African slave
labor, at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances what
soever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified this
policy of freedom, by leaving it to the several states, affected as they
were by differing circumstances, to abolish slavery in their own way
and at their own pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to congress ;
and that they secured to the slave states, while yet retaining the sys
tem of slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the federal
government, until they should find themselves able to relinquish it
with safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies
my position that the fathers knew that the two systems could not
endure within the Union, and expected that within a short period
slavery would disappear forever. Moreover, in order that these
modifications might not altogether defeat their grand design of a
republic maintaining universal equality, they provided that two-
thirds of the states might amend the constitution.

It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against
misapprehension. If these states are to again become universally
slaveholding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the
constitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand,
while I do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet
become a land of universal freedom, I do not expect that it will be
made so otherwise than through the action of 'the several states
cooperating with the federal government, and all acting in strict con
formity with their respective constitutions.

The strife and contentions concerning slavery, which gently-dis
posed persons so habitually deprecate, are nothing more than the

294 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

ripening of the conflict which the fathers themselves not only thus
regarded with favor, but which they may be said to have instituted.
It is not to be denied, however, that thus far the course of that
contest has not been according to their humane anticipations and
wishes. In the field of federal politics, slavery, deriving unlooked-
for advantages from commercial changes, and energies unforeseen from
the facilities of combination between members of the slaveholding
class and between that class and other property classes, early rallied,
and has at length made a stand, not merely to retain its original
defensive position, but to extend its sway throughout the whole
Union. It is certain that the slaveholding class of American citi
zens indulge this high ambition, and that they derive encouragement,
for it from the rapid and effective political successes which they have
already obtained. The plan of operation is this: By continued
appliances of patronage and threats of disunion, they will keep a
majority favorable to these designs in the senate, where each state
has an equal representation. Through that majority they will de
feat, as they best can, the admission of free states and secure the
admission of slave states. Under the protection of the judiciary,
they will, on the principle of the Dred Scott case, carry slavery into-
all the territories of the United States now existing and hereafter to
be organized. By the action of the president and the senate, using
the treaty-making power, they will annex foreign slaveholding states.
In a favorable conjuncture they will induce congress to repeal the
act of 1808, which prohibits the foreign slave trade, and so they will
import from Africa, at the cost of only twenty dollars a head, slaves
enough to fill up the interior of the continent. Thus relatively in
creasing the number of slave states, they will allow no amendment
to the constitution prejudicial to their interest ; and so, having per
manently established their power, they expect the federal judiciary
to nullify all state laws which shall interfere with internal or foreign
commerce in slaves. When the free states shall be sufficiently demo
ralized to tolerate these designs, they reasonably conclude that slavery
will be accepted by those states themselves. I shall not stop to show
how speedy or how complete would be the ruin which the accom
plishment of these slaveholding schemes would bring upon the coun
try. For one, I should not remain in the country to test the sad
experiment. Having spent my manhood, though not my whole life,
n a free state, no aristocracy of any kind, much less an aristocracy

THE IKREPEESSIBLE CONFLICT. 295

of slaveholders, shall ever make the laws of the land in which I shall
be content to live. Having seen the society around me universally
engaged in agriculture, manufactures and trade, which were innocent
and beneficent, I shall never be a denizen of a state where men and
women are reared as cattle, and bought and sold as merchandise.
When that evil day shall come, and all further effort at resistance
shall be impossible, then, if there shall be no better hope for redemp
tion than I can now foresee, I shall say with Franklin, while looking
abroad over the whole earth for a new and more congenial home,
" Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

You will tell me that these fears are extravagant and chimerical.
I answer, they are so ; but they are so only because the designs of
the slaveholders must and can be defeated. But it is only the possi
bility of defeat that renders them so. They cannot be defeated by
inactivity. There is no escape from them, compatible with non-re
sistance. How, then, and in what way, shall the necessary resistance
be made. There is only one way. The democratic party must be
permanently dislodged from the government. The reason is, that
the democratic party is inextricably committed to the designs of the
slaveholders, which I have described. Let me be well understood.
I do not charge that the democratic candidates for public office now
before the people are pledged to — much less that the democratic masses
who support them really adopt — those atrocious and dangerous de
signs. Candidates may, and generally do, mean to act justly, wisely
and patriotically, when they shall be elected ; but they become the
ministers and servants, not the dictators, of the power which elects
them. The policy which a party shall pursue at a future period is
only gradually developed, depending on the occurrence of events
never fully foreknown. The motives of men, whether acting as
electors or in any other capacity, are generally pure. Nevertheless,
it is not more true that "hell is paved with good intentions," than it
is that earth is covered with wrecks resulting from innocent and
amiable motives.

The very constitution of the democratic party commits it to exe
cute all the designs of the slaveholders, whatever they may be. It
is not a party of the whole Union, of all the free states and of all
the slave states ; nor yet is it a party of the free states in the north
and in the northwest ; but it is a sectional and local party, having

296 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

practically its seat within the slave states, and counting its constitu
ency chiefly and almost exclusively there. Of all its representatives
in congress and in the electoral colleges, two-thirds uniformly come
from these states. Its great element of strength lies in the vote of
the slaveholders, augmented by the representation of three-fifths of
the slaves. Deprive the democratic party of this strength, and it
would be a helpless and hopeless minority, incapable of continued
organization. The democratic party, being thus local and sectional,
acquires new strength from the admission of every new slave state,
and loses relatively by the admission of every new free state into
the Union.

A party is in one sense a joint stock association, in which those
who contribute most direct the action and management of the con
cern. The slaveholders contributing in an overwhelming proportion
to the capital strength of the democratic party, they necessarily dic
tate and prescribe its policy. The inevitable caucus system enables
them to do so with a show of fairness and justice. If it were pos
sible to conceive for a moment that the democratic party should
disobey the behests of the slaveholders, we should then see a with
drawal of the slaveholders, which would leave the party to perish.
The portion of the party which is found in the free states is a mere
appendage, convenient to modify its sectional character, without
impairing its sectional constitution, and is less effective in regulating
its movement than the nebulous tail of the comet is in determining
the appointed though apparently eccentric course of the fiery sphere
from which it emanates.

To expect the democratic party to resist slavery and favor free
dom, is as unreasonable as to look for protestant missionaries to the
catholic propaganda of Eome. The history of the democratic party
commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the democratic
party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its
present alarming culmination. Without stopping to ascertain, criti
cally, the origin of the present democratic party, we may concede its
claim to date from the era of good feeling which occurred under the
administration of President Monroe. At that time, in this state, and
about that time in many others of the free states, the democratic
party deliberately disfranchised the free colored or African citizen,
and it has pertinaciously continued this disfranchisement eyer since.
This was an effective aid to slavery ; for, while the slaveholder votes

THE IKREPKESSIBLE CONFLICT. 297

for his slaves against freedom, the freed slave in the free states is
prohibited from voting against slavery.

In 1824, the democracy resisted the election of John Quincy
Adams — himself before that time an acceptable democrat — and in
1828 it expelled him from the presidency and put a slaveholder in
his place, although the office had been filled by slaveholders thirty-
two oat of forty years.

In 1836, Martin Van Buren — the first non-slaveholding citizen of
a free state to whose election the democratic party ever consented —
signalized his inauguration into the presidency by a gratuitous
announcement, that under no circumstances would he ever approve
a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. From
1838 to 1844, the subject of abolishing slavery in the District of
Columbia and in the national dock-yards and arsenals, was brought
before congress by repeated popular appeals. The democratic party
thereupon promptly denied the right of petition, and effectually sup
pressed the freedom of speech in congress, so far as the institution
of slavery was concerned.

From 1840 to 1843, good and wise men counseled that Texas
should remain outside the Union until she should consent to relin
quish her self instituted slavery; but the democratic party precipi
tated her admission into the Union, not only without that condition,
but even with a covenant that the state might be divided and reor
ganized so as to constitute four slave states instead of one.

In 1846, when the United States became involved in a war with
Mexico, and it was apparent that the struggle would end in the dis
memberment of that republic, which was a non-slaveholding power,
the democratic party rejected a declaration that slavery should not
be established within the territory to be acquired. When, in 1850,
governments were to be instituted in the territories of California and
New Mexico, the fruits of that war, the democratic party refused to
admit New Mexico as a free state, and only consented to admit Cali
fornia as a free state on the condition, as it has since explained the
transaction, of leaving all of New Mexico and Utah open to slavery,
to which was also added the concession of perpetual slavery in the Dis
trict of Columbia, and the passage of an unconstitutional, cruel and
humiliating law, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, with a further
stipulation that the subject of slavery should never again be agitated
in either chamber of congress. When, in 1854, the slaveholders

VOL. IV. 38

298 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

were contentedly reposing on these great advantages, then so recently
won, the democratic party unnecessarily, officiously and with super-
serviceable liberality, awakened them from their slumber, to offer
and force on their acceptance the abrogation of the law which de
clared that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever
exist within that part of the ancient territory of Louisiana which
lay outside of the state of Missouri, and north of the parallel of 36°
30' of north latitude — a law which, with the exception of one other,
was the only statute of freedom then remaining in the federal
code.

In 1856, when the people of Kansas had organized a new state
within the region thus abandoned to slavery, and applied to be
admitted as a free state into the Union, the democratic party con
temptuously rejected their petition, and drove them with menaces
and intimidations from the halls of congress, and armed the presi
dent with military power to enforce their submission to a slave code,
established over them by fraud and usurpation. At every subse
quent stage of the long contest which has since raged in Kansas, the
democratic party has lent its sympathies, its aid, and all the powers
of the government which it controlled, to enforce slavery upon that
unwilling and injured people. And now, even at this day, while it
mocks us with the assurance that Kansas is free, the democratic
party keeps the state excluded from her just and proper place in the
Union, under the hope that she may be dragooned into the accept
ance of slavery.

The democratic party, finally, has procured from a supreme
judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree thaj slavery exists by force
of the constitution in every territory of the United States, para
mount to all legislative authority, either within the territory, or
residing in congress.

Such is the democratic party. It has no policy, state or federal,
for finance, or trade, or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or
internal improvements, or for the protection or even the security of
civil or religious liberty. It is positive and uncompromising in the
interest of slavery — negative, compromising, and vacillating, in
regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality, and wastes
its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only aristocracy
known in the land. It professes fraternity, and, so often as slavery
requires, allies itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for con-

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 299

quests in foreign lands, but it sends the national eagle forth always
with chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs.

This dark record shows you, fellow citizens, what I was unwilling
to announce at an earlier stage of this argument, that of the whole
nefarious schedule of slaveholding designs which I have submitted
to you, the democratic party has left only one yet to be consumma
ted — the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave trade.

Now, I know very well that the democratic party has, at every
stage of these procceedings, disavowed the motive and the policy of
fortifying and extending slavery, and has excused them on entirely
different and more plausible grounds. But the inconsistency and
frivolity of these pleas prove still more conclusively the guilt I
charge upon that party. It must, indeed, try to excuse such guilt
before mankind, and even to the consciences of its own adherents.
There is an instinctive abhorrence of slavery, and an inborn and
inhering love of freedom in the human heart, which render pallia
tion of such gross misconduct indispensable. It disfranchised the
free African on the ground of a fear that, if left to enjoy the right
of suffrage, he might seduce the free white citizens into amalgama
tion with his wronged and despised race. The democratic party
condemned and deposed John Quincy Adams, because he expended
twelve millions a year, while it justifies his favored successor in spend
ing seventy, eighty and even one hundred millions, a year. It
denies emancipation in the District of Columbia, even with compensa
tion to masters and the consent of the people, on the ground of an
implied constitutional inhibition, although the constitution expressly
confers upon congress sovereign legislative power in that district, and
although the democratic party is tenacious of the principle of strict
construction. It violated the express provisions of the constitution in
suppressing petition and debate on the subject of slavery, through fear
of disturbance of the public harmony, although it claims that the elec
tors have a right to instruct their representatives, and even demand
their resignation in cases of contumacy. It extended slavery over
Texas, and connived at the attempt to spread it across the Mexican
territories, even to the shores of the Pacific ocean, under a plea of
enlarging the area of freedom. It abrogated the Mexican slave law
and the Missouri compromise prohibition of slavery in Kansas, not
to open the new territories to slavery, but to try therein the new
and fascinating theories of non-intervention and popular sovereignty ;

300 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

and, finally, it overthrew both these new and elegant systems bj
the English Lecompton bill and the Dred Scott decision, on the
ground that the free states ought not to enter the Union without a
population equal to the representative basis of one member of con
gress, although slave states might come in without inspection as to
their numbers.

Will any member of the democratic party now here claim that
the authorities chosen by the suffrages of the party transcended their
partisan platforms, and so misrepresented the party in the various
transactions, I have recited? Then I ask him to name one demo
cratic statesman or legislator, from Van Buren to Walker, who, either
timidly or cautiously like them, or boldly and defiantly like Douglas,
ever refused to execute a behest of the slaveholders and was not
therefor, and for no other cause, immediately denounced, and de
posed from his trust, and repudiated by the democratic party for
that contumacy.

I think, fellow citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time
for the friends of freedom to rush to the rescue of the constitution,
and that their very first duty is to dismiss the democratic party
from the administration of the government.

Why shall it not be done ? All agree that it ought to be done.
What, then, shall prevent its being done ? Nothing but timidity
or division of the opponents of the democratic party.

Some of these opponents start one objection, and some another.
Let us notice these objections briefly. One class say that they can
not trust the republican party ; that it has not avowed its hostility to
slavery boldly enough, or its affection for freedom earnestly enough.

I ask, in reply, is there any other party which can be more safely
trusted ? Every one knows that it is the republican party, or none,
that shall displace the democratic party. But I answer, further, that
the character and fidelity of any party are determined, necessarily,
not by its pledges, programmes, and platforms, but by the public
exigencies, and the temper of the people when they call it into
activity. Subserviency to slavery is a law written not only on the
forehead of the democratic party, but also in its very soul — so resis
tance to slavery, and devotion to freedom, the popular elements now
actively working for the republican party among the people, must
and will be the resources for its ever- renewing strength and constant
invigoration.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 301

Others cannot support the republican party, because it has not
sufficiently exposed its platform, and determined what it will do,
and what it will not do, when triumphant. It may prove too pro
gressive for some, and too conservative for others. As if any party
ever foresaw so clearly the course of future events as to plan a
universal scheme of future action, adapted to all possible emergen
cies. Who would ever have joined even the whig party of the
revolution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it
would declare for independence in 1776, and for this noble federal
constitution of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or later ? The
people will be as wise next year, and even ten years hence, as we
are now. They will oblige the republican party to act as the public
welfare and the interests of justice and humanity shall require,
through all the stages of its career, whether of trial or triumph.

Others will not venture an effort, because they fear that the Union
would not endure the change. Will such objectors tell me how
long a constitution can bear a strain directly along the fibres of
which it is composed ? This is a constitution of freedom. It is being
converted into a constitution of slavery. It is a republican consti
tution. It is being made an aristocratic one. Others wish to wait
until some collateral questions concerning temperance, or the exer
cise of the elective franchise are properly settled. Let me ask all
such persons, whether time enough has not been wasted on these
points already, without gaining any other than this single advantage,
namely, the discovery that only one thing can be effectually done at
one time, and that the one thing which must and will be done at any
one time is just that thing which is most urgent, and will no longer
admit of postponement or delay. Finally, we are told by faint-hearted
men that they despond ; the democratic party, they say is unconquer
able, and the dominion of slavery is consequently inevitable. I reply
that the complete and universal dominion of slavery would be intol
erable enough, when it should have come, after the last possible effort
to escape should have been made. There would then be left to us
the consoling reflection of fidelity to duty.

But I reply further, that I know — few, I think, know better than
I — the resources and energies of the democratic party, which is
identical with the slave power. I do ample prestige to its traditional
popularity. I know, further — few, I think, know better than I —
the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force,

302 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

like the republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in
laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, understand
ing all this, I know that the democratic party must go down, and
that the republican party must rise into its place. The democratic^
party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the prin
ciples of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practised
this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable
when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has main
tained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its
traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the
political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage
to take up, and avow, and practice the life-inspiring principle which
the democratic party had surrendered. At last, the republican party
has appeared. It avows, now, as the republican party of 1800 did,
in one word, its faith and its works, " Equal and exact justice to all
men." Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it
struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumph
ant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won
advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.

The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic
which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting
imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one
idea ; but that idea is a noble one — an idea that fills and expands all
generous souls ; the idea of equality — the equality of all men be
fore human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before
the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know,
and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward.
Twenty senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in
congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom
which hardly so many men, even in this free state, dared to utter in
their own homes twenty years ago. While the government of the
United States, under the conduct of the democratic party, has been
all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to
slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily
and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to
recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been
lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the
betrayers of the constitution and freedom forever.

THE NATIONAL DIYEBGBNOE AND BETURN.1

DETROIT, SEPTEMBER 4, 1860.

WE claim that our political system is a judicious one, and that we
are an intelligent and virtuous people. The government ought,
therefore, not only to secure respect and good will abroad, but also
to produce good order, contentment and harmony at home. It fails
to attain these ends. The Canadians certainly neither envy nor love
•us. All the independent American powers, from the Eio Grande to
Cape Horn, while they strive to construct governments for them
selves after our models, fear, and many of them hate us. European
nations do indeed revere our constitutions and admire our progress,
but they generally agree in pronouncing us inconsistent with our
organic principle, and capricious. The president inveighs against
corruption among the people. The immediate representatives of
the people in congress charge the president with immoral practices,
and the president protests against their action as subversive of the
executive prerogative. The house of representatives organizes itself
convulsively amid confessed dangers of popular commotion. The
senate listens unsurprised, and almost without excitement, to menaces
of violence, secession and disunion. Frauds and violence in the terri
tories are palliated and rewarded. Exposure and resistance to them
are condemned and punished, while the just, enlightened and reason
able will of the people there, though constitutionally expressed, is
circumvented, disobeyed and disregarded. States watch anxiously
for unlawful intrusion and invasion by citizens of other states, while
the federal courts fail to suppress piracies on the high seas, and even
on our own coasts. The government of the Union courts and sub
mits to state espionage of the federal mails, while the states scarcely
attempt to protect the personal rights of citizens of other states,

I This speech and the six following, were made by Mr. Seward during his tour through Michi
gan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kansas, and came to be known as his "western speeches."
See Memoir, ante, page 84.

304 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

peacefully pursuing harmless occupations within their fraternal juris
dictions.

Are the people satisfied and content ? Let their several parties
and masses answer. Certainly you, the republicans of Michigan, as
well as the republicans throughout the whole country, are not satis
fied. But you are interested in a change of administration, and
therefore perhaps prejudiced. Ask, then, the constitutional Union
men, few and inefficient indeed here, but numerous and energetic
elsewhere. They are not satisfied. If they were they would not be
engaged, as they are now, in a hopeless attempt to organize a new
party without any principles at all, after their recent failures to com
bine such a party on obnoxious principles. But they also are inte
rested and possibly prejudiced like the republicans. Appeal, then,
to the democratic party, which enjoys and wields the patronage and
power of the federal government. Even the democrats are no less
dissatisfied. They certainly are dissatisfied with the republicans,
with the national Union men, with their own administration, with
each other, and as I think even individually, with themselves. The
north is not satisfied. Its masses want a suppression of the African
slave trade, and an effectual exclusion of slavery from the territories,
so that all the new and future states may surely be free states. The
south is not satisfied. Its masses, by whatever means and at what
ever cost, desire the establishment and protection of slavery in the
territories, so that none of the new states may fail to become slave
states. The east is discontented with the neglect of its fishery, manu
facture and navigation, and the west is impatient under the operation
of a national policy, hostile to its agricultural, mining and social
developments. What government in the world but ours has per
sistently refused to improve rivers, construct harbors and establish
light houses for the protection of its commerce ? New and anoma
lous combinations of citizens appear in the north, justifying armed
instigators of civil and servile war, in the south devising means for the
disruption and dismemberment of the Union. It is manifest that we
are suffering in the respect and confidence of foreign states, and that
disorder and confusion are more flagrant among ourselves now than
ever before.

I do not intend to be understood that these evils are thus far pro
ductive of material suffering or intolerable embarrassment, much less
that the country is, as so many extravagant persons say, on the high

THE NATIONAL DIVEKGENCE. 305

road to civil war or dissolution. On the contrary, this fair land we
live in is so blessed with all the elements of human comfort and
happiness, and its citizens are at once so loyal and wise, and so well
surrounded by yet unbroken guaranties of civil and religious liberty,
that our experience of misrule at the very worst, never becomes so
painful as to raise the question, how much more of public misery we
can endure ; but it leaves us at liberty to stop now, as always here
tofore, with the inquiry, how much more of freedom, prosperity and
honor we can secure by the practice of greater wisdom and higher
virtue? Discontentment is the wholesome fruit of a discovery of
maladministration, and conviction of public error is here at least
always a sure harbinger of political reform.

Martin Van Buren, they say, is writing a review of his own lifer
and our time, for posthumous uses. If it is not disrespectful, I
should like to know now the conclusions he draws from the national
events he has seen, and of which he has been an important part ; for
he is a shrewd observer, with advantages of large and long experi
ence. To me it seems that the last forty years have constituted a
period of signal and lamentable failure in the efforts of statesmen to
adjust and establish a federal policy for the regulation of the subject
of slavery in its relations to the Union. ' In this view I regard it as
belonging to the office of a statesman not merely to favor an imme
diate and temporary increase of national wealth, and an enlargement
of national territory, but also to fortify, so far as the prescribed con
stitutional limits of his action may allow, the influences of knowledge
and humanity ; to abate popular prejudices and passions, by modify
ing or removing their causes ; to ascertain and disclose the operation
of general laws, and to study and reveal the social tendencies of the
age, and by combining the past with the present, while giving free
play all the time to the reciprocating action of the many coexisting
moral forces, to develop that harmonious system which actually pre
vails in the apparent chaos of human affairs ; and so to gain some
thing in the way of assurance as to the complexion of that futurity
toward which, since our country is destined to endure, and insomuch
as we desire that it may be immortal, our thoughts are so vehemently
driven even by the selfish as well as by the generous principles of our
nature.

I have understood that John Quincy Adams, the purest and wisest
statesman I ever knew, died despairing of a peaceful solution of the

VOL. IV. 39

306 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

problem of slavery, on which he was so intently engaged throughout
his public service. If we may judge from the absolute failures of
Mr. Yan Buren, Mr. Polk, Mr. Pierce and Mr. Buchanan, in the
respect I have mentioned, and if we take into consideration also the
systems which Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Benton, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster
severally recommended, and which have subsequently failed to be
adopted, we may perhaps conclude that the difficulties of establishing
a satisfactory and soothing policy, have overtasked even our wisest
and most eminent statesmen. They certainly have been neither
incapable nor selfish men. No age or country has been illustrated
by public characters of greater genius, wisdom and virtue.

It is easy to see, fellow citizens, that the failure has resulted, not
from the faults of our statesmen, but from the peculiar constitutions
and characters of political parties, on which they relied for power.
Solid, enduring and constant parties, inspired by love of country,
reverence for virtue and devotion to human liberty, bold in their
conceptions of measures, moderate in success, and resolute through
out reverses, are essential to effective and beneficent administration
in every free state. Unanimity, even in a wise, just and necessary
policy, can never be expected in any country all at once, and without
thorough debate and earnest conflicts of opinion. All public move
ments are therefore undertaken and prosecuted through the agencies,
not of individuals, but of parties, regulated, excited and moderated,
as occasion may require, by their representatives. He who proposes
means so impracticable that he can win no party to their support,
may be a philanthropist, but he cannot be a statesman ; and even
when the leader in administration is thus sustained, he is, although
never so earnest or wise, everywhere and at all times inefficient and
imbecile, just in the degree that the party on which he depends is
inconstant, vacillating, timid or capricious. What has become of
the several political parties which have flourished within your time
and mine? That dashing, unterrified, defiant party, whose irresisti
ble legions carried the honest and intrepid hero of New Orleans on
their shields, through so many civil encounters — that generous,
though not unprejudiced whig party, which, apprehensive of per
petual danger from too radical policies of administration, so often
with unabated chivalry and enthusiasm, magically recombined its
bruised and scattered columns, even when a capricious fortune had
turned its rare and hard won triumphs into defeats more disastrous

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE. 307

than the field fights which it had lost — the recent American party,
that sprang at one bound from ten thousand dark chambers, and
which seemed only yesterday at the very point of carrying the
government by a coup de main. All these parties, that for brief
periods seemed so strong and so unchanging, have perished, leaving
no deep impression on the history of the country they aimed to direct
and rule forever. The democratic party, too, that has clothed itself
so complacently with the pleasant traditions of all preceding parties,
and combined so felicitously the most popular of our rational sym
pathies with the most inveterate and repulsive of our conservative
interests, that has won the south so dexterously, by stimulating its
maddest ambition, and yet has held the north so tenaciously and so
long, by awakening its wildest and most demoralizing fears. What
is its condition ? It is distinguished in fortune from its extinguished
rivals only by the circumstance that both portions of its crew,
divided as the hulk breaks into two not unequal parts, retain suffi
cient energy in their despair to seize on the drifting wrecks
of other parties, and by a cunning though hopeless carpentry,
to frame wretched and rickety rafts on which to sustain them
selves for one dark night more on the tempestuous sea of national
politics. All these parties, it is now manifest, were organized,
not specially to establish justice and maintain freedom and equality
among an honest, jealous and liberty-loving people, but to achieve
some material public advantage of temporary importance, or to secure
the advancement of some chief to whose discretion, as if the govern
ment were an elective despotism instead of a republic, the distribu
tion of its patronage and the direction of its affairs should be
implicitly confided. They did, indeed, out of respect or fear of
generous reforms, often affect to express elevated principles and
generous sentiments in their carefully elaborated creeds, but these
creeds, nevertheless, even when not ambiguously expressed, were
from time to time revised and qualified and modified, so that at last
the interpreters, who alone had them by heart, and were able to
repeat them, were found perverting the constitution in its most une
quivocal parts, and most palpable meaning, disparaging and rejecting
the Declaration of Independence, and stultifying the founders of the
republic. The parties thus constituted, dependent not on any
national or even on any natural sentiment, but on mere discipline
for their cohesion, and coming at last through constant demoraliza-

308 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

tion, to assume that capital and not labor, property and not liberty,
is the great interest of every people, and that religion, conversant
only with the relations of men to an unseen and future world, must
be abjured in their conduct toward each other on earth, have finally
discarded justice and humanity from their systems, broken up nearly
all the existing combinations for spiritual ends, and attempted to
conduct affairs of government on principles equally in violation of
the constitution and of the eternal laws of God's providence for the
regulation of the universe.

These views of the characters of our modern parties, are by no
means newly conceived on my part. In that high and intensely
exciting debate in congress in the year 1850, which, overruling the
administration of General Taylor, brought the two then dominating
parties into a compromise at the time solemnly pronounced finalr
irrevocable and eternal, but which was nevertheless scattered to the
winds of Heaven only four years afterward, the great statesman of
Kentucky denounced party spirit as he assumed it to be raging
throughout the country, as pregnant with the imminent and intole
rable disasters of civil war and national dissolution. I ventured
then to reply that, in my humble judgment, it was not a conflict of
parties that we then were seeing and hearing, but it was, on the con
trary, the agony of distracted parties, a convulsion resulting from
the too narrow foundations of both of the great parties and of all the
parties of the day, foundations that had been laid in compromises of
natural justice and human rights — that a new and great question —
a moral question transcending the too narrow creeds of existing par
ties had arisen — that the public conscience was ' expanding with itr
and the green withes of party combinations were giving way and
breaking under the pressure — that it was not the Union that was
decaying and dying, as was supposed, of the fever of party spirit,
but that the two great parties were smitten with paralysis, fatal indeed
to them unless they should consent to be immediately renewed and
reorganized, borrowing needful elements of health and vigor from a
cordial embrace with the humane spirit of the age.

But to exempt our statesmen by casting blame on our political
parties, does not reach, but only approximates the real source of
responsibility. All of these parties have been composed of citizens,
not a few but many citizens, in the aggregate all the citizens of the
republic. They were not ignorant, willful or dishonest citizens, but

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE. 309

sincere, faithful and useful members of the state. The parties of our
country, what are they at any time, but ourselves, the people of our
country ? Thus the faults of past administration, and of course the
responsibility for existing evils, are brought directly home to your
selves and myself — to the whole people. This is no hard saying.
The wisest, justest and most virtuous of men occasionally errs and
has need daily to implore the Divine goodness, that he be not led
further into temptation; and just so the wisest, justest and most
virtuous of nations often unconsciously lose and depart from their
ancient, approved and safer ways. Is there any society, even of
Christians, that has never had occasion to reform its practice, retrace
its too careless steps and discard heresies that have corrupted its
accepted faith? What was the English revolution of 1688, but a
return from the dark and dangerous road of absolutism ? What the
French revolution, but a mighty convulsion, that while it carried a
brave, enlightened and liberty-loving nation backward on their pro
gress of three hundred years, owed all its horrors to the delay which
had so long postponed the needed reaction !

A national departure always happens when a great emergency
occurs unobserved and unfelt, bringing the necessity for the attain
ment of some new and important object, which can only be secured
through the inspiration of some new but great and generous national
sentiment.

Let us see if we can ascertain, in the present case, when our depart
ure from the right and safe way occurred. Certainly it was not in
the revolutionary age. The nation then experienced and felt a stern
necessity, perceived and resolutely aimed at a transcendently sublime
object, and accepted cheerfully the awakening influences of an
intensely moving and generous principle. The necessity was deli
verance from British oppression ; the object, independence ; the
principle, the inalienable rights of man. The revolution was a suc
cess, because the country had in Adams and Jefferson and Washing
ton and their associates the leaders, and in the whigs the party,
needful for this crisis, and these were sustained by the people.

Our departure was not at the juncture of the establishment of the
constitution. The country then had and owned a new and over
powering necessity, perceived and demanded a new object, and
.adopted a new and most animating principle. The necessity, the
escape from anarchy ; the object, federal Union ; the principle, fra-

310 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

ternity of the American people. The constitution, with the ordi
nance of 1787, practically a part of it, was not a failure, because
Hamilton and Jay and Madison and King were competent, and the
federal party was constant, and the people gave it a confiding and
generous support.

It was not in 1800, that the national deviation took place. Then
were disclosed a new public necessity, new object, and new principle.
A separation and removal of aristocratic checks and interests from
the mechanism of our republican institutions. The needed reform
did not fail, because Jefferson and George Clinton, with their associ
ates, braved all resistance, the republican party defended, and the
people sustained them.

Again, the departure did not occur in 1812. Then was discovered
a further necessity, bringing into view a further object and introducing
yet another new and noble principle of action. The necessity, a
vindication of national rights; the object, freedom of intercourse
with mankind ; the principle, the defense of our homes and our
honor. The war of 1812 was a success, because Clay, Calhoun and
Tompkins did not shrink from the trial ; the republican party ap
proved and the people sustained them.

In 1820, however, the nation had unconsciously reached and
entered a new stage in its successful career, namely, that of expan
sion. ) By purchases from France and Spain it had extended its bor
ders from the St. Mary's southward around the peninsula of Florida,
and from the Mississippi to the Eocky mountains, an expansion to
be afterwards indefinitely continued. We all know the advantages
of expansion. They are augmented wealth and population. But
we all know equally well, if we will only reflect, that no new advan
tage is ever gained in national more than in individual life without
exposure to some new danger. What then is the danger which
attends expansion ? It is nothing less and can be nothing less than
an increase of the strain upon the bonds of the Union. The time had
come to organize government finally in the newly acquired ter
ritory of Louisiana, on principles that should be applied thereafter
in all cases of further expansion. This necessity brought into glar
ing light a new object, namely, since the only existing cause of
mutual alienation among the states was slavery, which was already
carefully circumscribed by the ordinance of 1787, that anomalous-
institution must now be further circumscribed by extending the ordi-

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE. 311

nance to cover the new states to be established in the Louisiania
purchase. To this end a new and humane impulse naturally moved
the country, namely, the freedom of human labor.

But although statesmen qualified for the crisis appeared, no party
stood forth to support them with constancy, and the country, after a
temporary glow of free soil excitement, subsided into cold indiffer
ence — and so a compromise was made which divided the newly
acquired domain between free labor and capital in slaves, between
freedom and slavery, a memorable compromise, which, after a trial
of only thirty -four years, proved to be effective only in its conces
sions to slavery, while its greater guaranties of freedom were found
unavailing and worthless. History says that the compromise of 1820
was necessary to save the Union from disruption. I do not dispute
history, nor debate the settled moral questions of the past. I only
lament that it was necessary, if indeed it was so. History tells us
that the course then adopted was wise. I do not controvert it. I only
mourn the occurrence of even one case most certainly the only one
that ever did happen, in which the way of wisdom has failed to be
also the way of pleasantness, and the path of pear". It was in 1820,
therefore, that the national deviation began. We have continued
ever since the divergent course then so inconsiderately entered, until
at last we have reached a point, where, amid confusion, bewilderment
and mutual recriminations, it seems alike impossible to go forward or
to return. We have added territory after territory, and region after
region with the customary boldness of feebly resisted conquerors,
not merely neglecting to keep slavery out of our new possessions,
but actually removing all the barriers against it which we found
standing at the times of conquest. In doing this we have defied the
moral opinions of mankind, overturned the laws and systems of our
fathers, and dishonored their memories by declaring that the un-
equaled and glorious constitution which they gave us, carries with it,
as it attends our eagles, not freedom and personal rights to the
oppressed, but slavery and a hateful and baleful commerce in slaves,
wherever we win a conquest by sea or land over the whole habitable
globe.

While we must now, in deference to history, excuse the first diver
gence, it is manifest that our subsequent persistence in the same
course has been entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable. New Brians
wick, Nova Scotia and Canada, what remains of Mexico, all of the

312 POLITICAL SPEECHES

West Indies and Central America, are doubtless very desirable, but
we have patiently waited for them, and are now likely to wait until
they can be acquired without receiving slavery with them, or ex
tending it over them. Nay, all the resistance we have ever met in
adding Spanish American territories to our republic, has resulted
from our willful and perverse purpose of subverting freedom there,
to blight the fairest portion of the earth, when we found it free, by
extending over it our only national agency of desolation. We may
doubtless persist still further. We may add conquest to conquest,
for resistance to our ambition daily grows more and more impossible,
until we surpass in extent and apparent strength the greatest empires
of ancient or modern times, all the while enlarging the area of
African bondage ; but after our already ample experience, I think
no one will be bold enough to deny that we equally increase the
evils of discontent and the dangers of domestic faction.

While I lament the national divergence I have thus described, I
do not confess it to be altogether inexcusable. Much less do I blame
any one or more of our politicians or parties, while exempting others.
All are, in different degrees perhaps, responsible alike, and all have
abundant, if not altogether adequate excuses. Deviations once be
gun, without realizing the immediate presence of danger, it was
easier to continue on than to return. The country has all the time
been growing richer and more prosperous and populous. It was not
unnatural that we should disregard warnings of what we were as
sured by high though interested authorities, always were distant,
improbable and even visionary dangers. It cannot be denied that
the African races among us are abject, although their condition, and
even their presence here, are due not to their will or fault, but to our
own, and that they have a direct interest in the question of slavery.
How natural has it been to assume that the motive of those who
have protested against the extension of slavey, was an unnatural
sympathy with the negro instead of what it always has really been,
concern for the welfare of the white man. There are few, indeed,
who ever realize that the whole human race suffers somewhat in the
afflictions and calamities which befall the humblest and most despised
of its members.

The argument, though demanding the most dispassionate calmness
and kindness, has too often been conducted with anger and broken
out into violence.

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE. 313

Moreover, alarms of disunion were sounded, and strange political
inventions like the floating fire ships sent down the St. Lawrence,
by the besieged in Quebec, to terrify the army of Wolfe on the island
of St. Louis, appeared suddenly before us whenever we proposed to
consider in good earnest the subject of federal slavery.

We love, and we ought to love the fellowship of our slaveholding
brethren. How natural, therefore, has it been to make the conces
sions so necessary to silence their complaints, rather than by seeming
impracticability in what was thought a matter of indifference, to lose
such congenial a companionship. Again, at least, present peace and
safety, together with some partial guaranties and concessions of free
dom, were from time to time obtained by compromises. Who had
the right, or who the presumption to say, with the certainty of
being held responsible for casting imputations of bad faith upon our
southern brethren, that these compromises would, when their inte
rests should demand it, be disavowed and broken ?

Other nations, we have assumed, are jealous of our growing great
ness. They have censured us, perhaps with unjust asperity, for our
apostacy in favor of slavery. How natural and even patriotic has it
been on our part to, manifest by persistence our contempt and defiance
of such interested and hostile animadversions. Besides, though
slavery is indeed now practically a local and peculiar institution of
the south, it was not long ago the habit and practice of the whole
American people. It is only twenty-five years since our British
brethren abolished slavery in their colonies, and only half a century
since we or any European nation interdicted the African slave
trade. Scarcely three generations have passed away since the sub
ject of the wrongfulness of slavery first engaged the consideration of
mankind.

You and I indeed understand now very well how it is that slavery
in the territories of the United States is left open by the constitution
to our utmost peaceful opposition, while within the slave states it is
entrenched behind local constitutions beyond the reach of external
legislation. But the subject is a complex one, and the great masses
of the people to whom it has only been recently presented, and
doubtlessly often presented, under unfavorable circumstances, might
well desire time for its careful and deliberate examination.

It seems a bold suggestion to say, that a great nation ought to
reconsider a practice of forty years' duration ; but forty years of a

VOL. IV. 40

314 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

nation's life are equivalent to only one year of the life of an indivi
dual. The thought is at least consistent with political philosophy, for
it is not more true that personal persistence in error leads inevitably
to ruin, than it is that every nation exists by obedience to the same
moral laws which direct individual life, that they are written in its
original constitution, and it must continually reform itself according
to the spirit of those laws or perish. -

My humble advice, then, fellow citizens, is, that we return and
reestablish the original policy of the nation, and henceforth hold, as
we did in the beginning, that slavery is and must be only a purely
local, temporary and exceptional institution, confined within the
slave states where it already exists, while freedom is the general,
normal, enduring and permanent condition of society within the
jurisdiction, and under the authority of the constitution of the
United States.

I counsel thus for a simple reason incapable of illumination.
Slavery, however it may be at any time or in any place excused, is
at all times and everywhere unjust and inhuman in its very nature;
while freedom, however it may be at any time or in any place
neglected, denied or abused, is in its nature right, just and benefi
cent. It can never, under any circumstances, be wise to persevere,
voluntarily, in extending or fortifying an institution that is intrinsi
cally wrong or cruel. It can never be unwise, wherever it is possi
ble, to defend and fortify an existing institution that is founded on
the rights of human nature. Insomuch as opinions are so mate
rially, and yet so unconsciously, affected and modified by time, place
and circumstances, we may hold these great truths firmly, without
impeaching the convictions or the motives of those who deny them
in argument or in practice.

I counsel thus for another reason quite as simple as the first.
Knowledge, emulation and independence among the members of a
social state are the chief elements of national wealth, strength and
power. Ignorance, indolence and bondage of individuals are always
sources of national imbecility and decline. All nations in their turns
have practised slavery. Most of them have abolished it. The world
over, the wealthiest and most powerful nations have been those which
tolerated it least, and which earliest and most completely abolished
it. Virginia and Texas are thrown into a panic even now by the
appearance or even the suspicion of a handful of men within their

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE. 315

borders instigating civil war. Massachusetts and Yermont defied
British invasion backed by treason, eighty years ago.

Thirdly. There is no necessity now to fortify or extend slavery
within the United States or on the American continent. All the
supposed necessities of that sort ever before known, have passed
away forever. Let us briefly review them. With the discovery and
conquest of America confessedly came a responsibility to reclaim it
from nature and to introduce civilization. Unfortunately Spain and
Portugal, the discoverers and conquerors, were, of all the European
states in the sixteenth century, the worst qualified and least able to
colonize. They were neither populous, nor industrious, nor free ;
but were nations of princes and subjects ; of soldiers, navigators,
nobles, priests, poets and scholars, wilhout merchants, mechanics,
farmers or laborers. The art of navigation was imperfect ; its prac
tice dangerous, and the new world that the pope had divided between
his two most loyal crown- wearing children was in its natural state
pestilential. • European emigration was therefore impracticable. In
the emergency the conquerors, with ruffian violence, swept off at
once the gold and silver ornaments which they found in the temples
and on the persons of the natives, ignorant of their European values,
and subjugated and enslaved the natives themselves. But these
simple children of the forest, like the wild flowers when the hurri
cane sweeps over the prairies, perished under cruelties so contrary
to nature.

The African trade, in prisoners of war spared from slaughter,
afforded an alternative. The chiefs sold ten men, women or children
for a single horse. The conquerors of America brought this unna
tural merchandise to our coasts. When the English colonists of
North America, happily in only a very limited degree, borrowed
from their predecessors this bad practice of slavery, they borrowed
also the wretched apology, a want of an adequate supply of free
labor. It was then thought an exercise of Christian benevolence to
rescue the African heathen from eternal suffering in a future state,
arid through the painful path of earthly bondage to open to him the
gates of the celestial paradise. But all this is now changed. We
are at last no feeble or sickly colonies, but a great, populous, homo
geneous nation, unsurpassed and unequaled in all the elements of
colonization and civilization. Free labor here continually increases
and abounds, and is fast verging towards European standards of

316 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

value. There is not one acre too much in our broad domain for the
supply of even three generations of our free population, with their
certain increase. Immigration from Europe is crowding our own
sons into the western region, and this movement is daily augmented
by the application of new machines for diminishing mechanical and
even agricultural labor. At this very moment, congress, after a long
and obstinate reluctance, finds itself obliged to yield a homestead
law to relieve the pressure of labor in the Atlantic states. Certainly,
therefore, we have no need and no room for African slaves in the
federal territories. Do you say that we want more sugar and more
cotton, and therefore must have more slaves and more slave labor ?
I answer, first, that no class or race of men have a right to demand
sugar, cotton, or any other comfort of human life to be wrung for
them, through the action of the federal government, from the unre
warded and compulsory labor of any other class or race of men.

I answer, secondly, that we have sugar and cotton enough already
for domestic consumption, and a surplus of the latter for exportation
without any increase of slave territory. Do you say that Europe
wants more sugar and cotton than we can now supply ? I reply, let
then Europe send her free laborers hither, or into Italy, or into the
"West Indies, or into the East; or, if it suit them better, let them
engage the natives of cotton-growing regions in the old world, to
produce cotton and sugar voluntarily, and for adequate compensa
tion. Such a course, instead of fortifying and enlarging the sway
of slavery here, will leave us free to favor its gradual removal. It
will renew or introduce civilization on the shores of the Mediterra
nean and throughout the coasts of the Indian ocean. Christianity,
more fully developed and better understood now than heretofore,
turns with disgust and horror from the employment of force and
piracy as a necessary agent of the gospel.

Fourthly. All the subtle evasions and plausible political theories
which have heretofore been brought into the argument for an exten
sion of slavery, have at last been found fallacious and frivolous.

It is unavailing now to say that this government was made by
and for white men only, since even slaves owed allegiance to Great
Britain before the revolution, equally with white men, and were
equally absolved from it by the revolution, and are not only held to
allegiance now under our laws, but are also subjected to taxation and
actual representation in every department of the federal government.

THE NATIONAL DIVERGENCE : THE RETURN. 317

'No government can excuse itself from the duty of protecting the
extreme rights of every human being, whether foreign or native
born, bond or free, whom it compulsorily holds within its jurisdic
tion. The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here
is a foreign and feeble element like the Indians, incapable of assimi
lation, but not the less, therefore, entitled to such care and protection
as the weak everywhere may require from the strong ; that it is a
pitiful exotic unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields,
and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation
of the native vineyard. Nor will the argument that the party of sla
very is national and that of freedom sectional, any longer avail when
it is fully understood that, so far as it is founded in truth, it is only
a result of that perversion of the constitution which has attempted
to circumscribe freedom, and to make slavery universal throughout
the republic. Equally do the reproaches, invectives and satires of
the advocates of slavery extension fail, since it is seen and felt that
truth, reason and humanity can work right on without fanaticism,
and bear contumely without retaliation. I counsel this course fur
ther, because the combinations of slavery are broken up, and can
never be renewed with success. Any new combination must be
based on the principle of the southern democratic faction, that slavery
is inherently just and beneficent, and ought to be protected, which
can no longer be tolerated in the north ; or else on the principle of
the northern democratic faction that slavery is indifferent and unwor
thy of federal protection, which is insufficient in the south : while the
national mind has actually passed far beyond both of these princi
ples, and is settled in the conviction that slavery, wherever and how
soever it exists, exists only to be regretted and deplored.

I counsel this course further, because the necessity for a return to
the old national way has become at last absolute and imperative.
We can extend slavery into new territories, and create new slave
states only by reopening the African slave trade ; a proceeding which,
by destroying all the existing values of the slaves now held in the
country, and their increase, would bring the north and the south into
complete unanimity in favor of that return.

Finally, I counsel that return because a statesman has been desig
nated who possesses, in an eminent and most satisfactory degree, the
virtues and the qualifications necessary for the leader in so great and
generous a movement ; and I feel well assured that Abraham Lin-

318 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

coin will not fail to reinaugurate the ancient constitutional policy in
the administration of the government successfully, because the repub •
lican party, after ample experience, has at last acquired the courage
and the constancy necessary to sustain him, and because I am satis
fied that the people, at last fully convinced of the wisdom and neces
sity of the proposed reformation, are prepared to sustain and give it
effect.

But when it shall have been accomplished, what may we expect
then ; what dangers must we incur ; what disasters and calamities
must we suffer? I answer, no dangers, disasters or calamities. All
parties will acquiesce, because it will be the act of the people, in the
exercise of their sovereign power, in conformity with the constitu
tion and laws, and in harmony with the eternal principles of justice,
and the benignant spirit of the age in which we live. All parties
and all sections will alike rejoice in the settlement of a controversy
which has agitated the country and disturbed its peace so long. We
shall regain the respect and good will of the nations, and once more,
consistent with our principles and with our ancient character, we
shall, with their free consent, take our place at their head, in their
advancing progress, toward a higher and more happy, because more
numane and more genial civilization.

DEMOCEACY THE CHIEF ELEMENT OF GOYEENMENT.

MADISON, WISCONSIN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1860.

IT is a political law — and when I say political law, I mean a
higher law, a law of Providence — that empire has, for the last three
thousand years, so long as we have records of civilization, made its
way constantly westward, and that it must continue to move on
westward until the tides of the renewed and of the decaying civil
izations of the world meet on the shores of the Pacific ocean.
Within a year I have seemed to myself to follow the track of empire
in its westward march for three thousand years. I stood but a year
ago on the hill of Calvary. I stood soon afterward on the Pirceus
of Athens. Again I found myself on the banks of the Tiber.
Still advancing westward I rested under the shades of the palaces of
the kings of England, and trod the streets of the now renovated
capital of France. From those capitals I made my way at last to
"Washington, the city of established empire for the present genera
tion of men, and of influence over the destinies of mankind.

Empire moves far more rapidly in modern than it did in ancient
times. The empire established at Washington, is of less than a
hundred years' formation. It was the empire of thirteen Atlantic
American states. Still, practically, the mission of that empire is ful
filled. The power that directs it is ready to pass away from those
thirteen states, and although held and exercised under the same
constitution and national form of government, yet it is now in the
very act of being transferred from the thirteen states east of the
Alleghany mountains and on the coast of the Atlantic ocean, to the
twenty states that lie west of the Alleghanies, and stretch away
from their base to the base of the Eocky mountains. The political
power of the republic, the empire, is already here in the plain that
stretches between the great lakes on the east and the base of the
Eocky mountains on the west ; and you are heirs to it. When the
next census shall reveal your power, you will be found to be the

320 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

masters of the United States of America, and through them the
dominating political power of the world. Our mission, if I may say
that I belong to that eastern and falling empire instead of the rising
western one — the mission of the thirteen states has been practically
accomplished. And what is it? Just like the mission of every
other power on earth. To reproduce, to produce a new and greater
and better power than we have been ourselves, to introduce on the
stage of human affairs twenty new states and to prepare the way for
twenty more, before whose rising greatness and splendor, all our
own achievements pale and fade away. We have done this with as
much forethought perhaps as any people ever exercised, by saving
the broad domain which you and these other forty states are to
occupy, saving it for your possession, and so far as we had virtue
enough, by surrounding it with barriers against the intrusion of
ignorance, superstition and slavery.

Because you are to rise to the ascendant and exercise a domina
ting influence, you are not, therefore, to cast off the ancient and
honored thirteen that opened the way for you and marshaled you
into this noble possession, nor are you to cast off the new states of
the west. But you are to lay still broader foundations, and to erect
still more noble columns to sustain the empire which our fathers
established, and which it is the manifest will of our Heavenly Father
shall reach from the shores of the lakes to the gulf of Mexico, and
from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. It was a free government
which they established, and it was a self-government — a government
such as, on so large a scale, or indeed on any scale, has never before
existed. I know that when you consider what a magnificent destiny
you have before you, to lay your hand on the Atlantic coast, and to
extend your power to the Pacific ocean and grasp the great com
merce of the east, you will fully appreciate the responsibility. It is
only to be done by maintaining the democratic system of govern
ment. There is no other name given under heaven by which, in
this generation, nations can be saved from desolation and ruin, than
democracy. This, to many conservative ears, would seem a strange
proposition ; and yet it is so simple that I lack the power almost of
elucidating it. Look at England. She is ambitious, as she well
may be, and ought to be, to retain that dominion, reaching into
every part of the habitable globe, which she now exercises. She is
likely to do it, too, and may do it, by reducing, every successive

THE ARISTOCRATIC ELEMENT. 321

year, the power of her aristocracy, and introducing more and more,
the popular element of democracy ID to the administration of her
government.

In many respects the government of England, though more aris
tocratic, is still less monarchical than our own. The British empire
exists to-day only by recognizing and gradually adopting the great
truth that if the British empire is to stand, it is the British people
who are to maintain that empire and enjoy and exercise it. France,
the other great European power, which seems to stand firmer now
than ever, and to be renewing her career of prosperity and glory —
France, under the form of a despotism, has adopted the principle of
universal suffrage, and the empire of France to-day is a democracy.
The Austrian empire is falling. And why ? Because democracy is
rising in Germany to demand the liberation of the people of its
various nations, and the exercise of universal suffrage. And Italy
to-day all along the coast of the Mediterranean, is rising up to the
dignity of renewed national life, by adopting the principle of univer
sal suffrage and the limitation of power by the action of the whole
people.

Now if in the Old World, where government and empire are
entrenched and established so strong in hereditary aristocracy, no
empire can stand except as it yields to the democratic principle ;
look around over the United States of America, and say how long
you can hold these states in a federal union or maintain one common
authority or empire here, except on the principles of democracy ?
Therefore, it is that, I say, that you of the northwest are, above all
things, first, last, and all the time, to recognize as the great element
of the republic, the system and principles of democracy.

But, fellow citizens, it is easy to talk about democracy. I have
heard some men prate of it by the hour, and admire it, and shout
for it, and express their reverence for it ; and yet I have seen that
they never comprehend the simplest element of democracy ? What
is it ? Is it the opposite of monarchy or of aristocracy ? Aristocracy
is maintained everywhere, in all lands, by one of two systems, or by
both combined. An aristocracy is the government in which the
privileged own the lands, and the many unprivileged work them, or
in which the few privileged own the laborers and the laborers work
for them. In either case the laborer works on compulsion, and
under the constraint of force ; and in either case he takes that which

VOL. IV. 41

322 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

may remain after the wants of the owners of land or labor are both
satisfied. The laborer must rest content with the privilege of being
protected in his personal rights ; and the powers of the government
are exercised by the owner, of labor and of land.

) Here, then, you see I have brought you to the consideration of
the great problem of society in this republic or empire. It is this :
Is there any danger -that in the United States the citizen will not be
the owner of the land which he cultivates ? If there is any part of
the United States where the labor or the land is monopolized by
capital, there is a place in which the democratic element has not yet
had its introduction or been permitted to work its way effectually.
So, on the other hand, as here, where you are, no man can monopo
lize the land which another man is obliged to cultivate, much less
monopolize the labor by which the lands on your fields are cultiva
ted, you are entirely and absolutely established and grounded on
democratic principles. But, you all know, that has not always been
the history of our whole country, and, at times, was not the condi
tion of any part of it. Some two hundred years ago, when laborers
were scarce, and the field to be cultivated was large, private citizens
of the Atlantic states, driven, as they said, by the cupidity of the
British government, introduced the labor of slaves into the American
colonies, and then established the aristocracy of land and labor.
The system pervaded nearly the whole Atlantic states. If it had
not been interrupted it would have pervaded the continent of
America ; and instead of what you see, and of what you are a part,
and of what you do, — instead of emigration from the eastern states
into the prairies of the west, and instead of emigration from Europe
all over the United States, you would have had in the northwest
this day the Boston and New York merchant importing laborers
instead of freemen into the seaports, and dispersing them over the
entire valley of the Mississippi. That would have been the condi
tion of civilization on this continent. It has been fortunate for you,
and fortunate for us, that such a desecration of the magnificent scene,
provided by nature for the improvement of human society and for
the increase of human happiness, has been arrested so soon ; and
you will see how felicitous it is when for one moment you compare
the condition of Wisconsin, and of Maine, and of Iowa, and of Illi
nois, and of Indiana, and of all the free states of the Union, with
the islands of the West Indies, colonized just at the same time that

THE DEMOCRATIC ELEMENT PERVERTED. 323

the Atlantic states were colonized, and with the condition of South
America, a whole and entire new continent, abounding in the most
luxuriant vegetation and with the greatest resources of mineral
wealth, absolutely reduced to a condition of perpetual civil war, and
ever-renewed ruinous desolation. The salvation of North America
from all those disasters that have befallen the southern portion of
the continent is the result of bold and firm procedure on the part
of your ancestors and mine, less than a hundred years ago.

The government of the United States was established in an
auspicious moment. The world had become aroused to the injustice
as well as to the inexpediency of the system of slavery, and the peo
ple of the United States, rising up to the dignity of the decision that
was before them, determined to prevent the further extension, and,
as far and fast as possible, to secure the abolition of African slavery.
It was under the influence of a high, righteous, noble, humane excite
ment like that, that even the state of Virginia, itself a slave state,
like the state of New York, determined that, so far as her power
and her will could command the future, slavery should cease for
ever ; first, by abolishing the African slave trade, which would bring
about, ultimately, the cessation of domestic slavery ; and, in the
second place, by declaring that her consent to the cession of territory
northwest of the Ohio, of which you occupy so beautiful a part, was
given with the express condition that it should never be the home
of slavery or involuntary servitude.

But, I need not remind you that this, like most other efforts of
human society to do good and to advance the welfare of mankind,
had its painful and unfortunate reaction. Hardty twenty years had
elapsed after the passage of these noble acts for the foundation of
liberty on the North American continent, before there came over
the nation a tide of demoralization, the results of which, coming on
us with such fearful rapidity, surpass almost our power to describe
or to sufficiently deplore.

What have we seen since that was done? We have seen the
people of the United States — for it is of no use to cast responsibility
on parties, or administrations, or statesmen — extend slavery all around
the coast of the gulf of Mexico. We have seen them take Texas
into the Union, and agree that she should come in as a slave state,
and have the right to multiply herself into four more slave states.
We have seen California and New Mexico conquered by the people

324: POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of the United States, with the deliberate consent, if not purpose,
that slavery should be extended from the Mississippi river to the
Pacific ocean. We have seen the constitution of the United States
perverted by the consent of the people until that constitution, instead
of being a law of freedom and a citadel of human rights, has come
to be pronounced by the affected judgment and willing consent of
the highest tribunal of the United States, yet enjoying the confidence
and support of the people, to be a tower and bulwark of human
slavery, of African bondage ; and you have it now announced by the
government of the United States, which you yourselves brought into
power, that wherever the constitution of the United States goes, it
carries, not freedom with the eagles of conquest, but hateful bondage.
If the principle which you have thus permitted to be established is
true, then there is not an arsenal within the United States, not a
military or naval school of the federal government, not a federal
jail, not a dock yard, not a ship that traverses the ocean bearing the
American flag in any part of the world, where the law, the normal
law, the law by which men are tried and judged, is not a law by
which every man whose ancestor was a slave is a slave, and by
which property in slaves, not freedom of man, is the real condition
of society under the federal system of government. I can only ask
you to consider for a moment how near you have come to losing
everything which you enjoy of this great interest of freedom. The
battle culminated at last on the fields of Kansas.

How severe and how dreadful a battle that has been, you all know.
It was a great and desperate effort of the aristocracy of capital in
labor, to carry their system practically with all its evils to the shores
of the gulf of Mexico, and to cut off the Atlantic states from all
communication with the sister states on the Pacific, and so extend
slavery from the centre, both ways, restoring it throughout the whole
country. You will say that this was a very visionary attempt ; but
it was far from being visionary. It was possible, and for a time^
seemed fearfully probable — probable for this reason, that the land
must have labor, and that it must be either the labor of freemen or
the labor of slaves. Introduce slave labor in any way that you can,
and free labor is repelled, and avoids it. Slave labor was introduced
into this country by the opening of the African slave trade, and
when the territory of the United States, in the interior of the conti
nent, was open to slavery with your "consent and mine, nothing then

THE ARISTOCRATIC ELEMENT RESISTED. 325

would have remained but to reopen and restore the African slave
trade ; for it is prohibited only by a law, and the same power that
made the law could repeal and abrogate it. The same power that
abrogated the Missouri compromise in 1854, would, if the efforts to
establish slavery in Kansas had been successful, have been, after a
short time, bold enough, daring enough, desperate enough, to have
repealed the prohibition of the African slave trade. And, indeed,
that is yet a possibility now ; for, disguise these issues now before
the American people, as they may be disguised by the democratic
party, yet it is nevertheless perfectly true, that if you forego your
opposition and resistance to slavery, if this popular resistance should
be withdrawn, or should, for any reason, cease, then the African
slave trade, which at first illegally renews itself along the coasts of
our southern states, would gradually steal up the Mississippi, until
the people, tired with a hopeless resistance, should become indifferent,
and African slavery would once more become the disgraceM trade
of the American flag.

Now, all these evils would have happened, all this abandonment
of the continent of North America to slavery would have happened,
and have been inevitable, had resistance to it depended alone on the
people of the thirteen original states. We were already overpowered
there. From one -end of the Atlantic states to the other, there were,
in 1850, scarcely three states which did not declare that henceforth
they gave up the contest, and that they were willing that the people
of the new territories might have slavery or freedom, and might
come into the Union as slave states, or as free states, just as they
pleased.

When that had happened, what would have followed? Why,
that the people who had the right to slavery if they pleased, had the
right to get slaves if they pleased. How, then, were we saved ? Ifc
seems almost as if it was providential that these new states of the
northwest, the state of Michigan, the state of Wisconsin, the state
of Iowa, the state of Ohio, founded on this reservation for freedom
that had been made in the year 1787, matured just in the critical
moment to interpose, to rally the free states of the Atlantic coast, to
call them back to their ancient principles, to nerve them to sustain
them in the contest at the capitol, and to send their noble and true
sons and daughters to the plains of Kansas, to defend, at the peril
of their homes, and even their lives, if need were, the precious soil

326 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

which had been abandoned bj the government to slavery, from the
intrusion of that, the greatest evil that has ever befallen our land.
You matured in the right time. And how came you to mature?
How came you to be better, wiser, than we of the Atlantic states ?
The reason is a simple one, perfectly plain. Your soil had been never
polluted by the footprints of a slave. Every foot of ours had been
redeemed from slavery. You are a people educated in the love of
freedom, and to whom the practice of freedom and of democracy
belongs, for every one of you own the land you cultivate, and no
human being that has ever trodden it has worn the manacles of a
slave. And you come from other regions too. You come from the
south, where you knew the evils of slavery. You come from Ger
many and from Ireland, and from Holland, and from France, and
from all over the face of the globe, where you have learned by expe
rience the sufferings that result from aristocracy and oppression.
And you brought away with you from your homes the sentiments,
the education of freemen. You came then just at the right moment.
You came prepared. You came qualified. You came sent by the
Almighty to rescue this land and the whole continent from slavery.
Did ever men have a more glorious duty to perform, or a more
beneficent destiny before them than the people of the northwestern
angle that lies between the Ohio river and the great lakes and the
Mississippi ? I am glad to see that you are worthy of it, that you
appreciate it.

It does not need that I should stimulate you by an appeal to your
patriotism, to your love of justice, and to your honor, to perfect this
great work, to persevere in it until you shall bring the government
of the United States to stand hereafter as it stood forty years ago, a
tower of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of all lands, instead
of a bulwark of slavery. I prefer rather to deal in what may per
haps be not less pleasing to you, and that is, to tell you that the
whole responsibility rests henceforth directly or indirectly on the
people of the northwest. Abandon that responsibility, and slavery
extends from the gulf of Mexico to the gulf of St. Lawrence on
the Atlantic coast. There can be no virtue in commercial and man
ufacturing communities to maintain a democracy, when the democ
racy themselves do not want a democracy. There is no virtue in
Pearl street, in Wall street, in Court street, in Chestnut street, in any
other stieet of great commercial cities, that can save the great demo-

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NORTHWEST. 327

cratic government of ours, when you cease to uphold it with your
intelligent votes, your strong and mighty hands. You must, there
fore, lead us as we heretofore reserved and prepared the way for you.
We resign to you the banner of fruman rights and human liberty,
on this continent, and we bid you be firm, bold and onward, and then
you may hope that we will be able to follow you. >

I have said that you are to have the responsibility alone. I have
shown you that in the Atlantic northern states we were dependent
on you. I need not tell you that at present you can expect no effec
tive support or sympathy in the Atlantic southern states.

You must demonstrate the wisdom of our cause by argument, by
reason, by the firm exercise of suffrage, in every way in which the
human intelligence and human judgment can be convinced of truth
and right — you must demonstrate it, giving line upon line, and pre
cept upon precept, overcoming passion and prejudice and enmity,
with gentleness, with patience, with loving kindness to your brethren
of the slave states, until they shall see that the way of wisdom which
you have chosen is also the path of peace. The southwest are
sharers with you of the northwest in this great inheritance of empire.
It belongs equally to them and to you. They have plains as beauti
ful. They have rivers as noble. They have all the elements of
wealth, prosperity and power that you have. Still from them, from
Kentucky and Tennessee, from Missouri and Arkansas, from Ala
bama and Mississippi and Louisiana, you will for the present receive
no aid or support ; but you will have to maintain your principles in
opposition, although I trust not in defiance of them — and that, for
the simple reason that in the great year 1787, when Mr. Jefferson
proposed that slavery should be excluded in all the public domain
of the United States, lying southwest, as well as that lying north
west of the Ohio river, those states had not the forecast, had not the
judgment, to surrender the temporary conveniences and advantages
of slavery, and to elect, as your ancestors chose for you, the great
system of free labor. They chose slavery, and they have to drag
out, for some years yet, not long, not so long as some of you will live,
but still so long that they will be a drag and a weight upon your
movements, instead of lending you assistance — they have got to drag
out to the end their system of slave labor. You have, therefore, as
you see, the whole responsibility. It depends upon you. You have
no reliance upon the Atlantic states of the east, north or south. You

328 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

have the opposition of the southern states on either side of the Alle
ghany mountains ; but still the power is with you. You are situated
where all powers have ever been, that have controlled the destiny of
the nation to which they belonged. You are in the land which pro
duces the wheat and the corn, the cereal grains — the land that is
covered with the oak, and where they say the slave cannot live.
They are in the land that produces cotton and sugar and the tropical
fruits — in the land where they say the white man cannot labor ; in
the land where the white man must perish if he have not a negro
slave to provide him with food and raiment. They do, indeed, com
mand the mouths of the rivers ; but what is that worth, except as
they derive perpetual supplies, perpetual moral reinvigoration, from
the hardy sons of the north that reside around the sources of those
mighty rivers?

I am sure that in this I am speaking only words of truth and
experience. The northwest is by no means so small as you may
think it ; I speak to you because I feel that I am, and during all my
mature life have been, one of you. Although of New York, I am
still a citizen of the northwest. The northwest extends eastward to
the base of the Alleghany mountains, and does not all of western
New York lie westward of the Alleghany mountains ? Whence
comes all the inspiration of free soil which spreads itself with such
cheerful voices over all these plains ? Why, from New York west
ward of the Alleghany mountains.1 The people before me — who
are you but New York men, while you are men of the northwest?
It is an old proverb, that men change the skies, but not their
minds, when they emigrate ; but you have changed neither skies nor
mind.

I will add but one word more. This is not the business of this
day alone. It is not the business of this year alone. It is not the
business of the northwest alone. It is the interest, the destiny of
human society on the continent. You are to make this whole conti
nent, from north to south, from east to west, a land of freedom and
a land of happiness. There is no power on earth now existing, no
empire existing, or as yet established, that is to equal or can equal

1 At this point of the speech a large number of voices in the audience responded, indicating
the different counties in New York, from which they had emigrated, " Cayuga," " Genesee,"
"Seneca," "Tates," ''Ontario,'1 &c., so that Mr. Seward remarked: "Why, I thought I was
midway between the Lakes and the Mississippi, but I find I am at home among old neighbors
and friends."

WORDS OF JOHN ADAMS. 329

in duration the future of the United States. It is not for ourselves
alone ; you have the least possible interest in it. It is, indeed, for
those children of yours. Old John Adams, when, at the close of the
revolutionary war, he sat down and counted up the losses and sacri
fices that he had endured and made, rejoiced in the establishment of
the independence which had been the great object of his life, and
said : " I have gained nothing. I should have been even more com
fortable, perhaps, and more quiet, had we remained under the British
dominion ; but for my children, and for their children, and for the
children of the generation that labored with me, I feel that we have
done a work which entitles us to rejoice, and call upon us by our
successes to render our thanks to Almighty God."

THE CONSTITUTION INTERPRETED.1

IT has been by a simple rule of interpretation that I have studied
the constitution of my country. That rule has been simply this :
That by no word, no act, no combination into which I might enter,
should any one human being of the generation to which I belong,
much less any class of human beings, of any nation, race or kindred,
be repressed and kept down in the least degree in their efforts to
rise to a higher state of liberty and happiness. Amid all the glosses
of the times, amid all the essays and discussions to which the con
stitution of the United States has been subjected, this has been the
simple, plain, broad light in which I have read every article and
every section of that great instrument. Whenever it requires of
me that this hand shall keep down the humblest of the human race,
then I will lay down power, place, position, fame, everything, rather
than adopt such a construction or such a rule. If, therefore, in this
land there are any that would rise, I extend to them, in God's name,
a good speed. If there are any in foreign lands who would improve
their condition by emigration, or if there be any here who would
go abroad in the search of happiness, in the improvement of their
condition, or in their elevation to a higher state of dignity and hap
piness, they have always had, and always shall have, a cheering
word and such efforts as I can consistently make in their behalf.

'Extract from Mr. SewarcTs speech, at Madison, September 11, 1860.

VOL. IV. 42

POLITICAL EQUALITY THE NATIONAL IDEA.

SAINT PAUL, SEPTEMBER 18, 1860.

ONE needs to have had something of my own experience of living
in a state at an early period of its material development and social
improvement, and growing up with its growing greatness, to be able to
appreciate the feeling with which I arn oppressed, on this my first
entrance into the capital of the state of Minnesota. Every step of
my progress since I reached the Northern Mississippi has been
attended by an agreeable and constantly increasing surprise. I had
early read the works in which the geographer had described the
scenes around me, and I had studied these scenes minutely in the
finest productions of art ; but still the grandeur, the luxuriance, the
geniality of the region were but imperfectly conceived before I saw
these sentinel walls that look down on the Mississippi — seen as I
beheld them — just when the earliest tinges of the fall give the rich
variety of hues to the American forest. I thought how much of
taste and genius had been wasted in celebrating the highlands of
Scotland and the mountains of Palestine, before civilized man had
reached the banks of the Mississippi. And then that beautiful lake
Pepin scene, at the close of the day, when the autumnal green of the
shores was lost in a deep blue hue that emulated that of the
heavens ; the moistened atmosphere reflected the golden rays of the
setting sun, and the skies above seemed to come down to complete
the gorgeous drapery of the scene. It was a piece of upholstery
such as no hand but that of nature could have made. This magnifi
cent lake, I said to myself, is a fitting vestibule to the capital of the
state of Minnesota — a state which I have loved, which I ever shall
love, for more reasons than time would now allow me to mention,
but chiefly because it was one of three states which my own voice
had been potential in bringing into the Federal Union. Every one
of the three was a free state, and I believe on my soul that, of the
whole three, Minnesota is the freest of all.

MINNESOTA AND THE NORTHWEST. 331

I find myself now, for the first time, on the highlands in the cen
ter of the continent of North America, equidistant from the waters
of Hudson's bay and the gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic ocean to
the ocean in which the sun sets — here on the spot where spring up,
almost side by side, and so near that they may kiss each other, the
two great rivers of the continent, the one of which pursuing its
strange, capricious, majestic, vivacious course through rapids and
cascade, lake after lake, bay after bay, and river after river, till,
at last, after a course of two thousand five hundred miles, it brings
your commerce into the ocean midway to the ports of Europe, and
the other, which meandering through woodland and prairie a like
distance of two thousand five hundred miles, -taking in tributary
after tributary from the east and from the west, bringing together
the waters from the western declivity of the Alleghanies and the
torrents which roll down the eastern sides of the Rocky mountains,
finds the Atlantic ocean in the gulf of Mexico. Here is the central
place where the agriculture of the richest regions of North America
must begin its magnificent supplies to the whole world. On the
east, all along the shore of lake Superior, and on the west, stretching
in one broad plain, in a belt across the continent, is a country where
state after state is yet to rise, and whence the productions for the
support of human society in other crowded states must forever go
forth. This is then a commanding field ; but it is as commanding
in regard to the commercial future, for power is not to reside perma
nently on the eastern slope of the Alleghany mountains, nor in the
seaports of the Pacific. Seaports have always been controlled at
last by the people of the interior. The people of the inland and
of the upland, those who inhabit the sources of the mighty waters,
are they who supply all states with the materials of wealth and
power. The seaports will be the mouths by which we shall commu
nicate and correspond with Europe, but the power that shall speak
and shall communicate and express the will of men on this conti
nent, is to be located in the Mississippi valley, and at the source of
the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. In other days, studying what
might perhaps have seemed to others a visionary subject, I have
cast about for the future the ultimate central seat of power of the
North American people. I have looked at Quebec and at New Or
leans, at Washington and at San Francisco, at Cincinnati and at St.
Louis, and it has been the result of my best conjecture that the seat

332 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of power for North America would yet be found in the valley of
Mexico ; that the glories of the Aztec capital would be renewed, and
that city would become ultimately the capital of the United States
of America. But I have corrected that view, and I now believe
that the last seat of power on the great continent will be found some
where within a radius not very far from the very spot where I stand,
at the head of navigation on the Mississippi river and on the great
Mediterranean lakes.

I have often seen, but never with great surprise, that on the occa
sion of a revival of religion, the oldest, the most devout, the most
religious preacher — he whose life had seemed to me and to the
world to be better ordered according to the laws of God and of affec
tion to mankind, has discovered that he had been entirely mistaken
in his own experience, and that he now found out, to his great grief and
astonishment, that he had never before been converted, and that now
for the first time he had become a Christian. While standing here, I
almost fall into the notion that I am in the category of that preacher,
and although I cannot charge myself with having been really a sedi
tious or ever a disloyal citizen, I have yet never exactly and com
pletely understood the duties that I owed to society and the spirit
that belongs to an American citizen. I have never until now occu
pied that place whence I could grasp the whole grand panorama of the
continent, for the happiness of whose present people and of whose
future millions of millions, it is the duty of an American statesman to
labor. I have often heard it said, and indeed I have thought that one
could get a very adequate idea of the greatness of this republic of ours,
if he could stand as I have stood on the deck of an American ship of
war, as she crossed the Mediterranean, passed through the Ionian
islands, ascended the Adriatic, bearing at the mast-head the stripes and
stars that command respect and inspire fear equally among the semi-
barbarians of Asia and the most polite and powerful nations of Europe.
I have often thought that I could lift myself up to the conception
of the greatness of this republic of ours by taking a stand on the
terrace of the capitol of Washington, and contemplating the concen
tration of the political power of the American people, and then fol
lowing out in my imagination the dispatches by which that will,
after being modified by the executive and legislative departments,
went forth in laws, and edicts, and ordinances for the government
and direction of a great people. But, after all, no such place as

THE GREAT AMERICAN UNION. 333

either of these is equal to that I now occupy. I seem to myself to
stand here on this eminence as the traveler who climbs the dome of
St. Peter's in Eome. There, through the opening of Jihat dome, he
seems to himself to be in almost direct and immediate communica
tion with the Almighty Power that directs and controls the actions
and the wills of men, and he looks down with pity on the priests
and votaries below who vainly try, by poring over beads and rituals,
to study out and influence the mind of the Eternal. Standing here
and looking far off into the northwest, I see the Eussian as he
busily occupies himself in establishing seaports and towns and forti
fications, on the verge of this continent, as the outposts of St. Peters
burg, and I can say, " Go on, and build up your outposts all along
the coast up even to the Arctic ocean — they will yet become the out
posts of my own country — monuments of the civilization of the
United States in the northwest." So I look off on Prince Rupert's land
and Canada, and see there an ingenious, enterprising and ambitious
people, occupied with bridging rivers and constructing canals, rail
roads and telegraphs, to organize and preserve great British provinces
north of the great lakes, the St. Lawrence, and around the shores of
Hudson bay, and I am able to say, " It is very well, you are build
ing excellent states to be hereafter admitted into the American Union.'7
I can look southwest and see, amid all the convulsions that are break
ing the Spanish American republics, and in their rapid decay and dis
solution, the preparatory stage for their reorganization in free, equal
and self-governing members of the United States of America. In
the same high range of vision I can look down on the states and the
people of the Atlantic coast of Maine and Massachusetts, of ISTew
York and Pennsylvania, of Virginia and the Carolinas, and Georgia,
and Louisiana, and Texas, and round by the Pacific coast to Califor
nia and Oregon. I can hear their disputes, their fretful controver
sies, their threats that if their own separate interests are not grati
fied and consulted by the federal government they will separate
from this Union. I am able to say, "peace, be still." These sub
jects of contention and dispute that so irritate and anger and pro
voke and alienate you, are but- temporary and ephemeral. These
institutions which you so much desire to conserve, and for which
you think you would sacrifice the welfare of the people of the con
tinent, are almost as ephemeral as yourselves. The man is born to-day
who will live to see the American Union, the American people,

334 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

coming into the harmonious understanding that this is the land for
the white man, and that whatever elements there are to disturb its
present peace or irritate the passions of its possessors, will in tHe
end, and that end will come before long, pass away, ineffectual in
any way to disturb the harmony of, or endanger the stability of this
great Union.

It is under the influence of reflections like these that I thank God
here to-day, more fervently than ever, that I live in so great a
country as this, and that my lot has been cast in it, not before the
period when political society was to be organized, nor yet in that
distant period when it is to collapse and fall into ruin, but that I
live in the very day and hour when political society is to be effect
ually organized throughout the entire continent. We seem here, and
now for the first time, to be conscious of that high necessity which
compels every state in the Union to be, not separate and isolated, but
one part of the American republic. We see and feel more than ever,
when we come up here, that fervent heat of love and attachment to
the region in which our lot is cast, that will not suffer the citizens of
Maine, the citizens of South Carolina, the citizens of Texas, or the
citizens of Wisconsin or Minnesota to be aliens to, or enemies of,
each other, but which, on the other hand, compels them all to be
members of one great political family. Aye, and we see now how
it is that while society is convulsed with rivalries and jealousies
between native and foreign born in our Atlantic cities and on our
Pacific coast, and tormented with the rivalries and jealousies pro
duced by difference of birth, of language, and of religion, here, in
the central point of the republic, the German, and the Irishman, and
the Italian, and the Frenchman, the Hollander and the Norwegian,
becomes in spite of himself, almost completely in his own day, and
entirely in his own children, an American citizen. We see the
unity, in other words, that constitutes, and compels us to constitute,
not many nations, not many peoples, but one nation and one people
only.

Valetudinarians of the north have been in the habit of seeking
the sunny skies of the south to restore their wasting frames under
consumption ; and invalids of the south have been accustomed to
seek the skies of Italy for the same relief. Now you see the vale
tudinarians of the whole continent, from the frozen north and the
burning south, resort to the sources of the Mississippi for an atmos-

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY. 335

phere which, shall restore them to health. Do you not see and feel
here that this atmosphere has another virtue — that when men from
Maine, and from Carolina, and from Mississippi, and from New
Hampshire, and from England and Ireland, and Scotland, from Ger
many and from all other portions of the world come up here, the
atmosphere becomes the atmosphere not only of health, but of liberty
and freedom ? Do we not feel when we come up here, that we have
not only found the temple and the shrine of freedom, but that we
have come into the actual living presence of the goddess of freedom
herself? Once in her presence, we see that no less capacious temple
could be fit for the worship that is her due. I wish, my fellow citi
zens, that all my associates in public life could come up here with
me, and learn by experience, as I have done, the elevation and
serenity of soul which pervades the people of the great northwest.
It is the only region of the United States in which I find fraternity
and mutual charity fully developed. Since I first set foot on the
soil of the valley of the Upper Mississippi, I have met men of all
sects and of all religions ; men of the republican party and men of
the democratic party, and of the American party, and I have not
heard one reproachful word, one intolerant or disdainful sentiment;
I have seen that you can differ, and yet not disagree. I have seen
that you can love your parties and the statesmen of your choice,
and yet love still more the country and its rulers ; the people, the
sovereign people ; not the squatter sovereigns scattered widecast and
roving in distant and remote territories which you are never to enter,
and so devised that they may be sold, and that the supreme court of
the United States may abolish sovereignty and the sovereigns both
together. You love the sovereignty that you possess yourselves,
in which every man is his own sovereign, the popular sovereignty
that belongs to me and the popular sovereignty that belongs to you ;
the equal popular sovereignty that belongs to every other man who
is under the government and protection of the United States. Under
the influence of such sentiments and feelings as these, I scarcely
know how to act or speak, when I come before you at the command
of the republican people of Minnesota as a republican. I feel that
if we could be but a little more indulgent a little more patient with
each other, and a little more charitable, all the grounds on which
we differ would disappear and pass away, just as popular sovereignty
is passing away ; and let us all, though we cannot confess ourselves

336 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

to be all republicans, at least agree that we all are above all parties
— American citizens. I see here, moreover, how it is, that in spite
of sectional and personal ambition, the form and body and spirit of
this nation organized itself and consolidated itself out of the equi
librium of irrepressible and yet healthful political counterbalancing
forces, and how out of that equilibrium it produced just exactly
that one thing which the interests of this continent and of mankind
require should be developed here — and that is, a federal republic of
separate republican or democratic states. I see here how little you
and I, and those who are wiser and better and greater than you or
I, have done, and how little they can do to produce the requisite
political condition for the people of this continent, the condition of
a free people. I see that, while we seem to ourselves to have been
trying to do much and to do everything, and while many fancy that
they have done a great deal, yet what we have been doing, what we
now are doing, what we shall hereafter do, and what we and those
who may come after us shall continue to be doing, is just exactly
what was necessary to be done, whether we knew it or not, for the
interests of humanity throughout the world, and therefore was cer
tain to be done, because necessity is only another expression or
name for the higher law. God ordains that what is useful to be
done shall be done. When I survey American society as it is de
veloping fully and perfectly here, I see that it is doing what the
exigencies of political society throughout the world have at last
rendered it necessary to be done. Society tried for six thousand
years how to live and improve and perfect itself under monarchical
and aristocratic systems of government, while practising a system
of depredation and slavery on each other. The result has been all
over the world a complete and absolute failure. At last, at the close
of the last century, the failure was discovered, and a revelation was
made of the necessity of a system to which henceforth men should
cease to enslave each other, and should govern themselves.

Nowhere, in Africa, Asia, or in Europe, was there any open field
where this great new work of the organization of a political society
under a more auspicious system of government, could be attempted.
They were all occupied. This great and unoccupied continent fur
nished the very theatre that was necessary ; and to it came all the bold,
and the free, and the brave men throughout the world, who feel and
know that necessity, and who have the courage, the manhood, and

EQUAL EIGHTS THE VITAL PKINCIPLE. 337

the humanity to labor to produce this great organization. Provi
dence set apart this continent for the work, and, as I think, set apart
and designated this particular locality for the place whence shall go
forth continually the ever-renewing spirit which shall bring the
people of all other portions of the continent up to a continual ad
vance in the establishment of the system. I may make myself
better understood by saying, that until the beginning of the present
century, men had lived the involuntary subjects of political govern
ment, and that the time had come when mankind could no longer
consent to be so governed by force. The time had come when men
were to live voluntary citizens and sovereigns themselves of the
states which they possessed, and that is the principle of the govern
ment established here. It has only one vital principle. All others
are resolved into it. That one principle — what is it? It is the
equality of every man who is a member of the state to be governed.
If there be not absolute political equality then home portion of the
people are governed by force, and are not voluntary citizens; and
whenever any portion of the people are governed by force, then
you are carried so far backward again toward the old system of
involuntary citizenship, or a government by kings, lords, and stand
ing armies. This was the great necessity, not of the people of the
United States alone — it was not even the original conception of the
people of the United States that a republican government was to be
established for themselves alone, but the establishment of the repub
lican system of the United States of America was only bringing out
and reducing to actual practice the ideas and opinions which men
had already formed, all over the civilized world. If you will refer
to the action of our forefathers, you will find that while they did:
labor, as they might well labor, to secure this government in its-
republican form for themselves and their posterity, yet they worn
conscious that they were erecting it as a model of refuge for the
people of every nation, kindred and tongue under heaven. The old
continental congress of 1787 declared that the interest of the United
States was forever the interest of human nature, and that it was the
political redemption of human nature that was to be worked out on
the continent of North America; and, as I have said, it is to be
brought to its perfection here in the valley of the Mississippi.

The framers of the republic conceived this necessity — they assumed
this high responsibility. They never could have done so, except

VOL. IV. 43

338 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

for the crisis of the revolution, which kindled an unknown fire of
patriotism within the bosom of the people and enabled them for a
brief period to elevate themselves up above temporary and ephemeral
interests and prejudices, and to rise to the great test of organizing
and constituting a free and purely popular government. The people
understood the great principle on which it was to be founded — the
political equality of the whole people ; and that they did so under
stand it you will see in the fact that in the Declaration of Independ
ence they lay the foundations of the great republic on the great
truth that all men are created equal, and have inalienable rights to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But it was not the good
fortune of our fathers to be able to find full and ample materials, all
of the right kind, for the erection of the temple of liberty, which
they constructed. Providence has so ordered it that uniformly per
fect materials for any edifice which the human mind is required to
devise, and the human hand to construct, cannot be found any
where. If you propose to build a lime-stone house here, you may
excavate the ground on which it is to be placed and take from the
quarry the needed rocks and lay them all away in their proper places
in the foundation and walls and vaulted roof; but other materials
besides the lime-stone enter into the noblest structure you can make.
There must be some lime, and some sand, and some iron, and some
wood, and one must combine perfect with imperfect materials to
make any human structure. Even the founders of a great republic
like this, wishing and intending to place it on the principle of the.
equality of man, had to take such materials as they found. They
had to take society as it was, in which some were free and some
were slaves, and to form a Union in which some were free states and
some were slave states. They had the ideal before them, but they
were unable to perfect it all at once. What did they do? They
did as the architect does who raises a structure of stone and lime,
and sand, and wood, and iron ; where there is a weakness of material,
and where the strength of the edifice would be impaired by it, he
applies braces, and props, and bulwarks, and buttresses to strengthen
and fortify so as to make the weak part combine with, and be held
together in solid connection with the firm and strong. That is what
our fathers intended to do, and what they did do, when they framed
the federal government. Seeing this element of slavery, which they
could not eliminate, they said, " We will take care that it shall not

EQUALITY THE TRUE POLICY. 339

weaken the edifice and bring it down. We will take care that
although we cannot get rid of slaves now, the number of slaves
hereafter shall diminish and the number of white men shall increase,
and that ultimately the element of free white men shall be so strong
that the element of slavery shall be inadequate to produce any
serious danger, calamity, or disaster." How did they do this?
They did it in a simple way by authorizing congress to prohibit, and
practically by prohibiting, the African slave trade after the expira
tion of twenty years from the establishment of the constitution;
supposing that if no more slaves were imported, the American
people, then almost unanimously in favor of emancipation, would
be able to eliminate from the country the small amount of slavery
which would be left to decay and decline for want of invigoration
by the African slave trade. They did another thing. They set
apart the territory northwest of the Ohio river, nearly all of the
unoccupied domain of the United States, for freemen only, declaring
that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever enter on
its soil. They did one thing more. They declared that congress
should pass uniform laws of naturalization, so that when the impor
tation of African slaves should cease, voluntary immigration of
freemen from all other lands should be encouraged and stimulated.
Thus, while unable to exclude slavery from the system, they pro
vided for the rapid development and perfection of the principle that
all men are born free and equal.

And now, fellow citizens, we see all around us the results of that
wise policy. Certain of the states concurred partially in the policy
of the fathers. I hardly need tell you what states they were. They
were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Some other states did not. It is
scarcely necessary to name them. They were the six southern states
of the Union. The six southern states said, although the constitu
tion has arrested the slave trade and invited emigration, and adopted
the policy of making all the men of the new states free and equal,
yet we will adhere to the system of slavery. You see how it has
worked in the cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. You
see it in the wheat fields of New York, of Ohio, of Indiana, of Illi
nois, of Wisconsin. You see it in the flocks and herds of Vermont
and New Hampshire ; you see it in the cattle that multiply upon ten
thousand hills ; you see it in the million of spindles in the manufac-

340 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

tories of the east, and in the forges and furnaces of Pennsylvania ;.
you see it in the crowded shipping of New York, and in her palaces
and towers, emulating the magnificence of the old world, and grasp
ing for itself the commerce of the globe. You see even in California
and Oregon the same results ; you see them in the copper ore dug
out on the banks of lake Superior, the iron in Pennsylvania, the
gypsum in New York, the salt in Ohio and New York, the lead in
Illinois, and the silver and the gold in the free states of the Pacific
coast. In all these you see the fruits of this policy. Neither in
forest, nor in mines, nor in manufactories, nor in workshop, is there
found one African slave that turns a wheel or supplies the oil which
keeps the machinery in motion. On the other hand, you see millions'
of freemen crowding each other in perpetual waves, rolling over from
Europe on the Atlantic coast, and flowing on and forming great
states on the western base of the Alleghany mountains — still rolling
on again perpetually until it constitutes new states, in which is built
up here in Minnesota in nine years, a capital equal to the capital
built in any slave state in the Union in two hundred years.

You see here the fruits of this great policy of the fathers. You
see what comes of a wise policy. But do not let us mistake it for
policy. It is not mere policy. It is the national practice of simple
justice, of equal and exact justice to all men, for the freedom which
we boast so highly, which we love so dearly and so justly, which we
prefer above every other earthly good, and without which earth is
unfit for the habitation of man. What is it? Nothing but you
allowing to me my rights, and I allowing to you equal rights — every
man having exactly his own — the right to decide whether he will
labor and eat, or will be idle and die; and if he will labor, for what
he will labor, and for whom he will labor, and the right to discharge
his employer just exactly as the employer can discharge him. You
see the fruits of this policy in another way. Go over the American
continent from one end of it to the other, wherever the principle of
equality has been adopted and adhered to, and every citizen of a
state, and every citizen of every other state, and every exile from a
foreign nation, may write, print, speak and vote when he acquires the
right to vote, just exactly as he pleases, and there is no man to
molest him, no man to terrify him, no man even to complain of him.
Now, on the other hand, go into any state which has retained the
principle of the inequality of man, and determined that it will retain

FKEE SPEECH AND A FREE PRESS. 341

it to the last, and you will find the state where not even the native
born citizen and slaveholder, certainly none but he, can express his
opinion on the question whether the African is or is not a descend
ant of Ham, or whether he is equal or inferior to the white man, and
if he be inferior, whether it is not therefore the duty of the white
man to enslave him. No, "mum's the word " for freemen wherever
slavery is retained and cherished.

Silence on matters of state, the absence of freedom of speech and
of freedom of the press — what kind of freedom is that? Is there a
man in Minnesota who would for one day consent to live in it if he
were deprived of the right to hurrah for Lincoln and Hamlin, or
hurrah for Douglas, to hurrah for freedom, or to hurrah for slavery,
just as he liked? I think that these one hundred and eighty thou
sand people who inhabit here, would be seen moving right out east
and west, into British .North America, or into Kamtschatka, any
where on the earth to get out of this luxuriant and beautiful valley,
if any power, human or divine, should announce to them that hence
forth they spoke and voted their real sentiments and their real choice
at their peril of imprisonment or death. Now, fellow citizens, you
need only look around through such a mass of American citizens as
I can see before me, and you may go over all the free states in the
Union, and you will find them every day of the week somewhere
gathered together, expressing their opinions and preparing to declare
their will just exactly as you are doing. Does this happen to be so ?
Is it mere chance ? Is it, indeed, even man's work, or device, or
contrivance, that in this land, on this side of the great lakes, on this
.side of the Atlantic ocean, on this side of the Pacific ocean, men may
all meet or may all stay apart, may all speak, think, act, print, write
and vote just exactly as they please, while there is no other land on
the face of the earth where ten men can be assembled together to
exercise the same rights without being dispersed by an armed band
of soldiers? Does it happen to be so in the United States, or is it
the result of that higher law controlling the destinies of races, of
nations, of men, so as to bring out and perfect here the model of what
I have described as the true constitution of society, of a self-govern
ing people, on the principle of equal and exact justice to all classes
and conditions of men ? Manifestly it is not of man's device or con
trivance, but it is the work of a superior power that

- " shapes our ends.
Rough hew them how we will !"

342 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Now, while we see how obviously this is the result of controlling
necessity, in accordance with the very purpose of a benevolent Pro
vidence, how singular and strange it is that so much pains have been
taken by ourselves to defeat and prevent the organization and per
fection of this very system of government among us ! What has
not the nation seen done and permitted to be done in the federal
council at Washington ? They have permitted statutes to be made
and judgments to be rendered in their name, declaring that men are
not freemen, but that in certain conditions, and in certain places,
they are merchandise. The supreme court of the United States of
America never rises without recording judgments and directing
executions for the sale of men, women and children as merchandise ;
and this is done in your name and mine. The constitution never
declared, never intended to declare, was never by its framers under
stood to declare, that any man could be a chattel or merchandise.
All that it did declare was that all men should have rights to per
sonal security and personal liberty within the action of the federal
government. You see how we have had new religious systems
established among us, teaching that the African slaves among us,
nay, all Africans, are the children of an accursed parent, who was
cursed not only in his own person and in his own day and genera
tion, but in all his generations, and teaching that everybody had a
right to curse anew these accursed generations to the end of time.
We have had religious creeds established among us, that it is our
duty to capture and return to slavery slaves escaping from their
owners, because, they say, St. Paul sent back Onesimus, as they say,
to his master — even teaching that it is the duty of men and a free
state, not only to submit to laws passed for the purpose of extending
human bondage, but even personally to execute them. You have seen
how, in a portion of the Union, the great governing race, the white
man, actually deprive themselves in a large degree of the advantages
of education and instruction for greater security of keeping slaves in
ignorance, so that schools and colleges and universities, as they are
organized and perfected in the free states, and now in most of the
states in western Europe, are, if not unpopular, yet feebly maintained
in the slave states. You have seen how we have, in order to coun
teract the policy of our forefathers, surrendered in 1820 the state of
Missouri, and all that part of the territory of Louisiana that lies
south of 36° 30', to slavery, and contented ourselves with saving to-

THE EFFORTS TO EXTEND SLAVERY.

ireedom what lay north of that line ; and you have seen how, only
forty years afterward, in order to counteract and entirely defeat the
policy of the fathers in establishing such institutions as those, we
surrendered and gave up the whole of what we had saved in 1820,
abandoning Kansas and the whole of our possessions from one end
of the continent to the other, to be made slave colonies and slave
states, if slave owners could make them so, and agreeing that we
would receive them into the Union, as we had already agreed to
receive four slave states out of Texas, to the end that this govern
ment might not continue to be, and develop itself to be a government
founded on the equality of man, but should be and remain forever a
government founded on the principle of property in man. You
iiave seen, within the last thirty years, how the congress of the United
States, in order to defeat this great policy, has suppressed, for a period
of nearly ten years, freedom of debate and the right of petition on the
subject of slavery in the house of representatives and in the seriate of
the United States. You know now how the mails of the United
States are subject to espionage, to the end that any paper, or letter,
or writing that shall argue for freedom against slavery, shall be
abstracted and destroyed and withdrawn in order to fortify the power
of slavery. You have seen the federal government connive and
cooperate and combine with the slave party in endeavoring to force
slavery on the people of Kansas when they had refused to accept it
Did I say that you have seen all these things done? I am sorry to
say that most of you have, at some time of your lives, given your
consent by your voices, and even your votes, that they should be
done. They are our own work.

The American people have adopted these measures to counteract
and subvert the very principle of freedom established by the consti
tution. And now, since so much has been done, let us see what is
the result after all, what advantage has slavery got, and what has
freedom lost. While we have for forty years given our free consent
that freedom should be stripped of everything, and that slavery
should be invested with all power and domination, why they have
arrested the march of emancipation at the line of Pennsylvania, nnd
have left the ancient slavery still lingering in Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and they have
added to them five or six slave states in the southwestern angle of
the United States. That is all that they have done, and on the other

S44 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

hand the great vital principle of the republic — this principle of free
dom and equality — what has it not done ? It has abolished slavery
in seven of the original slave states, and has produced new and strong
and most vigorous and virtuous states, all along the shores of the
great lakes, and all across to the valley of the Upper Mississippi,
and it has established freedom beyond the power of being overthrown,
on the coast of the Pacific ocean. Certainly, since we can lay so
little claim to having produced these results by our own work or
wisdom or virtue, what could have secured them but that overruling
Power, which, by its higher laws, controls even the perverse wills of
men, and which means nothing less than that this shall be, hence
forth and forever as it was established in the beginning — a land not
of slavery, but a land of freedom.

Either in one way or the other, whether you agree with me in
attributing it to the interposition of Divine Providence or not, this
battle has been fought — this victory has been won. Slavery to-day
is for the first time not only powerless, but without influence in the
American republic. The serried ranks of party after party which
rallied around it to sustain and support it, are broken under the
irresistible pressure of a new party, organized to restore freedom to
its original and just position in the government. For the first time
in the history of the United States, no man in a free state can be
bribed to vote for slavery. The government of the United States
has not the power to make good a bribe or a seduction by which to
convert whigs or democrats to support slavery. For the first time
in the history of the republic, the slave power has not even the
ability to terrify or alarm the freeman so as to make him submit, or
even to compromise. It rails now with a feeble voice, instead of
thundering as it did in our ears for twenty or thirty years past.
With a feeble and muttering voice they cry out that they will tear
the Union to pieces. They complain that if we will not surrender our
piinciples, and our system, and our right, being a majority, to rule,
and if we will not accept their system and such rulers as they will
give us, they will go out of the Union. " Who's afraid1 ?" No
body's afraid. Nobody can be bought. Now, fellow citizens, let
me ask you, since you are so prompt at answering, suppose at any
time within the last forty years we could have found the American
people in the free states everywhere just as they are in the free

IHere hundred? of voices responded, "Nobody !"

HOW THE VICTORY HAS BEEN WON. 345

states now, in such a frame of mind that there was no party that
could be bought, nobody that could be scared — how much sooner do
you think this revolution would have come in which we are now
engaged ? I do not believe there has been one day from 1787 until
now when slavery had any power in the government, except what
it derived from buying up men of weak virtue, little principle and
great cupidity, and terrifying men of weak nerves in the free states.

(And now I ask what has made this great political change ? How
is it that the American people who, only ten years ago, said, " Take
part if you will, take all if you must," who, only six years ago,
said, " Take Kansas, carry slavery over it peacefully if you can,
forcibly if you must," who, when the widow's lament and the blood
of the martyrs of liberty cried out from the ground and appealed to
them for help and sympathy, announced, "Let Kansas shriek," —
how is it that in the space of six years you have all become the
whole people of the north and of the northwest, the whole people
of the free states have become all at once so honest that none
of them can be bought, so brave that none of them can be terrified ?
I will tell you. Theorists and visionaries on the Atlantic coast, who,
of all men in the world, were safest from the invasion of slavey,
and had least to suffer from it, while these prairies and fields and
wildernesses were as yet being filled up and unorganized, could not
be convinced of the imminence of the danger. It has been next to
impossible to convince the man who lives on the sidewalk in an
Atlantic city, or even the farmer in his field in Ontario, or Cayuga,
or Berks, or Windham, or Suffolk, or any one of the counties of the
eastern states, that it was a matter 'of very great consequence whether
slaves or freemen constitute the people, the ruling powers of the new
states. But just in the right moment when the battle was as good
as lost, the immigration from the eastern suites and from the old
world, into Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa, rose
up in the exercise and enjoyment of that freedom which had been
saved to them by the ordinance of 1787, and appreciating its value
and importance, and feeling every man for himself that he neither
would be a slave, nor make a slave, nor own a slave, nor allow any
other man to make or buy or own a slave within the state to which
they belonged. They came like the army of Blucher to the rescue,
and the field of Waterloo was won. The northwest has vindicated
the wisdom of the statesmen of 1787, and the virtue of the Ameri-

VOL. IV. 44

346 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

can people ; and now, since you were so determined that slavery
should be arrested, and that freedom should henceforth be national
and slavery only sectional, we of the Atlantic states are becoming
just as honest and just as brave as you are.

But I must not be misinterpreted. I have said that this battle
was fought and this victory won. I said so in the senate of the
United States four years ago, and I was thought to have thereby
been demoralizing instead of encouraging the great army of freedom
to consummate its triumph. I knew better. I knew that men work
all the better and all the braver when they have hope and confi
dence of success and triumph instead of contending under the influ
ence of despondency or despair. This battle is fought and this
victory is won, provided nevertheless that you remain determined
to maintain the great republican party under its great and glorious
leader, Abraham Lincoln, in inaugurating its principles into the
administration of the government, and provided you stand by him
in his administration, if it shall be, as I trust it will, a wise and just
and good one, until the adversary shall find out that he has been
beaten, and shall voluntarily retire from the field. Unless you do
that there still is danger that all that has been gained may be lost.

There is one danger remaining — one only. Slavery can never
more force itself, or be forced, from the stock that exists among us
into the territories of the United States. But the cupidity of trade
and the ambition of those whose interests are identified with slavery,
are such that they may clandestinely and surreptitiously reopen, either
within the forms of law or without them, the African slave trade,
and may bring in new cargoes of African slaves at one hundred dol
lars a head, and scatter them into the territories, and once getting
possession of new domain they may again renew their operations
against the patriotism of the American people. Therefore it is I
enjoin upon you all to regard yourselves as men who, although you
have achieved the victory and are entitled even now, it seems, to
laurels, are nevertheless enlisted for the war and for your natural
lives. You are committed to maintain the great policy until it shall
have been so firmly established in the hearts and wills and affections
of the American people, that there shall never be again a departure
from it. We look to you of the northwest to finally decide whether
this ;s to be a land of slavery or of freedom. The people of the
northwest are to be the arbiters of its destiny ; the virtue that is to

THE DESTINY OF MINNESOTA. 347

save the nation must reside in the northwest, for the simple reason
that it is not the people who live on the sidewalks and who deal in
merchandise on the Atlantic or the Pacific coasts, that exercise the
power of government, of sovereignty, in the United States. The
political power of the United States resides in the owners of the
land of the United States. The owners of workshops and of the
banks are in the east, and the owners of the gold mines are in
the far west; but the owners of the land of the United States are to
be found along the shores of the Mississippi river, from New Orleans
to the source of the great river and the great lakes. On both sides
of the noble flood are the people who hold in their hands the des
tinies of the republic.

I have been asked by many of you what I think of Minnesota.
I will not enlarge further than to say, that Minnesota must be either
a great state or a mean one, just as her people shall have wisdom
and virtue to decide. That some great states are to be built up in
the Mississippi valley, I know. You will no longer hereafter hear
of the " Old Dominion " state. Dominion has been passing away
from Virginia long ago. Pennsylvania is no longer the " Keystone "
of the American Union, for the arch has been extended from the
Atlantic coast to the Pacific ocean, and the center of the arch is
moved westward also ; a new keystone is to be inserted in that aivh.
New York will cease to be the " Empire State," and a new Empire
State will grow up in a northern latitude, where the lands are rich,
and where the people who cultivate them are all free and all equal ;
where the wealth of the continent is made, not where it is exchanged.
That state which shall be truest to the great fundamental principle
of the government, the principle of equality, that state which shall
be most faithful, most vigorous in developing and perfecting society
on this principle, will be at once the New Dominion State, the new
Keystone State, the new Empire State. If there is any state in
the northwest that has been kinder to me than the state of Minnesota,
and if such a consideration could influence me, then I perhaps might
have a sympathy with the emulation of some other state. I will
only say that every man who has an honest heart and a clear head,
can see that these proud distinctions are within the grasp of the peo
ple of Minnesota, and every generous heart will be willing to give
her a fair chance to secure them.

THE NATIONAL IDEA; ITS PEEILS AND TEIUMPHS.

CHICAGO, OCTOBER 3, 1860.

HAIL to the state of Illinois ! whose iron roads form the spinal
column of that system of internal continental trade which surpasses
all the foreign commerce of the country, and has no parallel or imi
tation in any other country on the face of the globe.

Hail to Chicago ! the heart which supplies life to this great system
of railroads — Chicago, the last and most wonderful of all the mar
velous creations of civilization in North America.

Hail to this council chamber of the great republican party ! justly
adapted, by its vastness and its simplicity, to its great purposes —
the hall where the representatives of freemen framed that creed of
republican faith which carries healing for the relief of a disordered
nation. Woe ! woe ! be to him who shall add or shall subtract one
word from that simple, sublime, truthful, beneficent creed. 1

Hail to the representatives of the republican party ! chosen here
by the republicans of the United States, and placed upon the plat
form of that creed. Happy shall he be who shall give them his
suffrage. If he be an old man, he shall show the virtue of wisdom
acquired by experience. If he be a young man, he shall in all his
Doming years tell his fellow men with pride, "I, too, voted for
Abraham Lincoln."

That republican creed is nevertheless no partisan creed. It is a
national faith, because it is the embodiment of the one life sustaining,
life- expanding idea of the American republic. What is the idea
more or less than simply this : That civilization -is to be maintained
•and carried on upon this continent by federal states, based upon the
principles of free soil, free labor, free speech, equal rights, and uni
versal suffrage ?

This is no new idea. This idea had its first utterance, and the
boldest and clearest of all the utterances it has ever received, in tho

1 See Memoir, ante, page 76.

THE GREAT NATIONAL IDEA.

very few words that were spoken by this nation when it came before
the world, took its place upon the stage of human action, asserted its
independence in the fear of God, and in full confidence of the
approval of mankind, and declared that henceforth it held those to
be its enemies who should oppose it in war, and those to be its
friends who should maintain with it relations of peace. That utter
ance was expressed in these simple words : "We hold these truths
to be self-evident — that all men are created equal, and have the
inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This
great national idea has been working out its fruits ever since. Its
work is seen in the perfect acceptance of it by eighteen of the thirty-
four states of the Union — or seventeen of the thirty-three, if Kansas
is to be considered out. It is asserting itself in the establishment of
new states throughout the west, as it has revolutionized and is revo
lutionizing all of western and southern Europe. Why is this idea
so effective ? It is because it is the one chief living, burning, inex
tinguishable thought of human nature itself, entertained by man in
every age and in every clime.

This national idea works not unopposed. Every good and virtu
ous and benevolent principle in nature has its antagonist, and this
great national idea works in perpetual opposition — I may be allowed
to say in irrepressible conflict — with an erroneous, a deceitful, a
delusive idea. Do you ask what that delusive idea is? It is the
idea that civilization ought and can be effected on this continent by
this same form of federal states, based on the principles of slave
labor — of African slave labor, of unequal rights and unequal repre
sentation, resulting in unequal suffrage.

Can it be that this great creed of ours needs exposition or defense ?
It seems to me so evidently just and true, that it requires no expo
sition and needs no defense. Certainly in foreign countries it needs
none. In Scotland, or France, or Germany, or Russia, on the shores
of the Mediterranean, in Europe, or in Asia, or in Africa, you will
never find one human being who denies the truth and the justice of
this our national idea of the equality of men. It needs no exposition
anywhere. It is one of those propositions that when addressed to
thoughtful men needs no explanation or defense. And why not?

Here we can see for ourselves this mean and miserable stream of
black African slavery stealing along, turbid and muddy, as it is drawn
from its stagnant source in the slave states ; we see that it is pesti-

350 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

lential in the atmosphere ^it passes through; we can see how inade
quate it is and unfit to irrigate a whole continent with the living
waters of health and life ; we can see how it is that everything within
its sphere withers and droops ; while on the other hand, we can also
see free labor as it descends the mountain sides in torrents, is then
gathered in rivulets, which, increasing always in volume and power,
spread all over the land. We can well see, by the effects it has
already produced, how it irrigates and must continue to irrigate this
whole continent; how every good and virtuous thing lives and
breathes by its support. We see the magical fertility which results
from its presence, because it is around us and before us.

We sometimes hear an argument for a political proposition made
in this form: One offers to " take a thing to be done by the job."
Let us imagine for a moment that there could be one man bold
enough, great enough, and wise enough to take "by the job" the
work of establishing civilization over this broad continent of North
America. He would of course want to do it in the shortest time, at
the cheapest expense and in the best manner. Now, would such a
contractor ever dream of importing African barbarians, or of taking
their children or descendants in this country to build up and people
great free states all over this land, from the Alleghany mountains to
the Pacific ocean ? Would be not, on the contrary, accept, as the
rightful, natural, healthful and best possible agency which he could
select, the free labor of free men, the minds, the thoughts, the wills,
the purposes, the ambitions of enlightened freemen, such as we claim
ourselves to be ? Would he not receive all who claimed to aid in
such services as these, whether they were born on this soil or cradled
in foreign lands ?

I care not when reckless men say, in the heat of debate, or under
the influence of interest, passion or prejudice, that it is a matter of
indifference whether slavery shall pervade the whole land, or a part
of the land, and freedom the residue ; that freedom and slavery may
take their chances ; that they " don't care whether slavery is voted
up or down." There is no man who has an enlightened conscience
who is indifferent on the subject of human bondage. There is no
man who is enlightened and honest, who would not abate part of
his worldly wealth, if he could thereby convert this land from aland
cursed in whole or in part with slavery, into a land of equal and
impartial liberty. And I will tell you how I know this : I know it

THE GREAT NATIONAL IDEA. 351

because every man demands freedom for himself, and refuses to be a
slave. No free man, who is a man, would consent to be a slave.
Every slave who has any manhood in hirn desires to be free; every
man who has an unperverted reason, laments, condemns and deplores
the practice of commerce in man. The executioner is always odious,
even though his task is necessary to the administration of justice.
We turn with horror and disgust from him who wields the ax. So
the slaveholder turns with disgust from the auctioneer who sells the
man and woman whom he has reared and held in slavery, although
he receives the profits of the sale into his own coffers.

I know this national idea of ours is just and right for another
reason. It is that in the whole history of society human nature has
never, never honored one man who reduced another man to bondage.
The world is full of monuments in honor of men who have delivered
their fellow men from slavery.

Since this idea is self-evidently just, and is of itself pure, peace
able, gentle, easy to be entreated and full of good works, will you
tell me why it is that it has not been fully accepted by the American
people ? Alas ! that it should be so. Perhaps I can throw light on
that by asking another question. Is not Christianity pure, peace
able, gentle, easy to be entreated and full of good works ? and yet
is not the church of Jesus Christ still a church militant? Alas!
that it should be so. Christianty explains for herself how it is that
she is rejected of men. She says it is because men love darkness
rather than light, because their deeds are evil. I shall not say this
in regard to the subject of freedom. I know better. I know that
my countrymen love light, not darkness. They are even in the state
and disposition of the Roman governor, " almost thou persuadest me
to be a Christian," and almost the American people are persuaded
to be republicans. Why, then, are they not altogether persuaded ?
The answer cannot be given without some reflection. It involves an
examination of our national conduct and life.

The reason why the country is only almost and not altogether
persuaded to be republican, is because the national sense and judg
ment have been perverted. We inherited slavery ; it is organized
into our national life — into our forms of government. It exists
among us, unsuspected in its evils, because we have become accus
tomed, by national habit, to endure and tolerate slavery. The effect
of this habit arising from the presence of slavery, is to produce a

352 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

want of moral courage among the people and an indisposition to
entertain and examine the subject. It is not, however, the fault of
the people. This lack of moral courage is chiefly the fault of the
political representatives of the people. In every district in the
United States, and for every seat in congress, the people might select
men apparently as brave, as truthful, as fearless and as firm as Owen
Lovejoy. Yet, you may fill the halls of congress with men from all
the free states who seem to be as reliable as Owen Lovejoy ; but
on the clangor of the slavery bugle in the hall they begin to waver
and fail. They retire. They suffer themselves to be demoralized ;
and they return to demoralize the people. Slavery never hesitates
to raise the clangor of the trumpets to terrify the timid.

Slavery has, too, another argument for the timid ; it is power.
The concentration of slavery gives it a fearful political power. You
know how long it has been the controlling power in the executive
department of the government. Slavery uses that power, as might
be expected — to punish those who oppose it, to reward those who
serve it. All representatives are naturally ambitious ; all representa-
tatives like fame ; if they do not like pecuniary rewards, they like
the distinctions of place. They like to be popular. When the
people are demoralized, he who is constant becomes offensive and
obnoxious ; he loses position and the party chooses some other rep
resentative who will be less obnoxious. These demoralized repre
sentatives inculcate among the people pernicious lessons and sustain
themselves by adopting compromises. They compromise so far, if
possible, as to save place and a show of principle ; they save them
selves first, and let freedom take her chances.

A community thus demoralized by its representatives is fearful
of considering the subject of slavery at all. It does not like to look
back upon its record ; it does not dare to look forward to see what
are to be the consequences of errors. It desires peace and quiet.
We shall see in a moment what fearful sacrifices have been made
under the influence of this demoralization by the power of the
government.

The first act of demoralization was to surrender the territory of
Arkansas and the territory of Missouri to slavery, and also by im
plication all the rest of the territory of Louisiana acquired by
purchase from France, that lay south of thirty-six degrees thirty
minutes north latitude. Take up your maps when you go homer

THE COUNTRY DEMORALIZED. 353

and observe what a broad belt of country, lying south of that line,
was surrendered, with the states of Missouri and Arkansas, to
slavery. Next, under the influence of this same demoralization, the
whole of the peninsula of Florida acquired from Spain, was surren
dered to slavery, rendering it practically useless for all the national
purposes for which it was acquired, making it a burden instead of
a blessing, a danger instead of a national safe-guard in the gulf of
Mexico.

Then Texas was surrendered to slavery and brought in with the
gratuitous agreement that four slave states should be made out of
that territory. Next, in 1850, Utah and New Mexico were abandoned
to slavery. After these events, following in quick succession, came
the abrogation, in the year 1854, of the restriction contained in the
Missouri compromise, by which it had been stipulated that all north
of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, excepting the state of Missouri,
should be dedicated to freedom. That was abandoned to slavery to
take it if she could get it ; and the administration of the government
of the United States, with scarcely a protest from the people, went
on to favor its occupation by slavery. As a legitimate consequence
came the refusal, on the part of the national government — for it was
a practical refusal — to admit Kansas into the Union because she
would not accept slavery.

After these measures, what right had the nation to be surprised
when the president and the supreme court at last pronounced that
which in no previous year either of them would have dared to assert
— that this constitution of ours is not a constitution of liberty, but
that it is a constitution of human bondage ; that slavery is the
normal condition of the American people on each acre of the domain
of the United States not organized into states — that is to say, that
wherever this banner of ours, this star spangled banner, whose-'
glories we celebrate so highly — wherever that banner floats over a
national ship or a national territory, there is a land, not of freedom,
but of slavery !

Thus it has happened, that the nation up to 1854 surrendered all
the unoccupied portions of this continent to slavery, and thereby
practically excluded freemen — because experience shows that when
you have made a slave territory, freedom avoids it; just as much
as when you make a free state, like Kansas, shivery disappears
from it.

VOL. IV. 45

354 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

I have said tbat the country was demoralized by its political rep
resentatives ; but these political representatives have their agents.
All men necessarily flill into some political part}^ and into some
political parties and religious sects. To gain office in a political
party and share its favors, when the nation was demoralized it be
came necessary that the candidate should be tolerant of slavery. So
religious sects were ambitious to extend their ecclesiastical sway.
The consequence was that year by year slavery had always a party ;
slavery had religious sect upon religious sect; church after church,
But alas ! until the dawn of that memorable year 1854 freedom had
no party and no religious sect throughout this whole country.

A people who are demoralized are every day more easily operated
upon ; they are easily kept persistently in the same erroneous habit
which has demoralized them. The first practice for continuing to
extend the power of slavery upon this continent, is that of alarm.
Fears of all kinds are awakened in the public mind. The chief of
them is the fear of turbulence, of disorder, of civil commotions, and
of civil war. The slaveholders in the slave states very justly,
and truthfully, and rightfully assume that slaves are the natural
enemies of their masters; and, of course, that slaves are insidious
enemies of the state which holds them, or requires them to be held
in bondage ; that insidious enemies are dangerous ; and, therefore,
in every slave state that has ever been founded 'in this country, a
policy is established which suppresses freedom of speech and free
dom of debate, so far as liberty needs advocates, while it extends
the largest license of debate to those who advocate the interests of
slavery. This lack of freedom of speech and freedom of debate is
followed in slave states by the necessary consequence, that there is no
freedom of suffrage. So that at the last presidential election — the
first when this question was ever distinctly brought before the
American people — there were no slave states in which a ballot-box
was open for freedom, or where free men might cast their ballots
•with safety. If one side only is allowed to vote in a state, it is very
easy to see that that side must prevail.

If the condition of civil society is such that voting is not to be
done safely, few men will vote. Every man who wishes, perhaps
only consents, to express his choice is not expected to be a martyr.
The world produces but few men willing to be martyrs, my friends,
and I am sorry to say they have not been very numerous in our

THE COUNTRY DEMORALIZED. 355

day. Nearly one-half of the United States, then — that is, all the
slave states — are at once to be arrayed on the side of slavery ; and
behold then ! they tell us that republicanism, which invites them to
discuss the subject, is sectional, and they are national. But the
slave states are not willing to rest content with this exclusion of all
freedom, of suffrage, of speech and of debate on the subject of slavery
within their own jurisdiction, but they require the free states to
accept the same system for themselves. They insist that although
they may be able at home to keep down their slaves if we will be
quiet, yet they cannot tolerate a discussion of slavery in the free
states, as we thereby encourage the slaves in the slave states to insur
rection and sedition. Lest this argument might fail to reach and
convince us, inasmuch as we, ourselves, are safe from any danger to
result from insurrection in the slave states, they bring it home to
our fears by declaring that their peace is of more importance than
the interest of the nation ; that they prefer slavery even to Union ;
that if we will not acquiesce in allowing them to maintain, fortify
and extend slavery, then they will dissolve the Union, and we must
all go down together, or all suffer a common desolation. There are
few men — and there ought to be few — who would be so intent on
the subject of establishing freedom that they would consent to a
subversion of the Union to produce it, because the Union is a posi
tive benefit, nay, an absolute necessity, and to save the Union, men
may naturally dare to delay. Most men, therefore, very cheerfully
prefer to let the subject of slavery rest for some better time — for
some better occasion — for some more fortunate circumstance, and
they are content to keep the Union with slavery if it cannot be kept
otherwise.

You see how this has worked in demoralizing the American
people. Less than thirty years ago the governor of Massachusetts"
— that first and freest of the states — actually recommended the leg
islature to pass laws which would delare that the meetings of citizens
held to discuss the subject of slavery should be deemed seditious,
and should be dissolved by the police ! The governor of the state
of New York, who preceded me in that high office, during his ad
ministration, and within your own lifetime and mine, actually made
the same recommendation to the legislature of that state. What
was recommended, but not carried out in those states by law, became
a custom and practice ; for, as you know, when the laws did not

356 POLITICAL SPEECHES

dissolve the public assembly, there was a period of near twenty
years in which no meeting of men opposed to the extension or
aggrandizement of slavery, could be held without being dispersed by
the mob, acting in harmony with the general opinion of the country.

When the people of the free states were thus demoralized, what
wonder is it, that for twelve years all debate in congress on the sub
ject of slavery or the presentation of the subject by the people even
in the form of a petition, was repressed and trampled under footr
and remained there until John Quincy Adams at last rallied a party
around him, strong enough to restore freedom of debate in the house
of representatives ! What wonder is it that within the last year, in
the very face of the organization, and the onward march of the
republican party, the administration of the federal government has
actually, by its officers, appointed in compliance with the dictation
of the slaveholders, abandoned the federal mails to the inspection
and surveillance of the magistrates of the slave states ; so that they
may abstract and commit to the flames every word that any states
man may speak, however eloquent, able, truthful or moderate, in the
halls of congress against slavery and in favor of freedom.

This, fellow citizens, is your government. This is the condition
in which you are placed, I am sorry to say — but I like to be truth-
fa! — that I have no especial compliments for you of the state of
Illinois, on this subject; for in this long catalogue of extraordinary
concessions to slavery, under the influence of fear, I think the very
first protest that ever came from the state of Illinois was as late as the
year 1855 ; after all the most atrocious concessions had been made.
You sent two senators to congress ; you insisted upon extending
the Wilmot proviso over the territory acquired from Spain. How
did they do it? They voted for the Wilmot proviso under your
instructions, and they voted against it without instructions, when it
came to the practical test. I think you made no protest until Mr.
Douglas demanded one single and last concession "for the purpose,"
as he said, "of excluding the whole subject from congress." That
was the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, containing the
restrictions for the protection of freedom in the territories of Kansas
and Nebraska. Then you sent a noble representative to the senate
in the person of Judge Trumbull.

I marveled when I rose here before you to-day and saw this
immense assemblage, which no edifice, but only the streets, of Chicago

THE CHURCH DEMORALIZED. 357

could hold, and I wondered how it would have been had 'I come
here in 1850, or even at any later day before the abrogation of the
Missouri compromise.

But let by-gones be by-gones. I have seen the time when
I had as little cpurage and as little resolution on this subject as
most of you. I was born into the demoralization — I was born a
slaveholder, and have some excuse, which you have not. All these
things were done, not because you loved slavery, but because you
loved the Union.

/When slavery became identical in the public mind with the Union,
how natural it was, even for patriotic men, to approve of, or to at
least excuse and tolerate slavery. How odious did it become for
men to be freesoilers, and be regarded as abolitionists, when to be
an abolitionist was, in the estimation of mankind, to be a traitor to
one's country, and to such a country as this is. How natural was it
then to believe that slavery after all might not be so very bad, and
to believe that it might be necessary and might be right at some
times, or on some occasions, which times and occasions were always
a good way off from themselves; especially, how natural was it,
when the whole Christian church, with all its sects, bent' itself to the
support of the Union, mistaking the claim of slavery for the cause
of the Union.

How extensive this proscription for the sake and in the name of
Union, has been and is to this day, you will see at once when I tell
3^ou that there is not in this whole republic, from one end of it to the
other, a man who maintains that slavery shall not be extended, who
can secure, at the hands of his country, any part in the administra
tion of its government from a tide-waiter in the custom house, or a
postmaster in a rural district, to a secretary of state, a minister in a
foreign court, or a president of the United States. How could you
expect that a people, every one of whom is born with a possible
chance and a fair expectation of being something — perhaps presi
dent of the United States — would resist the demoralization prose
cuted by such means ? And when it becomes a heresy, for which a
man is deprived of position in an ecclesiastical sect to which he be
longs, how could you expect that the members of the Christian
churches would be bold enough to provoke the censure of the Chris
tian world? Above all, our constitution, as we have always sup
posed, was so framed that it gave us a judiciary which cannot err.

358 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

which must be infallible, and must not be disputed ; and when the
judicial authority, which has the army and the navy, through the di
rection of the executive power, to execute its judgments and decrees,
pronounces that every appeal made for freedom is seditious, that
every syllable in defense of liberty is treason, and the natural sym
pathy we feel for the oppressed is to be punished as a crime ; while
that authority is unwilling, or at least unable to bring to punishment
one single culprit out of the thousand of pirates who bring away
slaves from Africa to sell in foreign lands — how could you expect a
simple agricultural people, such as we are, to be so much wiser and
better than our presidents and vice-presidents, senators and repre
sentatives in congress, and even our judges?

I have brought you down to the time when this demoralization
was almost complete. How assured its ultimate success seemed,
after the compromise of 1850, you will learn from a fact which I
have never before mentioned, but which I will now : Horace Mann,
one of the noblest champions of freedom on this continent, confessed
to me, after the passage of the slavery laws of that year, that he
despaired of the cause of humanity. In 1854, after the repeal of
the Missouri compromise, without producing so much alarm as a
considerable thunder storm would do in the nation, there was only
one man left who hoped against the prevailing demoralization, and
who cheered and sustained me through it ; and that man, in his zeal
to make his prediction just, was afterwards betrayed so far by his
zeal that he became ultimately a monomaniac, and suffered on the
gallows. That was John Brown. The first and only time I ever
saw him was when he called upon me after the abrogation of the
Missouri compromise, and asked me what I thought of the future.
I said I was disappointed and saddened — I would persevere, but it
was against hope. He said, "Cheer up, governor; the people of
Kansas will not accept slavery ; Kansas will never be a slave state."

I took then a deliberate survey of the broad field; I considered
all ; I examined and considered all the political forces which were
revealed to my observation. I saw that freedom in the future states
of this continent was the necessity of this age, and of this country.
I saw that the establishment of this as a republic, conservative of
the rights of human nature, was the cause of the whole world ; and
I saw that the time had come when men, and women, and children
were departing from their homes in the eastern states, and were fol-

THE REFORMATION BEGUN. 359.

lowed or attended by men, women and children from the European
nations — all of them crowded out by the pressure of population upon
subsistence in the older parts of the world, and all making their way
up the Hudson river, through the Erie canal, along the railroads, by
the way of the lakes, spreading themselves in a mighty flood over
Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Illinois, and even to the banks of the
Mississippi. I knew that these emigrants were planting a town
every day, and a state every three years, heedless and unconcerned
as they were, thinking only of provision for their immediate wants,
shelter and lands to till in the west — I knew an interest yet unknown
to themselves, which they would have when they should get here,
and that was, that they should own the land themselves —that slaves
should not come into competition with them here.

So, as they passed by me, steamboat load after steamboat load, and
railroad train after railroad train, though they were the humblest
and perhaps the least educated and least trained portion of the com
munities from which they had come, I knew that they had the instinct
of interest, and below, and deeper than that, the better instinct of,
justice. And I said, I will trust these men ; I will trust these exiles ;
my faith and reliance henceforth is on the poor, not on the rich ; on
the humble, not on the great. Aye, and sad it was to confess, but
it was so. I said, henceforth I put rny trust in this case, not in my
native countrymen, but I put it in the exile from foreign lands. He
has an abhorrence for, and he has never been accustomed to slavery
by habit. Here he will stay and retain these territories free.

I was even painfully disappointed at first, in seeing that the emi
grants to the west had no more consciousness of their interest in this
question when they arrived here than they had in their native coun
tries. The Irishman who had struggled against oppression in his
own country, failed me ; the German seemed at first — but, thank God,
not long — dull and unconscious of the duty that had devolved upon
him. This is true; but nevertheless I said that the interest and
instincts of these people would ultimately bring them out, and when
the 'states which they found and rear and fortify, shall apply for
admission into the Federal Union, they will come, not as slave states,
but as free states.

I looked one step further. I saw how we could redeem all that
had been lost; and redeem it, too, by appealing to the very passions
and interests that had lost all.

360 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

The process was easy. The slave states of the south had demo
ralized the free states of the north by giving them presidencies, sec
retaryships, foreign missions and post offices. And now, here in the
northwest, we will build up more free states than there are slave
states. Those free states having a common interest in favor of free
dom, equal to that of the southern slave states in favor of slavery,
will offer to Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts
and New Jersey, objects worthy their ambition. And to-day I see
the very realization of it all. I can give you advocates for freedom
in the northern states, as bold, as outspoken, as brave and as confi
dent of the durability of the Union, as you can find for slavery in
the southern states. Aye, and when the southern states try to
demoralize the free states by saying they will give their trade and
traffic, will buy silks and linens and other trumpery, provided they
can buy their principles in the sale, and the bargain must be struck,
I said there shall be, in those new free states in the northwest, men
•who will say, we will buy your silks and linens and your trumpery
of every sort ; we will even buy more, and pay you quite as well,
provided you do not betray your principles.

All this was simply restoring the balance of the republican system,
bringing in a proper force in favor of freedom to counteract the
established political agencies of slavery. You have heard that I
have said that the last democrat is born in this nation. I say so,
however, with the qualification before used, that by democrat I mean
one who will maintain the democratic principles which constitute the
present creed of the democratic party ; and for the reason, a very
simple one, that slavery cannot pay any longer, and the democrat
does not work for anybody who does not pay. I propose to pay all
kinds of patriots hereafter, just as they come. I propose to pay them
f-iir consideration if they will only be true to freedom. I propose
t<> gratify all their aspirations for wealth and power, as much as the
slave states can.

But, fellow citizens, we had no party for this principle. There
was the trouble. Democracy wns the natural ally of slavery in the
south. We were either whigs, or, if you please, Americans, some
of us, and thank God I never was one, in the limited sense of the
term. But the whig party or the American party, if not equally an
ally of the slave party in the south, was, at least, a treacherous and
unreliable party for the interests of freedom. Only one thing was

A NEW ERA DAWNING. 361

wanting, that was to dislodge from the democratic party, the whig
party and the native American party, men enough to constitute a
republican party — a party of freedom.

And for that we are indebted to the kindness, unintentional, no
doubt, of your distinguished senator, now a candidate for the presi
dency, Mr. Douglas, who, in procuring the abrogation of the Mis
souri compromise, so shattered the columns of these parties as to
disintegrate them, and instantly there was the material, the prepara
tion for the onslaught.

Still there was wanted an occasion, and that occasion was given
when, in an hour of madness, the democratic party and administra
tion, with the sympathy, or at least the acquiescence, of the old line
whigs and the native Americans, refused to allow the state of Kansas
to exercise the perfect freedom in choosing between liberty and sla
very, which they had promised to her, except she should exercise it
in favor of slavery. Then came the hour. We had then the cause for
a party, the material for a party, and we had the occasion for a party,
and the republican party sprang into existence at once, full armed.
I will never knowingly do evil that good may corne of it; I will
never even wish that others may do evil that good may come of it ;
and for the same reason that I know the evil to be certain, and the
good only possible or problematical. But no man ever rejoiced more
heartily over the birth of his first born than I did when I saw the
folly and madness of the repeal of the Missouri compromise and the
rejection of Kansas. This act, I said to myself, is the doing of pre
sidents, of senators, of judges, of priests and of deacons; and when
the republican party organized itself, I said now is the preparation
for the work complete.

How much I have been cheered in this long contest by seeing that
only stolen, surreptitious advantages were gained by slavery in the
form of rescripts and edicts and laws on the statute book ; while the
cause of freedom brought in first California; next. New Mexico,
with her constitution claiming freedom ; next, Kansas; next, Min
nesota, and next, Oregon. You may all know, if possibly you
remember, the song of joy, not so poetic, but as full of truth and
exultation as the song of Miriam, which I then uttered, declaring
that the battle was ended and the victory was won. The battle is
ended and the victory is ours. Why, then, say they, why not with
draw from the field ? For the simple reason that if the victor retire

VOL. IV. 46

362 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

from the field, the vanquished will then come back, and the battle
will not be won. Why should the victor withdraw and surrender
all his conquests to the conquered enemy? Why should he invite
the enemy back upon the field, and withdraw his own legions into
the far distance, to give him a chance to reestablish the line that has
been broken up ?

The republican party will now complete this great revolution. I
know it will, because, in the first place, it clearly perceives its duties.
It is unanimous upon this subject. We have had hesitation hereto
fore, but the creed to which I have already adverted, which issued
from that council chamber now before me, announces the true deter
mination, and embodies that great, living, national idea of freedom,
with which I began. I know that the republican party will do it,
because it finds the necessary forces in all the free states adequate,
I trust, to achieve success, and has forces in reserve, and increasing
in every slave state in the Union, and only waiting until the success
of the republican party in the free states shall be such as to warrant
protection to debate, and free suffrage in the slave states. But,
above all, I know it, because the republican party -has, what is
necessary in every revolution, chosen the right line of policy. It is
the policy of peace and moral suasion ; of freedom and suffrage ;
the policy, not of force, but of reason. It returns kindness for
unkindness, fervently increased loyalty for demonstrations of disloy
alty ; patience as becomes the strong, in contention with the weak.
It leaves the subject of slavery in the slave states to the care and
responsibility of the slave states alone, abiding by the constitution
of the country, which makes the slave states on this subject sover
eign ; and, trusting that the end cannot be wrong, provided that it
shall confine itself within its legitimate line of duty, thereby making
freedom paramount in the federal government, and making it the
interest of every American citizen to sustain it as such. I know
that the republican party will succeed in this, because it is a positive
and an active party. It is the only party in the country that is or
can be positive in its action. You have three other parties, or forms
of parties, but each of them without the characteristics of a party.
You are to choose. The citizen is to choose between the republican
party and one of these.

! Try them now by their candidates. Mr. Lincoln represents the
republican party. He represents a party which has determined that

PARTIES AND THEIE REPRESENTATIVES. 363

not one more slave shall be imported from Africa, or transferred
from any slave state, domestic or foreign, and placed upon the com
mon soil of the United States. If you elect him, you. know, arid
the world knows, what you have got. Take the case of Mr. John
Bell, an honorable man ; a kind man, and a very learned man, a
very patriotic man ; a man whom I respect, and in social intercourse
quite as much as everywhere else, as here where my word may be
regarded as simply complimentary ; but what does Mr. John Bell,
and his constitutional Union — what is the name of his party ? Con
stitutional Union, is it not ? What do Mr. Bell and his constitutional
Union party propose on this question ? He proposes to ignore it
altogether; not to know that there is such a question. If we can
suppose such a thing possible as Mr. Bell's election by the people,
what then ? He ignored the question until the day of election came,
but it will not stay ignored. Kansas comes and asks or demands to
be admitted into the Union. The Indian territory, also, south of
Kansas, must be vacated by the Indians, and here at once the slave
holders present the question as they will also do in the case of New
Mexico. It will not stay ignored. It will not rest. It cannot rest.
You have postponed the decision for four years, and that is all.
Postponing does not settle it. When defending law suits, I have
seen times when I thought I won a great advantage by getting ;;n
adjournment, but I always found, nevertheless, that it was a great
deal better to be beaten in the first instance, and try it again, than
to hang rny hopes upon an adjournment.

Take the other : Mr. Breckinridge represents a party that proposes
a policy the very opposite of ours. They propose to extend slavery
and to use the federal government to do it. Let us suppose him
elected. Will that satisfy the American people? Will that settle
the question ? That is only what Mr. Buchanan has already done.
And if I should put a vote to this audience, I am sure I should get
no vote of confidence in Mr. Buchanan. That is of course. But
if I were to go into a Bell-and-Everett national Union party meet
ing, as vast as this, and ask for a vote of confidence in James
Buchanan, they would say no, just as emphatically as you do. In
the demonstration for Mr. Douglas, which is to be made here day
after to-morrow — I shall not be here, and would not have the right to
appear if I were — but any of you have the right, by their leave, and
you ought not to do it without, to offer and put to vote a resolution

364 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of confidence in James Buchanan, and you would get precisely the
same negative response that you get here, only a little louder. Then
the people are not going to elect Mr. Breckinridge, because he pro
poses to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Buchanan, who is rejected.
Grant, however, that owing to some misapprehension, or some
strange combination, they may obtain all they hope, and indirectly,
if not directly, m.ike Mr. Breckinridge president. Suppose Mr.
Breckinridge elected. Does that settle the question in favor of
slavery ? Then you have the combination, not only of the repub
licans, and the constitutional Union party, but even of the Douglas
paily also, to drive him out again. So in that case, too, you have
only postponed the question for four years more, under circumstan
ces far more serious, possibly fatal.

You have now disposed of them all except the Douglas party.
Mr. Douglas' party is not a positive party. It proposes just what
the Bell party proposes — to ignore the question in congress. That
is just what we find the people will not do, and will not be content
to do under John Bell. Why should they like it better under Mr.
Douglas? Mr. Douglas and his party say there is a better way.
They don't want it ignored, but that it belongs to the territories, and
the inhabitants there can settle it better and more wisely than we
p;:n. What can they do? Have they settled it in their territories
in favor of slavery ? Are you, the people of the free states, going
to consent to that ? If you were, why did you not consent to the
proposition of the president, that the people of Kansas should be
subjected to slavery under the Lecompton constitution? The presi
dent then said, that was the act of the people of Kansas. But if the
people of the territory should decide in favor of freedom, are the
slave states going to acquiesce ? No, because they have their candi
date in the person of Mr. Breckinridge to continue the war until
they shall regain the lost battle.

But Mr. Douglas' proposition may result in a different way. He
says, if I understand him rightly, that it is immaterial to him, at
least he has no right and does not propose to decide upon the ques
tion, being indifferent whether they vote slavery up or down. Then
they will vote slavery up in some territories, and vote it down in
some other territories. That, fellow citizens, will be compromise;
are you going to be satisfied with a new compromise ? You have

Tj;,7 I/?

( ,. ,- r-

THE TRIUMPH ASSURED. 365

tried compromises, and found that they are never kept. On the
whole, you are very sorry that they were ever made.

But is a compromise that is brought about in that way, the irre
sponsible act of squatter sovereignty in the territories, to satisfy the
slave states ? They have repudiated Mr. Douglas, the ablest man
among all their friends ; they have repudiated him altogether, because
they will not be satisfied with a squatter sovereignty that gives any
territory whatever to the free states.

I have now demonstrated to you, I think, that the republican
party is the only positive party. But I can show it by another argu
ment. The republican party has one faith, one creed, one baptism,
one candidate, and will have but one victory. The power of slavery
has three creeds, three faiths, and is to have three victories. They
have openly confessed, or rather the secret leaks out, through con
versations and consultations, that they do not expect to get a single
victory, any more than you expect they will. All their hope and
endeavor is to defeat the republican party, and leave to chance the
fruits to result from your defeat.

Suppose they should, by combinations and coalitions, secure the
defeat of the republican party, are you going to stay defeated ? You
have been defeated once, have you not? Can you not bear another
defeat? You will not have to, I am sure. But I am supposing for
the purpose of argument that we are defeated by a coalition. Did
any one ever know a cause that was lost when it was defeated by a
coalition ? There was a coalition in Europe five years ago, in which
Hungary was defeated by the coalition of Austria with Russia; but
Hungary has risen up again to-day, and the coalition is understood
to be dissolved. There was a coalition two or three years later, in
which Russia was defeated by the combination of France and Eng
land; but Russia is just as strong, just as steadily pressing on to
ward Constantinople to-day as she has been every day from the time
of the Czar Peter until now. And while she has abated nothing of
her purposes, and nothing of hope, she has gained strength. So,
all the efforts of the statesmen of both France and England are

o

required to keep them from falling out with each other before the
renewed battle begins. There is no danger and not much disgrace
in being beaten b}^ coalitions ; and there is no danger, because
they are coalitions. The more that coalitions are necessary, the
less are they effectual. One party is always stronger than two other

366 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

parties in a contest, unless the whole result is staked upon a single
battle.

But the explanation of the whole matter is, that there is a time
when the nation needs and will require and demand the settlement
of subjects of contention. That time has come at last, which the
parties in this country, both of the slaveholding states and of
the free states, both the slaveholder and the free laboring man,
will require an end — a settlement of the conflict. It must be re
pressed. The time has come to repress it. The people will have it
repressed. They are not to be forever disputing upon old issues and
controversies. New subjects for national action will come up. This
controversy must be settled and ended. The republican party is
the agent, and its success will terminate the contest about slavery in
the new states. Let this battle be decided in favor of freedom in
the territories, and not one slave will ever be carried into the terri
tories of the United States, and that will end the irrepressible conflict.

And the fact that it is necessary that it should be done, is exactly the
reason why it will be done. It cannot be settled otherwise, because it
involves a question of j ustice and of conscience. It is for us not merely
a question of policy, but a question of moral right and duty. It is
wrong, in our judgment, to perpetuate by our votes or to extend sla
very. It is a very different thing when the slaveholder proposes to
extend slavery ; for that is, with him, only a question of merchandise.
Men, of whatever race or nation, in our estimation, are men, not mer
chandise. According to our faitlj, they all have a natural right to be
men, but in the estimation of the other party, African slaves are not
men, but merchandise. It is, therefore, nothing more or less with
them than a tariff question ; a question of protecting commerce.
With us it is a question of human rights, and therefore when it is
settled, and settled in favor of the right, it will stay settled just as
every question that is settled in favor of the right always does.

But if it be taken merely as a question of policy, it is equally
plain that it will be settled in favor of the republican side, because
our highest policy is the development of the resources and the in
crease of the population, wealth and strength of the republic.
Every man sees for himself, and no man need be told that the coal,
the iron, the lead, the copper, the silver and the gold in our moun
tains and plains are to be dug out by the human hand, and that the
only hand that can dig them is the hand of a freeman. Every man

THE TRIUMPH ASSURED. 367

sees that this wealth and strength and greatness are to be acquired by
human labor, guided by human intelligence and human purpose.
Every man knows that the slave, even if he be a white man, will
have neither the strength, nor the intelligence, nor the virtue, nor
even the purpose to create wealth ; for the slave has a simple line
of interest before him — it is to effect the least and consume the most.

But I seem to myself to have fallen below the dignity and great
ness of this question, in discussing a proposition whether free labor
or slave labor is more expedient, or more necessary. Let me rise
once more, and remind you that we are building a new and great
empire ; not building it as modern Rome and Paris and Naples stand,
upon the ruins and over the graves of tenfold greater multitudes of
men than those who now occupy their sites ; but upon a soil where
we are the first possessors and the first architects. The tornb and
the catacomb in Kome and Paris and Naples are filled with relics
and implements of human torture and bondage, showing the igno
rance and barbarity of their former occupants. Let us, on the other
hand, while we build up an empire, take care that we leave no mon
ument or relic in our graves, and no trace in our history, to prove
that we were false to the great interests of humanity. Human nature-
is entitled to a home on this earth somewhere. Where else shall it
be if it be not here ? Human nature is entitled, among all the nations
of the earth, to have a nation that will truly represent, defend and
vindicate it. What other nation shall it be, if it be not ours ?

People of Illinois ! People of the great west ! You are all youth
ful, vigorous, generous. Your states are youthful, vigorous and vir
tuous. The destinies of our country, the hopes of mankind, the
hopes of humanity rest upon you. Ascend, I pray, I conjure you,
to the dignity of that high responsibility ! Thus acting, you will
have peace aud harmony and happiness in your future years. The
world, looking on, will applaud you, and future generations in all
ages and in all regions will rise up and call you blessed.

THE REPUBLICAN POLICY AND THE ONE IDEA.

DUBUQUE, SEPTEMBER 21, 1860.

I PROPOSE to speak to you on this occasion of wnat concerns us
all ; a great political question which is to be the subject of decision
by the American people in the coming canvass. The policy of the
federal government for forty years has been to extend and fortify
African slave labor in the United States.

Many who have maintained the administration and the party who-
have carried out this policy, have been unconscious, doubtless, of
the nature of the policy they maintained. But it is not a subject
of dispute or cavil what has been the policy of the government of
the country for forty years. I will give but one illustration. No
man in the nation would have objected or could have objected to the
admission of Texas into the Federal Union, provided it had been a
free state. No man who objected could have objected but for the
reason that she was not a slave state. When the question of annex
ing Texas tried all the existing parties, and puzzled, bewildered and
confounded the statesmen of the country, the question was finally
decided, in a short and simple way, by the declaration of the admin
istration of John Tyler, made by Mr. Calhoun, his secretary of state,
that Texas must be annexed because it was a slaveholding country
— it must be annexed with the condition of subdividing it into four
slave states. Texas must be annexed for the purpose of fortifying
and defending the institution of slavery in the United States. This
one single fact upon which the parties joined issue, is conclusive.

Now, it is our purpose to reverse this policy. Our policy, stated
as simply as I have stated that of our adversaries, is, to circumscribe
slavery, and to fortify and extend free labor or freedom. Many prelimi
nary objections are raised by those among you and us, who are not
prepared to go with us to the acceptance of this issue. They say

THE REPUBLICAN POLICY STATED. 369

that they are tired of a hobby and of men of one idea ; that the
country is too great a country, and lias too many interests to be
occupied with one idea alone; besides that it is repulsive, offensive,
disgusting to have "this eternal negro question" forever forced upon
their consideration when they desire to think of white men and what
belongs to them only. It is well, perhaps, to remove these prelimi
nary objections before we go into an argument.

Granting for a moment that there is wisdom in the objection to
this eternal negro question, pray, let us ask, who raised, who has
kept up this eternal negro question ?

The negro question was put at rest in 1787 by the fathers of the
republic, and it slept, leaving only for moralists and humanitarians
the question of emancipation, a question within the states, and by
no means a federal question. Who lifted it up from the states into
the area of federal politics ? Who but the slaveholders, in 1820?
They demanded that not only Missouri should be admitted as a slave
•state, located within the Louisiana purchase, but that slavery should
be declared forever, and even that, without declaration of law, it was
forever established and should prevail until the end of time, in Iowa,
Kansas, Nebraska, and in every foot of the then newly acquired
domain of the United States? It was the slaveholding power
which raised the negro question, and it was the democratic party
which made an alliance with that power, and which, in the north
and in congress, raised this very offensive legislation about negroes,
instead of legislation about white men.

The question was put at rest by the compromise of 1820, when,
God be praised, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska were saved for freedom,,
and only Arkansas and Missouri, out of the Louisiana purchase,
surrendered to slavery. It slept again for fifteen or twenty years;
and then the negro question was again introduced into the councils
of the federal government — and by whom? By the slave power,
when it said that " since you have taken Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska,
and left us only Missouri, Arkansas and Florida, out of our newly
acquired possessions, you must now go on' and annex Texas, so that
we shall have a balance and counterpoise in this government." Then
the democratic party again were seized with a sudden desire to extend
the area of slavery along the gulf of Mexico, and by way of balancing
the triumph of liberty they even went so far as to hang manacles and

chains on the claws of the conquering eagle of the country !
VOL. IV. 47

370 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Who, then, is responsible for the eternal negro question ? Still
such was the forbearance, the patience, the* hope without reason and
without justice, of the friends of freedom throughout the United
States, that the eternal negro question would have been left at rest
then, if it had not again been brought into the federal councils in
the years 1848 and 1850, when the slave power forced us into a war
with Mexico, by which we acquired Upper California and New
Mexico, and for no other purpose but that, notwithstanding all the
advantages which slavery had gained since the Atlantic states were
free, now, as a balance, slavery must have the Pacific coast.

Thus, on these three different occasions, when the public mind was
at rest on the subject of the negro, the slave power forced it upon
public consideration and demanded aggressive action. When they
had at last secured the consent of the people of the free states to a
compromise in 1850, by which it was agreed that California alone
might be free, and that New Mexico should be remanded back into
a territorial condition because she had not established slavery — then
there was but one man in the United States Senate that would vote
to accept New Mexico as a free state wh^n she came with her consti
tution in her hands, and that man the humble individual who stands
before you. Aye, you applaud me for it now, but where were your
votes in 1850? Ah ! well, that is past.

When they had agreed on a compromise, and had driven out of
the senate every man but some half dozen repiesentatives who had
opposed the aggressions of slavery, were they content to let the
negro question rest? No, in 1854 the democracy raised the negro
question to force slavery finally and forever throughout the whole
republic, by abrogating the Missouri compromise. They abandoned
the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to slave labor, and actually
assisted aud encouraged the armies sent there by the slaveholders, to
take forcible possession of regions which, until then, had been free.

0 ! what pleasure shall I have, in telling the people of Kansas1,
three days hence, how that when all others were faithless, and false,
and timid, they renewed this battle of liberty, and expelled the
intruding slaveholder, and established forever amongst themselves
the freedom of labor and the freedom of men on the plains of
Kansas.

Were the democracy then content? Not at all. They deter
mined in 1858, to raise the negro question once more and to admit

THE ETERNAL NEGRO QUESTION. 37 1

Kansas into the Union, if she would come in as a slave state,
and to keep her out indefinitely if she should elect freedom. And
only one year later, when they found that Kansas was slipping from
their clutches, who then raised once more the eternal negro question?
The slave power and the administration took it up by demanding
the annexation of Cuba, a slaveholding island of Spain, to be acquired
at a cost of one hundred and fifty million dollars, peaceably, if it
could be obtained for that sum, and forcibly if it should not be sur
rendered, for the purpose of adding two slave states, well manned and
well appointed, to balance the votes of Kansas and Minnesota, then
expected to come into the Union as free states.

Who has brought this issue and entered it on the record of this
canvass? The slaveholding party — the democratic party. They
held their convention first in this campaign at Charleston. They pre
sented again the everlasting negro question, nothing more, nothing
less. They differed about the form, but they gave us, nevertheless,
the everlasting negro question in two different parts, giving us our
choice to take one or the other, as they gave the people of Kansas
the choice, whether they would take slavery pure and simple, or
take it anyhow and get rid of it afterward if they could. Of one
part, Mr. Breckinridge is the representative. It is presented plainly
and distinctly ; it is that slaves are merchandise and property in the
territories under the constitution of the United States, and that the
national legislatures and the courts must protect it in the territories,
and no power on earth can discharge them of the responsibility
Of the other, Mr. Douglas is the representative, and the form in
which it is presented by those who support him is : What is the
best way not to keep slavery out of the territories ?

I doubt very much whether slaveholders have so great a repug
nance to the negro and to the eternal negro question as they affect.
On the other hand, being accustomed to sit in the federal councils,
with grave and reverend senators, and to mingle with representa
tives of the people from slaveholding states, I find a great dif
ference between myself and them on the subject. God knows, I
should find it hard to consent to be the unbidden, the unchosen rep
resentative of bondmen ! They must be freemen that I volunteer
to represent; every man of them must be a whole man. But my
respected friends who represent the slave states are willing, and do
most cheerfully, most gladly consent to represent three-fifths of all

372 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

the negro slaves. They take a slave at three-fifths of a man, and
they represent the three-fifths ; I doubt not they would be very
glad if he could be converted into five-fifths.

Well I think the democratic party has not so much repugnance to
negroes and the negro question, because they consent to take offices
of president, vice-president, secretary of state, ministers to Bogota,
and to all other parts of the world, consulships and post offices, that
are derived indirectly by adding another link to the chain of states
in which negroes count, each one, three-fifths. No, no ; slaveholders
and the democratic party would be very glad to take votes from
negroes, free or slave, by the head, at full count, if negroes and slaves
would only vote for slavery ; and it is only because they have a
sagacious insight into human nature, which teaches them that negroes
and slaves would vote for liberty, that makes the negro question so
repulsive to them.

But is this one idea, the eternal negro question, so objectionable
merely on account of the negro? I think not; I think it far other
wise ; for after all, you see that the negro has less than anybody
else in the world, to do with it. The negro is no party to it; he is
nly an incident; he is a subject of disputes but not one of the liti
gants. He has just as much to do with it as a horse or a watch in a
justice's court, when two neighbors are litigating about its owner
ship. The controversy is not with the negro at all, but with two
classes of white men, one who have a monopoly of negroes, and the
other who have no negroes. One is an aristocratic class, that wants
to extend itself over the new territories and so retain the power it
already exercises; and the other is yourselves, my good friends,
men who have no negroes and won't have any, and who mean that
the aristocratic system shall not be extended. There is no negro
question about it at all. It is an eternal question between classes —
between the few privileged and the many unprivileged — the eternal
question between aristocracy and democracy.

A sorrowful world this will be when that question shall be put
to rest ; for when it is, the rest that it shall have, shall be the same
it has always had for six thousand years ; the riding of the privi
leged over the necks of the unprivileged, booted and spurred. And
the nation that is willing to establish such an aristocracy, and is
shamed out of the defense of its own rights, deserves no better fate
than that which befalls the timid, the cowardly and the unworthy.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 373

It is to-day in the United States the same question that is filling
II angary, and is lifting the throne of a Cassar of Austria from its
pedestals ; the same which has expelled the tyrant of Naples from
the beautiful Sicily, and has driven him from his palace at Castella-
mare to seek shelter in his fortress at Gaeta. It is not only an eternal
question, but it is a universal question. Every man from a foreign
land will find here in America, in another form, the irrepressible
conflict which crushed him out, an exile from his native land.

Again, I am not quite convinced that it is sound philosophy in
anything, at least in politics, to banish the principle of giving para
mount importance at any one time to one idea. If a man wishes
to secure a good crop of wheat to pay off the debt he owes upon
Lis land, he is seized with one idea in the spring, he plows, plants
and sows, he gathers and reaps, with a single idea of getting forty
bushels to the acre, if he can. If a merchant wishes to be success
ful, he surrenders himself to the one idea of buying as cheap and
selling as dear as he honestly can. I would not give much for a
lawyer who is put in charge of my case, that would suffer himself,
when before the jury, to be distracted with a great many irrelevant
ideas. I want one devoted to my cause. In the church we have a
great many clergymen who have a horror of this one idea involved
in the negro question, but I think it was St. Peter who had it made
known to him, in a vision on the housetop, that he must not have
scattered ideas; but on the contrary adopt one idea only, that of being
satisfied with everything else, provided he could only win souls to his
Master. And Paul was very much after this spirit ; he said he
would be all things to all men, provided he could save some souls.
There was in the revolution one man seized with a terrible fanaticism,
propelled by one idea He scattered terror all through this conti
nent; and when he passed from Boston to the first congress in Phila
delphia, deputations from New York and Philadelphia went out to
meet and dissuade this erratic man of that one idea, namely, that of
national independence. And still John Adams proved, after all, to
be a public benefactor. There was, during the revolution, another
man of one idea, that appeared to burn in him so ardently that he was
regarded as the most dangerous man on the continent, and a triple
reward was -offered for his head. He actually went so far as to take
all the men of one idea in the country, and suffer himself to take
command of them in a rebellion. That man was George Washington.

374 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

His idea was justice, political justice. There was another monoma
niac of the same kind down in Virginia ; he, at the close of the revo
lution, had one idea, an eternal idea, and it even included negroes;
and that was the idea of equality. This was Thomas Jefferson. Now,
though the state which reared him might be glad if it could erase
from his monument at Monticello its sublime inscription, yet the
world can never lose that proud and beautiful epitaph, written by
himself : " Here lies Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration
of Independence." About the year 1805 or 1806, the French secre
tary for foreign affairs gave a dinner to the American representative
at court, and to American citizens resident there, and there was a
large and various party. When the wine flowed freely, and conver
sation ought to have been general, there was one young man who
was possessed with one idea, and he could not keep quiet, bat kept
continually putting this idea before the minister and his guests, say
ing, " If you will only make up for me a purse, or show me a bank
that will lend me five thousand dollars, I will put a boat on the Hud
son river which will make the passage from New York to Albany at
four miles an hour, without being driven by oars or sails." He was
an offensive monomaniac, that Robert Fulton. But still, had it not
been for his one idea, Iowa would have slept the last forty years,
and down to the twentieth century, and not one human being before
me, or within the boundaries of this state, would have resided here.
What I understand by one idea is this : It simply means that a man,
or a people, or a state, is in earnest. They get an idea which they
think is useful, and they are in earnest. God save us when we are
to abandon confidence in earnest men, and take to following trivial
men of light minds, confused and scattered ideas, and weak purposes.
There is no such thing as government carried out without the
intervention, the exaltation of one idea, and without the activity,
guidance and influence of earnest men. You may be listless,
indifferent, indolent, each one of you ; do you therefore get other
people to go to sleep? No. You may go to sleep, but you will
find somebody, that has got one idea that you don't like, will be
wide awake. Democrats are wide awake on the negro question as
long as it pays, and it pays just as long as you will be content to
follow their advice and take several ideas. Industry is the result
of one idea. I have never heard of idle ones in the beaver's camp,
br.t I do know there are drones in the beehive. Nevertheless, the

THE POWER OF ONE IDEA. 375

beaver's camp and the beehive alike give evidence of the domination
of one idea. The Almighty Power himself could never have made
the world, and never govern it, if he had not bent the force and
application of the one idea to make it perfect. And when at seven
o'clock in the morning, three months ago, with the almanac in my
hand, I stood with my smoked glass between my eye and the sun to see
whether the almanac maker was correct or whether nature vacillated
between one idea and another, I was astonished to see that, at the
very second of time indicated by the astronomer, the shadow of the
moon entered the disk of the sun. There was one idea only in
the mind of the Omnipotent Creator, that six thousand, or ten thou
sand, or twenty thousand, or hundreds of thousands of years ago, set
that sun, that moon and this earth in their places, and subjected them
to laws which brought that shadow exactly at this point at that
instant of time. Earth is serious; heaven is serious; earth is ear
nest ; heaven is earnest. There is no place for men of scattered
and confused ideas in the earth below, or in the heavens above, what
ever there may be in places under the earth. Every one idea has its
negative. It has its destinies, its purpose, and it lias its negative.
So it is with the idea of slavery. It means nothing less, nothing
more, nothing different from the extension of commerce or trading
iu slaves ; and in our national system it means the extension of
commerce in slaves into regions where that commerce has no right
to exist. The negative of that is our principle which we are endeavor
ing to inculcate upon you, namely : opposition to trading in slaves
within those portions of the territory where slaves are not lawfully a
subject of merchandise.

At the time of the compromise of 1820, the democratic party saw,
for they are wise men, and their opponents, Rufus King, John W.
Taylor and others in congress, saw, that there was an irrepressible
conflict between the two ideas of slavery and freedom, or rather
between the two sides of one idea. The alternative offered to the
democracy and to all the people of the United States, was a plain
one; the slaveholders are strong, are united; there are many slave
states, and they are agreed in their policy ; there are as many free
states, but they are divided in opinion. Lend your support to the
slave states, and you shall have the power, patronage, honors and
glory of administering the government of the United States. Some
asked, for how long ? Wise men cast the horoscope and said forty

376 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

years; just about that time an infant state shall grow up north of
Missouri within the Louisiana purchase, and another shall grow up
in Kansas. The great men I have named seemed few and feeble in
numbers; still they would rather have quiet consciences during all
the time, and postpone honors and rewards for forty years, rather
than to take the side of slavery ; and the democratic party reason
ing otherwise, said, " Give us the offices and power now ; we will
hold it the forty years, and more if we can." They say that the
u old one " is inexorable ; that when he makes a bond he lives up to
it, but when the time is up he calls for his own. To Mr. Breckin-
ridge, Mr. Douglas, slave states and all, he says : " I have given you
all the indulgence that was allowed rne to give you, now you must
go."

This, my young friends, for I see many such around me, brings
me to a point where I can give you one instruction which, if you
practice as long as you live, may make at least some of you great
men, honorable men, useful men. Remember that all questions have
two sides ; one is the right side, and the other the wrong side ; one
is the side of justice, the other that of injustice; one the side of
human nature, the other of crime. If you take the right side, the
just side, ultimately men, however much they may oppose you and
revile you, will come to your support ; earth with all its powers will
work with you and for you, and Heaven is pledged to conduct you
to complete success. If you take the other side, there is no power
in earth or Heaven that can lead you through successfully, because
it is appointed in the councils of Heaven that justice, truth and rea
son alone can prevail. This instruction would be incomplete if I
were not to add one other, that indifference between right and wrong
is nothing else than taking the wrong side. The policy of a great
leader of the democratic party in the north is indifference; it is
nothing to him whether slavery is voted up or voted down in the
territories. Thus it makes no difference to that distinguished states
man whether slavery is voted up or voted down in the new states;
whether they all become slave states or free states. Let us see how
this would have worked in the revolution. If Jefferson had been
indifferent as to whether congress voted up the declaration of inde
pendence or voted it down, what kind of a time would he have had
with it. Patrick Henry would have been after him with a vigilant
committee, and he would now have no monument over his remains.

IOWA AS A MODEL STATE. 377

The British government would have liked nothing better than a lot
of such indifferent men for leaders of the American people, and
George the Third and his dynasty might have had rule over this con
tinent for a thousand years to come.

I have thus removed the preliminary objection always interposed
on these occasions against the indulgence of the eternal negro ques
tion. What is the just and right national policy with regard to
slavery in the territories and in the new states of the Federal
Union? Your decision of that subject will involve the conside
ration of what you consider to be the natural constituents of a state.
I suppose 1 may infer from your choosing this beautiful land on the
western bank of the Mississippi, that you all want to make Iowa a
great and good state, a flourishing and prosperous state. You con
sider the development of the latent resources with which nature
has supplied the region on which you build a state, as one of the
material things to be considered in building up a great state ; that is
to say, you will have the forests subjugated and make them contri
bute the timber and lumber for the house, for the city, for the wharf,
for the steamer, for the ship of war, and for all the purposes of civi
lized society. Then I think if the land has concealed within it
deposits of iron, or lead, or coal, you will think of getting these out
as rapidly as you can, so as to increase the public wealth. Then I
think that you will have the same idea about states everywhere else
that you have about Iowa ; and that your first idea about the way
to make a state corresponds with my idea how to make a great
nation. And as you would subdue the forests, would develop
the lead, iron and coal in your region ; as you would improve the
fields, putting ten oxen to a plow to turn up the prairie, and then
plant it with wheat and corn ; as you would encourage manufactures,
and try, by making railways and telegraphs, to facilitate interchange
of products; so this is exactly what I propose to do for every new
state like Iowa that is to be admitted into the Federal Union. To be
sure we shall leave the slave states, which are all in the Union, as
they are; our responsibilities are limited to the states which are yet
to come into the Union, and we will apply our system to them. The
first point, then, in making a state, is to favor the industry of the
people, and industry is favored in every land exactly as it is free and
uncrippled.

VOL. IV. 48

378 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

We are a great nation ; we have illimitable forests in the far east
and on the banks of the upper waters of the Mississippi, around the
lakes and on the Pacific coast. No human arithmetic could com
pute the amount of materials of the forest that have already gone into
the aggregate of the wealth which this nation possesses. At this day
there is hardly one foot of timber, or one foot of dealboards, or a lath,
or a shingle, entering into the commerce of the United States that
is fabricated by a slave. You all have an idea, or had in the land
from which you came here, of the value and importance of the fish
eries, of making the ocean surrender its treasures to increase the
national wealth. The fisherman is seen in the winter time fishing
for ice in the ponds and lakes of Massachusetts ; and if you go to
Palestine, or to Grand Cairo, or to the furthest Indies, you will find
yourself regaled with ice fished out of the lakes and ponds of Mas
sachusetts. Ice is not a product that goes far to the support of
human life ; but can you tell me in what part of the earth men
are not lighted on their way by night, or in their dwellings, by the
produce of the fisheries ? Have you any idea how much the great
machinery of the country engaged in fabrication of goods and in
navigation is indebted to the fisheries? Those of the United States
are a great source of national wealth ; and a nursery of seamen for
the commercial marine and naval service of the United States, indis
pensable for the development of the resources of a great people.
I might almost say that there is not now, and there never was. on
lake or river, sea or bay, over the whole world, from the Arctic to
the Antarctic pole, a negro slave fisherman. You have been very
indifferent about these subjects.

It was only two years ago, only by constant watchfulness and
activity of the friendly representatives of the free states in congress,
that the protection of the United States was saved for the fisheries.
The slaveholders don't want ice to be gathered with free-soil hands;
they would rather have it taken from the lakes and rivers of Russia.
They don't want the fisheries conducted by free hands at home ;
they would rather take their supplies from foreign markets. The
fisheries are somewhat foreign for yon, but the quarries are not — the
granite and the marble out of which our capitol is being constructed,
our great cities erected, some of them are in yoitr own beautiful city.
Have you any idea of how large a portion of the national wealth is
extracted from the quarries of granite and marble and freestone? It

WHAT SLAVES CANNOT DO. 379

is beyond my capacity to compute. Yet there is not a slave engaged
in a quarry in the United States. Have you any slaves down your
shafts in your lead mines here? Not one. Have you any slaves in
your coal mines ? Not one. Any in your iron mines ? Not one.
Pennsylvania is being burrowed all through and through in all
directions, and the iron and coal taken out and fabricated. There is
not a single slave, nor was there ever one, that raised his hand to
add to that supply of national wealth. On the other hand, you
have in Maryland and in Virginia deposits of coal and iron as rich,
aye, and of gold, too; and yet in Maryland and Virginia, slave states
as they are, in their iron, coal and silver mines, the work is mainly
done by freemen. I need not speak of manufactures ; the African
slave is reduced to a brute, as nearly as may be, and he is incompe
tent to cast a shuttle, to grease or oil a wheel and keep it in motion.
In all the vast manufacturing establishments in the United States ; in
all the establishments of the forest, and of the fisheries, or of manu
factures throughout the whole world, there is not one African slave
to be found. California rejected the labor of slaves, and well she
did so; for if she had invited and courted it, her mines, instead of
yielding fifty millions of gold per year to the commerce of the United
States, would be yielding nothing. Could a man subsist in Iowa by
cultivating wheat or corn by slave labor ?

Commerce is of two kinds, domestic and foreign. The commerce
down the Mississippi and up, the commerce on railroads, is domestic
commerce ; the commerce across the ocean with foreign nations, is
foreign commerce. In New Orleans I found that sixteen thousand
men were engaged in domestic trading on the river between New
Orleans and the up country in the Mississippi valley. How many
of them were slaves? Not one. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri,
Kentucky, New York, Michigan, send the boatmen who conduct the
commerce even in slave states, while on all the oceans there is not a
slave engaged in commerce.

Now the three great wheels of national wealth are agriculture,
including the subjugation of the forests, manufactures and trade.
Slaves are unfit, African slaves are absolutely unfit to be employed
in turning either of those wheels; and it thus enters into the ele
ments of a great and prosperous state that its people shall not be
slaves but freemen. The reason is obvious; it is the interest of the
freeman to improve himself as well as he can, to produce the most

380 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

he can, at the least cost; and it is the interest of the slave to be r.s
disqualified as he can, to consume as much as he can, and produce
as little more than he consumes as possible.

It is not wealth jilone that makes a nation. It must have strength
and power to command, by the mere signification of its will, peace
and good order at home and respect and confidence abroad. Just
imagine the United States converted into planting states in which
the labor was performed only by negro slaves, and judge, if you can,
what would be the police power of the government in any of the
states. The laborer in a slave state is watched night and morning;
his outgoings, his incomings, his path is surrounded by a police ; he
can pass to execute the order of his master only on a permit or
license. He must retire to sleep at nine or ten at night, and must
not be abroad from the plantation without a special license, for no
other reason than that his master regards him as an enemy to be
watched. Turn a whole nation into masters watching slaves, and
.slaves regarded as natural enemies — what is the power of that nation
to preserve peace at home ? What its power to command respect
abroad ? Make us for once a nation of slave states, and any feeble,
contemptible power in Europe has only to instigate insurrection
among our slaves, then instead of relying on ourselves we should
want to make a federal union with Canada, that we might get pro
tection, just as the free states now protect the slave states.

But these elements— mate rial wealth and power — are but part of
what constitute a nation. It should have a head, an enlightened
head ; an open, free, manly, honest heart. Such a head and heart
as will enable any man or woman to go through the world with
safety. A nation is only an aggregate of individuals, of so many
heads to work as one head ; of so many hearts to beat as one heart.
You want an enlightened free people to constitute a nation ; and if
you have such a people, they are perpetually reducing the sacrifice,
and toil of muscle ; and if it be true as theologians say, that labor is the
primal curse imposed by the Maker on man for disobedience, then
this benevolent heart and enlightened head will suggest all manner
of machines to relieve them of the necessity of physical labor. The
poor widow, who, to eke out a subsistence, has to sew for her neigh
bors, will, with a machine that costs but from fifty to one hundred
•dollars — the invention of a freeman — make fifty garments where
before she made but one. And the steam engine — it plows, plants,

WHAT CONSTITUTES A NATION. 381

sows and harvests ; it threshes ; it gathers into the granaries ; it hauls
the cars loaded with produce ; it drives the steamboat on the river.
That is what invention does. Now out of the million inventions
which the American people enjoy, there is not one that was made
by a slave, and simply because the slave is imbruted in his heart
and stupified in his intellect.

A nation to be great wants character — character for justice, hon
esty, integrity ; for ability to maintain its own rights and respect for
the rights of others. That it cannot have, if it be a nation of slaves.
It is only a nation of freemen that can cultivate the virtues which
constitute a character. These virtues are two ; justice, equal and exact
justice among men; the equal freedom and liberty of every other
man. The other virtue is courage. The freeman has no enemies;
he is just ; he oppresses nobody ; nobody wishes to be revenged upon
him. A nation of freemen are safe ; they provoke nobody ; they
wrong nobody ; they covet nothing ; they keep the tenth command
ment. And nations must keep the commandments as well -as indi
viduals, or suffer the same penalty. But you cannot have these
morals except on one condition, and that is that the people of the
nation are trained up in them. And how trained? By schools and
general instruction, free press, free debate at home, and in legislative
councils ; and everywhere to be undisturbed as they go in and come
out. Introduce slavery in Iowa, and what kind of freedom of speech
would you enjoy? What kind of freedom of the press? freedom of
bridges? of taverns? Just look across the state of Missouri into
Kansas, and you will find freedom of the press, provided you will
maintain that property is above labor, that slavery is before all con
stitutions and governments — you will find that kind of freedom of
speech which sought the expulsion of John Quincy Adams from
the congress of the United States, for presenting a petition in favor
of human rights; that kind of freedom of debate which arrested my
distinguished and esteemed friend, Charles Surnner, in the midst of a
glorious and useful career, and doomed him to wander a sufferer and
invalid for four years. As for freedom of bridges, why the bridge over
the Missouri at Kansas was proved to be only a bridge for slave state
men ; and the tavern at Lawrence was subverted for a nuisance on
account of its being a tavern at which free state men could rest.

It is a bright September afternoon, and a strange feeling of surprise
comes over me that I should be here in the state of Iowa — the state

382 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

redeemed and saved in the compromise of 1820 — a state peopled by
freemen — that I should be here in such a state, before such a people,
imploring its citizens to maintain the cause of freedom instead of
the cause of slavery. It is a great change from the position I was
in only a year ago. In Italy, in Austria, in Turkey even, I was
excusing, in the best way I could, the monstrous delinquencies of
the American people in tolerating slavery, which even the Turk
had abrogated. You tell me that it is unnecessary ; that you are
all right ; I happen to know better. No ! the wide-awakes are not
up an hour too soon ; they do not sit up any too late o' nights ;
their zeal is not a bit too strong to save the state of Iowa from giving
her votes, in the present canvass, in favor of the policy which has
for forty years made slavery the cardinal institution, and freedom
secondary to it in the United States. There is something of excuse
and apology for this ; it is in the reluctance which men who are
always opposed to one new idea coming in, have to give up the old
idea, which they have so long cherished. The democratic party has
a wonderful affection for the name ; the prestige of the democratic
party; and most of them must die unconverted. It is not in hu
man nature that adult men and women change their opinions with
facility ; it is little ones like these before me that receive reforms
unobserved and unknown. Ten thousand of their votes enter into
every successive canvass in the state of Iowa. In every state the
great reformation which has been made within the last six years —
for we date no further back than that — has been the dying out of
the one-idea men of democracy and the growing up of the young
one-idea men of republicanism. And now why shall we not insist,
so far as our votes shall be effective, that the territories shall remain
free territories, so that new states which shall hereafter be added to
this Union shall be free states?

They say we interfere in the slave "titr~ "Mpt nififlll We do not

- mm.V — ar •'•* "

vote against slavery in Virginia. We do not authorize Abraham
Lincoln or the congress of the United States to pass any laws about
slavery in Virginia. We merely authorize them to intervene in the
territories, and to pass laws securing freedom there. They tell us
that it is unnecessary. They have rendered it necessary, because
they have explained the laws and the constitution to establish slavery
there, and we must either restrict slavery there or reverse the decision
made by the federal tribunal. But they tell us that this is incon-

WHAT CONSTITUTES A NATION. 383

vcnient ; it excites violence in the slave states. To which I answer
that they have the choice between slavery and freedom as well as
we ; but they must be content to leave it where it is. When they
choose to carry slaves into the territories we interfere. ASJ^at we
are_attackmgis not slavery^m the United States, but slavery in the
territories. But tln-y tell us Unit we are incurring very great harm;
that bur southern friends, driven angry, will not buy of us. Mayor
Wood made the discovery that we are a trading people, and we shall
Ios3 our trade if the republican party come into power. We are a
trading people as we are an eating people, a drinking people, a
clothes-wearing people. Trade! trade! trade! the great character,
the great employment, the one idea of the American people ! It is
a libel. We buy only with what we produce. We buy and sell,
but that is merely incidental to our greater occupation of producing
and making ; and even these are subordinate to our great notion of
educating and cultivating ourselves to make a great, virtuous and
happy people. Trade, however, for those who engage in it, knows no
respect of opinion ; the southern planters will buy their cotton bag
ging of the men who will make it the cheapest, and they will insist
on selling cotton to the Castle Garden committees and the Cooper
Institute patriots at precisely the same price as they will to Wendell
Phillips and Frederick Douglass. They won't buy your wheat unless
hungry for bread ; and if hungry for bread they will gladly give
you for it any surplus of cotton you want.

I have refrained from adverting to the higher sentiments of
humanity which enter into the consideration of this subject, because
those are considerations that are always with you. I will now, how
ever, say that the suggestions of justice are always in harmony with
the suggestions and impulses of humanity, and that both spring from
the same source. Nature herself seems to be forbearing ; she seems to
be passive and silent. She lets nations as she lets individuals go on
in their course of action, violating her laws ; but this is for a season
only. The time comes at last when nature unerringly vindicates
every right, and punishes every wrong, in the actions of men or
states. She comes, then, in terror, in revolution, in anarchy, in
chaos. You will let this government and this nation slide down
still further the smooth declivity of national vice if you choose:
nature will bring it back again in due time with convulsions which
will wake the sighs and groans of the civilized world.

384 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

YOUNG MEN AND THE FUTURE.1

THE past, since the adoption of the constitution, has been occupied
with trials to compromise the conflict between property in man and
the freedom of man, and these trials have proved unsuccessful. The
future demands the settlement of it now, by a return to the princi
ples of the declaration of independence and the constitution. This con
clusion can be reached only by accepting the principle of the political
equality of men within the exclusive range of the federal constitu
tion, yhis is simply a matter of education. It is not worth while
to spend much time upon this subject in trying to convert old men ;
they cannot last long, and therefore can do little harm. We all
become settled in our opinions and confirmed in our habits as we
grow old. The republican party is a party chiefly of young men.
Each successive year brings into its ranks an increasing proportion
of the young men of this country.

This is the ground of my hope, of my confidence, that before this
generation shall have passed away, the democratic party will cease
to exist ; and the republican party, or at least its principles, will be
accepted and universally prevail. If it be true, as the declaration
of independence asserts, that the right of all men to political equa
lity is self-evident, nothing can prevent the acknowledgment of that
fact by the generation now rising, since that truth is distinctly incul
cated now, for the first time, through all the agencies of private and
public education. The young man who shall reject it will find
himself in controversy with the ever-growing sentiment of his coun
trymen, and the settled public opinion of the world. Let him take
heed how he enters upon a. course which can bring nothing but
unavailing contention, disappointment and regret over the failure of
his ambition and of his desire for usefulness. Train up your chil
dren in the belief of this great principle of our constitution, and
they will secure for themselves the satisfaction of leading useful and
honorable lives, and follow you to yaur graves with more than even
filial veneration.

1 Extract from a speech at Cleveland, Oct. 4, 1860.

KANSAS THE SAVIOR OF FREEDOM.

LAWRENCE, SEPTEMBER 26, 1860.

A LONG cherished desire of mine is fulfilled ; at last a long
deferred duty is about to be paid — the desire of my heart to see the
people of Kansas — the duty that I felt I owed to the people of Kan
sas, to see them in their own homes and in their own houses. I
have visited your chief cities, Leaven worth and Lawrence — where
the army of mercenaries sent by the slave states battered down the
hotel, under an indictment and conviction in a court of the United
States as a nuisance, because it sheltered the freemen who had corne
here to see freedom established in Kansas. And I have looked also
upon the Constitution Hall, in Topeka, where the army of the United
States, for the first time in the history of our nation, dispersed a law
ful and peaceable assembly of citizens of the United States, convened
to counsel upon the best means of protecting their lives, their pro
perty and sacred honor. You, people of Kansas, whom I have not
been able to see in your homes, have come up here to greet me, from
the valleys of the Kansas, the Big Blue and the Neosho, and from,
all your plains and valleys.

I seem not to have journeyed hither, but to have floated across
the sela, — the prairie sea, — under bright autumnal skies, wafted by
genial breezes into the havens where I wished to be. I am not sorrv
that my visit has occurred at this particular time, so sad in its influ
ence, when nature, that sends its rains upon the unjust as well as the
just, has for a year withdrawn its genial showers from the soil of
Kansas. It is well to see one's friends in darkness and sadness, as
well as in the hour of joy. I have beheld the scenes of your former
conflicts. I have also looked upon that beautiful eminence on the
banks of the Kansas river, where Lecornpton sits a lonely widowr
desolate and mourning, her ambitious structures showing how high
is the ambition of slavery, and their desolation showing how easvT

VOL. TV. 49

386 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

after all, is her downfall. I would have seen more of Kansas, if I
had not been interrupted and impeded in my course through the
state by the hospitality and kindness of the people, which I could
not turn aside. I have been excessively retentive at Leaven worth
and Topeka, refusing to open my lips, because I do not like to say
things by piecemeal.

I desire to speak openly to you, in the broad daylight, in the hear
ing of the women as well as men of Kansas ; and here, where I have
renewed the memories of the contest waged upon this soil, while I
see around rue the broken implements with which that contest was
waged by the aggressors under the plea of popular sovereignty,
which left the; people perfectly free to do just as they please, subject
to the constitution of the United States, which they were left per
fectly free to interpret as they pleased, while the authorities at Wash
ington have never been able to interpret it.

When I look at field after field, and cabin after cabin, and church
after church, and school house after school house, where but six
years ago was the unbroken range of savages, I am prepared here —
not expecting to escape being heard on the Pacific as well as the
Atlantic coast — I am prepared to declare, and do declare you people
of Kansas the most intelligent and the bravest and most virtuous
people of the United States. That is the most intelligent and bravest
and most virtuous people which can take the banner of human free
dom when it is trailed in the dust by the government of its choice,
and can and does raise it aloft and protect it and bear it to success
and honor — and that without bloodshed and violence.

People of Kansas ! you are at once the youngest, the newest
people — the newest state, as well as the youngest of all the thirty-
four American states ; you are the poorest in wealth, the least favored
with political power, for you are nearly disfranchised — and yet you
are the most inflexible and the most constant. The two richest states
in the Union are Massachusetts and New York, but they are so
merely because they are the freest, the wisest and the most liberty-
loving states of the Union. I apprehend that you scarcely under
stand, yourselves, the importance of the position which you hold in
this republic. You will perhaps be surprised when I tell you that
the secret of all the interest I have felt in you has been merely this :
That you occupy a1 pivotal position in the republic of the United
States, with regard to slavery and freedom. There is no contest, no

THE PEOPLE OF KANSAS. 387

•difference on this subject, along the line of the northeastern states, for
they are hostile to slavery. There is no difference on the line of the
southern states, for they are in favor of slavery. But there has
been a severe strife between freedom and slavery, for the establish
ment of freedom or slavery in all the wide region reaching from the
Missouri to the Pacific ocean. If freedom was to triumph in this
contest, there was no point where she could expect to meet the enemy
except on the very place she has met it — here. And if you had
been false, slavery would have swept along through the Indian terri
tory, Texas and the whole of the country including the Rocky moun
tains, to the Pacific ocean.

California was imperfectly secured to freedom, and with a compro
mise. You opened a new campaign here to reclaim what was given
up in that already broken compromise, and it has been crowned with
a complete victory. Henceforth the battle is ended ; henceforth the
emigrant from the eastern states, from Germany and Ireland, the free
laborer, in short, from every land on the earth, when he reaches the
Missouri river, will enter on a broad land of impartial liberty.

He can safely pursue his way under the banner of freedom to the
foot of the Rocky mountains ; and there the hosts of freemen from
the western coast will unite and join under the same banner, extend
ing north and south. Everywhere, except in Missouri, is a land of
freedom. Missouri stands an island of slavery in the midst of a broad
ocean of liberty. You occupy not only the pivotal position, but it
was your fortune to attempt this great enterprise in behalf of free
dom at a critical period for mankind. Slavery was then just two
hundred years old in the United States. In the year 1776 our
fathers gave battle to slavery; the}^ declared war against it, and
pledged their lives and sacred honor in the service against it. Prac
tically, it was to be destroyed peaceably under the constitution of
the United States. Those good men believed it would reach its end
long before this period ; but the people became demoralized. The
war went back, back, BACK, until 1851 — until all guaranties of free
dom in every part of the United States were abandoned, and Kan
sas, that had for forty years been perfectly free from the footsteps of
the slave, was pronounced by the highest power of the government
as much a slave state as South Carolina. The flag of the United
States was made the harbinger, not of freedom, but of human,
bondage.

338 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

It was at this crisis that the people of Kansas appeared on the
stage, reviled and despised, and lifted the banner of liberty on high,
and bore it manfully forward, defied all force, and yet counteracted
peaceably all the efforts made to subdue them. In three years they
not only secured freedom in Kansas, but in all the territory of th$
United States.

You have made Kansas as free as Massachusetts, and made the
federal government, on and after the fourth of March next, the
patron of freedom — what it was at the beginning. You have made
freedom national, and slavery sectional. Had you receded after your
first conditional or provisional government was dispersed at Topeka
by cannon and bayonet; had you surrendered and accepted the
Lecompton constitution ; had you even abandoned the Wyandott con
stitution, at any stage of the battle, it would have destroyed the cause
of freedom not only in Kansas, but also throughout the whole Union.

I know I shall be justified in history; shall I not be justified by
cotemporaries ? Wise, best, bravest of citizens, no other hundred
thousand people in the United States have contributed as much for
the cause of freedom as Kansas. Before this people, then, appear
ing for the first time, I bow myself, as I have never done before to
any other people, in profound reverence. I salute you with grati
tude and affection.

Fellow citizens, my time here, as well as yours, is brief. It is but
few of many subjects upon which we can even touch. As to the
least important subject of all, myself, I give you, in one word, my
sincere and heartfelt thanks. I had formed my opinion of you from
your past conduct and history. I have not been disappointed in
your kindness. For all that remains to me, give yourselves no
trouble. Freedom is ^aved and assured to California and Kansas,
and therefore assured to the future states in the Eocky mountains.
If I may, indeed, hope that rny poor name will find a place in the
history of California and Kansas, then all the ambition I have ever
cherished is more than abundantly satisfied.

The second consideration to which I would advert for a moment,
is this sadness which lies like a pall over a large part of the territory
of Kansas — the result of the withdrawal of the rain for a period so
long as to excite apprehensions of famine.

I have carefully examined the condition of Kansas — the river
bottoms and the prairies, and my conclusion is — not more from the

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 389

condition of the crops than from the character of the people — that
.there will be no famine in Kansas, because there is wealth and credit
enough in Kansas to carry you through more than one year like
this. You will take care of this credit and retain it so far as pos
sible. If this will not do, then appeal to your friends in the east,
and they will not allow you to sutfer. I myself will do what I can
for you. Be of good cheer. Suffer yourselves not to be discouraged.
There are cattle enough on your thousand hills, if sold — although it
is a fearful sacrifice — to carry you through and sustain you during
the winter, and still come out in the spring with milch cows and
working oxen. And we who are here — coining from states whence
emigration flows, and from the Atlantic states, where emigrants are
•received and sent onward — will all do our share to direct emigration
to Kansas, assuring them from our own observation, that it is a cli
mate as salubrious as any in the world, and a soil as rich as any the
sun ever shone upon. This is a smiling and fair dominion, and we
think, were we set back twenty or thirty years, the place of all others
that we would seek for homes in the United States would be the
plains of Kansas.

One other consideration. When we see before us the transactions
of this day, do they not illustrate the subject of the " irrepressible
•conflict?" Did not our forefathers, in 1787, settle this whole ques
tion, and, by an ordinance, put at rest forever the question of free
dom and slavery in the United States ? Certainly they did. Did
they not, in 1820, settle this conflict forever? Did they not declare-
that all north of 36° 30' and west of the Missouri river should be
given up to freedom? Certainly they did. Was it not settled finally
a third time in 1850, when Kansas and Nebraska were still saved to
freedom, and all lying west of them ? Was it not settled a fourth
-time in 1854, when it was ordained that the people of Kansas were
free to choose freedom or slavery for themselves, subject to the con
stitution of the United States? Was it not settled for the fifth time,
when the Lecompton constitution was adopted by one scratch of the
pen of the President of the United States and the Supreme Court —
and this became a land of slavery ? Why was not slavery settled by
-all these settlements ? For no other reason tha^fcc^s£^£conflict
was irrepressible. But you determined, in your struggle for Kansas,
that she shall be forever free; and that settles the question. In
New Mexico they tried to settle it in favor of slavery, but they now

890 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

find it is irrepressible there. I think you will find that the whole battle
has been settled in the deliverance of Kansas, and that henceforth
freedom will be triumphant in all the territories in the United States.

And yet, while this is clear to these intelligent, practical and sen
sible men who have gone through the problem, what a contrast is
seen here to what is occurring in other parts of the United States,
where they suppose, because they are older, they are so much wiser ;
where they believe me still as false a prophet as Mohammed. In
Pennsylvania they have not yet made up their minds that there is
any conflict at all, much less that it is irrepressible. In the southern,
states they are actually organizing a militia against the freemen who
are establishing freedom in Kansas and New Mexico, as if the set
tlers in Kansas were no wiser than they are, and would seek to
propagate freedom by the sword. When freemen want to make a
territory free, they give it ballot boxes, and school houses and
churches ; and slavery will never triumph where these are first
established.

But to go a little deeper into the subject. In 1776 and 1787, there
were wise men administering the government of the United States ;
and if you look into their sayings, you will see they had all found
out that this republic was to be the home of an ever- increasing peo
ple, so free, so proud, so wise, so vigorous, that they could not be
confined in the old thirteen states ; they saw that this republic was
to be the home of free men, of free labor, and not slave labor. So,
they set apart all the territory within their reach, i. e., all they then
had control over — for freedom and for free emigration. Now, con
trast that which was wisely done in 1787 with what actually hap
pened in 1820 ! In 1820 it was found that the population of the
United States had crossed the Mississippi. Then what was neces
sary was, to provide exactly the same kind of government for the
territory west of the Mississippi, as had been provided for the coun
try east of it; so that, when the government should be extended to
the Pacific, all should be free. Could anything have been wiser than
for government in 1850 to have given freedom to these territories?
But it did not. They had previously given Missouri to slavery, and
said freedom might take the rest ; but now they wished to block up-
free labor by the barrier of slave Missouri. Could anything have
been more absurd than to thus attempt to stay the course of free
men ? Either free labor must go out of the United States, or it

FRUITS OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 891

rnusc go round Missouri to Kansas and New Mexico. It did go
round for a short season, but then it broke their barriers, and passed
through the very garrison of the slave power.

There were long ago good and brave men who foretold this result.
There was John Quincj Adams, who remonstrated against the exten
sion of slavery as political suicide. There were Henry W. Taylor,
James Tallmadge, and peerless among them all, Rufus King, who
declared in the senate of the United States, that the slave power in
Missouri would prove a mockery ; that this land was for liberty ;
and that the. slave power would repent in sackcloth and ashes. But
these good men were overruled. Missouri and Arkansas came into
the Union with slavery. And for what reason ? It was because the
slaveholders had property — capital which must not be confiscated,
even to prevent slavery from being established over as large a domain
as half of Europe. This was the reason the federal government
determined to secure their slaves to the capitalists of Missouri.
What capital had Missouri in slaves that was saved at that time?
All the slaves in Missouri at that time, were exactly ten thousand
two hundred and twenty in number, and were worth (I was born a
slaveholder, and know something of the value of slaves) three hun
dred dollars ahead, including the old and young, the sick and decre-
pid, which made the total value of the slaves in Missouri, in 1820,
three million sixty-six thousand dollars. Arkansas then had one
thousand six hundred slaves, worth four hundred and eighty thou
sand dollars. The whole capital of slaves in Missouri and Arkansas
was about three million five hundred thousand dollars, but to save
that capital in negroes, the great compromise of 1820 was made, and
those states given up to slavery. Three million and a half of
dollars was a large sum, but nobody then or ever proposed to con
fiscate it. They were left free to sell their slaves; they were at lib
erty to keep them, so only that they should import no more. There
was no need of confiscating the slaves in Missouri any more than
there was in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey
and Pennsvlvania; so this three million five hundred thousand dol
lars was never in jeopardy.

Even if it had been confiscated, how small a sacrifice of property
it was, weighed against the incalculable blessing of freedom over the
American continent. Look now at the advantages of their success,
and see how unavailing are the contrivances of politicians, and even

392 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of nations, to counteract and control the great moving principle of
the age. We all see plainly enough now that it was preposterous to
expect that merely by making Missouri a slave state in 1820, it
wonld follow, forty years afterwards, when the canals of New York
and Pennsylvania were burdened with commerce, when steamers
dotted all our inland lakes and rivers, when teachers and preachers
were abroad through the land, a slave state could be made out of
Kansas? They tried it, and what have they got? They have
got slavery in Missouri and Arkansas; freedom in Kansas, and
practically in New Mexico, in Utah and California. That is what
comes from attempting to bind up the decrees of Providence in
flaxen bands by human skill. Why did their attempt foil? It
failed because society has its rights and its necessities. It was
just as necessary that men should move out of Massachusetts
and New York and the western states, and Missouri even, into the
territories, as it is necessary that Kansas and other territories should
receive them when they have come. It was just as necessary that
the exile of Europe should have a place where he was perfectly free
to have no slaves. The movement of the age is quickened by the
agency of mind and of inventions ; all the operations of trade, the
arts and manufactures, are accelerated by mechanical skill. Who
thinks now of drawing himself to town with a pair of mules? The
steam engine carries him there with less cost than he could walk or
go on wagons. All the implements with which work and husbandry
are done, are the product of mechanical skill. Every farmer sees
that by the improvements made in the implements for cultivating the
soil, everv year he is able to dispense with the services of one more
laborer, who becomes himself an independent farmer.

Europe has been in a state of commotion for more than sixty years,
and still is. Ireland was bound to seek relief; Germany was over
populated, and must have an outlet for her energy and labor. What
madness and folly, then, that the statesmen of 1820 should open this
country to slavery, and instead of securing it teeming with wealth
and abundant cultivation, should abandon it to the production of
negroes at fifteen hundred dollars a head ! It is because I speak so
plainly of these things that some believe me not a very conservative
man. I think you are wiser than your fathers, wherever you may have
come from. I had a father who was a very wise man, but I think I
should be unworthy of him, had I not sought to improve rny better

MISSOURI AND SLAVERY. 393

opportunities to become a wiser man than he. It would have been
much better for Missouri and Arkansas could they have foreseen the
consequence of their action. The consequence of their embracing
slavery is that the tide of emigration in 1820, which would naturally
have come up the Mississippi river, was driven round into other
regions. Instead of entering at New Orleans, it sought the ports of
New York and Quebec, peopled the provinces of Canada and the
line of the northern lakes. There are three millions of settlers in
the provinces which slavery in Missouri sent round there. This
same tide of emigration peopled Northern Ohio, Wisconsin and
Michigan, and thence passed west to Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Missouri has thus lost from her soil all this population. At last the
mass of emigration got to be so dense that it could not divide and
spread itself, so making a great rush, it swept through Missouri,
through the very strongholds of slavery. There is not within the
longitude of my voice probably one man, if Missouri had been wise,
and had not driven emigration from its natural course, that would
ever have set foot on the soil of Kansas. There is population
enough in Kansas now to make Missouri a great state.

But Missouri does not want to be a great state. She prefers to
wait and be a slave state. She has no affection for the people of the
north, but a great affection for the people of the south. She has no
affection for free labor, but a great affection for slave labor. She
has no free speech ; she is satisfied to have what she may say, or
may not, controlled by the slave power. This is a sad c?se for Mis
souri, but not hopeless. She must look for deliverance to Kansas,
which Missouri at first overrun and subjugated, and which Missouri
refused to let come into the Union, but which is drawing emigration
through Missouri, and opening the way, and marking out the very
course, and inviting Missouri on, and calling upon eastern capitalists
to open a national highway to Pike's Peak and California. Missouri
to-day is richer by millions on millions by the settlement of Kansas
by free men. All her hopes of competition with the free northern
states are based upon what you are doing, and can do, and will do,
to make a Pacific railroad through to the Pacific ocean. Never was
policy of any state more suicidal ; for either she is to be forever a
slave state, as she desires to be, or she had better have been free from
the beginning. If she is a slave state, she must be a planting state
merely, and the value of her land would be nearly worthless — for,

VOL. IV. 50

894 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

on an average, the value of land in a free state is exactly threefold
the value of land in a slave state. Then, if Misvsouri wants to be a
slave state, the wisest thing she can do is to do on the west what she
has done on the east, namely, consent to be surrounded with free,
prosperous states.

These free states which you are building in Kansas and Nebraska
are showing and opening the true national highway to the Pacific
ocean. You are producing around Missouri the influences which
they dread and call abolitionizing. I don't know any way in
which such an operation can be done with so much quietness as to
go round her, and leave her to abolitionize herself. She will do it,
too, because Missouri has got capital, and she will find out that if
she is a slave state and Kansas free, Kansas, in twenty years, will
send more members to congress than Missouri — and people, though
slaveholders, don't like to give up political power.

Another lesson which this occasion teaches us, is instructive in an
eminent degree. When Missouri, in 1820, compelled congress to
admit her as a slave state, and in 1854 to abrogate the Missouri
compromise, and in 1856 drove all freemen from Kansas, in order
to have slavery in Kansas, she did not see how futile would be her
efforts. Missouri obtained these concessions for slavery from the
general government, not because the people of the United States
love slavery, but because they love the Union. But all the efforts
of the slave power were defeated by bands of emigrants from
New England, from New York and other eastern states, from Ger
many and Ireland — who came up the Missouri river, fearless of
cannons, and found the slaveholders here armed; and they drove
them out of the territory, and established what is called an " Aboli
tion " territory — making it a place for connection by the " Under
ground Eailroad " with every state. Who would have believed
that this could have been done, and that we should have met here
to-day to celebrate it with all kinds of demonstrations — by the firing
of cannon, by dinners and balls — and the Union be just as safe now
as it was before ?

Another consideration. It is not our choice, fellow citizens, that
our lot as a people is cast upon a continent, and that we are so con
stituted that in spite of ourselves we must become, sooner or Inter,
the possessors of the whole, continent of North America, from Bud-
son's bay to the gulf of Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic

THE DESTINY OF FREEDOM. 395

coast. France and Spain and Great Britain, who formerly occupied
vast possessions on this continent, have been gradually giving way,
retiring. Every year they are weaker, and it is only a question of
fifty or one hundred years, before we shall be masters of the
American confederacy or republic, over all this.

Now, a government which is to be extended over a continent
needs wealth ; it needs riches. A great government needs wealth
in proportion to its extent; its people mast have wealth as an
element of their happiness and prosperity. It is utterly contempti
ble and ridiculous to say, that the continent of North America,
instead of being peopled by free men, who are willing to take it at
forty acres apiece and enrich it, — instead of this, to turn off all these
free laborers, and get slaves from Africa at two hundred dollars a
head. What wealth have they in the slave states ? I much mistake
if the people of Kansas would, ten years hence, exchange their
wealth for that of the Old Dominion — slaves included.

Great nations require something more than wealth ; they need
intelligence, vigor and energy among the people. You are to-day
planted here, where, if, as they apprehend, the slaves become dis
contented, and the people of the slave states are to be protected, you
are the very men upon whom they must rely for that protection ;
you are the men to defend them ; you must also raise the means to
defend the national flag upon every sea, and over all this continent.
Give men freedom ; then every freeman will give you a return — an
equivalent for it; deny them that, and every man becomes an alien,
an enemy, under the government. You remember how feeble and
defenseless we free state men were ten years ago ; you see now that
we are established upon the Pacific ocean and in Kansas in the centre
of the continent, and we might almost say that —

" We are monarchs of all we survey."

This success, this power, has been obtained — how ? It has been
obtained amid reproach, invective, against force, fraud, and the
power of the federal government. This success will soon be made
still more apparent by the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presi
dency. And this victory has been built upon nothing except those
smooth, round pebbles with which we laid the foundations — and
the storms of earth and hell shall not prevail against it.

396 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

It Reminds me of that beautiful island of Capri, on which the
rocks are piled in native deformity, but in native strength, upon
whose summits I found the ruins of the palaces of Domitian and
Nero. Yet when I entered a cavern on the shore, I found that the
whole island rested on a foundation of coral.

These are the considerations which present themselves to me on
coming among you. I have kept nothing back. Henceforth, if my
confidence in the stability of the American Union wavers, I shall
come here to learn that the Union is stronger than human ambition,
because it is founded in the affection of the American people. If
ever I shall waver in my affection for freedom, I shall come up here
and renew it — here under the inspiration of one hundred thousand
freemen, saved from slavery. Henceforth, these shall not be my
sentiments alone, but the sentiments of ALL. Men will come up to
Kansas as they go up to Jerusalem. This shall be a sacred city.

For my brethren and companions' sake, then, I say — peace be
within your walls, and plenteousness in all your cabins, soon to
become palaces. And now, people of Kansas, once more HAIL!
and at the same time, Farewell.

THE POLICY OF THE FATHEES OF THE REPUBLIC.

SENECA FALLS, OCTOBER 31, 1860.

A CRISIS in individua] life is when a man passes through some
perilous accident, or surmounts some apprehended mortal disease ;
or else when he falls before the danger, or succumbs to the disease
and dies. A political crisis, such as we so often hear of, is the
period in which a nation — for a nation is but a person, a human
person consisting of many persons- -surmounts some national dis
ease or avoids some national peril, and takes new assurance and
long life, or failing to surmount it, suddenly or slowly languishes
and dies. And politicians, availing themselves through the in
fluence of interest or passion, tell us very often that the town in
which we live, or the state in which we belong, or the country of
which we are members, is in a crisis, misjudging, because a crisis
occurs but seldom even in the course of individual life, and at very
distant periods in the life of a nation. But on all hands there is an
agreement now that this republic of ours is in a crisis, and I, for
one confess, as I believe it to be true, if this republic passes safely
through this crisis, it takes assurance of long endurance — practically
of immortality ; and if it fails to pass safely through this crisis, it
will languish and die. To know how to pass safely through a crisis,
it is necessary to understand its nature, and to understand the nature
of the present national crisis it will be necessary for us to go back
to the beginning.

I said we must go back to the beginning, and the moment that we
go back to the beginning of our national existence we perceive the
fact, clear, unmistakable and uncontested, that this nation was to be,
not a monarchy, not an aristocracy, but a republican nation. That
can be a republican nation only which is a free nation ; and if free
dom or liberty is a vital principle of every republican government,
or every republican state, that principle is that the people must be
free and must be equal. When we say that the people of a country

398 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

are free and equal, we say precisely that that nation enjojrs civil and
religious liberty, and that all, practically all, of its citizens enjoy
the rights and safety of their persons, of freedom in the pursuit of
hnppiness, which involves freedom of speech, freedom of thought,
freedom of suffrage, and above all freedom of religious conscience.

This you will all recognize, at once, as the nature of the republic
which our fathers intended to establish, and which we all confess,
and the world confesses, that they did establish. It did not mean
that every human being within the jurisdiction of the govern
ment when it was first established was, or must immediately be,
entirely free. That was impossible, because slaves and slavery
existed in the land at that time, and there was no process by which
every human being in the United States? on the first organization
of the government, could be emancipated, if in bondage, and raised
up to freedom ; but it did mean this : that the great mass of the peo
ple were, and should remain forever free ; that slavery should be sub
ordinate, inferior in its position to freedom, and that freedom should
be the general and normal condition of the country ; that there
after all the changes shall be, not from freedom toward slavery,
but from existing and tolerated slavery, upward toward freedom.
This was all that could have been done in the country, at that time,
and this country was in a better condition to establish a free govern
ment, than any other people that had then existed on the face of the
globe.

I call your attention, then to this fact, that there were thirteen of
those states — that this was not to be a consolidated nation, consisting
of only one people, and one jurisdiction alone, like France, or like
Russia, but that it did consist of thirteen equal states, and that
these states were to remain thereafter, and until the end of time ;
and each of them should be, in a large degree, sovereign states —
and all of them, of course, should be equal. That this was to be in
the beginning a republic of thirteen states, and that, as time should
advance, the number should increase to twenty, up to thirty — at
which standard we have already arrived — and in distant years forty,
fifty, or sixty states — a thing not impossible, scarcely improbable, for
in; ny to see who are not older than the lad who sits upon the stage
before me.

Now none of these states, practically none, with the exception of
Massachusetts, scarcely worth noticing — no one of these states had

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. o99

fin entire population of freemen. There were slaves in every state,
and slavery was commingled with freemen in each one, and through
the whole country. But, nevertheless, freedom was recognized, and
not slavery, in founding the federal government, as the element which
prevailed in every one of these thirteen states ; and what was to be
done was to take care that freedom, and not slavery, should predomi
nate in all the other states, which, under any circumstances and at
any period, however remote, might be adopted into the Union.

There was, as you see, slavery existing then in every state in the
newly formed Union — and there was freedom existing in it, and
these two were in conflict. Let the silly person who denies that
there is a conflict between freedom and slavery wherever they exist
in the country, and that that conflict is irrepressible, answer me.
Let him answer rne whether, taking the Declaration of Independence,
which was the first utterance of the American nation, he does not
read there in the very first sentence of that utterance the existence
of a conflict between freedom and slavery?

He certainly will read there the declaration that " all men are
created equal, and have inalienable rights to life and liberty and the
pursuit of happiness." Did they assert a mere truism which all the
world accepted, and upon which all the world have based all their
institutions, or did they assert a truth that other people beside the
American nation denied and rejected ? They asserted a truth which
only this nation, and none before this had ever asserted, and which
was disputed in this country at the time, and was in dispute, and* is
in dispute still over the whote face of the globe.

Let rne ask the silly person who denies that there is an irrepres
sible conflict between freedom and slavery, whether every page of
the history of the United States does not bear testimony to the con
flict between freedom and slavery for the period of eighty years that
this Union has endured ? What else have we had from the begin
ning but attempts to compromise — compromises and breaches of
compromises of the dispute between freedom and slavery — and if it
was so in the beginning and has been so through the middle, how is
it now ? Upon what issue is the American people divided in this
political crisisT except a conflict between freedom and slavery? So,
unless this conflict shall end in the manner appointed by Him who
created and called into existence all nations, as he did all men, and
is in favor of the right, so it will be an irrepressible conflict

400 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

until this nation shall cease to exist, and shall give place to some
other in which the same conflict shall be renewed.

There was then a conflict between freedom and slavery in the begin
ning, and our fathers had to choose between freedom and slavery as
the elemental and vital principle of the republic. Our fathers, dif
fering from their descendants, widely differing from you, strange
that it should be so, were unanimous in accepting and adopting free
dom and rejecting slavery as the elemental and vital principle of the
republic. And not one statesman of them all proposed at any time
that all the American states, all of which practically were then slave-
holding states, should continue and remain forever slaveholding
states, and that every new state which should corne into the Union
through the course of ages, should also be a slave state. If there
was one such statesman in any one of those thirteen slave states,
pray name him to me, because his name and action have escaped my
reading of history. Not one statesman of the republic proposed an
equilibrium or a balance in which freedom should be one principle
and slavery another in the United States. That is to say, that one-
half of the states should be free states and that the other half of the
states should be slave states, and that each should remain free or
slave through all time as they were at the beginning, and that the
future states one-half to be admitted to be free and the other half to be
slave, and they should remain so forever. If I am mistaken in this,
if there was any statesman of that day who proposed an equal
balance between freedom and slavery, I pray you to name him to
me, because his name has escaped my reading of history. Not one
statesman in any part of this republic proposed to leave the matter
to accident or choice, to let freedom and slavery balance each other,
or the one to prevail over the other, as it might, careless whether
freedom was voted up or voted down, whether slavery was voted up
or voted down. If there is one of these political philosophers pro
posing the theory of indifference or practising it, I pray you to
name him to me, because I have been unable to find it inscribed
upon the history of the fathers of the republic.

Now there was a way in which this Union could have been estab
lished upon either of these three principles. There was a way in
which this could haive been made a republic, not of freedom, but of
slavery. And if there had been statesmen who desired such a gov
ernment, the process would have suggested itself to them, it is very

SLAVE STATES AND FKEE STATES. 401

simple, and they would have propounded it to the convention which
formed and to the people who accepted our state and federal consti
tution ; and it was this : Prohibit emancipation in all the thirteen
states; prohibit emigration of foreigners from all countries into the
United States, or any of them, because foreigners were free men ,
deny naturalization to the foreigner who is found here, and leave
him practically disfranchised, and therefore in the class of slaves;
perpetuate the African slave trade, so that for all time to come the
future inhabitants of the United States, upon whom they must depend
for labor and for the great business of society, should be African
slaves ; declare slavery to be not only existing and the law of the
land in each state, but declare that it shall be perpetual. Declare
this and take one step more. Let the federal government, the con
gress of the United States, shut up the common domain upon which
the future states were to be created, that domain stretching between
the river Ohio and the great lakes to the Mississippi ; declare that
that domain shall be open hereafter, not to freemen at all, but only
to slaveholders and slavery. Now you see how easy it would have
been at that day, by adopting this simple programme, to have made
not the free republic which our fathers bequeathed to us, but a slave
republic, from the Atlantic ocean to the Mississippi river, and from
the St. Lawrence to the St. Mary's, which were the original bounda
ries of the republic.

There was a way also for the statesmen of that day, if that had
been what they desired and what they meant, to make a republic-
in which freedom and slavery should be held in equilibrium and
remain so forever. How was this to be done? Divide the thirteen
orgirial states so that in just one-half of the territory freedom:
should exist and slavery be unknown, and in the other half slavery
should exist and freedom be unknown. Admit, of all the future
states, just one-half free, and the other half slave ; open your ports
to the emigrant from Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany,
Holland and Switzerland; admit just one-half of white labor of the
country free, keep open the African slave trade, and admit and
receive the other half of the labor of African slaves — here you
would have had that perfect equilibrium between freedom and
slavery which those who oppose the republican party say is exactly
the condition in which the country can live and flourish, and to-
which they propose to bring it by the policy upon which they insist.

VOL. IV. .31

402 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

There was a way also for a third system to be established — the
don't know and don't care system — that is, that it shall be a repub
lic of freedom or slavery, just as time and chance and accident shall
determine. How was that to be done? Why, if there had been
any statesman of the order of Mr. Douglas at that time, he would
have taken great care that the congress of the United States should
have no power to abolish the African slave trade, but it should have
power to admit at the same time foreign emigrants and naturalize
them, and that congress should be pledged by the constitution to
admit a state, slave or free, just as it should come when it offered
itself, without resistance, and he would have taken good care to have
the supreme court bound up so it should not interfere with the ques
tion, and when that was done, and when that course had been
adopted, then the slaveholders would have been invited to carry as
many slaves into the territories — new territories — as they could, and
the foreign laborers to go in as freely as they could, and as soon as
they got into the territory begin to vote it up or vote it down, or vote
both ways, as they chose ; or, when they were to vote it up or down,
tiien invite the slaveholders of other states to interfere on the side
of slavery, and then, failing to be able to settle it at the ballot box,
just resort to cannon and rifle, and what they could not vote up or
vote down, they would fight up or fight down.

It is not needful for me to say, that such a republic as would have
been adopted upon either of these three principles could not have
existed seventy years. It is not necessary to prove that it could not,
and therefore I pass it by, although it is my own opinion that a
republican government that can stand at all, must stand upon the
principle of liberty paramount to slavery. The people of the coun
try, then, having these three systems before them, adopted one
entirely different from them all, and that was the principle of making
freedom paramount in the "federal government, everywhere, so far
as they could, to the principle of slavery. We have grown to our
present growth upon this principle, and it has become the fixed and
settled habit of our national life — we live, hereafter, if we continue in
the habit of preserving freedom of labor paramount to slavery, and
we perish whenever we change that habit; — for it is with nations as
it is with individuals — the nation that forsakes and abandons the
habit of health which is essential in its very constitution, declines
and perishes as the consequence of the departure. How was this

THE SYSTEM OF THE FATHERS. 403

principle of freedom paramount to slavery established ? The fathers
encouraged every one of the thirteen original slave states to emanci
pate their slaves just so soon as they could consistently with the
interest and the comfort of society then existing. It proposed to
nobody to abolish slavery all at once, to substitute freedom all at
once ; it is neither the course of nature nor the course of human
wisdom to do anything of a sudden ; but time enters and is an essen
tial element in all human transactions which are wise. Then they
prohibited the African slave trade, not all at once, because that
might produce a shock if suddenly done. But they prohibited it
•after twenty years, and said to the slaveholders and those in the
slaveholding interest, "Make good use of your time; twenty years
you may import the black bondman into the country, and hold him
there, but after that period there shall never be another slave im
ported into this Union, whether its institutions be free or slave insti
tutions." They took one further step, and that is, they invited the
foreigners of all lands, the free men of all lands, of all conditions
and all climates, into the country to fill up the vacuum or void which
was to be made by preventing the importation of slaves, and de
clared that on giving evidence of character and loyalty, they should
all become citizens of the United States equal with the native ; aye,
even with the first-born of the republic. They took one further
step, and that was, to make all the future states that should be
admitted into the Union become, not slave, but free states, 'by just
building a wall along the bank of the Ohio river, where all these
new states were to be erected, and said, this shall be free soil, and it
shall never be trodden by the foot of the slave, and every state that
shall be erected here shall not be a slave but a free state.

Having just accepted these few simple measures, the fathers sat
themselves down contentedly and said to themselves: "It has been
well and wisely done. True, we have not all free states and univer
sal freedom, and for the present we have more slave states than free ;
but we have so arranged the forces of freedom and slavery in the
balance that in sixty years there will be more free states than slave
states ; in eighty years there will be twice as many free states as
slave states, and in one hundred years there will scarcely be a slave
state ; and at some period, within a hundred or five hundred or a
thousand years, every man under the government of the United
States will be a freeman, and slavery anywhere will exist only as a

404 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

relic of barbarism and inhumanity." Does any man deny now that
this was well and wisely done ? If he does, then he must wish that
it had never been done — he must wish that this wise and judicious
arrangement had never been made. Let us see, then, what would
have been the consequence. Take a single state. If this arrange
ment which I have related to you had not been made, this state oF
New York, which, in the beginning, when the system was adopted,
held every seventeenth person a slave, would have been a slave-
state now. Does any man living in this state, or out of it, in any
slave state, in any foreign country, is there a man who so hates the
state of New York, and so much hates the human race that he
would be willing to have this, not as it is now, a free state, but a slave-
state? There is not one wheel on this river that would be in motion
if this were a slave state ; there is not one mine of salt or iron — and
we are not wealthy in mineral resources — that would not have closed
up. The city of New York, a metropolis worthy of a great state,,
a metropolis worthy of a great nation, a metropolis worthy of a great
continent, rapidly advancing to be the first and greatest city of
modern times, and first, therefore and greatest, of all the cities that
ever existed in the great tide of time — what would it have been now
if this had been left to be a slave state instead of a free state ?
Strange inconsistency ! You are all contented. Everybody is con
tented with society as they find it in the state of New York. We
would not be changed backward for anything We must be free.
But if there are any who think this condition is confined to the state
of New York, go then, through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connec
ticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Mich
igan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa,* and even Kansas,
after the controversy is ended, and I ask where is the human being on
the face of this earth that is so hateful of human happiness, so hate
ful of the good and welfare of his -country and of his race, that he
would be willing to have freedom excluded from that state, and
slavery introduced in its place.

Suppose for a moment, that in this state, instead of adopting the
policy of the fathers, making this free, and seeking to make all the
other states free within the range of its constitutional powers, — sup
pose it had been a slave state, what kind of freedom would the free
men in it enjoy ? What would they be enjoying to-day ? Not free
dom of speaking just what they think, or writing just what they

A NATION FREE OR SLAVE. 405

think, or thinking just as they please, of worshiping God in every
form, with every ritual that suits their own conscience ; but they
would have liberty to write, to speak, to think, to vote, to pray just
exactly what the slaveholders desire them to write, speak, print, vote
and pray. Is anybody then discontented or dissatisfied with the
existing condition of things in the country ? Not a man. Every
body is satisfied that it was rightly and wisely ordered in the begin
ning. If there be anybody who is discontented, I pray him to
speak. Is this country all too free for you ? Is there any danger of
its ever going to be so much more free as to be too free for you? Is
the republic already too great for you, and you would have it less,
or contract it in its dimensions ? Is the republic too rich, too pros
perous, our people too happy for you? Its commerce, the second of
any nation in the whole world, is it too broad, is it too enriching, is
it too refining, that you would have it reduced ? Not at all. Shall
the influence of this nation be broken up, and aristocratic and des
potic systems extended over the whole world? Do you dislike this,
would you have this a miserable slave republic which would be men
tioned in the councils of kings and emperors and the conclaves of
aristocrats, not with respect and honor, and fear, as it is now, but
with scorn, contempt and reproach ? No I No ! There is nobody
wants the country less prosperous, less great, less free, less powerful
than it is now.

But, going on just exactly in the track which was laid out for it
by the fathers, it is going to be so much greater than it is now, so
much broader, so much wiser and happier, aye, and even so much
more free, that those who come fifty years after us, will wonder at our
contentment with being satisfied with such a country as we then had.
Now, does anybody want to arrest it? The way that all this is to
happen is by multiplying the free states in the west, and taking care,
as fast as possible, to see that slavery is reduced and diminished in
the old states, not by any force that anybody is to apply, for there
never was force contemplated nor used, but simply by teaching, by
example, that compensated labor is more productive of wealth and
happiness in a society, than slave labor, that morality is better than
-crime, and humanity is better than inhumanity, and that virtue is
the surest and safest guide to national prosperity and greatness.
But if anybody does want anywhere to arrest the growing pros
perity and greatness of the republic, there is one simple way to do

406 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

it. I can show him exactly how to do it. Encourage all the slave
states to continue and to perpetuate slavery forever, reopen the Afri
can slave trade, and open the public domain to slave states instead
of free, and the whole thing is done, secured to be done at least, in
the twinkling of an eye. I am sure that you do not want such a
sad perverseness to come over the people of this country as to pro
duce such a shock and such a change. Kather with me you would
continue contented, and with the fathers reducing and circumscribing
slavery just as they did, and as vigilantly as they did, and then wait
to see Canada and all British America to the shores of Hudson Bay,
and Eussian America to Behrings Straits, and Spanish America to
the Isthmus of Panama, and perhaps to Cape Horn, all coming into
this republic as they would come, voluntarily, as they could not be
kept from coming, — it would require the sword to prevent, — if you
would only admit them as equal states and carry to them the bless
ings of your free states, but not the curse of slave states.

Well, it is sad to confess that just what I have been stating to you
as the great problem of our government, is the very question in tins
canvass. The question in this canvass is, whether we shall keep this,
nation a republic of freedom, or reverse all its policy and henceforth
make it a republic of slavery. It were better if it were to be a slave
republic, better that it were made so in the beginning, than that it
should have been deferred to us to have committed such a crime
against mankind, and change now from freedom to slavery. When
the national pulse is healthiest, when the whole form of the nation
is rounded out and full, and when its habit of existence is freedom,
to change that by injecting slavery into its veins, would be to smite
it immediately with a poison under which it would languish for a
time, and dissolve and die. It could have been made a slave repub
lic in the beginning peacefully. It could be made a slave republic
now only by revolution, resulting in civil war and anarchy.

But how does this question arise? It arises in this way. There
is nobody discontented among us ; but south of Mason and DixonV
line there is discontentment, and unhappiness, and despondency, and
a feeling amounting almost to despair. South of the Delaware liver,
I should have said, are six states which, like the other seven, at the
beginning were slave states, which declined to take the advice and
counsel of the fathers, as the seven did, and kept and continued
slavery, ai>d they retain it yet. They are discontented, they are

-

THE DISCONTENTED STATES. 407

unhappy. Have they suffered from this being made a free republic ?
If so, will any one here who sympathizes with them, and they Lave
many of that class, will any one tell me what wrong, what injurious
measure any one or all the slave states in this republic have ever
suffered from the policy which has made this and kept this a free
republic?

Have the}?- not enjoyed freedom? Have they not enjoyed the
freedom of having slavery, and has any one deprived them of the
right or the power? Has any one enjoined upon them, or enforced
upon them, an unwilling duty ? Not one. Have they been taxed
oppressively ? They have submitted to equal taxation, and no other
can be enforced. Have they not enjoyed equal representation ? Aye,
a representation equal to those of the free states, with the addition
of three-fifths of all the slaves. They complain of no wrong, of no
suffering that they have endured, and they could riot complain, for
they themselves have administered the government itself for the
whole period of fifty years. They make no complaint against the
government and its action, as they could not, because they were .
exercising the government, the free states having resigned it to their
hands in contentment. What then is the character and ground of
their discontent? Nothing but this: That slavery, confined to the
natural increase of slave labor, and being by its nature inert and
without vigor and force, that slavery does not produce prosperity
for them equal to the prosperity which free labor and freedom pro
duce for the states which abolished slavery. This is the whole of
all the complaint they have — that we of the free states prosper more
than they of the slave states ; they under the system of their choice,
however, and we under the system of our choice. They have still
another complaint, and that is this: That free states multiply so rh.-it
where we had in the beginning only one free state, and they had the
other twelve, they have now only fifteen slave states, and we have
eighteen free states, without counting the last and youngest one,
which they still continue to deny to us.

This discontentment it is that works upon them to desire to pro
duce a change. What is that change now which they desire and
which they are seeking to produce, and can be produced only by our
consent, and we can do nothing without taking their voice? It is to
make no more free states, or to make less, or to reduce the number
of free states in the republic by admitting hereafter slave states, and

408 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

enable them to provide the material for these slave states by consent
ing to reopen the African slave trade, and thereby reject the free and
voluntary emigrant from Europe, excluding with him our own chil
dren from the common soil of the republic.

And now I corne to the question, how it happens that we are in
the crisis which I describe and confess? It is that for the sake of
peace and harmony we have gone so far with them, conceded to their
discontent so long, that they have proceeded in direct opposition to
the action of all the social causes in the country. They have pro
cured from the congress of the United States laws, from the presi
dent of the United States judgments, which all lead directly to enable
them, if we do not prevent the further passage of such laws, if we
<lo not prevent the further issuing of such edicts, if we do not pre
vent the further registering of such decrees, to reopen the African
slave trade, causing the territories which shall come in hereafter as
states to be slave territory and not free territory, or at least so large
i\ number of them as to subvert the balance of freedom which has
J>een established, and to introduce slavery as an element in the con
stitution of the republic.

Now, fellow citizens, I speak not unconscious of the place where
I stand. I am surrounded by citizens of the county of Seneca.
That one county, which has been known to me intimately for a long
period, that one county lying between two beautiful lakes, transpa
rent as crystal, with a soil as rich as ever the human hand subjected
to supply the wants of man, a county in the very center of western
New York, which stood persistently, — I will not say obstinately, —
stood fixed in resisting and in dissenting from the people of all the
counties of all the region around it, and maintaining continually
toleration, not for freedom, but for slavery, concession not to freedom,
but concession to slavery, and for nearly forty years that I have
known it, a balance of one or two hundred votes turned the scale,
it ever it did turn, in favor o^f freedom (God be praised!) and the
balance turned it nine-tenths of the time I think in favor of human
bondage. I know where I stand. I know where you stand. I
know that this persistency in maintaining arid defending slavery
here, while not you but your neighbors of Cayuga and Wayne,
Ontario and Tompkins, and all the other people of this state, have
arrested the footsteps of the invader of slavery in Kansas, and turned
him back.

THE COUNTY OF SENECA. 409

I know you have not had this design — God knows there is no such,
perverseness among men that they can be insensible to the difference
between right and wrong, justice and injustice, liberty and slavery,
humanity and cruelty. You have done it simply because you would
not listen. You had your guides, grown up men as you are ; from
childhood up you had your parties — your whig party, and your
American party, and your democratic party. And they had their
leaders, and you must take care of the welfare of your leaders. You
must see that they were sent to the legislature, and sent to congress,
sent to the public offices, and you had no time to listen to those who
told you that the man that you call your leader is but the ephemeris
of the day, that he perishes to-morrow, but freedom or slavery is the
interest of humanity for all countries, for all ages.

TRADE IN SLAVES.1

WE may call slavery by gentle names or modest terms, but slavery
is nothing less than the trade in slaves, for it makes merchandise of
the bodies and souls of men. The fifteen states have the right and
have the power, the unquestionable and undeniable power, to carry
on this trade in slaves within those fifteen states themselves. We
do not interfere with them. We have no right to interfere with
them. They are sovereign on that subject, and are exempt from
our control. But when it comes to the Federal Union — the Union
which is the government over us all — there their right to trade in
slaves in the territories of the United States has ceased, because the
constitution is a constitution to establish justice, not injustice; to
maintain peace not by force, but by the consent of the governed, and
to perpetuate, not the curse of slavery, but the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and to our posterity forever. This Union is this
nation — is this empire of thirty millions of people. It is not made
for mere trade, much less for trade in the bodies and souls of men.
It is made for the happiness of the people, for the development of
the material resources of the country, to guarantee peace and safetv
to every citizen in this broad land, and to guarantee him in the full
enjoyment of all his rights of life, liberty and property. It opens
to him this vast continent for the pursuit of happiness, and by its
power acting on the governments of the old world and of the new,
it makes the American citizen the citizen of the world.

1 Extract from a speech at La Crosse, Wis., September 14, 1860.

VOL. TV. 52

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND SECESSION.

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 2, 1860.

IT would surprise, I doubt not, the citizens of the metropolis, who
meet daily on 'Change, and who are found at night in the political
and social circles, if I were to claim that I, whose home is in a dis
tant rural district, feel an equal interest and an equal pride in the
prosperity and greatness of New York. And yet I know not why
I should not. The city, and the country around which sustains it,
are not separate and isolated from each other, but they are parts of
one whole. The town stands by common consent for town and
country. Certainly an inhabitant of the suburbs may justly feel
that he shares in all the pride and in all the glory of the city, as he
certainly is seldom altogether exempt from its misfortunes and disas
ters. But when a city extends its dimensions so far on all sides as
to make the state its suburbs, and when, extending still further, it
embraces the most remote regions of the country within its suburbs,
then he who lives outside, as well as he who resides within the city
gates, feels his heart warm with the impulses of patriotism, for the
town and the country have become one.

In the spirit, then, of such a pride in the city in which we stand
as a patriot may feel, I shall hope that I can speak profitably, if I
treat of the political questions of the canvass in their relations to the
metropolis of the country. In the beginning of our history the city
of New York was as unconscious of its then future destiny as the
country was ignorant itself of the destiny of the city. At the begin
ning of this century, it was a small provincial town. It had just
lost the seat of the federal government. Its inland navigation was
all included in a sloop navigation from New York bay to the over
slaugh at Albany, together with the navigation of Long Island
sound. Public-spirited citizens of New York cast about to see what
they could do to continue the prosperity which New York had then
recently enjoyed in consequence of its being the federal capital.

EAKLY HISTORY OF THE CITY. 411

They concluded that it was useless to try to make a commercial city
on New York bay, because the commerce of the country was des
tined to be enjoyed by Boston and Philadelphia; and the wise men
of the day, after casting around for all other resources, finally con
cluded that this island, upon which we stand, was exactly the best
spot in the whole country for the establishment of schools, which, by
bringing in pupils from large portions of the surrounding country,
would make a tolerably fair town on Manhattan island. I do not
know whether the experiment was attempted, but if it was, there is no
doubt that New York was soon distanced in the race of education by
Princeton and New Haven. I do not know whether the people of
New Jersey and the people of Connecticut had better qualifications
for instructing the young, but I must confess — and I speak it, never
theless, with reverence — that the Scotch, the English and the Irish
schoolmasters and the Dutch, which New York city then employed,
if they were to be judged by those they sent out into the rural dis
tricts in my childhood, were not altogether the best qualified persons
for the task of public education.1

Manhattan island fell, by the dispensation of a wise Providence,
within the circuit of a great state and a great nation, and although
that state and that nation thought little and cared less for the city
of New York, yet, like a great state and a great nation that thought
deeply, they thought long and they cared wisely for themselves.
The state owned a broad region, rich in forest, mineral, agricultural
and manufacturing resources, lying south of the St. Lawrence and
west of the falls at Cohoes. Any one could see that a great and
flourishing state must arise here if this great region could be peo
pled with free men, intelligent men, and if its settlers could be
furnished with facilities for access to this, the only seaport within
the state. The United States owned a still greater domain, lying
just west of the domain of New York, stretching to the Mississippi
river, and bounded north by the lakes and south by the river Ohio.
Everybody did see that the United States must become a great
-nation if they could spread the civilization of intelligent freemen over
this vast domain, and could connect the seat of that flourishing por
tion of the country with an adequate seaport on the Atlantic coast.
Manhattan island stood just exactly in the point to which all the

'Here there were cries of " Three cheers for William H. Seward, the father of free schools!''

412 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

commerce of western New York, all the commerce of western
America must converge, if only the right policy was adopted to
concentrate that commerce here. To make this great state and this
great nation it required legislation ; not any exercise of power or of
force, but only proper and wise legislation to direct and invigorate
the existing social forces among us. Therefore, nobody at that day
proposed to conquer any additional territory, or to subjugate foreign
nations for the purpose of increasing the greatness of our own.
What did it require? You will see in a moment what it required
from what was done. In all the state of New York, then, there
were only three hundred thousand inhabitants, and of these, every
seventeenth person was an African slave. There were in the United
States only four millions of people, and of this sum half a million
were African slaves. Everybody could see that a great state could
not be built in New York upon the basis of a population consisting
•of only three hundred thousand souls — a white population. Every
body could see that a great nation could not be created in the United
States upon a basis of only four millions of souls, and that at that
time the element of increasing force was the increase of African
negroes instead of white citizens, as well in the state of New York
as in the United States. The reason was an obvious one. The
African slave trade was in full force, and it was vigorously exer
cised for the profits of the white man ; and much as men may
denounce the assertion of an irrepressible conflict between freedom
and slavery in the same community, it was apparent and manifest
then that this importation of African negroes amounted to an exclu
sion of European freemen. There was a bounty, a bonus upon
negroes, and there were expenses, burdens, costs and losses upon
white men.

I do not know how it is — it is for these philosophers who deny
the irrepressible conflict to-day to tell how it is — that so early as that
it was, as it has been to this day, that wherever a state will admit
imported African negroes, voluntary emigrants from Ireland, Eng
land and Germany will not go. What was to be done ? To make
this great state, and this great nation, manifestly required to dimin
ish the vigor of the African labor force — to diminish it and arrest it,
and on the other hand to stimulate and invigorate the force of free
emigration. Does anybody doubt that? It required, secondly, a
system of internal improvements to be commensurate with the great-

THE EARLY POLICY. 41S

ness of the regions which were thus to be inhabited, and it required
that the free labor population should be educated and trained so as
to be able to maintain a republican government. This thing required
the cooperation of the federal legislature, and of the state legislature.
The federal legislature addressed themselves to their work in the
convention which framed the constitution, and in the congress which
succeeded the constitution. These three federal legislative efforts
settled the whole matter in a manner simple and practical. It did
not extirpate or attempt to extirpate African slavery. It did not
emancipate or attempt to emancipate the African slaves. It did not
even arrest at once the African slave trade ; but it did encourage all
the slave states to remove slavery themselves as soon as they practi
cally could without disturbing the peace and order and the interests
of society, of which the states were left the sole judges. The next
step that they took was to prohibit the African slave trade, not im
mediately, but after the expiration of twenty years, and to declare
that from and after that time no African slave should ever be intro
duced into the United States. They took one step now on the
side of free labor. They encouraged free labor by federal laws, by
inviting the emigrant from Europe, the exiled poor and pennilessr
no matter whether he were catholic or protestant, or Jew, or Greek,
or Gentile — no matter whether he were an Englishman, or a Ger
man, or a Pole, or a Hungarian — they invited him to come ; and
insomuch as the cost of transportation was great and the voyage
hazardous, they declared that he might sell his labor which he
should perform for years after his arrival to pay the expenses of his
transportation to this free land from his native soil. They took one
other broad and liberal step, and that was, they declared, by laws-
of uniform naturalization, that the freeman immigrating into this
country, from whatever land, should, after sufficient probation to
establish his character and his loyalty, be admitted as a citizen of the
republic, and of every state in it, too, whether free state or slave
state, on the same footing with the native born. They took one
more step, more effective than all the rest, and that is that they shut
up the whole of the unoccupied, unsettled, national domain, upon
which all the future states were to be erected — they shut it up
against slavery and the slave forever. This is what the federal
legislative authority did.

414 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

Hear, now, what the states did. The prize of commercial great
ness and glory was equally sought by the thirteen states. Seven
seconded the wise — I had almost said, and will say — the pious policy
of the federal government, and abolished slavery from all their bor
ders. Not all at once — not by violence — not by confiscation ; but
they took such measures in the year 1800 or thereabouts, that
whereas, in the year 1800 every twenty-eighth person was a slave, in
1828 not one slave was found upon the soil of the state of New York.
Six others of the states followed in the same policy. But six more,
— the more southern states — declined to pursue that policy, but they
still determined to compete for the great national commercial prize.
The state of New York had, in its early days, enlightened states
men — men who had not learned the demoralizing doctrine of the
times, that virtue and freedom enfeebled the state, and that slavery
is the necessary element of national greatness. Among the great
men and great statesmen and patriots of that early period were
Christopher Colles, Hamilton, Jay, the Clintons, Tompkins and
Rufus King; and coming later, but not unworthy of the noble asso
ciation, John W. Francis, of the city of New York. The thoughts
of these enlightened men, then called speculation and imagination,
filled the age in which they lived, and they projected, and there have
sin< e been completed all the great thoroughfares of commerce, from
New York bay to the St. Lawrence and the lakes. And other states
have continued the work until these same channels of intercourse
and commerce between the city of New York and other portions of
the continent now reach the very borders of our civilization in the
west. One thing more was necessary, and that was education — edu
cation for a free people. The foundation of a system of education,
equally fair, just and impartial, among all the classes of the citizens,
was laid in the state at an early day, and after much attention was
finally introduced and established permanently in the city of New
York. Here, fellow citizens, I have told you in these very few
words the whole foundation of all the prosperity of the state of New
York, which now, after a period of only sixty years, counts a popu
lation of four millions, and a commerce surpassing all the other
states, as well as the foundation of the prosperity of the United States,
which now, instead of four millions, counts thirty millions — and
which have established in the city of New York, as the one port
which alone was adequately adapted to the commerce inland, sur-

NEW YORK FOR FREEDOM. 415

passing that of any other capital, and a foreign commerce second only
to one in the world. Surely if, instead of being now before the
citizens of this metropolis of this great state of the United States,
I had told this story to a stranger in a foreign land, he would have
said: "You have told me of that Atlantis — that happy republic
which the ancient philosophers conceived, and the ancient poets sung,
and which the hard experience of mankind has hitherto proved to
be an impossibility and a fabrication."

And now for the future of New York. I, myself, when I was
even older than some beardless hearers before me, sought recreation
and rest out of the city of New York by hanging around the open
tomb of the Potters field, and what is now Washington square. I
think a very able and ingenious writer in a morning newspaper yes
terday called my attention to the fact that, to a certainty established
by demonstration, within a period of one hundred and fifty years
the population of the United States will be three hundred mil
lions — that it would surpass China. I doubt not his figures are accu
rate. What, then, is it to be fifty years hence? — for it is a gradual
progression. What a hundred years hence — only a hundred years —
is to be the magnitude and the population of the city of New York?
Take into view only one agency — two agencies — the combination of
the great state of New York arid of the United States in increasing
their own greatness, and the greatness and glory and magnificence of
New York city follow as its legitimate result. This commerce is to
be soon not merely a national commerce, but the commerce of the con
tinent of America. I need not tell you. that the port which enjoys
the commerce of the continent of America, commands at once the
commerce of the globe. You have now seen what it is, and you
have seen what has produced it. What remains is to consider what
is needful to secure that future for the city, as well as for the coun-
trv for which you as well as myself are necessarily and naturally and
justly so ambitious. What can it be, my dear friends? What can it
be that is needful to be done but to leave things to go on just exactly
as they have gone on hitherto ; to leave slavery to be gradually, peace
ably circumscribed and limited hereafter, as it has been hitherto, and
to leave the increase of our own white population, and the increase
by foreign immigration to go on just exactly as they are already
going on, and to leave the canals and railroads in full operation as
they are, and to leave your systems of education and toleration to

416 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

stand on the basis on which they now rest. There, if you please, is
what I understand by republicanism. I do not know what com
plexion it wears to your glasses, but I do know that men may call it
black, or green, or red, but to me it is pure, unadulterated republi
canism and Americanism.

That is the whole question in this political canvass. There is no-
more. If you elect that eminent, and able, and honest and reliable
man, Abraham Lincoln, to the presidency, and if, as I am sure you
will during the course of the next four years, you constitute the
United States senate with a majority like him, and at the present
election establish the house of representatives on the sameJbasis, you
have then done just exactly this: you have elected men who will
leave slavery in the United States just exactly where it is now, and
who will do more than that — who will leave freedom in the United
States, and every foot and every acre of the public domain, which
is the basis of future states, just exactly as it is now. There are
laws of congress; there are edicts of presidents and governors;
there are judgments or pretended judgments of the supreme court,
which have a tendency if they should stand, and if they should be
continued and renewed by future presidents, and future congressesr
and future judges of the supreme court, to change all this thing, to
put slavery over into the free states again, and to send slavery into,
and freedom out of the territories of the national domain. All that
we propose to do, all that you will do, and, God be thanked, all that
it is needful to do, is to take care that no more such laws, no more
such edicts, no more such judgments or pretended judgments shall
be rendered. Why, then, since it is so simple, shall you not go on
in the same way which was begun by your fathers, and which has
been prosecuted so long and with so much success ? They tell us
that we are to encounter opposition. Why, bless my soul, did any
body ever expect to reach a fortune, or fame, or happiness on earth,
or a crown in Heaven, without encountering resistance and opposi
tion ? What are we made men for but to encounter and overcome
opposition arrayed against us in the line of our duty. But whence
comes this opposition? What is it? I have already alluded to the
fact that fifty years ago, when the seven northern states abolished
slavery the six southern ones did not see their interest in the same
way, and they declined to second or adopt the policy of the day and
of the age, and having retained slavery, and the world found out

, NEW YORK AND NEW ORLEANS. 4:17

just about the same time the usefulness of cotton as a fabric or
material for human clothing, and an invention was made which
rendered 'its manufacture easy.

Then the slave states, retaining their slave labor, proceeded to
build up a great interest on the growth of cotton, and when they
had grown cotton, and made it a great material interest in the
country, they then fell down before it, and did homage to it. I do
not say they paid worship to it; but they anointed it king, and they
pronounced allegiance to cotton to be a political duty. Did any
body interfere with that homage? Did anybody complain of it?
Never. They were men at liberty, like ourselves, to raise a com
mercial and political king — a social king — within the republic. But
they set up the, throne in our midst, and said that we must bend
and bow to cotton. But from that requirement we have modestly
but firmly — not always very firmly, neither — but with tolerable
persistence, declined to comply. Now they find that this system
does not build up great states like New York, but on the other
hand that the six states which pursued their system have remained
stationary, or relatively so. The greatest and finest site for com
merce on this continent is New Orleans, and in early life I made a
pilgrimage there to see whether it was not true that New Orleans
was to supersede and supplant New York, the capital of my native-
state, as the seat of commerce on this continent. I found that
whereas there were some ten times the population in New York
that there was in New Orleans, that it was increasing in a ratio of
such magnitude that when New Orleans would have a quarter of a
million New York would have a million and a half. Shall I tell
you the reason ? I found it in the fact that when I went out in the
night in the city of New York, I saw the cobbler's light twinkling-
in his window in the gray of the morning or late at night. I saw
everything made, as well as sold, in New York ; but when I came
to the city of New Orleans I found there that everything was sold
and nothing was made. After trying in vain to find any article of
human raiment that was made in New Orleans, I did see upon a
sign opposite the St. Charles hotel this inscription : " "Wagons, carts
and wheelbarrows made and sold here." I said, I have found one
thing that is made in New Orleans! coarse wagons, carts and rough
and rude wheelbarrows, but on crossing to inspect the matter a little
more minutely, before entering it in my notes. I found that I tad

VOL. IV. 5:1

418 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

overlooked some words printed in smaller letters, " at New Haven,"
and that the sign was rightly to be read : " Wagons, carts and
wheelbarrows made at New Haven and sold here." Fellow citizens,
this is not a reproach. It is not spoken reproachfully, it would ill
become me to so speak it. But it is their system. They employ
slaves, and in New York — I was going to say that we employ, but
I think I will reverse it and say that freemen employ their masters,
the manufacturers. This is but an illustration. The principle is
the same in every department of industry and manufacture.

^.QW,.the_sJave. states ..nQLonly-biiild.no^ifiat.Qities, but they build
no great states, compared with these states — these free states. There
is one other distinction, and that is, the free states multiply and
replenish the continent with free states, but the slave states fail to
multiply and replenish the continent with slave states. And they
say that the reason is not in the nature of slavery and freedom,
relatively, themselves, but in the injustice of not allowing them to
establish slave territory ; and they are going to say next, as they
logically must, that they should reopen the African slave trade, and
so furnish the supplies for slavery. The opposition is founded upon
these facts; is it reasonable to concede to it? We cannot concede
to it unless we are willing to wreck the prosperity, and growth, and
greatness of our city, of our state and of our country. That would
seem an end of the argument, but they then resort to terror and to
menace. They tell us that they will withdraw their trade from the
city of New York, unless she will vote — unless her citizens will vote
— as they require them to vote — as their supposed interest dictates.
Is it best to yield to that? Why, New York is not a province of
Virginia or of Carolina, any more than it is a province of New
Jersey or Connecticut. New York is the metropolis of the country.
New York must be the metropolis of the continent. Her commerce,
like her principles, must be elevated, equal, just, impartial toward
every state. Toward freedom, at least, if it must be tolerant of
slavery. But they proceed to tell us that if we do not concede to
their demands they will secede and dissolve the Union. Will they?
Shall we then surrender? That involves the question whether they
will secede arid dissolve the Union if we do not. What then is it
we propose to do which they require us not to do? Why, it is
simply to vote for the man we prefer over the three men, or the no
man which they prefer. Is there any offense in that? That is just

SECESSION CONSIDERED. 419

what the constitution says we may do, and insomuch as there must
necessarily be differences of opinion among men, the constitution
requires every man to vote, not for the person somebody else has
selected, but the man he himself prefers to have elected. Well,
they say that they must nevertheless take offense, and we ask them
why, if this is right? "Why, yes, so far you are all right," say
thev. " Why, then, will you dissolve ? " They reply : " We
will dissolve because that Mr. Lincoln and a republican con
gress will commit aggressions upon us after they are elected."
u Very well," we say, " but is it not prudent — is it not reasonable —
to wait for them to be elected first, and then to commit the aggres
sions, or attempt to commit them ?" They answer, "No; we can
not afford to wait for the overt act, because that overt act may never
be committed, and if it shall be committed we shall have become so
much demoralized that we cannot resist after that." Well, I will
not argue the latter point, for I do believe better of them than they
proclaim of themselves. I know their humanity, their spirit, their
courage and their chivalry, and I know enough of human nature to
know also, that he that waits until an overt act is committed before
he strikes back, will be able to recover his rights a thousand times
sooner than he who strikes before any overt act is committed.

But why shall we expect that the president, Mr. Lincoln, and his
cabinet, and the congress, will commit aggressions against the slave
states? They cannot do it constitutionally, and what they cannot
constitutionally do cannot be done. Besides, who are these men
who are destined to commit these unconstitutional aggressions?
They are citizens of the LTnited States, chosen by their fellow citi
zens, as, if not altogether the best, yet from the best of every part
of these United States. Are they less likely to be honest, and just,
and wise, and prudent statesmen than the men selected from the
same constituency who have heretofore been chosen to fill the same
places? Aye, they tell us this republican party is driven on by
enthusiasts, and madmen, and fanatics, and these will control instead
of being restrained by their associates. This republican party that
next Tuesday is to elect Abraham Lincoln president of the United
States, what will it be but a majority of the American people? If
it is less than that it cannot elect anybody, and if it elects anybody
it will be precisely the same American people that has tolerated the
government in the abuse of constitutional powers, out of tenderness

420 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

to the south and to the slave states, for a period of fifty years. It
will be as forbearing still as it can be, and maintain the principles
of freedom, and to maintain those principles as I have already shown
yon, involves no action of the government in any unconstitutional
mode.

The election of a chief magistrate of a great republic of thirty
millions brings every party and every interest to use the best argu
ments to sustain its cause that it has. We give them the arguments
which have been submitted to you so often here, and which I have
attempted to renew to-night. They give us in return— what? De
nunciation and threat. Well, these are not a very effective, they
are not a very logical form of argument, but they are not to be
blamed who use them for that — they are all the arguments they
have. And what is it our duty to do? To threaten back again ?
To fulminate menace for menace and denunciation for denunciation ?
No ; but to listen and hear with patience, with kindness, with fra
ternal feeling and sympathy. For we do expect them to hear our
arguments, and our arguments are much harder to bear than theirs.
I do not think these threats before election are evidences of revolu
tion or disunion after the election, for the simple reason that I have
always found that the man who does intend to strike a fatal blow
does not give notice so long beforehand. And for ten, aye, twenty
years, these threats have been renewed, in the same language and in
the same form, about the first day of November every four years,,
when it happened to come before the day of the presidential election.

I do not doubt but that these southern statesmen and politicians-
think they are going to dissolve the Union, but I think they are
going to do no such thing ; and I will tell you in a very few words
why. He who in this country thinks that this government and this
constitution can be torn down, and that this Union of states can be
dissolved, has no faith — first, in the constitution ; he has no faith in
the Union, no faith in the people of the states, no faith in the people
of the Union, no faith in their loyalty, no faith in reason, no faith
in justice, no faith in truth, no faith in virtue. I am not unwilling
to see the members of that class of the American people brought
up, so that we may see them altogether. For my part, I, on the
contrary, have faith in the constitution, faith in the Union, faith in
the people of the states, faith in the people of the Union, faith in
freedom, faith in justice, faith in virtue, and faith in humanity. The

SECESSION CONSIDERED. 421

constitution and the Union have stood eighty years only upon the
foundation of such a faith existing among the American people. It
will stand and survive this presidential election, and forty presiden
tial elections after ; aye, I trust a hundred and a thousand, because
the people, since the government was established, have grown wiser,
more just, humane and virtuous than they were when it was esta
blished.

SECESSION AND DISUNION.1

IT has been said that Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and
Florida and South Carolina will go out, and then the Union will
be dissolved. They say, " you will not try to take us back ; you
will not dare to imbrue your hands in brothers' blood to reestablish
by force of conquest a Union which we have repudiated and dis
solved." They are right. We do not propose to do any such thing.
If it were possible I should like to see the experiment of old
Massachusetts going out and endeavoring to carry Plymouth rock
with her, or I would like to see New York go out and carry the
harbor and Catskill mountains with her. What do you think the
rest of the states would say? I think they would fold their arms
and see whether they behaved themselves, and they would let them
stay out just as long as they behaved themselves. Well, what would
they do if they got out and did not behave themselves? If New
York should levy taxes and imposts, and instead of paying them
into the national exchequer should keep them on her own account,
that would not be behaving well. Those who think that for nothing
or for any imaginary cause, the Union is to be dissolved or destroyed,
have no idea of the nature of the government under which they
live, or of the character of the people. Go on, then, and do your
duty. The lesson of public life is one that is easy to be learned.
It resolves itself simply into this — to ascertain, as you always can,
•what, in the day in which you live, is the great work for the welfare
of mankind ; do that work fearlessly, in the love of your fellow
men and in the fear of God, and the Union will survive you and me
.and your posterity for a thousand years.

1 Extract from a speech at La Crosse, Wis., Sept. 14, 1860.

THE NIGHT BEFOEE THE ELECTION.

AUBURN, NOVEMBER 5, 1860.

THE question, looking through this election to-morrow, and for
ward through many elections, presses home upon us, — whatever may
be the result, auspicious as I am almost sure it will be, — shall free
dom, justice and humanity ultimately and in the end prevail; are
these republican institutions of ours safe and permanent ? I have
sought and entered the hall of prophecy. I may not tell you just
where it stands, but this much I can say, that its entrance is through
native forest shades, from the water's edge of a deep and flowing
river. I entered it, not irreverently, not unconscious of the pre
sumption of attempting to explore the will of the God whose rale,
however men may deny or profess, is higher law. The two gigantic
figures, Time and Destiny, which guarded the approach to the altar,
seemed to relax their grim features as I passed, and the one dropped
his scythe, and the other balanced for a moment the hour glass which
he held in his hand. I learned from the oracle that the powers
above favor the perpetuation of these institutions, and that they are
never to fall by the hand of any foreign enemy ; that they are to be
saved or to be lost by the action of the American people ; that a
great danger, a danger that has been long gathering, is at this very
moment being passed, and that this danger once passed, there is assu
rance of long life, aye, of immortality to the institutions of Ameri
can freedom. I asked for a sign, but the oracle replied to me, "why
do this generation look for a sign? I say unto you that no sign shall
be given to this generation, but a rule shall be given to them ade
quate to every emergency, and that rule is, let the American people
rule their own spirit"

This people are human, and because they are human, they have
accidental and temporary interests and passions and prejudices to
mislead them ; but also, because they are human, they have reason
to conduct them through all temptations and all perils, in the way

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION. 413

I

of wisdom. A mysterious Providence has permitted, does always
permit, error to exist everywhere, cotemporaneously with truth,
wrong with right, freedom with slavery ; and between these different
powers there is always an irrepressible conflict. That conflict is the
trial of human virtue ; a triumph of the good over the bad consti
tutes the perfection of human nature. Slavery was probably essen
tial to the success of the institutions of republicanism. That con
tinually provoking conflict, as continually stimulated virtue, and the
love of freedom. The fathers, rejecting the sinister counsels of in
terest and suppressing passions and prejudice, surveyed the continent
when they established our government, and they adopted the policy
which alone was possible. They could not extirpate slavery at a
blow. Probably it had been unwise if they had attempted it; but
they had adopted a policy marked equally by sagacity and by
benevolence, which is told in a very few words. Its effect was to be
the abridgment of the power and duration of slavery by practica
ble, peaceful means, and the invigoration and ultimate establishment
of universal freedom. How this was to be done, requires as few
words to tell. The African slave trade, which was then exercised in
bringing slaves to do the cultivation of the whole continent — and if
it had continued, would have covered the land with savage Africans
stolen from their native land — was to be abolished after twenty years,
during which time the American people might, as they could, pro
cure supplies of free labor from oppressed and groaning Europe, to
supply its place. The states were encouraged and stimulated to pro
vide, by acts of gradual emancipation, for the removal of slavery
altogether. The whole of the public domain, then unoccupied, lying
northwest of the Ohio river, was set apart exclusively for freedom,
and for the erection of new and future free states. Free emigration
from all the nations of Europe, of whatever faith or language, was
invited by the permission given to the emigrant to pledge his labor
for a term of years, so that he might pay the cost of his passage.
And to all these was added that boon of boons, that offer, the rich-'
est that any nation ever had to give, — an equal citizenship by natu
ralization to the immigrant of whatever race or name, or lineage,
with the native born.

You see how simple this system was. Mark, now, while I tell'
you in a few words how effective it was. Within twenty years the'
African slave trade ceased, and never until one year ago did the soil

424 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

of America again bear the tread of a native African bondman.
S^ven of the states rapidly removed slavery by prospective laws,
which, while they deprived no man of what he called his property,
but left his slave to be his slave for life, still, in a period of twenty-
five years, there remained on the soil of those states not one native
born or imported African slave. And whereas, in this state of New
York of ours, on the day when it became independent, every seven
teenth inhabitant was a slave, in the year 1825, not one slave was
found upon its soil. And the redemption carne under the invitation
of that liberal law, from Germany, France, Holland, England, Scot
land and Ireland, and they became naturalized without question as
to their former allegiance, or their religious faith, and they are now
our brethren, and by ties of kindred are mixed and mingled with
the American people. There is scarcely -one man or woman who
can trace to a parentage of one nation of Europe an undivided line
age. The blood of the Dane and Hungarian — the Irishman and the
German — the Frenchman arid Englishman —are intermingled until
we have become the descendants and representatives of enlightened
Christian nations throughout the whole continent of Europe.

And then five new states rose upon that public domain, and all of
them free states; and this process still being continued that five
added to the other seven which had emancipated, making twelve,
has already been increased, until whereas twelve of the original
thirteen states were slave states, now eighteen of the states are free
states, and only fifteen are slave states. As it had been ordered
wisely, so all was going on prosperously; and at the expiration of
the present century slavery would either have ceased to exist, or have
been languishing or dying in the midst of what would have been
practically universal liberty, but for one of those singular accidents,
one of those strange events which, occurring in the course of human
affairs, produces a reaction, and for a time the cause which was sup
pressed, goes forward, and the cause which was expected to triumph,
recedes. That accident was nothing more than that an ingenious
countryman of ours, and a lover of freedom as much as you or I,
invented a machine by which he could, with greater ease, extract the
seeds from the fibers in cotton balls, and thus, giving a cheaper value
to cotton, and increasing the demand for it, for fabrics of human
wear, cotton became the production of slave labor in six slave states,
or in a portion of them, and became king in those states, commanded

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION. 425

emancipation to cease, shut foreigners out from their ports, demanded
a rescinding of all the laws which forbid slavery to spread over the
American soil, demanded room for new slave territories and new
slave states, and began the dreadful work of preparation for the
restoration of the African slave trade.

You know too well to need that I should repeat it, the rapidity
and violence of that reaction. You know how it bought up parties,
and statesmen and capitalists through all of the free states, and
moulded them as the image-maker moulds the moistened plaster, to
its demands. You know how that under the very first earnest, vehe
ment, violent demand of slavery, Missouri and Arkansas were ad
mitted into the Union, slave states, by a people under the influence
of terror, who had, only twenty years before, abolished the African
slave trade, and denied slavery another acre of American soil. You
know how Texas, a free country in Mexico, was overrun, first by
slaveholders with slaves, and then brought into the American Union,
with the consent of yourselves, that five slave states might be made
out of its soil. You know how California arid Mexico and Utah,
free lands, free soil, inhabited by men of free speech and free thought,
were conquered and brought into the Union, with the expectation —
only baffled by the perseverance of a few men in despair, of whom
I was one — of establishing slavery upon the Pacific coast. And you
know, finally, how presidents and cabinets, ministers and foreign
ministers, and at last the judges, came to confess a faith, alien from
the constitution, and alien from the spirit of all our institutions, that
the normal condition of every territory under the flag of the United
States is not freedom but slavery, and that no power existing on the
soil, no power existing in other states, no power existing in the con
gress of the United States, or in any department of the federal gov
ernment, can challenge it, and say, " How came you or what do you
here?"

This was the reaction, and it culminated only six years ago.
Never, never was a nation more thoroughly demoralized. The
whig party, that had affected sympathy for freedom, faltered and
failed in the hour of trial, and went down. The democratic party,
bolder than ever, became the unblushing advocate of slavery, ceased
to be longer, or to pretend to be, a party of human freedom, but
became a party of human bonds. There was no party for freedom.
J --nloiisies were engendered between American free born freemen,

VOL. IV. 54

426 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

and the voluntary citizens, and at the time when both should have
been engaged in rescuing the constitution, which secured the soil for
them and their children, and their children's children, as a patrimony
for freedom, they were engaged in internecine hostilities, the only
effect of which could be to let slavery go roaming over the whole
territories.

Such, my friends, was the real condition of things when I ad
dressed you in the park on South street, only four years ago. You
were a thoughtless, an excited, a bewildered people. I saw a party
forming for freedom, but it was unorganized and discordant, and
filled with mutual jealousies. It was the only hope for freedom, but
it failed, and it seemed as if it must fail, though it "charmed never
so wisely," to win the American people. It seemed to me then that
I saw the good angel of my country rising up and bidding her a last
farewell.

But now all is changed. The elements of freedom which that
republican party took in at that day are so invigorating, so renew
ing that they have within four years made it a might}r, yes, an
unconquerable host. They have taken the reins of the state gov
ernment in almost every one of the free states, and they lay close
siege to what are left in the hands of slavery. They appear strong
and vigorous, and have already achieved .free speech, free thought
and free debate in three slave states, Delaware, Maryland and Mis
souri, and the battle recedes immediately after this contest, from the
free states into the slave states; and the slaveholders, instead of
boasting that they are national, and we republicans, are sectional,
are already beginning to feel what it is to be attempting to extend
and fortify an institution which is purely sectional, into territories
that belong to the nation, against the will of the nation.

It has been long that this reaction has been working, and its
history will bring out into a new light controversies that to all
around us seemed to be already buried in the past. You, laboring
men, and especially you of foreign birth, naturalized citizens, can
you tell me why it is that you are here among these men in this
community, and in the employment of men whom you accuse so
often with sympathy with the negro to your prejudice? Why is it
that you are here in aland that you call a land of abolitionists?
Why are you not in Virginia and in North Carolina and in South
Carolina and in Louisiana, among the slave drivers whom you ap-

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION. 427

plaud and approve for their inhumanity to the negro ? It is because
slavery will not tolerate one of you upon its soil. You manufac
turers, whose mills have been so often put in motion only to en
counter hostile legislation in congress under the influence of the
slave power of the slave states, will you tell me why it is th^t the
government of the United States maintains, as its true and settled
policy that an American citizen must carry all his materials to the
manufacturers and workshops of England to be wrought up into-
fabrics by the mechanics, artisans and manufacturers of England,
and must send his wheat, his corn, his beef and his pork to support
those manufacturers in England, instead of bringing the educated
and trained artists and machinists of England here to set up his
mills, to put his wheels in motion upon the banks of the Mohawk,
the Owasco, the Seneca and the Niagara rivers?

The explanation is a simple one ; slavery wants as little of the
industry of the white man in the nation as possible. Can you tell
me why it is that the expenses of the government, which have
risen in the period of thirty-two years from ten millions of dol
lars, to eighty, ninety and a hundred millions of dollars annually
must be levied in such a way as to discourage American man
ufacturers, and that the deficiency, if there be an}^ of revenue,
must be paid out of the sales of the public lands of the Unii d
States at a dollar and a quarter per acre, when there are in every
city, in every town, in every village, and in every hamlet of the
land, poor, unfortunate white men, with their families, seeking and
asking for a living upon this public domain, — and willing to convert
it into farms, yielding and paying revenue to the United States?
It is simply because slavery is unwilling that the free white man
should go there. Can you account for the obstinate resistance to the
enlargement of the Erie canal, continued so long, on anv other
ground? Can you tell me why it was that twenty years ago, this
whole state was filled with alarm because equal and free education
was being extended to the children of the catholic and the foreigner,
upon the ground that, as the children of the foreigner were to be
future members of the state, it was important, not more to them
than to the state itself, that they should be prepared for citizenship?1
Oh ! then the Bible was in danger. Oh ! then the protestant churcb

» See Vol. I, p. xlii, Vol. II, pp. 206, 216.

428 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

was to go clown. All the hostility to education was the suggestion
of slavery in order that free white men might not come to swell the
population of the free states, and swarm into the new states beyond
the Alleghany mountains.

But all this is ended. The agents, and the parties who were
'deceived, misled and perverted, who opposed the interests of free
dom, have all within six years fallen and disappeared. The whig
party once cherished by so many of us, and relied upon with faith
and hope against evidence, proved unfaithful at last and perished,
and I know not one sound thinking man, however much he was
.attached to it, that laments its loss. The American party that
sought to deceive itself with the idea that it could secure forbear
ance for freedom in the new alliance formed with slaveholders in
the south, suddenly, even more suddenly disappeared, and there is
not one man living to vindicate its memory. And so the democratic
party had a form and existence a year ago. Where is it now. It
has changed its form as often as a guilty dream. It was single,
united, unterrified and violent a year ago. Six months passed and
it wore two forms in hostile attitude against each other. Six months
later the two disappeared, and now it is nowhere. An opposition
is organized but it is an organization, not of the democratic party
but of three parties. It presents not one candidate, but three can
didates for president. It comes up to fight its first, last and desperate
battle with the republican party which is engaged in the effort and
determination to elect a president by a majority of votes; and this
hybrid party comes up and puts into the hands of the electors, bal
lots for scattering the votes, not concentrating them; to defeat the
election of a president of the United States because they cannot
.agree whom they would elect. Strange confusion of the times, this !
Have you ever studied the present creed of the opposition? I will
•endeavor to recite it for you :

" I believe in intervening in the territories of the United States
for slavery ; I also fully believe in non-intervening in the territories
•of the United States for slavery, and I further believe that it is not
right either to intervene or to not intervene. Each of these three
articles of faith is essential and of saving health to the nation. He
that is faithful must believe them all, and he that is faithful must
believe one and reject the other two. I believe in Stephen A.
Douglas as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, arid

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION.

I pledge myself to vote for him to the exclusion of everybody else.
I also believe in John C. Breckinridge, and I pledge myself to vote-
for him to the exclusion of Stephen A. Douglas and of everybody
else; and I also equally and implicitly believe in John Bell. as a
candidate for president of the United States, and I pledge myself to
vote for -him to the exclusion of Douglas and Breckinridge. I
promise faithfully to vote for them all, and to vote, at the same
time, against either one, except the one not designated as my choice."

Now here is the trinity in unitv and unity in trinity, of the
political church, just now come to us by the light of a new revela
tion, and christened " Fusion." And this " Fusion " party, what is
the motive to which it appeals ? You may go with me into the
streets to-night and follow the little giants, who go with their torch
lights and their flaunting banners of " Popular Sovereignty ;" or
you may go with the smaller and more select and modest band who*
go for Breckinridge and slavery ; or yon may follow the music of
the clanging bells, and, strange to say, they will all bring you into
one common chamber. When you get there you will hear only
this emotion of the human heart appealed to, fear, — fear that if you
elect a president of the United States according to the constitution
and the laws to-morrow, you will wake up the next day and find
that you have no country for him to preside over. Is that not a
strange motive for an American patriot to appeal to ? And in that
same hall, amid the jargon of three discordant members of the
fusion party, you will hear one argument, and that argument is, that
so sure as you are so perverse as to cast your vote singly, lawfully,,
honestly, as you ought to do, for one candidate for the presidency,
instead of scattering it among three candidates, so that no president
maybe elected, this Union shall come down over your heads, involv
ing you and us in a common ruin.

Fellow citizens, it is time, high time, that we .know whether this
is a constitutional government under which we live. It is high-
time that we know, since the Union is threatened, who are its friends
and who are its enemies. The republican party who propose in the
old appointed constitutional way to choose a president, are every
man of them loyal to the Union. The disloyalists, wherever they
may be, are those who are opposed to the republican party and
attempt to prevent the election of a president. I know that our
good and esteemed neighbors — Heaven knows I have cause to

430 POLITICAL SPEECHES.

respect and esteem and honor and love them as I do, for such neigh
bors as even my democratic neighbors, no other man ever had — I
know that they do not avow, nor do they mean to support or think
they are supporting disunion ists. But I tell them that he who pro
poses to lay hold of the pillars of the Union and bring it down into
ruin, is a disunionist; that every man who quotes him, and uses his
threats and his menaces as an argument against our exercise of our
duty, is an abettor, unconscious though he may be, of disunion ; and
that when to-morrow's sun shall have set and the next morning's
sun shall have risen upon the American people, rejoicing in the
election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, those men who
to-day sympathize with, uphold, support and excuse the disunion-
ists, will have to make a sudden choice and choose whether, in the
language of the senator from Georgia, they will go for treason and so
make it respectable, or whether they will go with us for freedom,
for the constitution, and for eternal Union.

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.1

THE past was for the east — the 'future is for the west. Empire has
culminated in the east, and is now passing to the west. The past
was for slavery, which at one time was practically universal in the
east. The future is for freedom, which, in the order of Providence,
is to be universal in the west. The change from past eastern slavery
to future western freedom is to be effected simply by bringing the
mind of the nation to a just apprehension of what slavery is. Our
fathers in the east understood it to be a question simply of trade.
The Declaration of Independence and the constitution of the United
States, announced on the other hand, that slavery is a question of
human rights. While they left the regulation of that subject within
the states to the states themselves, they did establish the principle
that in the common territories of the United States and within the
sphere of federal action, every man is a person, a man, a free man,
who could neither hold another in slavery nor be held in bondage
by any other man.

1 Extract from a speech at Cleveland, Oct. 4, 1860.

SPEECHES

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK MEETING.1

WASHINGTON, January 28, 1854.

" The invitation to a meeting to be held in the city of New York, to protest
against any repeal or violation of the Missouri compromise, with which you have
honored me, has been received. My constant attendance here is required by the
interest which the city of New York and the state of New York have in the
great projects of a railroad to San Francisco, and the extension of our commerce
to the islands and continents divided from us by the Pacific ocean, which are now
being matured in committees to which I belong. Moreover the day designated
for the meeting is one upon which the senate may be brought to a vote upon the
bold and dangerous measure which has so justly excited the patriotic apprehensions
of the citizens of the metropolis. I could not be safely absent from the capital
under these circumstances, even if my attendance in New York would otherwise
be proper.

" You have kindly asked me, in view of this inability, to give you such an ex
pression of my ' Sentiments as may help to arouse the north to the defense of its
rights, and the south to maintenance of its plighted honor.' Permit me to say,
in response to the appeal, that when the slavery laws of 1850 were under discus
sion in the senate, I regarded the ground then demanded to be conceded by the
north as a vantage ground, which, when once yielded, would be retrieved with
infinite difficulty afterward, if, indeed, it should not be absolutely irretrievable ;
and that, I, therefore, in my place as a representative here, said and did all that it
was in my power to do and say, and all that I could now do and say, to ' help to
rouse the north to the defense of its rights, and south to the maintenance of its honor.'
When, afterward, eminent members of congress, who had been engaged in passing
those laws, carried an appeal against those who had opposed them before the people-
in their primary assemblies, I declined to follow them then, and I have ever since
refrained from all unnecessary discussions of the slave laws of 1850, and of matters
pertaining to slavery, even here, as well as elsewhere, because I was unwilling to
injure so just a cause by discussions which might seem to betray undue solicitude,
if not a spirit of faction. We have only now arrived at a new stage in the tnal
of that appeal. For it is 'quite clear that if the slavery laws had not been passed in
1850, for the territories acquired from Mexico, there would have been no pretense
for extending such slavery laws now, over the territories before acquired from
Louisiana, and that if we had maintained our ground on the laws of freedom, which
then protected New Mexico and Utah, we should not now have been attacked in
our stronghold in Nebraska. It is equally evident, also, that Nebraska is not all
that is to be saved or lost. If we are driven from this field, there will yet remain
Oregon and Minnesota, and we who thought only so lately as 1849 of securing
some portion at least of the shore of the gulf of Mexico and all of the Pacific coast
to the institutions of freedom, will be, before 1859, brought to a doubtful struggle
to prevent the extension of slavery to the shores of the great lakes, and thence
westward to Puget's sound. I hope, gentlemen, that for one, I may be allowed
to continue to the end that abstinence from popular agitation which I have hereto
fore praciised, less from considerations of self-respect than from my confidence in
the sagacity and virtue of the people I represent. Nevertheless, I beg you to be
assured that, while declining to go into popular assemblies, as an agitator, I shall
endeavor to do my duty here with as many true men as shall be found in a delega
tion, which, if all were firm and united in the maintenance of public right and
justice, would be able to control the decision of this great question. But the
measure of success and effect which shall crown our exertions must depend now,
as heretofore, on the fidelity with which the people whom we represent shall
adhere to the policy and principles which are the foundation of their own unri
valed prosperity and greatness.

" I am, gentlemen, with great respect and esteem, your obedient servant,

" WILLIAM H. SEWARD."
1 See ante page 27.

SPEECHES

ESf

THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

NEBKASKA AND KANSAS.

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH.'

The United States of America, at the close of the revolu
tion, rested southward on the St. Mary's, and westward on the
Mississippi, and possessed abroad, unoccupied domain, circumscribed
by those rivers, the Alleghany mountains, and the great northern
lakes. The constitution anticipated a division of this domain into
states, to be admitted as members of the Union, but it neither pro
vided for nor foresaw any enlargement of the national boundaries.
The people, engaged in reorganizing their governments, improving
their social systems, and establishing relations of commerce and
friendship with other nations, remained many years content within
their apparently ample limits. But it was already known that the
free navigation of the Mississippi would soon become an urgent pub
lic want.

France, although she had lost Canada, in chivalrous battle, on the
Heights of Abraham, in 1763, nevertheless, still retained her ancient
territories on the western bank of the Mississippi. She had also,
just before the breaking out of her own fearful revolution, reac-
quired, by a secret treaty, the possessions on the gulf of Mexico,
which, in a recent war, had been wr, sted from her by Spain.. Her

1 Speech in the United States Semite, February 17, 1854.

VOL. IV. 55

434 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

first consul, among those brilliant achievements which proved him
the first statesman, as well as the first captain of Europe, sagaciously
sold the whole of these possessions to the United States, for a libe
ral sum, and thus replenished his treasury, while he saved from his
enemies, and transferred to a friendly power, distant and vast regions
which, for want of adequate naval force, he was unable to defend.

This purchase of Louisiana from France by the United States,
involved a grave dispute concerning the western limits of that pro
vince; and that controversy, having remained open until 1819, was
then adjusted by a treaty, in which they relinquished Texas to
Spain, and accepted a cession of the early discovered and long in
habited provinces of East Florida and West Florida. The United
States stipulated, in each of these cases, to admit the countries thus
annexed into the Federal Union.

The acquisitions of Oregon, by discovery and occupation, of
Texas, by voluntary annexation, and of New Mexico and Califor
nia, including what is now called Utah, by war, completed the rapid
course of enlargement, at the close of which our frontier has been
fixed near the center of what was New Spain, on the Atlantic side
•of the continent, while on the west, as on the east, only an ocean
.separates us from the nations of the old world. It is not in my way
.now to speculate on the question, how long we are to rest on these
advanced positions.

Slavery, before the revolution, existed in all the thirteen colonies,
as it did alsoiri nearly all the other European plantations in America.
But it had been forced by British authority, for political and com
mercial ends, on the American 'people, against their own sagacious
instincts of policy, and their strongest feelings of justice and hu
manity.

They had protested and remonstrated against the system ear
nestly, for forty years, and they ceased to protest and remonstrate
against it only when they finally committed their entire cause of
complaint to the arbitrament of arms. An earnest spirit of emanci
pation was abroad in the colonies at the close of the revolution, and
all of them, except perhaps South Carolina and Georgia, anticipated,
desired and designed an early removal of the system from the coun
try. The suppression of the African slave trade, which was univer
sally regarded as ancillary to that great measure, was, with much
reluctance, postponed until 1808.

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 4:35

While there was no national power, and no claim or desire for
national power, anywhere, to compel involuntary emancipation in
the state where slavery existed, there was at the same time a very
general desire and a strong purpose to prevent its introduction into
new communities, yet to be formed, and into new states yet to be
•established. Mr. Jefferson proposed, as early as 1784, to exclude it
from the national domain — which should be constituted by cessions
from the states to the United States. He recommended and urged
the measure as ancillary, also, to the ultimate policy of emancipation.
There seems to have been at first no very deep jealousy between the
emancipating and the non-emancipating states; and the policy of
admitting new states was not disturbed by questions concerning
slavery. Vermont, a nori-slaveholding state, was admitted in 1793.
Kentucky, a tramontane slaveholding community, having been de
tached from Virginia, was admitted, without being questioned, about
the same time. So, also, Tennessee, which was a similar commu
nity separated from North Carolina, was admitted in 1796, with a
stipulation that the ordinance which Mr. Jefferson had first proposed,
and which had in the meantime been adopted for the territory north
west of the Ohio, should not be held to apply within her limits.
The same course was adopted in organizing territorial governments
for Mississippi and Alabama, slaveholding communities which had
been detached from South Carolina and Georgia. All these states
and territories were situated southwest of the Ohio river, all were
more or less already peopled by slaveholders with their slaves ; and
to have excluded slavery within their limits would have been a
national act, not of preventing the introduction of slavery, but of
abolishing slavery. In short, the region southwest of the Ohio river
presented a field in which the policy of preventing the introduction
of slavery was impracticable. Our forefathers never attempted what
was impracticable.

But the case was otherwise in that fair and broad region which
stretched away from the banks of the Ohio, northward to the lakes,
and westward to the Mississippi. It was yet free, or practically free,
from the presence of slaves, and was nearly uninhabited, and quite
unoccupied. There was then no Baltimore and Ohio railroad, no
Erie railroad, no New York Central railroad, no Boston and Ogdens-
burgh railroad; there was no railroad through Canada; nor, indeed,
any road around or across the mountains ; no imperial Erie canal,

436 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

no Welland canal, no lockage around the rapids and the falls of th&
St. Lawrence, the Mohawk and the Niagara rivers, arid no steam
navigation on the lakes, or on the Hudson, or on the Mississippi.
There, in that remote and secluded region, the prevention of the in
troduction of slavery was possible ; and there our forefathers, who
left no possible national good unatternpted, did prevent it. It makes
one's heart bound with joy and gratitude, and lift itself up with
mingled pride and veneration, to read the history of that great
transaction. Discarding the trite and common forms of expressing
the national will, they did not merely " vote," or " resolve," or
" enact,1' as on other occasions, but they "ORDAINED," in language
marked at once with precision, amplification, solemnity and empha
sis, that there "shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, where
of the party shall have been duly convicted." And they further
ORDAINED and declared that this law should be considered a COM
PACT between the original states and the people and states of said
territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common con
sent. The ordinance was agreed to unanimously. Virginia, in reaf
firming her cession of the territory, ratified it, and the first congress-
held under the constitution solemnly renewed and confirmed it.

In pursuance of this ordinance, the several territorial government*
successively established in the northwest territory, were organized
with a prohibition of the introduction of slavery, and in due time,
though at successive periods, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and
Wisconsin, states erected within that territory, have come into the
Union with constitutions in their hands forever prohibiting slavery
and involuntary servitude, except for the punishment of crime.
They are yet young; but, nevertheless, who has ever seen elsewhere
such states as they are ? There are gathered the young, the vigor
ous, the active, the enlightened sons of every state, the flower and
choice of every state in this broad Union ; and there the emigrant,
for conscience sake, and for freedom's sake, from every land in
Europe, from proud and all-conquering Britain, from heart-broken
Ireland, from sunny Italy, from mercurial France, from spiritual
Germany, from chivalrous Hungary, and from honest and brave old
Sweden and Norway. Thence are already coming ample supplies
of corn and wheat and wine for the manufacturers of the east, for
the planters of the tropics, and even for the artisans and the armies

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. 487

of Europe ; and thence will continue to come in long succession,
fus they have already begun to come, statesmen and legislators for
this continent.

Thus it appears, Mr. President, that it was the policy of our
fathers, in regard to the original domain of the United States, to
prevent the introduction of slavery, wherever it was practicable.
This policy encountered greater difficulties when it came under con
sideration with a view to its establishment in regions not included
within our original domain. While slavery had been actually abo
lished already, by some of the emancipating states, several of them,
owing to a great change in the relative value of the productions of
.slave labor, had fallen off into the class of non-emancipating states ;
and now the whole family of states was divided and classified as
.slaveholding or slave states, and non-slaveholding or free states. A
rivalry for political ascendency was soon developed; and besides
the motives of interest and philanthropy which had before existed,
there was now on each side a desire to increase, from among the
candidates for admission into the Union, the number of states in
their respective classes, and so their relative weight and influence in
the federal councils.

The country which had been acquired from France was, in 1804,
•organized in two territories, one of which, including New Orleans
as its capital, was called Orleans, and the other, having St. Louis for
its chief town, was called Louisiana. In 18.12, the territory of
Orleans was admitted as a new state, under the name of Louisiana.
It had been an old slaveholding colony of France, and the preven
tion of slavery within it would have been a simple act of abolition.
At the same time, the territory of Louisiana, by authority of con
gress, took the name of Missouri; and, in 1819, the portion thereof
which now constitutes the state of Arkansas was detached, and
became a territory, under that name. Tn 1819, Missouri, which was
then but thinly peopled, and had an inconsiderable number of slaves,
applied for admission into the Union, and her application brought
the question of extending the policy of the ordinance of 1787 to
that state, and to other new states in the region acquired from
France, to a direct issue. The house of representatives insisted on
n prohibition against the further introduction of slavery in the state,
as a condition of her admission. The senate disagreed with the
house in that demand. The non-slaveholding states sustained the

438 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

house, and the slavehokling states sustained the senate. The differ
ence was radical, and tended toward revolution.

One party maintained that the condition demanded was constitu
tional, the other that it was unconstitutional. The public mind
became intensely excited, and painful apprehensions of disunion and
civil war began to prevail in the country.

In this crisis, a majority of both houses agreed upon a plan for
the adjustment of the controversy. By this plan, Maine, a non-
slaveholding state, was to be admitted ; Missouri was to be admitted
without submitting to the condition before mentioned ; and in all
that part of the territory acquired from France, which was north of
the line of 36° 30' of north latitude, slavery was to be forever pro
hibited. Louisiana, which was a part of that territory, had been
admitted as a slave state eight years before; and now, not only was
Missouri to be admitted as a slave state, but Arkansas, which was
south of that line, by strong implication, was also to be admitti d as
a slavehokling state. I need not indicate what were the equivalents
which the respective parties were to receive in this arrangement,
further than to say that the slavehokling states practically were to
receive slavehokling states, the free states to receive a desert, a soli
tude, in which they might, if they could, plant the germs of future
free states. This measure was adopted. It was a great national trans
action — the first of a class of transactions which have since come to
be thoroughly defined and well understood, under the name of com
promises. My own opinions concerning them are well known, and
are not in question here. According to the general understanding,
they are marked by peculiar circumstances and features, viz. :

First, there is a division of opinion upon some vital national
question between the two houses of congress, which division is
irreconcilable, except by mutual concessions of interests and opin
ions, which the houses deem constitutional and just.

Secondly, they are rendered necessary by impending calamities,
to result from the failure of legislation, and to be no otherwise
averted than by such mutual concessions, or sacrifices.

Thirdly, vsuch concessions are mutual and equal, or are accepted
as such, and so become conditions of the mutual arrangement.

Fourthly, by this mutual exchange of conditions, the transaction,'
takes on the nature and character of a contract, compact, or treaty,
between the parties represented ; and so, according to well-settled

REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 439

principles of morality and public law, the statute which embodies it
is understood, by those who uphold this system of legislation, to he
irrevocable and irrepealable, except by the mutual consent of both,
or of all the parties concerned. Not indeed, that it is absolutely
irrepealable, but that it cannot be repealed without a violation of
honor, justice, and good faith, which it is presumed will not be com
mitted.

Such was the compromise of 1820. Missouri came into the
Union immediately as a slaveholding state, and Arkansas came in
.as a slaveholding state, sixteen years afterward. Nebraska, the part
of the territory reserved exclusively for free territories and free
states, has remained a wilderness ever since. And now it is pro
posed here to abrogate, not, indeed, the whole compromise, but only
that part of it which saved Nebraska as a free territory, to be after
ward divided into non-slaveholding states, which should be admitted
into the Union. And this is proposed, notwithstanding a universal
acquiescence in the compromise, by both parties, for thirty years,
and its confirmation, over and over again, by many acts of successive
congresses, arid notwithstanding that the slaveholding states have
peaceably enjoyed, ever since it was made, all their equivalents,
while, owing to circumstances which will hereafter appear, the non-
slaveholding states have not practically enjoyed those guarantied to
them.

This is the question now before the senate of the United States
of America.

It is a question of transcendent importance The proviso of
1820, to be abrogated in Nebraska, is the ordinance of the conti
nental congress of 1787, extended over a new part of the national
domain acquired under our present constitution. It is rendered
venerable by its antiquity, and sacred by the memory of that con
gress, which in surrendering its trust, after establishing the ordinance,
enjoined it upon posterity, always to remember that the cause of the
United States was the cause of human nature. The question in
volves an issue of public faith, and national morality and honor.
It will be a sad day for this republic, when such a question shall be
deemed unworthy of grave discussion, and shall fail to excite intense
interest. Even if it were certain that the inhibition of slavery in
the region concerned was unnecessary, and if the question were
thus reduced to a mere abstraction, yet even that abstraction would

44.0 SPEECHES TN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

involve the testimony of the United States on the expediency, wis
dom, morality, and justice, of the system of human bondage, with
which this and other portions of the world have been so long
afflicted; and it will be a melancholy day for the republic and for
mankind, when her decision on even such an abstraction shall com
mand no respect, and inspire no hope into the hearts of the oppressed.

But it is no such abstraction. It was no unnecessary dispute, no
mere contest of blind passion, that brought that compromise into
being. Slavery and freedom were active antagonists, then seeking
for ascendency in this Union. Both slavery and freedom are more
vigorous, active, and self-aggrandizing now, than they were then, or
ever were before or since that period. The contest between them
has been only protracted, not decided. It will be a great feature in
our national hereafter. So the question of adhering to or abrogating
this compromise is no unmeaning issue, and no contest of mere blind
passion now.

To adhere, is to secure the occupation by freemen, with free labor,
of a region in the very center of the continent, capable of sustain
ing, and in that event destined, though it may be only after a far-
distant period, to sustain ten, twenty, thirty, forty millions of people
and their successive generations forever!

To abrogate, is to resign all that vast region to chances which
mortal vision cannot fully foresee; perhaps to the sovereignty of
such stinted and short-lived communities as those of which Mexico
and South America and the West India islands present us with
examples ; perhaps to convert that region into a scene of long and
desolating conflicts between not merely races, but castes, to end, like
a similar conflict in Egypt, in a convulsive exodus of the oppressed
people, despoiling their superiors ; perhaps, like one not dissimilar
in Spain, in the forcible expulsion of the inferior race, exhausting
th<» state by the sudden and complete suppression of a great resource
of national wealth and labor; perhaps in the disastrous expulsion,
even of the superior race itself, by a people too suddenly raised from
slavery to liberty, as in St. Domingo. To adhere is to secure for
ever the presence here, after some lapse of time, of two, four, ten,
twenty, or more senators, and of representatives in larger propor
tions, to uphold the policy and interests of the non-slaveholding
states, and balance that ever-incrensing representation of slavehold-
ing states, which past experience, and the decay of the Spanish-

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 441

American states, admonish us has only just begun ; to save what
the non-slaveholding states have in mints, navy-yards, the military
academy and fortifications, to balance against the capital and federal
institutions in the slaveholding states; to save against any danger
from adverse or hostile policy, the culture, the manufactures, and
the commerce, as well as the just influence and weight of the
national principles and sentiments of the slaveholding states. To
adhere is to save to the non-slaveholding states, as well as to the
slaveholding states, always, and in every event, a right of way and
free communication across the continent, to and with the states on
the Pacific coasts, and with the rising states on the islands in the
South sea, and with all the eastern nations on the vast continent of
Asia.

To abrogate, on the contrary, is to commit all these precious inte
rests to the chances and hazards of embarrassment and injury by
legislation, under the influence of social, political and commercial
jealousy and rivalry; and in the event of the secession of the slave-
holding states, which is so often threatened in their name, but I thank
God without their authority, to give to a servile population a La
Vendee at the very sources of the Mississippi, and in the Very
recesses of the Rocky mountains.

Nor is this last a contingency against which a statesman, when
engaged in giving a constitution for such a territory so situated, must
veil his eyes. It is a statesman's province and duty to look before
as well as after. I know, indeed, the present loyalty of the Ameri
can people north and south and east and west. I know that it is a
sentiment stronger than any sectional interest or ambition, and
stronger than even the love of equality in the non-slaveholding
states, and stronger, I doubt not, than the love of slavery in the
slaveholding states. But I do not know, and no mortal sagacity
does know, the seductions of interest and ambition, and the influences
of passion, w~hich are yet to be matured in every region. I know
this, however, that this Union is safe now, and that it will be safe so
long as impartial political equality shall constitute the basis of society,
as it has heretofore done, in even half of these states, and they shall
thus maintain a just equilibrium against the slaveholding states.
But I am well assured, also, on the other hand, that if ever the
slaveholding states shall multiply themselves and extend their sphere
BO that they could, without association with the non-slaveholding
VOL. TV. 56

442 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

states, constitute of themselves a commercial republie, from that day
their rule, through the executive, judicial and legislative powers of
this government, will be such as will be hard for the non-slavehold-
ing states to bear; and their pride and ambition, since they are con
gregations of rnen and are moved by human passions, will consent
to no Union in which they shall not so rule.

The slaveholding states already possess the mouths of the Missis
sippi, and their territory reaches far northward along its banks on
one side to the Ohio, and on the other even to the confluence of the
Missouri. They stretch their dominion now from the banks of the
Delaware, quite around bay, headland and promontory to the Rio
Grande. They will not stop, although they now think they may, ou
the summit of the Sierra Nevada ; nay, their armed pioneers are
already in Sonora, and their eyes are already fixed, never to be
taken off, on the island of Cuba, the queen of the Antilles. If we
of the non-slaveholding states surrender to them now the eastern
slope of the Rocky mountains and the very sources of the Mississippi,
what territory will be secure, what territory can be secured hereafter,
for the creation and organization of free states within our ocean-
bound domain? What territories on this continent will remain
unappropriated and unoccupied for us to annex ? What territories,
even if we are able to buy or conquer them from Great Britain or
Russia, will the slaveholding states suffer, much less aid us to annex,
to restore the equilibrium which, by this unnecessary measure, we
shall have so unwisely, so hurriedly, so suicidally subverted ?

Nor am I to be told that only a few slaves will enter into this vast
region. One slaveholder in a new territory, with access to the execu
tive ear at Washington, exercises more political influence than rive
hundred freemen. It is not necessary that all or a majority of the
citizens of a state shall be slaveholders to constitute a slaveholding
state. Delaware has only two thousand slaves against ninety-one
thousand freemen ; and yet Delaware is a slaveholding state. The
proportion is not substantially different in Maryland and in Missouri ;
and yet they are slaveholding states. These, sir, are the stakes in
this legislative game, in which I lament to see, that while the repre
sentatives of the slaveholding- states are unanimously and earnestly
playing to win, so many of (he representatives of the non-slave-
holding states are, with even greater zeal and diligence, playing to

KANSAS AND NEBRASKA. 4 -43

The committee who have recommended these twin bills for the
organization of the territories of Nebraska and Kansas, hold the
affirmative in the argument upon their passage.

What is the case they present to the senate and the country ?

They have submitted a report, but that report, brought in before
they had introduced or even conceived this bold and daring measure
of ' abrogating the Missouri compromise, directs all its arguments
against it.

The committee say in their report :

" Such being the character of the controversy, in respect to the territory acquired
from Mexico, a similar question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in
the proposed territory of Nebraska, when the Indian laws shall be withdrawn,
and the country thrown open to emigration and settlement. By the eighth sec
tion of ' An act to authorize the people of the Missouri territory to form a consti
tution and state government, and for the admission of such state into the Union
on an equal footing with the original states, and to prohibit slavery in certain
territories,' approved March 6. 1820, it was provided : ' That in all that territory
ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, which lies
north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within
the limits of the state contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude,
otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been
duly convicted, shall be and is hereby forever prohibited : Provided, always, that
any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed,
in any state or territory of the United States, such fugitive may be law!' illy
reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as
aforesaid.'

" Uud jr this section, as in the case of the Mexican law in New Mexico and
Utah, it is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country
by valid enactment. The decision of this question involves the constitutional
power of congress to pass laws prescribing and regulating the domestic institutions
of the various territories of the Union. In the opinion of those eminent states
men who hold that congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon
the subject of slavery in the territories, the eighth section of the act preparatory
to the admission of Missouri is null and void : while the prevailing sentiment in
large portions of the Union sustains the doctrine that the constitution of the
United States secures to every citi/en an inalienable right to move into any of the
territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and
enjoy the same under the sanction of the law. Your committee do not feel them
selves called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted questions.
They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional
strife and the fearful struggle of 1850. As congress deemed it wise and prudent
to refrain from deciding the matters in controversy then, either by affirming or
repealing the Mexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of the
constitution, and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slave property in
the territories.. so your committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure

444: SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either hv affirming1 or repeal
ing the eighth section of the Missouri act, or by any act declaratory of the mean
ing of the constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute."

This report gives us the deliberate judgment of the committee on
two important points. First, that the compromise of 1850 did not,
by its letter or by its spirit, repeal or render necessary, or even pro
pose the abrogation of the Missouri compromise; and, secondly, that
the Missouri compromise ought not now to be abrogated. And now,
sir, what do we next hear from this committee? First, two similar
and kindred bills, actually abrogating the Missouri compromise,
which in their report they had told us ought not to be abrogated at
all. Secondly, these bills declare on their face in substance that that
compromise was already abrogated by the spirit of that very com
promise of 1850, which, in their report they had just shown us, left
the compromise of 1820 absolutely unaffected and unimpaired
Thirdly, the committee favor us, by their chairman, watli an oial
explanation that the amended bills abrogating the Missouri compro
mise are identical with their previous bill, which did not abrogate it,
and are only made to differ in phraseology, to the end that the pro
visions contained in their previous, and now discarded bill, shall be
absolutely clear and certain.

I entertain great respect for the committee itself, but I must take
leave to say that the inconsistencies and self-contradictions contained
in the papers it has given us, have destroyed all claims, on the part
of those documents, to respect, here or elsewhere.

The recital of the effect of the compromise of 1850, upon the
compromise of 1820, as finally revised, corrected, and amended, here
in the face of the senate, means after all substantially what that
recital meant as it stood before it was perfected, or else it means
nothing tangible or worthy of consideration at all. What if the
.spirit, or even the letter, of the compromise laws of 1850 did conflict
with the compromise of 1820? The compromise of 1820 was, by
its very nature, a compromise irrepealable and unchangeable, without
.a violation of honor, justice, and good faith. The compromise of
1850, if it impaired the previous compromise to the extent of the
loss to free labor of one acre of the territory of Nebraska, was either
absolutely void, or ought, in all subsequent legislation, to be deemed
and held void.

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. 445

What if the spirit or the letter of the compromise was a violation
of the compromise of 1820? Then, inasmuch as the compromise
of 1820 was inviolable, the attempted violation of it shows that the
so-called compromise of 1850 was to that extent not a compromise
at all, but a factitious, spurious, and pretended compromise. What
if the letter or spirit of the compromise of 1850 did supersede or
impair, or in any way, in any degree, conflict with the compromise
of 1820 ? Then that is a reason for abrogating, not the irrepealable
and inviolable compromise of 1820, but the spurious and pretended
compromise of 1850.

Why is this reason for the proposed abrogation of the compromise
of 1820 assigned in these bills at all? -It is unnecessary. The as
signment of a reason adds nothing to the force or weight of the
abrogation itself. Either the fact alleged as a reason is true or it is
not true. If it be untrue, your asserting it here will not make it
true. If it be true, it is apparent in the text of the law of 1850,
without the aid of legislative exposition now. It is unusual. It is
unparliamentary. The language of the lawgiver, whether the sov
ereign be democratic, republican, or despotic, is always the same.
It is mandatory, imperative. If the lawgiver explains at all in a
statute the reason for it, the reason is that it is his pleasure — sic volor
sic jubeo. Look at the compromise of 1820. Does it plead an ex
cuse for its commands? Look at the compromise of 1850, drawn
by the master-hand of our American Chatham. Does that bespeak
your favor by a quibbling or shuffling apology ? Look at your
own, now rejected, first Nebraska bill, which, by conclusive impli
cation, saved the effect of the Missouri compromise. Look at any
other bill ever reported by the committee on territories. Look at
any other bill now on your calendar. Examine all the laws on
your statute books. Do you find any one bill or statute which ever
came bowing, stooping, and wriggling into the senate, pleading an
excuse for its clear and explicit declaration of the sovereign and
irresistible will of the American people ? The departure from this
habit in this solitary case betrays self-distrust, and an attempt on
the part of the bill to divert the public attention, to raise complex
and immaterial issues, to perplex and bewilder and confound the
people \}j whom this transaction is to be reviewed. Look again at
the vacillation betrayed in the frequent changes of the structure of
this apology. At first the recital told us that the eighth section

446 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

of the compromise act of 1820 was superseded by the principles of
the compromise laws of 1850 — as if any one had ever heard of a
supersedeas of one local law by the mere principles of another local
law, enacted for an altogether different region, thirty years after
ward. On another day we were told, by an amendment of the
recital, that the compromise of 1820 was not superseded by the com
promise of 1850 at all, but was only " inconsistent with " it — as if a
local act which was irrepealable was now to be abrogated, because it
was inconsistent with a subsequent enactment, which had no appli
cation whatever within the region to which the first enactment was
confined. On a third day the meaning of the recital was further
and finally elucidated by an amendment, which declared that the
first irrepeahible act protecting Nebraska from slavery was now
declared " inoperative and void," because it was inconsistent with
the present purposes of congress not to legislate slavery into any
territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom.

But take this apology in whatever form it may be expressed, and
test its logic by a simple process.

The law of 1820 secured free institutions in the regions acquired
from France in 1803, by the wise and prudent foresight of the con
gress of the United States. The law of 1850, on the contrary,
committed the choice between free and slave institutions in New
Mexico and Utah — territories acquired from Mexico nearly fifty
years afterward — to the interested cupidity or the caprice of their
earliest and accidental occupants. Free institutions and slave insti
tutions are equal, but the interested cupidity of the pioneer, is a
wiser arbiter, and bis judgment a surer safeguard, than the collective
wisdom of the American people and the most solemn and time-hon
ored statute of the American congress. Therefore, let the law of
freedom in the territory acquired from France be now annulled and
abrogated, and let the fortunes and fate of freedom and slavery, in
the region acquired from France, be, henceforward and forever,
determined by the votes of some seven hundred camp followers
around Fort Leavenworth, and the still smaller number of trappers,
government school-masters, and mechanics, who attend the Indians
in their seasons of rest from hunting in the passes of the Eocky
mountains. Sir, this syllogism may satisfy you and other senators;
but as for me, I must be content to adhere to the earlier system.
Stare super antiquas vias.

THE MISSOTRI COMPROMISE. 447

There is yet another difficulty in this new theory. Let it be
granted that, in order to carry out a new principle recently adopted
in New Mexico, you can supplant a compromise in Nebraska, yet
there is a maxim of public law which forbids you from supplanting
that compromise, and establishing a new system there, until you first
restore the parties in interest there to their statu quo before the com
promise to be supplanted was established. First, then, remand
Missouri and Arkansas back to the unsettled condition, in regard to
slavery, which they held before the compromise of 1820 was enacted,
and then we will hear you talk of rescinding that compromise. You
cannot do this. You ought not to do it, if you could ; and because
you cannot and ought not to do it, you cannot, without violating
law, justice, equity and honor, abrogate the guarantee of freedom in
Nebraska.

There is still another and not less serious difficulty. You call the
slavery laws of 1850 a compromise between the slaveholding and
non-slaveholding states. For the purposes of this argument, let it
be granted that they were such a compromise. It was nevertheless
a compromise concerning slavery in the territories acquired from
Mexico, and by the letter of the compromise it extended no further.
Can you now, by an act which is not a compromise between the
same parties, but a mere ordinary law, extend the ibrce and obliga
tion of the principles of that compromise of 1850 into regions not
only excluded from it, but absolutely protected from your interven
tion there by a solemn compromise of thirty years' duration, and
invested with a sanctity scarcely inferior to that which hallows the
constitution itself?

Can the compromise of 1850, by a mere ordinary act of legisla
tion, be extended beyond the plain, known, fixed intent and under
standing of the parties at the time that contract was made, and yet
be binding on the parties to it, not merely legally, but in honor and
conscience ? Can you abrogate a compromise by passing any law
of less dignity than a compromise? If so, of what value is any
one or the whole of the compromises? Thus you see that these
bills violate both of the compromises — not more that of 1820 than
that of 1850.

Will you maintain in argument that it was understood by the
parties interested throughout the country, or by either of them, or
by any representative of either, in either house of congress, that the

448 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

principle then established should extend byond the limits of the
territories acquired from Mexico, into the territories acquired nearly
fifty years before, from France, arid then reposing under the gua
ranty of the compromise of 1820 ? I know not how senators may
i/ofe, but I do know what they will say. I appeal to the honorable
senator from Michigan [Mr. CASS], than whom none performed a
more distinguished part in establishing the compromise of 1850,
whether he so intended or understood. I appeal to the honorable
and candid senator, the senior representative from Tennessee [Mr.
BELL], who performed a distinguished part also. Did he so under
stand the compromise of 1850? Pie is silent. I appeal to the
gallant senator from Illinois [Mr. SHIELDS] ? He, too, is silent. I
now throw my gauntlet at the feet of every senator now here,
who was in the senate in 1850, and challenge him to say that
he then knew, or thought, or dreamed, that, by enacting the com
promise of 1850, he was directly or indirectly abrogating, or in any
degree impairing, the Missouri compromise? No one takes it up.
I appeal to that very distinguished — nay, sir, that expression falls
short of his eminence — that illustrious man, the senator from Mis
souri [Mr. BENTON], who led the opposition here to the compromise
of 1850. Did he understand that that compromise in any way
overreached or impaired the compromise of 1820? Sir, that distin
guished person, while opposing the combination of the several laws
on the subject of California and the territories, and slavery, together,
in one bill, so as to constitute a compromise, nevertheless voted for
each one of those bills, severally ; and in that way, and that way
only, they were passed. Had he known or understood that any
one of them overreached and impaired the Missouri compromise, we
all know he would have perished before he would have given it his
support.

If it were not irreverent, I would dare to call up the author of
both of the compromises in question, from his honored, though yet
scarcely grass-covered grave, and challenge any advocate of this
measure to confront that imperious shade, and say that, in making
the compromise of 1850, Henry Clay intended or dreamed that he
was subverting or preparing the way for a subversion of his greater
work of 1820. Sir, if that eagle spirit is yet lingering here over the
scene of its mortal labors, and watching over the welfare of the
republic it loved so well, it is now moved with more than human

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 449

indignation against those who are perverting its last great public act
from its legitimate uses, not merely to subvert the column, but to
wrench from its very bed the base of the column that perpetuates
its fame.

And that other proud and dominating senator, who, sacrificing
himself, gave the aid without which the compromise of 1850 could
not have been established — the statesman of New England and the
orator of America — who dare assert here where his memory is yet
fresh, though his unfettered spirit may be wandering in spheres far
hence, that he intended to abrogate, or dreamed that by virtue of or in
consequence of that transaction, the Missouri compromise would or
could ever be abrogated? The portion of the Missouri compromise
you propose to abrogate, is the ordinance of 1787 extended to Nebraska.
Hear what Daniel Webster said of that ordinance itself in 1830, in
this very place, in reply to one who had undervalued it and its author :

" I spoke, sir, of the ordinance of 1787, which prohibits slavery, in all future
time, northwest of the Ohio, as a measure of great wisdom and forethought, and
one which has been attended with highly beneficial and permanent consequences,"

And now hear what he said here, when advocating the compro
mise of 1850 :

" I now say, sir, as the proposition upon which I stand this day, and upon the
truth and firmness of which I intend to act until it is overthrown, that there is
not at this moment in the United States, or any territory of the United States,.
one single foot of land, the character of which, in regard to its being free territory
or slave territory, is not fixed by some law, and some IRREPEALABLE law, beyond
the power of the action of this government."

What irrepealable law, or what law of any kind, fixed the charac
ter of Nebraska as free or slave territory, except the Missouri com
promise act ?

And now hear what Daniel Webster said when vindicating the
compromise of 1850, at Buffalo, in 1851 :

a My opinion remains unchanged, that it was not within the original scope or
design of the constitution to admit new states out of foreign territory ; and for
one, whatever may be said at the Syracuse convention or any other assemblage of
insane persons, I never would consent, and never have consented, that there should
be one foot of slave territory beyond what the old thirteen states had at the time
of the formation of the Union ! Never ! Never !

" The man cannot show his face to me and say he can prove that I ever departed
from that doctrine. He would sneak away and slink away, or hire a mercenary
press to cry out, What an apostate from liberty Daniel Webster has become ! But
he knows himself to be a hypocrite and a falsifier."

VOL. IV. 57

450 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

That compromise was forced upon the slaveholding states and upon
the non-slaveholding states as a mutual exchange of equivalents.
The equivalents were accurately denned and caretully scrutinized
and weighed by the respective parties through a period of eight
months. The equivalents offered to the non-slaveholding states
were: First, the admission of California; second, the abolition of
the public slave trade in the District of Columbia. These, arid these
only, were the boons offered to them, and the only sacrifices which
the slaveholding states were required to make. The waiver of the
Wilmot proviso in the incorporation of New Mexico and Utah, and
a new fugitive slave law, were the only boons proposed to the slave-
holding states, and the only sacrifices exacted of the non-slavehold
ing states. No other questions between them were agitated, except
those which were involved in the gain or loss of more or less of free
territory or of slave territory in the determination of the boundary
between Texas and New Mexico, by a line that was at last arbitra
rily made, expressly saving, even in those territories, to the respective
parties, their respective shares of free soil and slave soil, according
to the articles of annexation of the republic of Texas. Again :
There were alleged to be five open, bleeding wounds in the federal
system, and no more, which needed surgery, and to which the com
promise of 1850 was to be a cataplasm. We all know what they
were: California without a constitution ; New Mexico in the grasp
of military power ; Utah neglected; the District of Columbia dis
honored ; and the rendition of fugitives denied. Nebraska was not
even thought of in this catalogue of national ills. And now, sir,
did the Nashville convention of secessionists understand that, besides
the enumerated boons offered to the slaveholding states, they were
to have also the obliteration of the Missouri compromise line of 1820 ?
If they did, why did they reject and scorn and scout at the compro
mise of 1850? Did the legislatures and public assemblies of the
non-slaveholding states, who made your table groan with their remon
strances, understand that Nebraska was an additional wound to be
healed by the compromise of 1850 ? If they did, why did they omit
to remonstrate against the healing of that, too, as well as of the other
five, by the cataplasm, the application of which they resisted so long?

Again: Had it been then known that the Missouri compromise
was to be abolished, directly or indirectly, by the compromise of
1850, what representative from a non-slaveholding state would, at

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 451

that day, have voted for it ? Not one. What senator from a slave-
holding state would not have voted for it ? Not one. So entirely
was it then unthought of that the new compromise was to repeal the
Missouri compromise line of 36° 30' in the region acquired from
France, that one- half of that long debate was spent on propositions
made by representatives from slaveholding states, to extend the line
further on through the new territory we had acquired so recently
from Mexico, until it should disappear in the waves of the Pacific
ocean, so as to secure actual toleration of slavery in all of this new
territory that should be south of that line ; and these propositions
were resisted strenuously and successfully to the last by the represen
tatives of the non-slaveholding states, in order, if it were possible, to
save the whole of those regions for the theatre of free labor.

I admit that these are only negative proofs, although they are
pregnant with conviction. But here is one which is not only affirm
ative, but positive, and not more positive than conclusive.

In the fifth section of the Texas boundary bill, one of the acts
constituting the compromise of 1850, are these words

" Provided; That nothing herein contained shall be construed to impair or qualify
anything contained in the third article of the second section of the joint resolu
tion for annexing Texas to the United States, approved March 1, 1845, either as
regards the number of states that may hereafter be formed out of the state of
Texas or otherwise."

What was that third article of the second section of the joint reso
lution for annexing Texas ? Here it is :

"New states of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to
said state of Texas, having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of
said state, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admis
sion under the provisions of the federal constitution. And such states as may be
formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of 36° 30' north latitude,
commonly known as the Missouri compromise line, shall be admitted into the
Union with or without slavery, as the people of each state asking admission may
desire. And in such state or states as shall be formed out of said territory north
of said Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for
crime) shall be prohibited."

This article saved the compromise of 1820, in express terms,
overcoming any implication of its abrogation, which might, by acci
dent or otherwise, have crept into the compromise of 1850 ; and any
inferences to that effect that might be drawn from any such circum
stance as that of drawing the boundary line of Utah so as to tres-

452 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

pass on the territory of Nebraska, dwelt upon by the senator from
Illinois.

The proposition to abrogate the Missouri compromise being thus
stripped of the pretense that it is only a reiteration or a reaffirmation
of a similar abrogation in the compromise of 1850, or a necessary
consequence of that measure, stands before us now upon its own
merits, whatever they may be.

But here the senator from Illinois challenges the assailants of
these bills, on the ground that they all were opponents of the com
promise of 1850, and even of that of 1820. Sir, it is not my
purpose to answer in person to this challenge. The necessity,,
reasonableness, justice, and wisdom of those compromises, are not
in question here now. My own opinions on them were, at a proper
time, fully made known. I abide the judgment of my country and
mankind upon them. For the present, I meet the . committee who
have brought this measure forward, on the field they themselves
have chosen, and the controversy is reduced to two questions : 1st.
Whether, by letter or spirit, the compromise of 1850 abrogated or
involved a future abrogation of the compromise of 1820 ? 2d.
Whether this abrogation can now be made consistently with honor,
justice, and good faith? As to my right, or that of any other
senator, to enter these lists, the credentials filed in the secretary's
office settle that question. Mine bear a seal, as broad and as firmly
fixed there as any other, by a people as wise, as free, and as great^
as any one of all the thirty-one republics represented here.

But I will take leave to say, that an argument merely ad per son am,
seldom amounts to anything more than an argument ad captandum.
A life of approval of compromises, and of devotion to them, only
enhances the obligation faithfully to fulfill them. A life of disap
probation of the policy of compromises only renders one more
earnest in exacting fulfillment of them, when good and cherished
interests are secured by them.

Thus much for the report and the bills of the committee, and for
the positions of the parties in this debate. A measure so bold, so
unlooked-for, so startling, and yet so pregnant as this, should have
some plea of necessity. Is there any such necessity ? On the con
trary, it is not necessary now, even if it be altogether wise, to
establish territorial governments in Nebraska. Not less than
eighteen tribes of Indians occupy that vast tract, fourteen of which,

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 458

I am informed, have been removed there by our own act, and in
vested with a fee simple to enjoy a secure and perpetual home, safe
from the intrusion and the annoyance, and even from the presence
of the white man, and under the paternal care of the government,
and with the instruction of its teachers and mechanics, to acquire
the arts of civilization and the habits of social life. I will not say
that this was done to prevent that territory, because denied to
slavery, from being occupied by free white men, and cultivated
with free white labor ; but I will say, that this removal of the
Indians there, under such guaranties, has had that effect. The
territory cannot be occupied now, any more than heretofore, by
savages and white men, with or without slaves, together. Our ex
perience and our Indian policy alike remove all dispute from this
point. Either these preserved ranges must still remain to the
Indians hereafter, or the Indians, whatever temporary resistance
against removal they may make, must retire.

Where shall they go? Will you bring them back again across
the Mississippi? There is no room for Indians here. Will you
send them northward, beyond your territory of Nebraska, toward
the British border? That is already occupied by Indians; there is
no room there. Will, you turn them loose upon Texas and New
Mexico? There is no room there.

Will you drive them over the Rocky mountains? They will
meet a tide of immigration there flowing into California from
Europe and from Asia. Whither, then, shall they, the dispos
sessed, unpitied heirs of this vast continent, go? The answer is,
nowhere. If they remain in Nebraska, of what use are your
charters ? Of what harm is the Missouri compromise in Nebraska,
in that case? Whom doth it oppress? No one.

Who, indeed, demands territorial organization in Nebraska at all.
The Indians? No. It is to them the consummation of a long ap
prehended doom. Practically, no one demands it. I am told that
the whole white population, scattered here and there throughout
those broad regions, exceeding in extent the whole of the inhabited
part of the United States at the time of the revolution, is less than
fifteen hundred, and that these are chiefly trappers, missionaries,
and a few mechanics and agents employed by the government, in
•connection with the administration of Indian affairs, and other per
sons temporarily drawn around the post of Fort Leaven worth. It

45-1 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

is clear, then, that this abrogation of the Missouri compromise is not
necessary for the purpose of establishing territorial governments in
Nebraska, but that, on the contrary, these bills, establishing such
governments, are only a vehicle for carrying, or a pretext for carry
ing, that act of abrogation.

It is alleged that the non-slaveholding states have forfeited their
rights in Nebraska, under the Missouri compromise, by first break
ing that compromise themselves. The argument is, that the Mis
souri compromise line of 36° 30', in the region acquired from
France, although confined to that region, which was our western
most possession, was, nevertheless, understood as intended to be
prospectively applied also to the territory reaching thence westward
to the Pacific ocean, which we should afterward acquire from Mex
ico; and that when afterward, having acquired these territories,
including California, New Mexico, and Utah, we were engaged in
1848 in extending governments over them, the free states refused to
extend that line, on a proposition to that effect made by the honor
able senator from Illinois.

It need only be stated, in refutation of this argument, that the
Missouri compromise law, like any other statute, was limited by the
extent of the subject of which it treated. This subject was the ter
ritory of Louisiana, acquired from France, whether the same were
more or less, then in our lawful and peaceful possession. The length
of the line of 36° 30' established by the Missouri compromise, was
the distance between the parallels of longitude which were the
borders of that possession. Young America — I mean aggrandizing,
conquering America — had not yet been born ; nor was the states
man then in being who dreamed that, within thirty years afterward,
we should have pushed our adventurous way not only across the
Kocky mountains, but also across the snowy mountains. Nor did any
one then imagine, that, even if we should have done so within the
period I have named, we were then prospectively carving up and
dividing, not only the mountain passes, but the Mexican empire on
the Pacific coast, between freedom and slavery. If such a proposition
had been made then, and persisted in, we know enough of the temper
of 1820 to know this, viz. : that Missouri and Arkansas would have
stood outside of the Union until even this portentous day.

The time, for aught I know, may not be thirty years distant, when
the convulsions of the Celestial empire and the decline of British

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. 455

sway in India will have opened our way into the regions beyond
the Pacific ocean. I desire to know now, and be fully certified, of
the geographical extent of the laws we are now passing, so that
there may be no such mistake hereafter as that now complained of
here. We are now confiding to territorial legislatures the power to
legislate on slavery. Are the territories of Nebraska and Kansas
alone within the purview of these acts? Or do they reach to the
Pacific coast, and embrace also Oregon and Washington ? Do they
stop there, or do they take in China, and India, and Afghanistan,
even to the gigantic base of the Himalaya mountains? Do they
stop there, or, on the contrary, do they encircle the earth, and,
meeting us again on the Atlantic coast, embrace the islands of Ice
land and Greenland, and exhaust themselves on the barren coasts
of Greenland and Labrador?

If the Missouri compromise neither is in its spirit nor by its letter
extended to the line of 36° 30' beyond the confines of Louisiana,
or beyond the then confines of the United States — for the terms are
equivalent — then it was no violation of the Missouri compromise in
1848 to refuse to extend it to the subsequently acquired possessions
of Texas, New Mexico, and California.

But suppose we did refuse to extend it; how did that refusal
work a forfeiture of our vested rights under it ? I desire to know
that.

Again : If this forfeiture of Nebraska occurred in 1848, as the
senator charges, how does it happen that he not only-failed in 1850,
when the parties were in court here, adjusting their mutual claims,
to demand judgment against the free states, but, on the contrary,
even urged that the same old Missouri compromise line, yet held
valid and sacred, should be extended through to the Pacific ocean ?

I. come now to the chief ground of the defense of this extraor
dinary measure, which is, that it abolishes a geographical line of
division between the proper fields of free labor and slave labor, and
refers the claim between them to the people of the territories. Even
if this great change of policy was actually wise and necessary, I
have shown that it is not necessary to make it now. in regard to the
territory of Nebraska. If it would be just elsewhere, it would be
unjust in regard to Nebraska, simply because, for ample and
adequate equivalents, fully received, you have contracted in effect
not to abolish that line there.

456 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

But why is this change of policy wise or necessary? It must be
because either that the extension of slavery is no evil, or that you
have not the power to prevent it at all, or because the maintenance
of a geographical line is no longer practicable.

I know that the opinion is sometimes advanced, here and else-
•where, that the extension of slavery, abstractly considered, is not an
evil ; but our laws prohibiting the African slave trade are still stand
ing on the statute book, and express the contrary judgment of the
American congress and of the American people. I pass on, there
fore, from that point.

I do not like, more than others, a geographical line between free
dom and slavery. But it is because I would have, if it were possi
ble, all our territory free. Since that cannot be, a line of division
is indispensable; and any line is a geographical line.

The honorable and very acute senator from North Carolina (Mr.
BADGER) has wooed us most persuasively to waive our objection to
the new principle, as it is called, of non-intervention, by assuring us
that the slaveholder can only use slave labor where the soils and
climates favor the culture of tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar. To
•which I reply : None of these find congenial soils and climates at
the sources of the Mississippi, or in the valley of the Rocky moun
tains. Why, then, does he want to remove the inhibition there ?

But again : That senator reproduces a pleasing fiction of the cha
racter of slavery from the Jewish history, and asks: Why not
allow the modern patriarchs to go into new regions with their slaves,
as their ancient prototypes did, to make them more comfortable and
happy ? And he tells us, at the same time, that this indulgence will
not increase the number of slaves. I reply by asking first, Whether
slavery has gained or lost strength by the diffusion of it over a
larger surface than it formerly covered ? Will the senator answer
that? Secondly, I admire the simplicity of the patriarchal times.
But they, nevertheless, exhibited some peculiar institutions quite in
congruous with modern republicanism, not to say Christianity,
namely, that of a latitude of construction of the marriage contract,
which has been carried by one class of so-called patriarchs into
Utah. Certainly, no one would desire to extend that peculiar in
stitution into Nebraska. Thirdly, slaveholders have also a pecu
liar institution, which makes them political patriarchs. They reckon
five of their slaves as equal to three freemen in forming the basis of

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 457

federal representation. If these patriarchs insist upon carrying their
institutions into new regions, north of 36° 30', I respectfully submit
that they ought to resume the modesty of their Jewish predecessors,
and relinquish this political feature of the system they thus seek to
extend. Will they do that ?

Some senators have revived the argument that the Missouri com
promise was unconstitutional. But it is one of the peculiarities of
compromises, that constitutional objections, like all others, are buried
under them by those who make and ratify them, for the obvious rea
son that the parties at once waive them, and receive equivalents.
Certainly, the slaveholding states, which waived their constitutional
objections against the compromise of 1820, and accepted equivalents
therefor, cannot be allowed to revive and offer them now as a rea
son for refusing to the non-slaveholding states their rights under that
compromise, without first restoring the equivalents which they re
ceived on condition of surrendering their constitutional objections.

For argument's sake, however, let this reply be waived, and let
us look at this constitutional objection. You say that the exclusion
of slavery by the Missouri compromise reaches through and beyond
the existence of the region organized as a territory, and prohibits
slavery FOREVER even in the states to be organized out of such ter
ritory, while, on the contrary, the states, when admitted, will be
sovereign, and must have exclusive jurisdiction over slavery for
themselves. Let this, too, be granted. But congress, according to
the constitution, "may admit new states." If congress mav admit,
then congress may also refuse to admit — that is to say, may reject
new states. The greater includes the less ; therefore, congress may
admit, on condition that the states shall exclude slavery. If such a
condition should be accepted, would it not be binding?

It is by no means necessary, on this occasion to follow the argu
ment further, to the question, whether such a condition is in conflict
with the constitutional provision, that the new states received shall
be admitted on an equal footing with the original states, because, in
this case, and at present, the question relates not to the admission of
a state,, but to the organization of a territory, and the exclusion of
slavery within the territory while its status as a territory shall con
tinue, and no further. Congress have power to exclude slavery in
territories, if they have any power to create, control or govern ter
ritories at all, for this simple reason: that, find the authority of

VOL. IV. 58

458 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

congress over the territories wherever you may, there you find no
exception from that general authority in favor of slavery. If con
gress has no authority over slavery in the territories, it has none in
the District of Columbia. If, then, you abolish a law of freedom in
Nebraska, in order to establish a new policy of abnegation, then true
consistency requires that you shall also abolish the slavery laws in
the District of Columbia, and submit the question of the toleration
of slavery within the district to its inhabitants.

If you reply, that the District of Columbia has no local or territo
rial legislature, then I rejoin, so also has not Nebraska, and so also
has not Kansas. You are calling a territorial legislature into exis
tence in Nebraska, and another in Kansas, to assume the jurisdic
tion on the subject of slavery, which you renounce. Then consis
tency demands that you call into existence a territorial legislature in
the District of Columbia, to assume the jurisdiction here, which you
must also renounce. Will you do this ? We shall see.

To come closer to the question : What is this principle of abne
gating national authority, on the subject of slavery, in favor of the
people ? Do you abnegate all authority whatever in the territories ?
Not at all ; you abnegate only authority over slavery there. Do you
abnegate even that? No; you do not, and you cannot. In the very
act of abnegating you legislate, and enact that the states to be here
after organized shall come in, whether slave or free, as their inhabi
tants shall choose. Is not this legislating not only on the subject of
slavery in the territories, but on the subject of slavery in the future
states ? In the very act of. abnegating, you call into being a legisla
ture which shall resume the authority which you are renouncing.
You not only exercise authority in that act, but you exercise autho
rity over slavery when you confer on the territorial legislature the
power to act upon that subject. More than this : In the very act of
calling that territorial legislature into existence, you exercise autho
rity in prescribing who may elect and who may be elected. You even
reserve to yourselves a veto upon every act that they can pass as a
legislative body, not only on all other subjects, but even on the sub
ject of slavery itself. Nor can you relinquish that veto; for it is
absurd to say that you can create an agent, and depute to him the
legislative authority of the United States, which agent you cannot
at your own pleasure remove, and whose acts you cannot at your
own pleasure disavow and repudiate. The territorial legislature is

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH.

your agent. Its acts are your own. Such is the principle that is to
supplant the ancient policy — a principle full of absurdities and con
tradictions.

Again : You claim that this policy of abnegation is based upon a
democratic principle. A democratic principle is a principle opposed
to some other that is despotic or aristocratic. You claim and exer
cise the power to institute and maintain government in the territo
ries. Is this comprehensive power aristocratic or despotic ? If it
be not, how is the partial power aristocratic or despotic? You
retain authority to appoint governors, without whose consent no
laws can be made on any subject, and judges, without whose con
sideration no laws can be executed, and you retain the power to
change them at pleasure. Are these powers, also, aristocratic or
despotic ? If they are not, then the exercise of legislative power by
yourselves is not. If they are, then why not renounce them also?
No, no. This is a far-fetched excuse. Democracy is a simple, uni
form, logical system, not a system of arbitrary, contradictory, and
conflicting principles !

But you must, nevertheless, renounce national authority over
slavery in the territories, while you retain all other powers. What
is this but a mere evasion of solemn responsibilities? The general
authority of congress over the territories is one wisely confided to
the national legislature, to save young and growing communities
from the dangers which beset them in their state of pupilage, and to
prevent them from adopting any policy that shall be at war with
their own lasting interests, or with the general welfare of the whole
republic. The authority over the subject of slavery is that which
ought to be renounced last of all, in favor of territorial legislatures,
because, from the very circumstances of the territories, those legisla
tures are likely to yield too readily to ephemeral influences, and
interested offers of favor and patronage. They see neither the great
future of the territories, nor the comprehensive and ultimate inte
rests of the whole republic, as clearly as you see them, or ought to
see them.

I have heard sectional excuses given for supporting this measure.
I have heard senators from the slaveholding states say that they
ought not to be expected to stand by the non-slaveholding states,
when they refuse to stand by themselves; that they ought not to be
expected to refuse the boon offered to the slaveholding states, since

460 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

it is offered by the non-slavebolding states thcm'si Ives. I not only
confess the plausibility of these excuses, but I feel the justice of the
reproach which they imply against the non-slaveholding states, as
far as the assumption is true. Nevertheless, senators from the slave-
holding states must consider well whether that assumption is, in any
considerable degree, founded in fact. If one or more senators from
the north decline to stand by the non-slaveholding states, or offer a
boon in their name, others from that region do, nevertheless, stand
firmly on their rights, and protest against the giving or the accept
ance of the boon. It has been said that the north does not speak
out, so as to enable you to decide between the conflicting voices of
her representatives. Are you quite sure you have given her timely
notice? Have you not, on the contrary, hurried this measure for
ward, to anticipate her awaking from the slumber of conscious
security into which she has been lulled by your last compromise I
Have you not heard already the quick, sharp protest of the legisla
ture of the smallest of the 'non-slaveholding states, Rhode Island?
Have you not already heard the deep-toned and earnest protest of
the greatest of those states, New York? Have you not already
heard remonstrances from the metropolis, and from the rural dis
tricts? Do you doubt that this is only the rising of the agitation
that you profess to believe is at rest forever? Do you forget that,
in all such transactions as these, the people have a reserved right to
review the acts of their representatives, and a right to demand a
reconsideration ; that there is in our legislative practice a form of
RE-ENACTMENT, as well as an act of repeal ; and that there is in our
political system provision not only for abrogation, but for RESTORA
TION also? And when the process of repeal has begun, how many
and what laws will be open to repeal, equally with the Missouri
•compromise? There will be this act, the fugitive slave laws, the
articles of Texas annexation, the "territorial laws of New Mexico
-and Utah, the slavery laws in the District of Columbia.

Senators from the slaveholding states, you are politicians as well
as statesmen. Let me remind you, therefore, that political move
ments in this country, as in all others, have their times of action
and reaction. The pendulum moved up the side of freedom in
1840, and swung back again in 1844 on the side of slavery, tra
versed the dial in 1848, and touched even the mark of the Wilmot
proviso, and returned again in 1852, reaching even the height of the

MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 461

Baltimore platform. Judge for yourselves whether it is yet aa.vnd-
ing, and whether it will attain the height of the abrogation of the
Missouri compromise. That is the mark you are fixing for it. For
myself, I may claim to know something of the north. I see in the
changes of the times only the vibrations of the needle, trembling
on its pivot. I know that in due time it will settle; and when
it shall have settled, it will point, as it must point forever, to the
same constant polar star, that sheds down influences propitious
to freedom as broadly as it pours forth its mellow but invigorating
light.

I have nothing to do, here or elsewhere, with personal or party
motives. But I come to consider the motive which is publicly
assigned for this transaction. It is a desire to secure permanent
peace and harmony on the subject of slavery, by removing all occa
sion for its future agitation in the federal legislature. Was there
not peace already here? Was there not harmony as perfect as is
ever possible in the country, when this measure was moved in the
senate a month ago? Were we not, and was not the whole nation,
grappling with that one great, common, universal interest, the open
ing of a communication between our ocean frontiers, and were we
not already reckoning upon the quick and busy subjugation of
nature throughout the interior of the continent to the uses of man,
and dwelling with almost rapturous enthusiasm on the prospective
enlargement of our commerce in the east, and of our political sway
throughout the world ? And what have we now here but the obli
vion of death, covering the very memory of those great enterprises,
and prospects, and hopes ?

Senators from the non-slaveholding states : You want peace.
Think well, I beseech you, before you yield the price now demanded,
even for peace and rest from slavery agitation. France has got
peace from republican agitation by a similar sacrifice. So has
Poland; so has Hungary; and so, at last, has Ireland. Is the
peace which either of those nations enjoys worth the price it cost?
Is peace, obtained at such cost, ever a lasting peace ?

Senators from the slaveholding states : You, too, suppose that you
are securing peace as well as victory in this transaction. I tell you
now, as I told you in 1850, that it is an error, an unnecessary error,
to suppose, that because you exclude slavery from these halls to-day,
that it will not revisit them to-rnorrow. You buried the Wilmot

462 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

proviso here then, and celebrated its obsequies with pomp and
revelry. And here it is again to-day, stalking through these halls,
•clad in complete steel as before. Even if those whom you denounce
as factionists in the north would let it rest, you yourselves must
-evoke it from its grave. The reason is obviobs. Say what you
will, do what you will, here, the interests of the non-slaveholding
states and of the slaveholding states remain just the same; and
they will rerhain just the same, until you shall cease to cherish and
defend slavery, or we shall cease to honor and love freedom 1 You
will not cease to cherish slavery. Do you see any signs that we are
becoming indifferent to freedom ? On the contrary, that old, tradi
tional, hereditary sentiment of the north is more profound and more
universal now than it ever was before. The slavery agitation you
deprecate so much is an eternal struggle between conservatism and
progress, between truth and error, between right and wrong. You
may sooner, by act of congress, compel the sea to suppress its up-
heavings, and the round earth to extinguish its internal fires, than
oblige the human mind to cease its inquirings, and the human heart
to desist from its th robbings.

Suppose then, for a moment, that this agitation must go on here
after as heretofore. Then, hereafter as heretofore, there will be need,
on both sides, of moderation ; and, to secure moderation, there will
be need of mediation. Hitherto you have secured moderation
by means of compromises, by tendering which, the great mediator,
now no more, divided the people of the north. But then those in
the north who did not sympathize with you in your complaints of
aggression from that quarter, as well as those who did, agreed that
if compromises should be effected, they would be chivalrously kept
on your part. I cheerfully admit that they have been so kept until
now. But hereafter, when having taken advantage, which in the
north will be called fraudulent, of the last of those compromises,, to
become, as you will be called, the aggressors, by breaking the other,
as will be alleged, in violation of plighted faith and honor, while
the slavery agitation is rising higher than ever before, and while
your ancient friends, and those whom you persist in regarding as
your enemies, shall have been driven together by a common and
universal sense of your injustice, what new mode of restoring peace
and harmony will you then propose ? What statesman will there
be in the south, then, who can bear the flag of truce? What states-

NEBRASKA AXD KANSAS. 463

man in the north who can mediate the acceptance of your new pro
posals? I think it will not be the senator from Illinois.

If, however, I err in all this, let us suppose that you succeed in
suppressing political agitation of slavery in national affairs. Never
theless, agitation of slavery must go on in some form; for all the
world around you is engaged in it. It is, then, high time for you
to consider where you may expect to meet it next. I much mistake
i^ in that case, you do not meet it there where we, who once were
slaveholding states, as you now are, have met, and, happily for us,
succumbed before it — namely, in the legislative halls, in the churches
and schools, and at the fireside, within the states themselves. It is
an angel of mercy with which, sooner or later, every slaveholding
state must wrestle, and by which it must be overcome. Even if, by
reason of this measure, it should the sooner come to that point, and
although I am sure that you will not overcome freedom, but that
freedom will overcome you, yet I do not look even then for disas
trous or unhappy results. The institutions of our country are so
framed, that the inevitable conflict of opinion on slavery, as on
every other subject, cannot be otherwise than peaceful in its course
and beneficent in its termination.

Nor shall I "bate one jot of heart or hope" in maintaining a just
equilibrium of the non-shiveholding states, even if this ill-starred
measure shall be adopted. The non-slaveholding states are teeming
with an increase of freemen — educated, vigorous, enlightened, enter
prising freemen — such freemen as neither England, nor Eome, nor
even Athens, ever reared. Half a million of freemen from Europe
annually augment that increase ; and ten years hence half a million,
twenty years hence a million of freemen from Asia will augment it
still more. You may obstruct and so turn the direction of those
peaceful armies away from Nebraska. So long as you shall leave
them room on hill or prairie, by river side or in the mountain fast
nesses, they will dispose of themselves peacefully and lawfully in the
places you shall have left open to them ; and there they will erect
new states upon free soil, to be forever maintained and defended by
free arms and aggrandized by free labor. American slavery, I know,
has a large and ever-flowing spring, but it cannot pour forth its
blackened tide in volumes like that I have described. If you are
wise, these tides of freemen and of slaves will never meet, for they
will not voluntarily commingle ; but if, nevertheless, through your

464 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

own erroneous policy, their repulsive currents must be directed
against each other, so that they needs must meet, then it is easy tx>
see in that case which of them will overcome the resistance of the
other, and which of them, thus overpowered, will roll back to drown
the source which sent it forth.

" Man proposes, and God disposes." You may legislate, and abro
gate, and abnegate, 'as you will, but there is a Superior Power that
overrules all your actions and all your refusals to act, and, I fondly
hope and trust, overrules them to the advancement of the happiness,
greatness and glory of our country — that overrules, I know, not
only all your actions and all your refusals to act, but all human
events, to the distant but inevitable result of the equal and universal
liberty of all men.

NEBKASKA AND KANSAS.

SECOND SPEECH,1

I RISE with no purpose of further resisting or even delaying the
passage of this bill. Let its advocates have only a little patience,
and they will soon reach the object for which they have struggled so
earnestly and so long. The sun has set for the last time upon the
guarantied and certain liberties of all the unsettled and unorganized
portions .of the American continent that lie within the jurisdiction
of the United States. To-morrow's sun will rise in dim eclipse over
them.8 How long that obstruction shall last, is known only to the
Power that directs and controls all human events. For myself, I
know only this — that now no human power will prevent its coming
on, and that its passing off will be hastened and secured by others
than those now here, and perhaps by only those belonging to future
generations.

It would be almost factious to offer further resistance to this mea
sure here. Indeed, successful resistance was never expected to be
made in this hall. The senate floor is an old battle-ground, on which

1 On the return of the bill from the house of representatives with amendments, May 25, 1854.
See memoir, page 26, prese-nt volume.
3 An almost total eclipse of the sun actually occurred on that day— the 26th of May, 1854.— ED.

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. 465

have been fought many contests, and always, at least since 1820,
with fortune adverse to the cause of equal and universal freedom.
We were only a few here who engaged in that cause in the begin
ning of this contest. All that we could hope to do — all that we did
hope to do — was to organize and to prepare the issue for the house
of representatives, to which the country would look for its decision
as authoritative, and to awaken the country, that it might be ready
for the appeal which would be made, whatever the decision of con
gress might be. We are no stronger now. Only fourteen at the
first, it will be fortunate if, among the ills and accidents which sur
round us, we shall maintain that number to the end.

We are on the eve of the consummation of a great national trans
action — a transaction which will close a cycle in the history of our
country — and it is impossible not to desire to pause a moment and
survey the scene around us and the prospect before us. However
obscure we may individually be, our connection with this great
transaction will perpetuate our names for the praise or for the cen
sure of future ages, and perhaps in regions far remote. If, then, we
had no other motive for our actions but that of an honest desire for
a just fame, we could not be indifferent to that scene and that pros
pect. But individual interests and ambition sink into insignificance
in view of the interests of our country and of mankind. These
interests awaken, at least in me, an intense solicitude.

It was said by some in the beginning, and it has been said by
others later in this debate, that it was doubtful whether it would be
the cause of slavery or the cause of freedom that would gain advan
tages from the passage of this bill. I do not find it necessary to be
censorious, nor even unjust to others, in order that my own course-
may be approved. I am sure that the honorable senator from Illi
nois [Mr. DOUGLAS] did not mean that the slave states should gain
an advantage over the free states, for he disclaimed it when he intro
duced the bill. I believe in all candor that the honorable senator
from Georgia [Mr. TOOMBS], who comes out at the close of the battle
as one of the chiefest leaders of the victorious party, is sincere in
declaring his own opinion that the slave states will gain no unjust
advantage over the free states, because he disclaims it as a triumph
in their behalf. Notwithstanding all this, however, what has occurred
here and in the country, during this contest, has compelled a convic
tion that slavery will gain something, and freedom will endure rj
VOL. IV. 59

466 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

severe, though I hope not an irretrievable loss. The slaveholding
states are passive, quiet, content and satisfied with the prospective
boon, and the free states are excited and alarmed with fearful fore
bodings and apprehensions. The impatience for the speedy passage
of the bill manifested by its friends, betrays a knowledge that this is
the condition of public sentiment in the free states. They thought
in the beginning that it was necessary to guard the measure by
inserting the Clayton amendment, which would exclude unnatural-
ized foreign inhabitants of the territories from the right of suffrage.
And now they seem willing, with almost perfect unanimity, to relin
quish that safeguard, rather than to delay the adoption of the principal
measure for at most a year, perhaps for only a week or a day. Suppose
that the senate should adhere to that condition, which so lately was
thought so wise and so important — what then? The bill could only
go back to the house of representatives, which must either yield or
insist! In the one case or in the other, a decision in favor of the
toll would be secured, for even if the house should disagree, the
senate would have time to recede. But the majority will hazard
nothing, even on a prospect so certain as this. They will recede at
once, without a moment's further struggle, from the condition, and
thus secure the passage of this bill, now to-night. Why such haste?
Even if the question were to go to the country before a final decision
here, what would there be wrong in that ? There is no man living
who will say that the country anticipated, or that he anticipated agi
tation of this measure in congress, when this congress was elected,
or even when it assembled in December last.

Under such circumstances, and in the midst of agitation and excite
ment and debates, it is only fair to say that certainly the country has
not decided in favor of the bill. The refusal, then, to let the ques
tion go to the country, is a conclusive proof that the slave states, as
represented here, expect from the passage of this bill what the free
states insist that they will lose by it, an advantage, a material advan
tage, and not a mere abstraction. There are men in the slave states,
as in the free states, who insist always too pertinaciously upon mere
abstractions. But that is not the policy of the slave states to-day.
They are in earnest in seeking for and securing an object, and an
important one. I believe they are going to have it. I do not know
how long the advantage gained will last, nor how great or comprehen
sive it will be. Every senator who agrees with me in opinion must feel

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 467

as I do — that under such circumstances he can forego nothing that can
be done decently, with due respect to difference of opinion, and con
sistently with the constitutional and settled rules of legislation, to
place the true merits of the question before the country. Questions
sometimes occur, which seem to have two right sides. Such were
the questions that divided the English nation between Pitt and Fox —
such the contest between the assailant and the defender of Quebec.
The judgment of the world was suspended by its sympathies, and
seemed ready to descend in favor of him who should be most gallant
in conduct. And so, when both fell with equal chivalry on the same
field, the survivors united in raising a common monument to the
glorious but rival memories of Wolfe and Montcalm. But this con
test involves a moral question. The slave states so present it. They
maintain that African slavery is not erroneous, not unjust, not incon
sistent with the advancing cause of human nature. Since they so
regard it, I do not expect to see statesmen representing those states
indifferent about a vindication of this system by the congress of the
United States. On the other hand, we of the free states regard
slavery as erroneous, unjust, oppressive, and therefore absolutely
inconsistent with the principles of the American constitution and
government. Who will expect us to be indifferent to the decisions
of the American people and of mankind on such an issue?

Again : there is suspended on the issue of this contest the politi
cal equilibrium between the free and the slave states. It is no
ephemeral question, no idle question, whether slavery shall go on
increasing its influence over the central power here, or whether free
dom shall gain the ascendency. I do not expect to see statesmen
of the slave states indifferent on so momentous a question, and as
little can it be expected that those of the free states will betray their
own great cause. And now it remains for me to declare, in view
of the decision of this controversy so near at hand, that I have seen
nothing and heard nothing during its progress to change the opinions
which at the earliest proper period I deliberately expressed. Cer
tainly, I have not seen the evidence then promised, that the free
states would acquiesce in the measure. As certainly, too, I may say
that I have not seen the fulfillment of the promise that the history
of the last thirty years would be revised, corrected, and amended,
and that it would then appear that the country, during all that
period, had been resting in prosperity and contentment and peace,

468 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

not upon a valid, constitutional, and irrevocable compromise be
tween the slave states and the free states, but upon an unconstitu
tional and false, and even infamous, act of congressional usurpation.

On the contrary, I am now, if possible, more than ever satisfied
that, after all this debate, the history of the country will go down
to posterity just as it stood before, carrying to them the everlasting
facts that until 1820 the congress of the United States legislated to
prevent the introduction of slavery into new territories whenever
that object was practicable ; and that in that year they so far modi
fied that policy, under alarming apprehensions of civil convulsion,
by a constitutional enactment in the character of a compact, as to
admit Missouri a new slave state ; but upon the express condition,
stipulated in favor of the free states, that slavery should be forever
prohibited in all the residue of the existing and unorganized terri
tory of the United States lying north of the parallel of 36° 30'
north latitude. Certainly, I find nothing to win my favor toward
the bill in the proposition of the senator from Maryland [Mr.
PEAECE], to restore the Clayton amendment, which was struck out
in the house of representatives. So far from voting for that proposi
tion, I shall vote against it now, as I did when it was under consid
eration here before, in accordance with the opinion adopted as early
as any political opinions I ever had, and cherished as long, that the
right of suffrage is not a mere conventional right, but an inherent
natural right, of which no government can rightly deprive any adult
man who is subject to its authority, and obligated to its support.

I hold, moreover, that inasmuch as every man is, by force of cir
cumstances beyond his own control, a subject of government some
where, he is, by the very constitution of human society, entitled to
share equally in the conferring of political power on those who
wield it, if he is not disqualified by crime ; that in a despotic gov
ernment he ought to be allowed arms, in a free government the
ballot or the open vote, as a means of self- protection against un
endurable oppression. I am not likely, therefore, to restore to this
bill an, amendment which would deprive it of an important feature
imposed upon it by the house of representatives, and that one, per
haps, the only feature that harmonizes with my own convictions of
justice. It is true that the house of representatives stipulate such
suffrages for white men as a condition for opening it to the possible
proscription and slavery of the African. I shall separate them. I

FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. 469

shall vote for the former, and against the latter, glad to gee universal
suffrage of white men, if only that can be gained now, and working
right on, full of hope and confidence, for the prevention or the
abrogation of slavery in the territories hereafter.

I am surprised at the pertinacity with which the honorable senator
from Delaware, mine ancient and honorable friend [Mr. CLAYTON],
perseveres in opposing the granting of the right of suffrage to the
unnaturalized foreigner in the territories. Congress cannot deny
him that right. Here is the third article of that convention by
which Louisiana, including Kansas and Nebraska, was ceded to the
United States:

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall bo incorporated in the Union of
the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles
of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of the rights, privileges, and immu
nities, of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be main
tained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the
religion they profess."

The inhabitants of Kansas and Nebraska are citizens already, and
bjr force of this treaty must continue to be, and as such to enjoy the
right of suffrage, whatever laws you may make to the contrary.
My opinions are well known, to wit:/That slavery is not only an
evil, but a local one, injurious and ultimately pernicious to society,
wherever it exists, and in conflict with the constitutional principles
of society in this country. I am not willing to extend nor to per
mit the extension of that local evil into regions now free within our
empire./* I know that there are some who differ from me, and who
regard the constitution of the United States as an instrument which
sanctions slavery as well as freedom. But if I could admit a propo
sition so incongruous with the letter and spirit of the federal con
stitution, and the known sentiments of its illustrious founders, and
so should conclude that slavery was national, I must still cherish
the opinion that it is an evil; and because it is a national one, I am
the more firmly held and bound to prevent an increase of it, tend
ing, as I think it manifestly does, to the weakening and ultimate
overthrow of the constitution itself, and therefore to the injury of
all mankind. I know there have been states which have endured
long, and achieved much, which tolerated slavery ; but that was not
the slavery of caste, like African slavery. Such slavery tends to
demoralize equally the subjected race and the superior one. It has

470 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

been the absence of such slavery from Europe that has given her
nations their superiority over other countries in that hemisphere.
Slavery, wherever it exists, begets fear, and fear is the parent of
weakness. What is the secret of that eternal, sleepless anxiety in
the legislative halls, and even at the firesides, of the slave states,
always asking new stipulations, new compromises and abrogations
of compromises, new assumptions of power and abnegations of
power, but fear? It is the apprehension that, even if safe now,
they will not always or long be secure against some invasion or
some aggression from the free states. What is the secret of the
humiliating part which proud old Spain is acting at this day, trem
bling between alarms of American intrusion into Cuba on one side,
and British dictation on the other, but the fact that she has cherished
slavery so long, and still cherishes it, in the last of her American
colonial possessions ? Thus far, Kansas and Nebraska are safe,
under the laws of 1820, against the introduction of this element of
national debility and decline. The bill before us, as we are assured,
contains a great principle, a glorious principle; and yet that prin
ciple, when fully ascertained, proves to be nothing less than the
subversion of that security, not only within the territories of Kansas-
and Nebraska, but within all the other present and future new terri
tories of the United States. Thus it is quite clear that it is not a
principle that is involved, but that those who crowd this measure
with so much zeal and earnestness, must expect that either freedom
or slavery shall gain something by it in those regions. The case,
then, stands thus in Kansas and Nebraska : Freedom may lose, but
certainly can gain nothing; while slavery may gain, but as certainly
can lose nothing.

So far as I am concerned, the time for looking on the dark side
has passed. I feel quite sure that slavery at most can get nothing
more than Kansas ; while Nebraska, the wider northern region, will,
under existing circumstances, escape, for the reason that its soil and
climate are uncongenial with the staples of slave culture — rice,
sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Moreover, since the public attention has
been so well and so effectually directed toward the subject, I cherish
a hope that slavery may be prevented even from gaining a foothold
in Kansas. Congress only gives consent, but it does not and cannot
introduce slavery there. Slavery will be embarrassed by its own
over-grasping spirit. No one, I am sure, anticipates the possible

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 4-71

reestablish men t of the African slave trade. The tide of emigration
to Kansas is therefore to be supplied there solely by the domestic
fountain of slave production. But slavery has also other regions
besides Kansas to be filled from that fountain. There are all of New
Mexico and all of Utah already within the United States ; and then
there is Cuba, that consumes slave labor and life as fast as any one
of the slaveholding states can supply it ; and besides these regions,
there remains all of Mexico down to the isthmus. The stream of
slave labor flowing from so small a fountain, and broken into several
divergent channels, will not cover so great a field ; and it is reason
ably to be hoped that the part of it nearest to the north pole will
be the last to be inundated.

But African slave emigration is to compete with free emigration
of white men, and the source of this latter tide is as ample as the
civilization of the two entire continents. The honorable senator
from Delaware mentioned, as if it were a startling fact, that twenty
thousand European immigrants arrived in New York in one month..
He has stated the fact with too much moderation. On my return
to the capital, a day or two ago, I met twelve thousand of these
immigrants who had arrived in New York on one morning, and
who had thronged the churches on the following sabbath, to return
thanks for deliverance from the perils of the sea, and for their
arrival in the land, not of slavery, but of liberty. I also thank God
for their escape, and for their coming. They are now on their way
westward, and the news of the passage of this bill, preceding them,
will speed many of them toward Kansas and Nebraska. Such
arrivals are not extraordinary — they occur almost every week; and
the immigration from Germany, from Great Britain, and from Nor
way, and from Sweden, during the European war, will rise to six
or seven hundred thousand souls in a year. And with this tide is
to be mingled one rapidly swelling from Asia and from the islands
of the South seas. All the immigrants, under this bill as the house
of representatives overruling you have ordered, will be good, loyal,
liberty -loving, slavery-fearing citizens. Come on, then, gentlemen
of the slave states. Since there is no escaping your challenge, I
accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom. We will engage in
competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory
to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.

472 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

There are, however, earnest advocates of this bill, who do not
expect, and who, I suppose, do not desire, that slavery shall gain
possession of Nebraska. What do they expect to gain ? The hon
orable senator from Indiana says that by thus obliterating the Mis
souri compromise restriction, they will gain a tabula rasa, on which
the inhabitants of Kansas and Nebraska may write whatever they
will. This is the great principle of the bill, as he understands it.
Well, what gain is there in that? You obliterate a constitution of
freedom. If they write a new constitution of freedom, can the new
be better than the old? If they write a constitution of slavery,
will it not be a worse one? I ask the honorable senator that! But
the honorable senator says that the people of Nebraska will have
the privilege of establishing institutions for themselves. They have
now the privilege of establishing free institutions. Is it a privilege,
then, to establish slavery ? If so, what a mockery are all our con
stitutions, which prevent the inhabitants from capriciously subvert
ing free institutions and establishing institutions of slavery? It is
a sophism, a subtlety, to talk of conferring upon a country, already
secure in the blessings of freedom, the power of self-destruction.

What mankind everywhere want, is not the removal of the con
stitutions of freedom which they have, that they may make at their
pleasure constitutions of slavery or of freedom, but the privilege of
retaining constitutions of freedom when they already have them,
and the removal of constitutions of slavery when they have them,
that they may establish constitutions of freedom in their place.
We hold on tenaciously to all existing constitutions of freedom.
Who denounces any man for diligently adhering to such constitu
tions? Who would dare to denounce any one for disloyalty to our
existing constitutions, if they were constitutions of despotism and
slavery ? But it is supposed by some that this principle is less im
portant in regard to Kansas and Nebraska than as a general one — a
general principle applicable to all other present and future territories
of the United States. Do honorable senators then indeed suppose
they are establishing a principle at all? If so, I think they egre-
giously err, whether the principle is either good or bad, right or
wrong. They are not establishing it, and cannot establish it in this
way. You subvert one law capriciously, by making another law in
its place. That is all. Will your law have any more weight,
authority, solemnity, or binding force on future congresses than the

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 473

first had? You abrogate the law of jour predecessors — others will
have equal power and equal liberty to abrogate yours. You allow
no barriers around the old law, to protect it from abrogation. You
erect none around your new' law, to stay the hand of future inno
vators.

On what ground do you expect the new law to stand ? If you
are candid, you will confess that you rest your assumption on the
ground that the free states will never agitate repeal, but always
acquiesce. It may be that you are right. I am not going to predict
the course of the free states. I claim no authority to speak for
them, and still less to say what they will do. But I may venture to
say, that if they shall not repeal this law, it will not be because they
are not strong enough to do it. They have power in the house of
representatives greater than that of the slave states, and, when they
choose to exercise it, a power greater even here in the senate. The
free states are not dull scholars, even in practical political strategy.
When you shall have taught them that a compromise law establish
ing freedom can be abrogated, and the Union nevertheless stand,
you will have let them into another secret, namely: that a law per
mitting or establishing slaverv can be repealed, and the Union
nevertheless remain firm. If you inquire why they do not stand
by their rights and their interests more firmly, I will tell you to the
best of my ability. It is because they are conscious of their strength,
.and therefore unsuspecting, and slow to apprehend danger. The
reason why you prevail in so many contests, is because you are in
perpetual fear.

There cannot be a convocation of abolitionists, however imprac
ticable, in Faneuil hall or the Tabernacle, though it consists of men
and women who have separated themselves from all effective politi
cal parties, and who have renounced all political agencies, even
though they resolve that they will vote for nobody, not even for
themselves, to carry out their purposes, and though they practise on
that resolution, but you take alarm, and your agitation renders
necessary such compromises as those of 1820 and 1850. We are
young in the arts of politics ; you are old. We are strong ; you
are weak. We are, therefore, over-confident, careless, and indiffer
ent; you are vigilant and active. These are traits that redound to
your praise. They are mentioned not in your disparagement. I
say only that there ma}7 be an extent of intervention, of aggression,

VOL. IV. 60

474 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

on your side, which may induce the north, at some time, either in
this or in some future generation, to adopt your tactics and follow
your example. Remember now, that by unanimous consent, this
new law will be a repealable statute, exposed to all the chances of
the Missouri compromise. It stands an infinitely worse chance of
endurance than that compromise did.

The Missouri compromise was a transaction which wise, learned,
patriotic statesmen agreed to surround arid fortify with the princi
ples of a compact for mutual considerations, passed and executed,
and therefore, although not irrepealable in fact, yet irrepealable in
honor and conscience; arid, down at least until this very session of
the congress of the United States, it has had the force and authority
not merely of an act of congress, but of a covenant between the
free states and the slave states, scarcely less sacred than the constitu
tion itself. Now, then, who are your contracting parties in the law
establishing governments in Kansas and Nebraska, and abrogating
the Missouri compromise? What are the equivalents in this law?
What has the north given, and what has the south got back that
makes this a contract? Who pretends that it is anything more than
an ordinary act of ordinary legislation ? If, then, a law which has
all the forms and solemnities recognized by common consent as a
compact, and is covered with traditions, cannot stand amid this
shuffling of this balance between the free states and the slave states,
tell me what chance this new law that you are passing will have?

You are, moreover setting a precedent which abrogates all com
promises. Four years ago, you obtained the consent of a portion
of the free states — enough to render the effort at immediate repeal
or resistance alike impossible — to what we regarded as an unconsti
tutional act for the surrender of fugitive slaves. That was declared,
by the common consent of the persons acting in the name of the
two parties, the slave states and free states in congress, an irrepeal
able law — not even to be questioned, although it violated the consti
tution. In establishing this new principle, you expose that law also
to the chances of repeal. You not only so expose the fugitive slave
law, but there is no solemnity about the articles for the annexation
of Texas to the United States, which does not hang about the Mis
souri compromise; and when you have shown that the Missouri
compromise can be repealed, then the articles for the annexation of
Texas are subject to the will and pleasure and the caprice of a tern-

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 475

porarj majority in congress. Do you, then, expect that the free
states are to observe compacts, and you to be at liberty to break
them ; that they are to submit to laws and leave them on the statute
book, however unconstitutional and however grievous, and that you
are to rest under no such obligation ? I think it is not a reasonable
expectation. Say, then, who from the north will be bound to admit
Kansas, when Kansas shall come in here, if she shall come as a
slave state?

The honorable senator from Georgia [Mr. TOOMBS], and I know
he is as sincere as he is ardent, says if he shall be here when
Kansas comes as a free state, he will vote for her admission. I
doubt not that he would ; but he will not be here, for the very
reason, if there be no other, that he would vote that way. When
Oregon or Minnesota shall come here for admission — within one
year, or two years, or three years from this time — we shall then see
what your new principle is worth in its obligation upon the slave-
holding states. No; you establish no principle, you only abrogate
a principle which was established for your own security as well as
ours ; and while you think you are abnegating and resigning all
power and all authority on this subject into the hands of the people
of the territories, you are only getting over a difficulty in settling
this question in the organization of two new territories, by postpon
ing it till they come here to be admitted as states, slave or free.

In saying that your new principle will not be established by this
bill, I reason from obvious, clear, well-settled principles of human
nature. Slavery and freedom are antagonistical elements in this
country. The founders of the constitution framed it with a know
ledge of that antagonism, and suffered it to continue, that it might
work out its own ends. There is a commercial antagonism, an irre
concilable one, between the systems of free labor and slave labor.
They have been at war with each other ever since the government
was established, and that war is to continue forever. The contest,,
when it ripens between these two antagonistic elements, is to be set
tled somewhere; it is to be settled in the seat of central power, in
the federal legislature. The constitution makes it the duty of the
central government to determine questions ns often as they shall
arise in favor of one or the other party, and refers the decision of
them to the majority of the votes in the two houses of congress. It
will come back here, then, in spite of all the efforts to escape from it.

476 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

This antagonism must end either in a separation of the antago
nistic parties — the slaveholding states and the free states — or,
secondly, in the complete establishment of the influence of the slave
power over the free — or else on the other hand, in the establishment
of the superior influence of freedom over the interests of slavery.
It will not be terminated by a voluntary secession of either party.
Commercial interests bind the slave states and the free states together
in links of gold that are riveted with iron, and they cannot be broken
by passion or by ambition. Either party will submit to the ascend
ency of the other, rather than yield to the commercial advantages
•of this Union. Political ties bind the Union together — a common
necessity, and not merely a common necessity, but the common in
terests of empire — of such empire as the world has never before
seen. The control of the national power is the control of the great
western continent; and the control of this continent is to be in a
very few years the controlling influence in the world. Who is there
north, that hates slavery so much, or who, south, that hates emanci
pation so intensely, that he can attempt, with any hope of success,
to break a Union thus forged and welded together? I have always
heard, with equal pity and disgust, threats of disunion in the free
states, and similar threats in the slaveholding states. I know that
men may rave in the heat of passion, and under great political ex
citement; but I know that when it comes to a question whether this
Union shall stand, either with freedom or with slavery, the masses
will uphold it, and it will stand until some inherent vice in its con
stitution, not yet disclosed, shall cause its dissolution. Now, enter
taining these opinions, there are for me only two alternatives, viz.:
either to let slavery gain unlimited sway, or so to exert what little
power and influence I may have, as to secure, if I can, the ultimate
predominance of freedom.

In doing this, I do no more than those who believe the slave
power is rightest, wisest, and best, are doing, and will continue to
do, with my free consent, to establish its complete supremacy. If
they shall succeed, I still shall be, as I have been, a loyal citizen.
If we succeed, I know they will be loyal also, because it will be
safest, wisest, and best, for them to be so. The question is one, not
of a day, or of a year, but of many years, and for aught I know,
many generations. Like all other great political questions, it will
be attended sometimes by excitement, sometimes by passion, and

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS. 477

sometimes, perhaps, even by faction ; but it is sure to be settled in a
constitutional way, without any violent shock to society, or to any
of its great interests. It is, moreover, sure to be settled rightly ;.
because it will be settled under the benign influences of republican
ism and Christianity, according to the principles of truth and justice,
as ascertained by human reason. In pursuing such a course, it
seems to me obviously as wise as it is necessary to save all existing
laws and constitutions which are conservative of freedom, and to
permit, as far as possible, the establishment of no new ones in favor
of slavery; and thus to turn away the thoughts of the states wlik-h
tolerate slavery from political efforts to perpetuate what in its nature
cannot be perpetual, to the more wise and benign policy of emanci
pation.

This, in my humble judgment, is the simple, easy path of duty
for the American statesman. I will not contemplate that other alter
native — the greater ascendency of the slave power. I believe that
if it ever shall come, the voice of freedom will cease to be heard in
these halls, whatever may be the evils and dangers which slavery
shall produce. I say this without disrespect for representatives of
slave states, and I say it because the rights of petition and of debate
on that subject are effectually suppressed — necessarily suppressed —
in all the slave states, and because they are not always held in reve
rence even now, in the two houses of congress. When freedom of
speech on a subject of such vital interest shall have ceased to exist
in congress, then I shall expect to see slavery not only luxuriating
in all new territories, but stealthily creeping even into the free states
themselves. Believing this, and believing, also, that complete re
sponsibility of the government to the people is essential to public
and private safety, and that decline and ruin are sure to follow,
always, on the train of slavery, I am sure that this will be no longer
a land of freedom and constitutional liberty when slavery shall have
thus become paramount. Auferre, trucidare fahis nominibus imperium
atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

I have always said that I should not despond, even if this fearful
measure should be effected; nor do I now despond. Although,
reasoning from my present convictions, I should not have voted foi
the compromise of 1820, I have labored, in the very spirit of those
who established it, to save the landmark of freedom which it
assigned. I have not spoken irreverently, even of the compromise

478 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

of 1850, which, as all men know, I opposed earnestly and with
diligence. Nevertheless, I have always preferred the compromises
of the constitution, and have wanted no others. I feared all others.
This was a leading principle of the great statesman of the south
[Mr. CALHOUN]. Said he :

" I see my way in the constitution ; I cannot in a compromise. A compromise
is but an act of congress. It may be overruled at any time. It gives us no secu
rity. But the constitution is a statute. It is a rock on which we can stand, and
on which we can meet our friends from the non-slaveholding states. It is a firm
and stable ground, on which we can better stand in opposition to fanaticism than
on the shifting sands of compromise. Let us be done with compromises. Let us
go back and stand upon the constitution."

I stood upon this ground in 1850, defending freedom upon it as
Mr. CALHOUN did in defending slavery. I was overruled then, and
I have waited since without proposing to abrogate any compromises.

It has been no proposition of mine to abrogate them now ; but
the proposition has come from another quarter — from an adverse
one. It is about to prevail. The shifting sands of compromise are
passing from under my feet, and they are now, without agency of
my own, taking hold again on the rock of the constitution. It shall
be no fault of mine if they do not remain firm. This seems to me
auspicious of better days and wiser legislation. Through all the
darkness and gloom of the present hour, bright stars are breaking,
that inspire me with hope, and excite me to perseverance. They
show that the day of compromises has passed forever, and that
henceforward all great questions between freedom and slavery legi
timately coming here — and none other can come — shall be decided,
as they ought to be, upon their merits, by a fair exercise of legisla
tive power, and not by bargains of equivocal prudence, if not of
doubtful morality.

The house of representatives has, and it alwa}^s will have, an
increasing majority of members from the free states. On this occa
sion, that house has not been altogether faithless to the interests of
the free states; for although it has taken away the charter of free
dom from Kansas and Nebraska, it has at the same time told this
proud body, in language which compels acquiescence, that in sub
mitting the question of its restoration, it would submit it not merely
to interested citizens, but to the alien inhabitants of the territories
also. So the great interests of humanity are, after all, thanks to the

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 479

Louse of representatives, and thanks to God, submitted to the voice
of human nature.

'I see one more sign of hope. The great support of slavery in the
south has been its alliance with the democratic party of the north.
By means of that alliance it obtained paramount influence in this
government about the year 1800, which, from that time to this, with
but few and slight interruptions, it has maintained. While demo
cracy in the north has thus been supporting slavery in the south,
the people of the north have been learning more profoundly the
principles of republicanism and of free government. It is an extra
ordinary circumstance, which you, sir, the present occupant of the
chair [Mr. STUART], I am sure, will not gainsay, that at this moment,
when there seems to be a more complete divergence of the federal
government in favor of slavery than ever before, the sentiment of
universal liberty is stronger in all free states than it ever was before.
With that principle the present democratic party must now come
into a closer contest. Their prestige of democracy is fast waning,
by reason of the hard service which their alliance with their slave-
holding brethren has imposed upon them. That party perseveres,
as indeed it must, by reason of its very constitution, in that service,
and thus comes into closer conflict with elements of true democracy,
and for that reason is destined to lose, and is fast losing, the power
which it has held so firmly and so long. That power will not be
restored until the principle established here now shall be reversed,
and a constitution shall be given, not only to Kansas and Nebraska
but also to every other national territory, which will be, not a tabula
rasa, but a constitution securing equal, universal, and perpetual
freedom.

THE IMMEDIATE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 1

To OBTAIN empire is easy and common ; to govern it well is diffi
cult and rare indeed. I salute the congress of the United States in
the exercise of its most important function, that of extending the
federal constitution over added domains, and I salute especially the
senate in the most august of all its manifold characters, itself a con
gress of thirty-one free, equal, sovereign states, assembled to decide

1 Speech in the United States Senate, April 9, 1856. See Memoir, ante, page 39.

480 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

whether the majestic and fraternal circle shall be opened to receive-
yet another free, equal arid sovereign state.

The constitution prescribes only two qualifications for new states,
namely — a substantial civil community, and a republican govern
ment. Kansas has both of these.

The circumstances of Kansas, and her relations towards the Union,
are peculiar, anomalous, and deeply interesting. The United States
acquired the province of Louisiana (which included the present
territory of Kansas) from France, in 1803, by a treaty, in which
they agreed that its inhabitants should be incorporated into the
Federal Union, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the
principles of the constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights,
advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States.
Nevertheless, Kansas was in 1820 assigned as a home for an indefi
nite period to several savage Indian tribes, find closed against immi
gration and all other than aboriginal civilization, but not without a
cotemporaneous pledge to the American people and to mankind,
that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should be tolerated
therein forever. In 1854, congress directed a removal of the Indian
tribes, and organized and opened Kansas to civilization, but by the
same act rescinded the pledge of perpetual dedication to freedom,
and substituted for it another, which declared that the [future] peo
ple of Kansas should be left perfectly free to establish or to exclude
slavery, as they should decide through the action of a republican
government which congress modeled and authorized them to estab
lish, under the protection of the United States. Notwithstanding
this latter pledge, when the newly associated people of Kansas, in
1855, were proceeding with the machinery of popular elections, in
the manner prescribed by congress, to choose legislative bodies for
the purpose of organizing that republican government, armed bands
of invaders from the state of Missouri entered the territory, seized
the polls, overpowered or drove away the inhabitants, usurped the
elective franchise, deposited false and spurious ballots without regard
to regularity of qualification or of numbers, procured official certifi
cates of the result by fraud and force, and thus created and consti
tuted legislative bodies to act for and in the name of the people of
the territory. These legislative bodies afterward assembled, assumed
to be a legitimate legislature, set forth a code of municipal laws,
created public offices and filled them with officers appointed for con-

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 481

siderable periods by themselves, and thus established a complete and
effective foreign tyranny over the people of the territory. These
high-handed transactions were consummated with the expressed
purpose of establishing African slavery as a permanent institution
within the territory by force, in violation of the natural rights of
the people solemnly guarantied to them by the congress of the
United States. The president of the United States has been an
accessory to these political transactions, with full complicity in
regard to the purpose for which they were committed. He has
adopted the usurpation, and made it his own, and he is now main
taining it with the military arm of the republic. Thus Kansas has
been revolutionized, and she now lies subjugated and prostrated at
the foot of the president of the United States, while he, through the
agency of a foreign tyranny established within her borders, is forci
bly introducing and establishing slavery there, in contempt and
defiance of the organic law. These extraordinary transactions have
been attended by civil commotions, in which property, life, and lib
erty, have been exposed to violence, and these commotions still
continue to threaten, not only the territory itself, but also the adjacent
states, with the calamities and disasters of civil war.

I am fully aware of the gravity of the charges against the presi
dent of the United States which this statement of the condition and
relations of Kansas imports. I shall proceed, without fear and with
out reserve, to make them good. The maxim, that a sacred veil
must be drawn over the beginning of all governments, does not hold
under our system. I shall first call the accuser into the presence of
the senate — then examine the defenses which the president has made-
— and, last, submit the evidences by which he is convicted.

The people of Kansas know whether these charges are true or
false. They have adopted them, and, on the ground of the high
political necessity which the wrongs they have endured, and are yet
enduring, and the dangers through which they have already passed,
and the perils to which they are yet exposed, have created, they
have provisionally organized themselves as a state, and that state is
now here, by its two chosen senators and one representative, stand
ing outside at the doors of congress, applying to be admitted into
the Union, as a means of relief indispensable for the purposes of
peace, freedom and safety. This new state is the president's respon
sible accuser.

VOL. IV. Cl

482 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

The president of the United States, without waiting for the ap
pearance of his accuser at the capital, anticipated the accusations,
and submitted his defenses against them to congress. The first one
of these defenses was contained in his annual message, which was
communicated to congress on the 30th of December, 1855. I
examine it. You shall see at once that the president's mind was
oppressed — was full of something, too large and burdensome to be
concealed, and yet too critical to be told.

Mark, if you please, the state of the case at thai time. So early
as August, 1855, the people of Kansas had denounced the legisla
ture. They had at voluntary elections chosen Mr A. H. Reeder to
represent them in the present congress, instead of J. W. Whitfield,
who held a certificate of election under the authority of the legisla
ture. They had also, on the 23d day of October, 1855, by similar
voluntary elections, constituted at Topeka an organic convention,
which framed a constitution for the projected state. They had also,
on the 15th of December, 1855, at similar voluntary elections,
adopted that constitution, and its tenor was fully known. It pro
vided for elections to be held throughout the new state on the 15th
of January, 1856, to fill the offices created by it, and it also required
the executive and legislative officers, thus to be chosen, to assemble
at Topeka on the 4th day of March, 1856, to inaugurate the new
state provisionally, and to take the necessary means for the appoint
ment of senators, who, together with a representative alread}^ chosen,
should submit the constitution to congress at an early day, and apply
for the admission of the state of Kansas into the Union. All these
proceedings had been based on the grounds that the territorial autho
rities of Kansas had been established by armed foreign usurpation,
and were nevertheless sustained by the president of the United
States. A constitutional obligation required the president " to give
to congress," in his annual message, "information of the state of
the Union." Here is all "the information" which the president
gave to congress concerning the events in Kansas, and its relations
to the Union :

" In the territory of Kansas, there have been acts prejudicial to good order, but
as yet none have occurred under circumstances to justify the interposition of the
federal executive. That could only be in onse of obstruction to federal law, or of
organized resistance to territorial law. assuming the character of insurrection,
which, if it should occur, it would be my duty promptly to overcome and sup-

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 483

press. I cherish the hope, however, that the occurrence of any such untoward
event will be prevented by the sound sense of the people of the territory, who by
its organic law, possessing the right to determine their own domestic institutions,
are entitled, while deporting themselves peacefully, to the free exercise of that
right, and must be protected in the enjoyment of it, without interference on the
part of the citizens of any of the states.''

This information implies, that no invasion, usurpation, or tyranny,
has been committed within the territory by strangers ; and that the
provisional state organization now going forward is not only unne
cessary, but also prejudicial to good order, and insurrectionary. It
menaces the people of Kansas with a threat, that the president will
" overcome and suppress " them. It mocks them with a promise,
that, if they shall hereafter deport themselves properly, under the
control of authorities by which they have been disfranchised, in
determining institutions which have been already forcibly deter
mined for them by foreign invasion, that then they " must be pro
tected against interference by the citizens of any of the states."

The president, however, not content with a statement so obscure
and unfair, devotes a third part of the annual message to argumen
tative speculations bearing on the character of his accuser. Each
state has two and no more senators in the senate of the United
States. In determining the apportionment of representatives in the
house of representatives, and in the electoral colleges among the
states, three-fifths of all the slaves in any state are enumerated.
The slaveholding or non-slaveholding character of a state is deter
mined, not at the time of its admission into the Union as a state, but
at that earlier period of its political life in which, being called a ter
ritory, it is politically dependent on the United States, or on some
foreign sovereign. Slavery is tolerated in some of the states, and
forbidden in others. Affecting the industrial and economical sys
tems of the several states, as slavery and freedom do, this diversity
of practice concerning them early worked out a corresponding differ
ence of conditions, interests, and ambitions, among the states, and
divided and arrayed them into two classes. The balance of political
power between these two classes in the federal system is sensibly
affected by the accession of any new state to either of them. Each
state, therefore, watches jealously the settlement, growth, and in
choate slaveholding and non-slaveholding characters of territories,
•which may ultimately come into the Union as states. It has resulted
from these circumstances, that slavery, in relations purely political

484 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

and absolutely federal, is an element which enters with more or less
activity into many national questions of finance, of revenue, of
expenditure, of protection, of free trade, of patronage, of peace, of
war, of annexation, of defense, and of conquest, and modifies opin
ions concerning constructions of the constitution, and the distribution
of powers between the Union and the several states by which it is
constituted. Slavery, under these political and federal aspects aloner
enters into the transactions in Kansas, with which the president and
congress are concerned. Nevertheless, he disingenuously alludes to
those transactions in his defense, as if they were identified with that
moral discussion of slavery which he regards as odious and alarm
ing, and without any other claim to consideration. Thus he alludes
to the question before us as belonging to a

" Political agitation concerning a matter which consists to a great extent of
exaggeration of inevitable evils, or over-zeal in social improvement, or mere
imagination of grievance, having but a remote connection with any of the con
stitutional functions of the federal government, and menacing the stability of the
constitution and the integrity of the Union."

In like manner the president assails and stigmatizes those who
defend and maintain the cause of Kansas, as

" Men of narrow views and sectional purposes, engaged in those wild and chi
merical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the
unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators — ' mad men, raising
the storm of frenzy and faction,' 'sectional agitators,' ' enemies of the constitu
tion, who have surrendered themselves so far to a fanatical devotion to the sup
posed interests of the relatively few Africans in the United States, as totally to
abandon and disregard the interests of the twenty-five millions of Americans, and
trample under foot the injunctions of moral and constitutional obligation, and to
engage in plans of vindictive hostility against those who are associated with them
in the enjoyment of the common heritage of our free institutions.' "

The president's defense on this occasion, if not a matter simply
personal, is at least one of temporary and ephemeral importance,
Possibly, all the advantages he will gain by transferring to his accu
ser a portion of the popular prejudice against abolition and aboli
tionists, can be spared to him. It would be wise, however, for those
whose interests are inseparable from slavery, to reflect that abolition
will gain an equivalent benefit from the identi^ cation of the presi
dent's defense with their cherished institution. Abolition is a slow
but irrepressible uprising of principles of natural justice and human-

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 485

ity, obnoxious to prejudice, because they conflict inconveniently
•with existing material, social, and political interests. It belongs to
others than statesmen, charged with the care of present interests, to
conduct the social reformation of mankind in its broadest bearings.
I leave to abolitionists their own work of self-vindication. I may,
however, remind slaveholders" that there is a time when oppression
and persecution cease to be effectual against such movements ; and
then the odium they have before unjustly incurred becomes an ele
ment of strength and power. Christianity, blindly maligned during
three centuries, by praetors, governors, senates, councils, and empe
rors, towered above its enemies in a fourth ; and even the cross on
which its founder had expired, and which therefore was the emblem
of its shame, became the sign under which it went forth evermore
thereafter, conquering and to conquer. Abolition is yet only in its
first century.

The president raises in his defense a false issue, and elaborates an
irrelevant argument to prove that congress has no right or power,
nor has any sister state any right or power, to interfere within a
slave state, by legislation or force, to abolish slavery therein — as if
you, or I, or any other responsible man, ever maintained the con
trary.

The president distorts the constitution from its simple text, so as
to make it expressly and directly defend, protect, and guaranty
African slavery. Thus he alleges that "the government" which
resulted from the Kevolution was a " Federal Republic of the free
white men of the colonies," whereas, on the contrary, the Declara
tion of Independence asserts the political equality of all men, and
even the constitution itself carefully avoids any political recognition,
not merely of slavery, but of the diversity of races. The president
represents the fathers as having contemplated and provided for a
permanent increase of the number of slaves in some of the states,
and therefore forbidden congress to touch slavery in the way of
attack or offense, and as having therefore also placed it under the
general safeguard of the constitution ; whereas the fathers, by au
thorizing congress to abolish the African slave trade after 1808, as a
means of attack, inflicted on slavery in the states a blow, of which
they expected it to languish immediately, and ultimately to expire.

The president closes his defense in the annual message with a
deliberate assault, very incongruous in such a place, upon some of

486 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

the northern states. At the same time he abstains, with marked
caution, from naming the accused states. They, however, receive a
compliment at his hands, by way of giving keenness to his rebuke,
which enables us to identify them. They are northern states
" which were conspicuous in founding the republic." All of the
original northern states were conspicuous in that great transaction.

/All of them, therefore, are accused. The offense charged is, that
they disregard their constitutional obligations, and although "con
scious of their inability to heal admitted and palpable social evils of
their own, confessedly within their jurisdiction, they engage in an
offensive, hopeless, and illegal undertaking, to reform the domestic
institutions of the southern states, at the peril of the very existence
of the constitution, and of all the countless benefits which it has
conferred.^/ 1 challenge the president to the proof, in behalf of
Massachusetts; although I have only the interest common to all
Americans and to all men in her great fame. What one corporate
or social evil is there, of which she is conscious, and conscious also
of inability to heal it? Is it ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, vice,
crime, public disorder, poverty, or disease, afflicting the minds or
the bodies of her people ? There she stands. Survey her univer
sities, colleges, academies, observatories, primary schools, Sunday
schools, penal codes, and penitentiaries. Descend into her quarries,
walk over her fields and through her gardens, observe her manufac
tories of a thousand various fabrics, watch her steamers ascending
every river and inlet on your own coast, and her ships, displaying
their canvas on every sea; follow her fishermen in their adventu
rous voyages from her own and adjacent bays to the icy ocean under
either pole ; and then return and enter her hospitals, which cure or
relieve suffering humanity in every condition and at every period
of life, from the lying-in to the second childhood, and which not
only restore sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and speech
to the dumb, but also bring back wandering reason to the insane,
and teach even the idiot to think ! Massachusetts, sir, is a model
of statevS, worthy of all honor ; and though she was most conspicu
ous of all the states in the establishment of republican institutions
here, she is even more conspicuous still for the municipal wisdom
with which she has made them contribute to the welfare of her
people, and to the greatness of the republic itself.

THE PRESIDENT AND KANSAS. 187

In behalf of New York, for whom it is my right and duty to
speak, I defy the presidential accuser. Mark her tranquil magnani
mity, which becomes a state for whose delivery from tyranny
Schuyler devised and labored, who received her political constitu
tion from Hamilton, her intellectual and physical development from
Clinton, and her lessons in humanity from Jay. As she waves her
wand over the continent, trade forsakes the broad natural channels
which conveyed it before to the Delaware and Chesapeake bays, and
to the gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico, and obedient to her com
mand pours itself through her artificial channels into her own once
obscure seaport. She stretches her wand again towards the ocean,
and the commerce of all the continents concentrates itself at her
feet ; and with it, strong and full floods of immigration ride in, con
tributing labor, capital, art, valor, arid enterprise, to perfect and
embellish our ever-widening empire.

When, and on what" occasion, ha^ Massachusetts or New York
officiously and illegally intruded herself within the jurisdiction of
sister states, to modify or reform their institutions? No, no, sir.
Their faults have been quite different. They have conceded too
often and too much for their own just dignity and influence in fed
eral administration, to the querulous complaints of the states in
whose behalf the president arraigns them. I thank the president
for the insult which, though so deeply unjust, was perhaps needful
to arouse them to their duty in this great emergency.

The president, in this connection, reviews the acquisitions of new
domain, the organization of new territories, and the admission of
new states, and arrives at results which must be as agreeably sur
prising to the slave states, as they are astounding to the free states.
He finds that the former have been altogether guiltless of political
ambition, while he convicts the latter not only of unjust territorial
aggrandizement, but also of false and fraudulent clamor against the
slave states, to cover their own aggressions. Notwithstanding the
president's elaborated misconceptions, these historical facts remain,
namely — that no acquisition whatever has ever been made at the
instance of the free states, and with a view to their aggrandizement;
that Louisiana and Florida, incidentally acquired for general and
important national objects, have already yielded to the slave states
three states of their own class, while Texas was avowedly annexed
as a means of security to slavery, and one slave state has been

488 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

already admitted from that acquisition, and congress has stipulated
for the admission of four more ; that by way of equivalent for the
admission of California a free state, the slave states have obtained a
virtual repeal of the Mexican law which forbade slavery in New
Mexico and Utah ; and that, as a consequence of that extraordinary
legislation, congress has also rescinded the prohibition of slavery,
which, in 1820, was extended over all that part of Louisiana, except
Missouri, which lies north of thirty -six degrees thirty minutes of
north latitude. Sir, the real crime of the northern states is this:
they are forty degrees too high on the arc of north latitude.

I dismiss for the present the president's first defense against the
accusation of the new state of Kansas.

On the 24th of January, 1856, when no important event had hap
pened which was unknown at the date of the president's annual
message, he submitted to congress his second defense, in the form
of a special message. In this paper, the president deplores, as the
cause of all the troubles which have occurred in Kansas, delays of
the organization of the territory, which have been permitted by the
governor, Mr. Keeder. The organic law was passed by congress on
the 31st of May, 1854, but on that day there was not one lawful'
elector, citizen, or inhabitant, within the territory, while the question,
whether slavery or universal freedom should be established there,
was devolved practically on the first legislative bodies to be elected
by the people who were to become thereafter the inhabitants of
Kansas. The election for the first legislative bodies was appointed
by the governor to be held on the 30th of March, 1855 ; and the 2d
day of July, 1855, was designated for the organization of the legis
lative assembly. The only civilized community that was in contact
with the new territory was Missouri, a slaveholding state, at whose
instance the prohibition of slavery within the territory had been
abrogated, so that she might attempt to colonize it with slaves. Im
migrants were invited not only from all parts of the United States,
but also from all other parts of the world, with a pledge that the
people of the new territory should be left perfectly free to establish
or prohibit slavery. A special election, however, was held within
the territory on the 29th day of November, 1854, without any pre
liminary census of the inhabitants, for the purpose of choosing a
delegate who might sit without a right to vote in congress, during
the second session of the thirty-third congress, which was to begin

THE PKESIDENT AND KANSAS. 489

on the first Monday of December, 1854, and to end on the third day
of March, 1855. Mr. J. W. Whitfield was certified to be elected.
There were vehement complaints of illegality in the election, but
his title was nevertheless not contested, for the palpable reasons, that
an investigation, under the circumstances, of the territory, during so
short a session of congress, would be impossible, and that the ques
tion was of inconsiderable magnitude. Yet the president laments
that the governor neglected to order the first election for the legis
lative bodies of the new territory to be held simultaneously with
that hurried congressional election. He assign his reasons:

" Any question appertaining to the qualifications of persons voting as the peo
ple of the territory would (in that case, incidentally) have necessarily passed
under the supervision of congress ("meaning the house of representatives), and
would have been determined before conflicting passions had been inflamed by
time, and before an opportunity would have been afforded for systematic interfer
ence by the people of individual states."

Could the president, in any explicit arrangement of words, more
distinctly have confessed his disappointment in failing to secure a
merely formal election of legislative bodies within the territory, in
fraud of the organic law, of the people of Kansas, and of the cause
of natural justice and humanity?

The president then proceeds to launch severe denunciations against
what he calls a propagandist attempt to colonize the territory with
opponents of slavery. The whole American continent has been
undergoing a process of colonization, in many forms, throughout a
period of three hundred and fifty years. The only common element
of all those forms was propagandism. Were not the voyages of
Columbus propagandist expeditions under the auspices of the Pope
of Kome ? Was not the wide occupation of Spanish America a
propagandism of the Catholic church ? The settlement of Massa
chusetts by the Pilgrims; of the New Netherlands by the reformers
of Holland ; the later plantation of the Mohawk valley by the Pala
tines ; the establishment of Pennsylvania by the Friends ; the mission
of the Moravians at Bethlehem, in the same state ; the foundation
of Maryland by Lord Baltimore and his colony of British catholics;
the settlement of Jamestown by the Cavaliers and Churchmen of
England; that of South Carolina by the Huguenots: Were not all
these propagandist colonizations? Was not Texas settled by a
colony of slaveholders, and California by companies of freemen ?

VOL. TV. 62

490 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Yet never before did any prince, king, emperor, or president, de
nounce such colonizations. Does any law of nature or nations
forbid them? Does any public authority quarantine, on the ground
of opinion, the ships which are continually pouring into the gates
of New York whole religious societies, from Ireland, Wales, Ger
many, and Norway, with their pastors, and clerks, and choirs?

But the president charges that the propagandists entered Kansas
with a design to " anticipate and force the determination of the
slavery question within the territory " (in favor of freedom), forget
ting, nevertheless, that he has only just before deplored a failure of
his own to anticipate and force the determination of that question in
favor of slavery, by a coup de main, in advance even of their depart
ure from their homes in the Atlantic states and in Europe. lie
charges, moreover, that the propagandists designed to u prevent the
free and natural action of the inhabitants in the intended orgauiza
tion of the territory," when, in fact, they were pursuing the only
free and natural course to organize it by immigrating and becoming
permanent inhabitants, citizens and electors of Kansas. Not one
unlawful or turbulent act has been hitherto charged against any one
of the propagandists of freedom. Mark, now, an extraordinary
inconsistency of the president. On the 29th of June, 1854, only
twenty-nine days after the opening of the territory, and before one
of these emigrants had reached Kansas, or even Missouri, a propa
gandist association, but not of emigrants, named the Platte County
Self-Defensive Association, assembled at Weston, on the western bor
der of Missouri, in the interest of slavery ; and it published, through
the organ of the president of the United States at that place, a reso
lution, that " when called upon by any citizen of Kansas, its mem
bers would hold themselves in readiness to assist in removing any
and all emigrants who should go there under the aid of northern
emigrant societies." This association afterward often made good its
atrocious threats, by violence against the property, peace and lives
of unoffending citizens of Kansas. But the president of the United
States, so far from denouncing it, does not even note its existence.

The majority of the committee on territories ingeniously elaborate
the president's charge, and arraign Massachusetts, her Emigrant Aid
Society, and her emigrants. What has Massachusetts done worthy
of censure ? Before the Kansas organic law was passed by con
gress, Massachusetts, on application, granted to some of her citizens,

THE PRESIDENT AND KANSAS. 491

who were engaged in " taking up " new lands in western regions,
one of those common charters which are used by all associations —
industrial, moral, social, scientific and religious — now-a-days, instead
of copartnerships, for the more convenient transaction of their fiscal
affairs. The actual capital is some sixty thousand dollars. Neither
the granting of the charter, nor any legislative action of the associa
tion under it, was morally wrong. To emigrate from one state or
territory singly, or in company with others, with .or without incorpo
ration by statute, is a right of every citizen of the United States, as
it is a right of every freeman in the world. The state that denies
this right is a tyranny — the subject to whom it is denied is a slave.
Such free emigration is the chief element of American progress and
civilization. Without it, there could be no community, no political
territory, no state in Kansas. Without it, there could have been no
United States of America. To retain and carry into Kansas cher
ished political, as well as moral, social, and religious convictions, is
a right of every emigrant. Must emigrants to that territory carry
there only their persons, and leave behind their minds and souls,
disembodied and wandering in their native lands ? They only are
fit founders of a state who exercise independence of opinion; and it
is to the exercise of that right that our new states, equally with all
the older ones, owe their intelligence and vigor.

" There are, who, distant from their native soil,
Still for their own and country's glory toil ;
While some, fast rooted to their parent spot,
In life are useless, and in death forgot."

It is not morally wrong for Massachusetts to aid her sons, by a
charter, to do what in itself is innocent and commendable. The
president and the majority of the committee maintain that such asso
ciations are in violation of national or at least of international laws.
Here is the constitution of the United States, and here are the
statutes at large, in ten volumes octavo. Let the president or his
defenders point out the inhibition. They specify, particularly, that the
action of the state violates a law of comity, which regulates the inter
course of independent states, and especially the intercourse between
the members of the Federal Union. Here are Yattel and Burlama-
qui. Let them point out in these pages this law of comity. There
is no law of comity which forbids nations from permitting and
encouraging emigration, on the ground of opinion. Moreover,

492 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

slavery is an outlaw under tlie law of nations. Still further, the
constitution of the United States has expressly incorporated into
itself all of the laws of comity, for regulating the intercourse be
tween independent states, wliich it deems proper to adopt. What
ever is forbidden expressly by the constitution is unlawful. Whatever
is not forbidden is lawful. The supposed law of comity is not incor
porated into the constitution.

With the aid of the committee on territories, we discover that the
emigrants from Massachusetts have violated the supposed national
laws, riot by any unlawful conduct of their own, but by provoking
the unlawful and flagitious conduct of the invaders of Kansas.

"They passed through Missouri in large numbers, using violent language, and
giving unmistakable indications of their hostility to the domestic institutions of
that state," and thus " they created apprehensions that the object of the Emigrant
Aid company was to abolitionize Kansas, as a means of prosecuting a relentless
warfare upon the institution of slavery within the limits of Missouri, which appre
hensions, increasing with the progress of events, ultimately became settled con
victions of the people of western Missouri.

Missouri builds railroads, steamboats and wharves. It cannot be,
therefore, that the mere "largeness of the numbers" of the eastern
travelers offended or alarmed the borderers. I confess my surprise
that the sojourners used violent language. It seems unlike them. I
confess my greater surprise that the borderers were disturbed so
deeply by mere words. It seems unlike them. Which of the
domestic institutions of Missouri were those against which the travel
ers manifested determined hostility? Not certainly her manufacto
ries, banks, railroads, churches and schools. All these are domestic
institutions held in high respect by the men of Massachusetts,
and just such ones as these emigrants are now establishing in
Kansas. It was therefore African slavery alone, a peculiar domestic
institution of Missouri, against which their hostility was directed.
Waiving a suspicious want of proof of the unwise conduct charged
against them, I submit that clearly they did not thereby endanger
that peculiar institution in Missouri, for they passed directly through
that state into Kansas. How, then, were the borderers provoked ?
The Missourians inferred, from the language and demeanor of the
travelers, that they would abolitionize Kansas, and thereafter, by
means of Kansas abolitionized, prosecute a relentless warfare against
slavery in Missouri. Far-seeing statesmen are these Missouri bor-

MISSOURI AND KANSAS. 493

derers, but less deliberate than far-sighted. Kansas was not to be
abolitionized. It had never been otherwise than abolitionized.
Abolitionzed Kansas would constitute no means for the prosecution
of such a warfare. Missouri lies adjacent to abolitionized Iowa on
the north, and to abolitionized Illinois on the east, yet neither of those
states has ever been used for such designs. How could this ft-arful
enemy prosecute a warfare against slavery in Missouri ? Only by
buying the plantations of her citizens at their own prices, and so
qualifying themselves to speak their hostility through the ballot-
boxes? Could apprehensions so absurd justify the invasion of Kan
sas? Are the people of Kansas to be disfranchised and trodden
down by the president of the United States, in punishment for any
extravagance of emigrants, in Missouri, on the way to that territory ?

Such is the president's second defense, so far as it presents new
matter in avoidance of the accusation of the new state of Kansas.

I proceed, in the third place, to establish the truth of the accusations.
Of what sort must the proofs be ? Manifestly only such as the circum
stances of the case permit to exist. Not engrossed documents, authen
ticated by executive, judicial or legislative officers. The transactions
occurred in an unorganized country. All the authorities subse
quently established in the territory are implicated, all the complain
ants disfranchised. Only presumptive evidence, derived from the
cotemporaneous statements and actions of the parties concerned,
can be required.

Such presumptive evidence is derived from the nature and charac
ter of the president's defenses. Why did the president plead at all
on the thirty-first of December last, when the new state of Kansas
was yet unorganized, and could not appear here to prefer her accu
sations until the twenty-third of March ? Why, if he must answer
so prematurely, did he not plead a general and direct denial ? If he
must plead specially, why did he not set forth the facts, instead of
withholding all actual information concerning the case? Why,
since, instead of defending himself, he must implead his accuser, did
he not state at least the ground on which that accuser claimed to
justify the conduct of which he complained ? .Why did he threaten
" to overcome and suppress " the people of Kansas as insurrectionists,
if he did not mean to terrify them and to prevent their appearing
here, or at least to prejudice their cause ? Why did he mock them
with a promise of protection thereafter against interference by citi-

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

2ens of other states, if they should deport themselves peacefully and
submissively to the territorial authorities, if no cause for apprehend
ing such interference had already been given by previous invasion ?
Why did he labor to embarrass his accuser by identifying her cause
with the subject of abolition of slavery, and stigmatize her support
ers with opprobrious epithets, and impute to them depraved and
seditious motives? Why did he interpose the false and impertinent
issue, whether one state could intervene by its laws or by force to
abolish slavery in another state? Why did he distort the constitu
tion, and present it as expressly guarantying the perpetuity of slavery ?
Why did he arraign so unnecessarily and so unjustly, not one, but
all of the original northern states? Why did he drag into this case,
where only Kansas is concerned, a studied, partial and prejudicial
history of the past enlargements of the national domain, and of the
past contests between the slave states and the free states in their
rivalry for the balance of power?

Why did not the president rest content with one such attack on
the character and conduct of the new state of Kansas, in anticipating
her coming, if he felt assured that she really had no merit on which
to stand ? Why did he submit a second plea in advance ? Why in
this plea does he deplore the delays which prevented the Missouri
borderers from effecting the conquest of Kansas, and the establish
ment of slavery therein, at the time of the congressional election
held in November, 1854, in fraud of the Kansas law and of justice
and humanity ? Why, without reason or authority of public or of
national law, does he denounce Massachusetts, her emigrant aid
society and her emigrants ? If "propagandist" emigrations must be
denounced, why does he spare the Platte County Self-Defensive Asso
ciation? Why does he charge Governor Eeeder with "failing to
put forth all his energies to prevent or counteract the tendencies to
illegality which are found to exist in all imperfectly organized and
newly associated countries," if, indeed, no "illegality " has occurred
there? While thus, by implication, admitting that such illegality
has occurred in Kansas, why does he not tell us its nature and
extent ? Why, when Governor Eeeder was implicated in personal
conduct, not criminal, but incongruous with his official relations, did
the president retain him in office until after he had proclaimed at
Easton that Kansas had been subjugated by the borderers of Mis
souri, and why, after he had done so, and had denounced the legis-

THE PRESIDENT AND KANSAS. 495

lature. did the president remove him for the same preexisting cause
only ? Why does the president admit that the election for the legis
lative bodies of Kansas was held under circumstances inauspicious
to a truthful and legal result, if, nevertheless, the result attained was
indeed a truthful and legal one ? On what evidence does the presi
dent ground his statement, that, after that election, there were mutual
complaints of usurpation, fraud and violence, when we hear from no
other quarter of such complaints made by the party that prevailed?
If there were such mutual accusations, and even if they rested on
probable grounds, would that fact abate the right of the people of
Kansas to a government of their own, securing a safe and well
ordered freedom ? Why does the president argue that the governor
[Mr. REEDER] alone had the power to receive and consider the
returns of the election of the legislative bodies, and that he certified
those returns in fifteen out of the twenty- two districts, when he
knows that the governor, being his own agent, gave the certificates,
on the ground that the returns were technically correct, and that the
illegality complained of was in the conduct of the elections, and in
the making up of the returns by the judges, and that the terror of
the armed invasion prevented all complaints of this kind from being-
presented to the governor? Why does the president repose on the
fact that the governor, on the ground of informality in the returns,
rejected the members who were chosen in the seven other districts,
and ordered new elections therein, and certified in favor of the per
sons then chosen, when he knows that the majority, elected in the
fifteen districts, expelled at once the persons chosen at such second
elections, and admitted those originally returned as elected in these
seven districts, on the ground that the governor's rejection of them,
and the second elections which he ordered, were unauthorized and
illegal ? Why does the president, although omitting to mention this
last fact, nevertheless justify the expulsion of these newly elected
members, on the ground that it was authorized by parliamentary law,
when he knows that there was no parliamentary or other law exist
ing in the territory, but the organic act of congress, which conferred
no such power on the legislature? Why was Governor Reeder
replaced 'by Mr. Shannon, who immediately proclaimed that the
legislative bodies which his predecessor had denounced, were the
legitimate legislature of the territory ? Why does the president
plead that the subject of the alleged Missourian usurpation and

496 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

tyranny in Kansas, was one which, by its nature, appertained exclu
sively to the jurisdiction of the local authorities of the territory,
when, if the charges were true, there were no legitimate local autho
rities within the territory ? Is a foreign usurpation in a defenseless
territory of the United States to be tolerated, if only it be successful ?
And is the government de facto, by whomsoever usurped, and with
whatever tyranny exercised, entitled to demand obedience from the
people, and to be recognized by the president of the United States ?
Why does he plead that " whatever irregularities may have occurred,
it is now too late to raise the question?" Is there nothing left but
endurance to citizens of the United States, constituting a whole
political community of men, women and children — an. incipient
American state — subjugated and oppressed? Must they sit down in
peace, abandoned, contented and despised? Why does he plead that
"at least it is a question as to which, neither now nor at any previ
ous time, has the least possible legal authority been possessed by the
president of the United States?" Did any magistrate ever before
make such an exhibition of ambitious imbecility ? Cannot congress
clothe him with power to act, and is it not his duty to ask power to
remove usurpation and subvert tyranny in a territory of the United
States ? Are these the tone, the tenor, and the staple of a defense,
where the accused is guiltless aad the crimes charged were never
committed. The president virtually confesses all the transactions
charged, by thus presenting a connected system of maxims and prin
ciples, invented to justify them.

I proceed, however, to clinch conviction by direct and positive
proofs : First, the statements of the party which has been overborne.
General Pomeroy and his associates, in behalf of the state of Kansas,
make this representation concerning the congressional election held
in the territory on the 30th November, 1854 :

" The first ballot-box that was opened upon our virgin soil, was closed to us
by overpowering numbers and impending force. So bold and reckless were our
invaders, that they cared not to conceal their attack. They came upon us, not in
the guise of voters to steal away our franchise, but boldly and openly to snatch it
with a strong hand. They came directly from their own homes, and in compact
and organized bands, with arms in hand and provisions for the expedition, marched
to our polls, and, when their work was done, returned whence they came. It is
unnecessary to enter into the details ; it is enough to say that in three districts in
which, by the most irrefragable evidence, there were not one hundred and fifty
voters, most of whom refused to participate in the mockery of the elective fran
chise, these invaders polled over a thousand votes.

THE KANSAS ELECTIONS. 497

In regard to the election of the 30th of March, 1855, the same
party states :

" They (the Missourians) arrived at their several destinations the night before
the election, and, having pitched their camps and placed their sentries, waited for
the coming day. Baggage wagons were there, with arms and ammunition enough
for a protracted fight, and among them two brass field pieces, ready charged.
They came with drums beating and flags flying, and their leaders were of the
most prominent and conspicuous men of their respective states. In the morning
they surrounded the polls, armed with guns, bowie-knives and revolvers, and
declared their determination to vote at all hazards and in spite of all consequences.
If the judges could be made to subserve their purposes and receive their votes
and if no obstacle was cast in their way, their leaders exerted themselves to pre
serve peace and order in the conduct of the election, but at the same time did not
hesitate to declare, that if not allowed to vote, they would proceed to any extre
mity in destruction of property and life. If the control of the polls could not be
had otherwise, the judges were by intimidation, and, if necessary, by violence,
prevented from performing their duty, or, if unyielding in this respect, were driven
from their post, and the vacancy filled in form by the persons on the ground; and
whenever by any means they had obtained the control of the board, the foreign
vote was promiscuously poured in, without discrimination or reserve, or the slight
est care to conceal its nefarious illegality. At one of the polls, two of the judges
having manfully stood up in the face of the armed mob, and declared they would
do their duty, one portion of the mob commenced to tear down the house, another
proceeded to break in the door of the judges' room, whilst others, with drawn
knives, posted themselves at the window, with the proclaimed purpose of killing
any voter who would allow himself to be sworn. Voters were dragged from the
window, because they would not show their tickets, or vote at the dictation of the
mob ; and the invaders declared openly at the polls that they would cut the throats
of the judges if they did not receive their votes without requiring an oath as to
their residence. The room was finally forced, and the judges, surrounded by an
armed and excited crowd, were offered the alternative of resignation or death, and
five minutes were allowed for their decision. The ballot-box was seized, and,
amid shouts of ' hurrah for Missouri,' was carried into the mob. The two menaced
judges then left the ground, together with all the resident citizens, except a few
who acted in the outrage, because the result expected from it corresponded to
their own views.

"When an excess of the foreign force was found to be had at one poll, detach
ments were sent to the others. * * * * A minister of the gospel, who
refused to accede to the demands of a similar mob of some four hundred armed
and organized men. was driven by violence from his post, and the vacancy filled
by themselves. * * * * Another clergyman, for the expression of his
opinion, was assaulted and beaten. * * * * The inhabitants of the district,
powerless to resist the abundant supply of arms and ammunition, organized pre
paration, and overwhelming numbers of the foreigners left the polls without
voting. * * * In the Lawrence district, one voter was fired at, as he was
driven from the election ground. * * * Finding they had a greater force
than was necessary for that poll, some two hundred men were drafted from the-

VOL. IV. 03

498 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

number, and sent off under the proper officers to anoiliL-r district, after which they
still polled from this camp seven hundred votes. * * * In the fourth and
seventh districts, the invaders came together in an armed and organized body,
with trains of fifty wagons, besides horsemen, and, the night before election,
pitched their camps in the vicinity of the polls, and having appointed their own
judges, in place of those who, from intimidation or otherwise, failed to attend,
they voted without any proof of residence. In these two election districts, where
the census shows one hundred, voters, there were polled three hundred and
fourteen votes, and last fall seven hundred and sixty-five votes, although a large
part of the actual residents did not vote on either occasion. *****
From a careful examination of the returns, we are satisfied that over three thou
sand votes were thus cast by the citizens and residents of the states."

I place in opposition to these statements of the party that was
overborne, the statements of the party that prevailed, beginning
with signals of the attack, and ending with celebrations of the vic
tory.

General Stringfellow addressed the invaders in Missouri, on the
eve of the election of March 30, 1855, thus :

" To those who have qualms of conscience as to violating laws, state or national,
the time has come when such impositions must be disregarded, as your rights and
property are in danger ; and I advise you, one and all, to enter every election dis
trict in Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and his vile myrmidons, and vote at the
point of the bowie-knife and revolver. Neither give r.or take quarter, as our cause
demands it. It is enough that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there
is no appeal. What right has Governor Reeder to rule Missourians in Kansas ?
His proclamation and prescribed oatli must be repudiated. It is your interest to
do so. Mind that slavery is established where it is not prohibited/'

The Kansas Herald, an organ of both the administration and the
pro-slavery party, announced the result of the legislative election in
the territory immediately afterwards, as follows :

" Yesterday was a proud and glorious day for the friends of southern rights.
The triumph of the pro-slavery party is complete and overwhelming. Come
on, southern men! Bring your slaves, and fill up the territory! Kansas is
saved !"

The Squatter Sovereign, published in Missouri, thus announced
the result of the election the day after it closed :

"INDEPENDENCE, March 31, 1.855.

" Several hundred emigrants from Kansas have just entered our city. They
were preceded by the Westport and Independence brass bands. They came in
at the west side of the public square, and proceeded entirely around it, the bands
cheering us with fine music, and the emigrants with good news. Immediately

KANSAS ELECTIONS. 499

following the bands were about two hundred horsemen in regular order ; follow
ing these were one hundred and fifty wagons, carriages, &c. They gave repeated
cheers for Kansas and Missouri. They report that not an anti-slavery man will
be in the legislature of Kansas. We have made a clean sweep."

A .letter written at Brunswick, in Missouri, dated April 20th, 1855,
and published in the New York Herald, a pro-slavery journal, says:

" From five to seven thousand men started from Missouri to attend the elec
tion, some to remove, but the most to return to their families, with an inten
tion, if they liked the territory, to make it their permanent abode, at the earliest
moment practicable. But they intended to vote. The Missourians were, many
of them, Douglas men. There were one hundred and fifty voters from this
county, one hundred and seventy-five from Howard, one hundred from Cooper.
Indeed, every county furnished its quota ; and when they set out it looked like
an army. * * They were armed. * * * And, as there were no houses
in the territory, they carried tents. Their mission was a peaceable one — to vote,
and to drive down stakes for their future homes. After the election, some one
thousand five hundred of the voters sent a committee to Mr. Reeder, to ascertain
if it was his purpose to ratify the election. He answered that it was, and said
the majority at an election must carry the day. But it is not to be denied that
the one thousand five hundred, apprehending that the governor might attempt
to play the tyrant — since his conduct had already been insidious and unjust —
wore on their hats bunches of hemp. They were resolved, if a tyrant attempted
to trample upon the rights of the sovereign people, to hang him."

On the 29th of May, 1855, the Squatter Sovereign, an organ of
the invasion in Missouri, thus gave utterance to its spirit :

" From reports now received of Reeder, he never intends returning to our bor
ders. Should he do so, we, without hesitation, say that our people ought to hang
him by the neck, like a traitorous dog as he is, so soon as he puts his unhallowed
feet upon our shores. Vindicate your characters and the territory ; and, should
the ungrateful dog dare to come among us again, hang him to the first rotten
tree. A military force to protect the ballot-box ! Let President Pierce or Gover
nor Reeder, or any other power, attempt such a course, in this or any portion of
the Union, and that day will never be forgotten."

Governor Reeder, at Easton, in Pennsylvania, on his first return
to that place after the elections, declared the same result in frank
and candid words, which cost him his office, namely :

" It was indeed too true that Kansas had been invaded, conquered, subjugated,
by an armed force from beyond her borders, led on by a fanatical spirit, trampling
under foot the principles of the Kansas bill and the right of suffrage."

David K. Atchison, a direct and out-spoken man, who never
shrinks from responsibility, and who is confessedly eminent at once

500 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

as a political leader in Missouri, and as a leader of the pro-slavery
movement therein directed against Kansas, in a speech reported as
having been made to his fellow citizens, and which, so far as I know,
has not been disavowed, said :

" I saw it with my own eyes. These men came with the avowed purpose of
driving or expelling you from the territory. What did I advise you to do ? Why,
meet them at their own game. When the first election came off, I told you to
go over and vote. You did so, and beat them. We, our party in Kansas, nomi
nated General Whitfield. They, the abolitionists, nominated Flenniken ; not
Flanegan, for Flanegan was a good, honest man, but Flenniken, Well, the next
day after the election, that same Flenniken, with three hundred of his voters, left
the territory, and has never returned — no, never returned ! Well, what next ?
Why, an election for members of the legislature, to organize the territory, must
be held. What did I advise you to do then ? Why, meet them on their own
ground, and beat them at their own game again ; and, cold and inclement as the
weather was, I went over with a company of men. My object in going was not
to vote ; I had not a right to vote, unless J had disfranchised myself in Missouri.
I was not within two miles of a voting place. My object in going was not to
vote, but to settle a difficulty between two of our candidates; and abolitionists of
the north said and published it abroad that Atchison was there with bowie-knife
and revolver, and by God 'twas true. I never did go into that territory, I never
intended to go into that territory, without being prepared for all such kind of
cattle. Well, we beat them ; and Governor Reeder gave certificates to a majority
of all the members of both houses; and then, after they were organized, as every
body will admit, they were the only competent persons to say who were and
who were not members of the same."

A tree is known by its fruits. If Missourians voted in Kansas, it
would be expected that the ballots deposited would exceed the num
ber of electors. Just so it was. We have seen that it was so
asserted. The executive journal, recently obtained, proves that in
four districts, where the results were not contested, two thousand
nine hundred and sixty-four votes were cast on the 30th of March,
although only one thousand three hundred and sixty-five voters
were there, as ascertained by the census. Again : The legislature,
chosen on the 30th of March, 1855, withdrew from the interior of
the territory to a place inconvenient to its citizens, and on the bor
der of Missouri. There that legislature enacted laws to this effect,
namely: Forbidding the speaking, writing, or printing, or publish
ing of anything, in any form, calculated to disaffect slaves, or induce
them to escape, under pain of not less than five years' imprison
ment with hard labor ; and forbidding free persons from maintaining
by speech, writing, or printing, or publishing, that slaves cannot

THE KANSAS LAWS. 501

lawfully be held in the territory, under pain of imprisonment and
hard labor two years.

The legislature further enacted, that no persons "conscientiously
opposed to holding slaves," or entertaining doubts of the legal exis
tence of slavery in Kansas, shall sit as a juror in the trial of any
cause founded on a breach of the laws which I have described.
They further provided, that all officers and attorneys should be
sworn, not only to support the constitution of the United States, but
also to support and sustain the organic law of the territory, and the
fugitive slave law; and that any persons offering to vote shall be
presumed to be entitled to vote until the contrary is shown ; and if
any one, when required, shall refuse to take an oath to sustain the
fugitive slave law, he shall not be permitted to vote. Although
they passed a law that none but an inhabitant who had paid a tax
should vote, yet they made no time of residence necessary, and pro
vided for the immediate payment of a poll tax ; so virtually declar
ing that on the eve of an election the people of a neighboring state
can come in, in unlimited numbers, and by taking up a residence of
a day or an hour, pay a poll tax, and thus become legal voters, and
then, after voting, return to their own state. They thus, in practi
cal eifect, provided for the people of Missouri to control future elec
tions at their pleasure, and permitted such only of the real inhabi
tants of the territory to vote as are friendly to the holding of slaves.

They permitted no election of any of the officers in the territory to
be made by the people thereof, but created the offices, and filled
them, or appointed officers to fill them, for long periods. They
provided that the next annual election should be held in October,
1856, and the assembly should meet in January, 1857 ; so that none
of these laws could be changed until the lower house might be
changed, in 1856 ; but the council, which is elected for two years,
could not be changed so as to allow a change of the laws or officers
until the session of 1858, however much the inhabitants of the ter
ritory might desire it. How forcibly do these laws illustrate that
old political maxim of the English nation, that a parliament called
by a conqueror is itself conquered and enslaved ! Who but foreign
ers, usurpers, and tyrants, could have made for the people of Kansas
— a people " perfectly free " — such laws as these. Anatomists will
describe the instrument, and even the force of the blow, if only you
show them the wound.

502 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Behold the proofs on which the allegations of invasion, usurpation,
and tyranny, made by the new state of Kansas, rest. They are :
First. The president's own virtual admission, by defenses indirect,
irrelevant, ill-tempered, sophistical, and evasive. Second. An abso
lute agreement, concurrence, and harmony, between the statements
of the conflicting parties who were engaged in the transactions
involved. Third. The consequences of those transactions exactly
such as must follow, if the accusations be true, and such as could not
result if they be false. A few words, however, must be added, to
bring more distinctly into view the president's complicity in these
transactions, and to establish his responsibility therefor. The presi
dent openly lent his official influence and patronage to the slavehold
ers of Missouri, to effect the abrogation of the prohibition of slavery
in Kansas, contained in the act of congress of 1820. He knew their
purposes in regard to the elections in Kansas. He never interfered
to prevent, to defeat, or to hinder them. He employed his official
patronage to aid them. He now defends and protects the usurpation
and tyranny, established by the invaders in Kansas, with all the
influence of his exalted station, and even with the military power
of the republic ; and he argues the duty of the people there to sub
mit to the forcible establishment of slavery, in violation of the
national pledge, which he concurred in giving, that they should be
left perfectly free to reject and exclude that justly obnoxious system.
It thus appears that the president of the United States holds the
people of Kansas prostrated and enslaved at his feet.

To complete the painful account of this great crime, it is necessary
now to add that there has not been one day nor night, since the
government of Kansas was constituted and confided to the president
of the United States, in which either the properties or the liberties,
or even the lives, of its citizens have been secure against the violence
and vengeance of the extreme foreign faction which he upholds and
protects. At this day, Kansas is becoming more distinctly than
before, the scene of a conflict of irreconcilable opinions, to be deter
mined by brute force. No immigrant goes there unarmed, no citizen
dwells there in safety unarmed ; armed masses of men are proceed
ing into the territory, from various parts of the United States, to
complete the work of invasion and tyranny which he has thus
begun, under circumstances of fraud and perfidy unworthy of the
character of a ruler of a free people. This gathering conflict in

KANSAS AND THE PRESIDENT. 503

Kansas divides the sympathies, interests, passions, ana prejudices,
of the people of the United States. Whether, under such circum
stances, it can be circumscribed within the limits of the territory of
Kansas, must be determined by statesmen, from their knowledge
of the courses of civil commotions, which have involved questions
of moral right and conscientious duty, as well as balances of politi
cal power. Whether, on the other hand, the people of Kansas,
under these circumstances, will submit to this tyranny of a citizen
of the United States like themselves, whose term of political power
is nearly expired, can be determined by considering it in the aspect
in which it is viewed by themselves. Speechless here, as they yet
are, I give utterance to their united voices, and, holding in my hand
the arraignment of George III, by the congress of 1776, I impeach
— in the words of that immortal text — the president of the United
States :

4' He has refused to pass laws for the accommodation of the people unless they
would relinquish the right of representation in their legislature — a right inesti
mable to them, and formidable to tyrants only ;

"He has called together legislative bodies at a place unusual, 'uncomfortable,
and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of
fatiguing them into compliance with his measures;

" He has prevented legislative houses from being elected, for no other cause
than his conviction that they " would oppose with manly firmness his invasions on
the rights of the people ;

''He has refused fora long time, after" spurious legislative houses were im
posed by himself, by usurpation, on the people of Kansas. " to cause others to
be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have re
turned to the people at large, for their exercise, the state remaining in the mean
time exposed to all the danger of invasion from without, and civil war within ;

" He has created a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers,
to harass the people, and eat out their substance ;

" He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, to compel our sub
mission to a foreign " legislature, " and has affected to render the military inde
pendent of, and superior to, the civil power;

" He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of
pretended legislation ;

"For protecting" invaders of Kansas "from punishment for any murders
which they shall commit on the inhabitants " of this territory ;

" For abolishing the free system of American law in " this territory, " establish
ing therein an arbitrary government, so as to render it at once an example and
fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into" other territories ;

"For taking away our charter, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering
fundamentally the powers of our government ;

504 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

"For suspending our own legislature, and declaring" an usurping legislature,
constituted by himself, " invested with power to legislate for us in all cases what
soever."

What is wanting here to fill up the complement of a high judicial
process? Is it an accuser? The youngest born of the republic is
before you, imploring you to rescue her from immolation on the
altar of public faction. Is it a crime? Bethink yourselves what it
is that has been subverted. It is the whole of a complete and
rounded-off republican government of a territory indeed, by name,
but, in substance, a civil state. Consider the effect. The people of
Kansas were " perfectly free." They now are free only to submit
and obey. Consider whose system that republican government was,
and the power that established it. It was one of the constitutions
of the United States, established by an act of the congress of
the United States. Consider what a tyranny it is that has been
built on that atrocious usurpation. It is not a discriminating tyranny,
that selects and punishes one, or a few, or even many, but it dis
franchises all, and reduces every citizen to abject slavery. Examine
the code created by the legislature. All the statutes of the state of
Missouri are enacted in gross, without alteration or amendment, for
the government of Kansas ; and then, at the end, the hasty blunder
of misnomer is corrected by an explanatory act, that wherever the
word "state" occurs, it means "territory." And what a code!
One that stifles not, indeed, the fruits of the womb, but the equally
important element of a state, the fruits — the immortal fruits — of the
mind — a code that puts in peril all rights and liberties whatsoever,
by denying to men the right to know, to utter, and to argue, freely,
according to conscience — a right in itself conservative of all other
rights and liberties. Is an offender wanting? He stands before
you, in many respects the most eminent man in all the world — the
president of the United States — the constitutional and chosen de
fender and protector of the people who have been subjugated and
enslaved. Is there anything of dignity or authority wanting to this
tribunal? Where elsewhere shall be found one more august than
the senate of the United States? It is the ancient, constant, and
undoubted right and usage of parliaments — it is the chief purpose
of their being — to question and complain of all persons, of what
degree soever, found grievous to the commonwealth, in abusing the
power and trust committed to them by the people. Does this tri-

KANSAS AND THE PRESIDENT. 505

bunal need a motive? We have that, too, in painful reality. These
usurpations and oppressions have hitherto rested with the president
of the United States, and those whom he has abetted. If they shall
be left unredressed, they will henceforth become, by adoption, our
own.

The conviction of the offending president is complete, and now he
sinks out of view. His punishment rests with the people of the
United States, whose trust he has betrayed. His conviction was only
incidental to the business which is the order of the day. The order
of the day is the redress of the wrongs of Kansas.

How like unto each other are the parallels of tyranny and revolu
tion in all countries and in all times! Kansas is to-day in the very
act of revolution against a tyranny of the president of the United
States, identical in all its prominent features with that tyranny of the
king of England which gave birth to the American revolution.
Kansas has instituted a revolution, simply because ordinary remedies
can never be applied in great political emergencies. There is a pro
found philosophy that belongs to revolutions. According to that
philosophy, the president is assumed by the people of Kansas to
entertain a resentment which can never be appeased, and his power,
consequently, must be wholly taken away. Happily, however, for
Kansas and for us, her revolution is one that was anticipated and
sanctioned and provided for in the constitution of the United States,
and is therefore a peaceful and (paradoxical as the expression may
seem) a constitutional one. Never before have I seen occasion so
great for admiring the wisdom and forecast of those who raised that
noble edifice of civil government. The people of Kansas, deprived
of their sovereignty by a domestic tyranny, have nevertheless law
fully rescued it provisionally, and, so exercising it, have constituted
themselves a state, and applied to congress to admit them as such
into the federal Union. Congress has power to admit the new state
thus organized. The favorable exercise of that power will terminate
and crown the revolution. Once a state, the people of Kansas can
preserve internal order, and defend themselves against invasion. Thus,
the constitutional remedy is as effectual as it is peaceful and simple.

This is the remedy for the evils existing in the territory of Kansas,
which I propose. Happily there is no need to prove it to be either
a lawful one or a proper one, or the only possible one. The presi
dent of the United States and the committee on territories unani-

VOL. IV. 64

506 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

mously concede all this broad ground, because be recommends it,
and they adopt it.

Wherein, then, do I differ from them? Simply thus. I propose
to apply the remedy now, by admitting the new state with its pre
sent population and present constitution. My opponents insist on
postponing the measure until the territory shall be conceded by the
usurping authorities to contain ninety-three thousand seven hundred
inhabitants, and until those authorities shall direct and authorize the
people to organize a new state under a new constitution. In other
words, I propose to allow the people of Kansas to apply the consti
tutional remedy at once. The president proposes to defer it indefi
nitely, and to commit the entire application of it to the hands of the
Missouri borderers. He confesses the inadequacy of that course by
asking appropriations of money to enable him to maintain and pre
serve order within the territory until the indefinite period when the
constitutional remedy shall be applied. There is no sufficient reason
for the delay which the president advises. He admits the rightful-
ness and necessity of the remedy. It is as rightful and necessary
now as it ever will be. It is demanded by the condition and circum
stances of the people of Kansas now. You cannot justly postpone,
any more than you can justly deny that right. To postpone would
be a denial. The president will need no grant of money or of armed
men to enforce obedience to law, when you shall have redressed the
wrongs of which the people complain. Even under governments
less free than our own, there is no need of power where justice
holds the helm. When justice is impartially administered, the
obedience of the subject or citizen will be voluntary, cheerful and
practically unlimited.

Freedom justly due cannot be conceded too soon. True freedom
exists, the utmost bounds of civil liberty are obtained, only where
complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily redressed.
So only can you restore to Kansas the perfect freedom which you
pledged and she has lost.

The constitution does not prescribe ninety-three thousand seven
hundred, or any other number of people, as necessary to constitute
a state. Besides, under the present ratio of increase, Kansas, whose
population now is forty thousand, will number one hundred thou
sand in a few months. The point made concerning numbers, is
therefore practically unimportant and frivolous. The president

KANSAS AND THE PRESIDENT. 507

objects that the past proceed ings, by which the new state of Kansas
was organized, were irregular in three respects : First, that they were
instituted, conducted and completed without a previous permission
by congress or by the local authorities within the territory. Secondly,
that they were instituted, conducted and completed by a party and
not by the whole people' of Kansas. And thirdly, that the new state
holds an attitude of defiance and insubordination toward the territo
rial authorities and the Federal Union. I reply, first, that if the
proceedings in question were irregular and partisanlike and factious,
the exigencies of the case would at least excuse the faults, and con
gress has unlimited discretion to waive them. Secondly, the pro
ceedings were not thus irregular, partisanlike and factious, because
no act of congress forbade them — no act of the territorial legislature
forbade them, directly or by implication — nor had the territorial
legislature power either to authorize or to prohibit them. The pro
ceedings were, indeed, instituted by a party who favored them. But
they were prosecuted and consummated in the customary forms of
popular elections, which were open to all the inhabitants of the ter
ritory qualified to vote by the organic law, and to no others ; and
they have in no case come into conflict, nor does the new state now
act or assume to engage in conflict with either the territorial authori
ties or the government of the Union. Thirdly, there can be no
irregularity where there is no law prescribing what shall be regular.
Congress has passed no law establishing regulations for the organiza
tion or admission of new states. Precedents in such cases, being
without foundation in law, are without authority. This is a country
whose government is regulated, not by precedents, but by constitu
tions. But if precedents were necessary, they are found in the cases
of Texas and California, each of which was organized and admitted,
subject to the same alleged irregularities.

The majority of the committee on territories, in behalf of the pre
sident, interpose one further objection, by tracing this new state
organization to the influence of a secret, armed, political society.
Secrecy and combination, with extra-judicial oaths and armed power,
were the enginery of the Missouri borderers in effecting the subju
gation of the people of Kansas, as that machinery is always emplo37ed
in the commission of political crimes. How far it was lawful or
morallv right for the people of Kansas to employ the same agencies
for the defense of their lives and liberties, may be a question for

508 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

casuists, but certainly is not one for me. I can freely confess, how
ever, my deep regret that secret societies, for any purpose whatsoever,
Lave obtained a place among political organizations within the repub
lic ; and it is my hope that the experience which we have now so
distinctly had, that they can be but too easily adapted to unlawful,
seditious and dangerous enterprises, while they bring down suspicion
:and censure on high and noble causes when identified with them,
mav be sufficient to induce a general discontinuance of them.

Will the senate hesitate even an hour between the alternatives
before them? The passions of the American people find healthful
exercise in peaceful colonizations, and the construction of railroads,
.and the building up and multiplying of republican institutions.
The territory of Kansas lies across the path through which railroads
must be built, and along which such institutions must be founded,
without delay, in order to preserve the integrity of our empire.
Shall we suppress enterprises so benevolent and so healthful, and
inflame our country with that fever of intestine war which exhausts
and consumes not more the wealth and strength than the virtue and
freedom of a nation ? Shall we confess that the proclamation of
popular sovereignty within the territory of Kansas, was not merely
a failure, but was a pretense and a fraud ? Or will senators now
•contend that the people of Kansas, destitute as they are of a legis
lature of their own, of executive authorities of their own, of judicial
authorities of their own, of a militia of their own, of revenues of
their own, subject to disposal by themselves, practically deprived as
they are of the rights of voting, serving as jurors, and of writing,
printing and speaking their own opinions, are nevertheless in the
enjoyment and exercise of popular sovereigntv ? Shall we confess
before the world, after so brief a trial, that this great political system
of ours is inadequate either to enable the majority to control through
the operation of opinion, without force, or to give security to the
citizen against tyranny and domestic violence? Are we prepared
so soon to relinquish our simple and beautiful systems of republican
government, and to substitute in their place the machinery of usurp
ation and despotism?

The congress of the United States can refuse admission to Kansas
only on the ground that it will not relinquish the hope of carrying
African slavery into that new territory. If you are prepared to
assume that ground, why not do it manfully and consistently, and

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 009

establish slavery there by a direct and explicit act of congress? But
have we come to that stage of demoralization and degeneracy so
soon ? We, who commenced our political existence and gained the
sympathies of the world by proclaiming to other nations that we
held " these truths to be self-evident: That all men are born equal,
and have certain inalienable rights ; and that among these rights are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness:" we, who in the spirit of
that declaration have assumed to teach and to illustrate, for the
benefit of mankind, a higher and better civilization than they have
hitherto known ! If the congress of the United States shall persist
in this attempt, then they shall at least allow me to predict its results.
Either you will not establish African slavery in Kansas, or you will do
it at the cost of the sacrifice of all the existing liberties of the American
people. Even if slavery were, what it is not, a boon to the people of
Kansas, they would reject it if enforced upon their acceptance by federal
bayonets. The attempt is in conflict with all the tendencies of the age..
African slavery has, for the last fifty years, been giving way, as well in
this country as in the islands and on the mainland throughout this
hemisphere. The political power and prestige of slavery in the
United States are passing away. The slave states practically gov
erned the Union directly for fifty years. They govern it now, only
indirectly, through the agency of northern hands, temporarily enlisted
in their support. So much, owing to the decline of their power,
they have already conceded to the free states. The next step, if they
persist in their present course, will be the resumption and exercise
by the free states of the control of the government, without such
concessions as they have hitherto made to obtain it. Throughout a
period of nearly twenty years, the defenders of slavery screened it
from discussion in the national councils. Now, they practically con
fess to the necessity7 for defending it here, by initiating discussion
themselves. They have at once thrown away their most successful
weapon, compromise, and worn out that one which was next in
effectiveness, threats of secession from the Union. It is under such
unpropitious circumstances that they begin the new experiment of
extending slavery into free territory by force, the armed power of
the federal government. You will need many votes from free states
in the house of represent tives, and even some votes from those
states in this house, to sen:! an army with a retinue of slaves in its
train into Kansas. Have you counted up your votes in the two

610 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

bouses? Have you calculated how long those who shall cast such
votes will retain their places in the national legislature ?

But I will grant, for the sake of the argument, that with federal
battalions you can carry slavery into Kansas, and maintain it there.
Are you quite confident that this republican form of government
can then be upheld and preserved ? You will then yourselves have
introduced the Trojan horse. No republican government ever has
endured with standing armies maintained in its bosom to enforce
submission to its laws. A people who have once learned to relinquish
their rights, under compulsion, will not be long in forgetting that
they ever had any. In extending slavery into Kansas, therefore, by
arms, you will subvert the liberties of the people.

Senators of the free states, I appeal to you. Believe ye the pro
phets? I know you do. You know, then, that slavery neither
works mines and quarries, nor founds cities, nor builds ships, nor
levies armies, nor mans navies. Why, then, will you insist on clos
ing up this new territory of Kansas against all enriching streams of
immigration, while you pour into it the turbid and poisonous waters
of African slavery ? Which one of you all, whether of Connecticut,
or of Pennsylvania, or of Illinois, or of Michigan, would consent
thus to extinguish the chief light of civilization within the state in
which your own fortunes are cast, and in which your own posterity
are to live ? Why will you pursue a policy so unkind, so ungene
rous, and so unjust, toward the helpless, defenseless, struggling ter
ritory of Kansas, inhabited as it is by your own brethren, depending
on you for protection and safety? Will slavery in Kansas add to
the wealth or power of your own states, or to the wealth, power or
glory of the republic? You know that it will diminish all of these.
You profess a desire to end this national debate about slavery, which
has become for you intolerable. Is it not time to relinquish that
hope ? You have exhausted the virtue for that purpose, that resided
in compacts and platforms, in the suppression of the right of petition
and in arbitrary parliamentary laws, and in abnegation of federal
authority over the subject of slavery within the national territories.
Will you even then end the debate, by binding Kansas with chains,
for the safety of slavery in Missouri? Even then you must give
over Utah to slavery, to make it secure and permanent in Kansas ;
and you must give over Oregon and Washington to both polygamy
arid slavery, so as to guaranty equally the one and the other of those

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS — DISUNION. 511

peculiar domestic institutions in Utah ; arid so you must go on,
sacrificing on the shrine of peace territory after territory, until the
prevailing nationality of freedom and of virtue shall be lost, and the
vicious anomalies, which you have hitherto vainly hoped Almighty
Wisdom would remove from among you without your own concur
rence, shall become the controlling elements in the republic. He
who found a river in his path, and sat down to wait for the flood to
pass away, was not more unwise than he who expects the agitation
of slavery to cease, while the love of freedom animates the bosoms
of mankind.

The solemnity of the occasion draws over our heads that cloud
of disunion which always arises whenever the subject of slavery is
agitated. Still the debate goes on, more ardently, earnestly and
angrily than ever before. It employs now not merely logic, reproach,
menace, retort and defiance, but sabres, rifles and cannon. Do you
look through this incipient war quite to the end, and see there peace,
quiet and harmony on the subject of slavery ? If so, pray enlighten
me, and show me how long the way is which leads to that repose.
The free states are loyal, and they always will remain so. Their
foothold on this continent is firm and sure. Their ability to main
tain themselves, unaided, under the present constitution, is estab
lished. The slave states, also, have been loyal hitherto, and I hope
and trust they ever may remain so. But if disunion could ever
come, it would come in the form of a secession of the slaveholding
states ; and it would come, then, when the slaveholding power, which
is already firmly established on the gulf of Mexico, and extends a
thousand miles northward along both banks of the Mississippi, should
have fastened its grappling irons upon the fountains of the Missouri
and the slopes of the Rocky mountains. Then that power would
either be intolerably supreme in this republic, or it would strike for
independence or exclusive domination. Then the free states and
slave states of the Atlantic, divided and warring with each other,
would disgust the free states of the Pacific, and they would have
abundant cause and justification for withdrawing from a Union pro
ductive no longer of peace, safety and liberty to themselves, and no
longer holding up the cherished hopes of mankind.

The continental congress of 1787, on resigning the trust which it
had discharged with signal fidelity, into the hands of the authorities
elected under the new constitution, and in taking leave of their

512 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

constituents, addressed to the people of the United States this memo
rable injunction: "Let it never be forgotten, that the cause of the
United States has always been the cause of human nature." Let us
recall that precious monition ; let us examine the ways which we
have pursued hitherto, under the light thrown upon them by that
instruction. We shall find, in doing so, that we have forgotten
moral right in the pursuit of material greatness, and we shall cease
henceforth from practising upon ourselves the miserable delusion
that we can safely extend empire, when we shall have become reck
less of the obligations of eternal justice, and faithless to the interests
of universal freedom.

KANSAS— USUEPATIONS. '

I SHALL, with the greatest pleasure in the world, vote for this
amendment (Mr. WILSON'S, to abrogate the spurious laws of Kan
sas). I agree with the honorable mover of it, that the present bill
has no other tendency, and can have no other effect, than to crown
with success the object of the law of 1854, which abrogated the pro
hibition of slavery contained in the Missouri compromise act, and
thus to form a slave state out of Kansas. Against that I was com
mitted then ; I commit myself now ; I stand committed forever. I
admit that the bill, as it would stand after the adoption of the amend
ment, would not leave in the territory of Kansas a code of municipal
laws. But, in that shape, this bill, if passed, would be only a con
gressional declaration of what I hold to be a solemn political fact,
already established and known, namely : that there is no law, there
are no laws, there is no code, there is no legal society in Kansas,
otherwise organized or governed, than by the organic act passed by
congress in the year 1854.

I hold now, as I have already shown to the senate and to the
country on a former occasion, that what is called the legislature of
Kansas is a usurpation, and that the code which it has established is

1 Speech in the Senate of the United States. July 2. 1856, against Mr. Douglas1 second Enabling
Bill, and in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union.

USURPATIONS IN KANSAS. 513

a tyranny. Lapse of time during our long debate has not changed
their character. I hold that there is no legal obligation, as there is
no moral obligation, upon any man, whether he is a citizen of that
territory or otherwise, to treat that legislature or that code with the
least respect. If the legislature be a usurpation, all men must admit
this consequence to be just. When we had this subject in debate at
an earlier stage of the session, with only confused and informal evi
dence before us, it was denied that the legislature of the territory is
a usurpation. That fact is completely established now by the report
of a committee appointed by the house of representatives, to investi
gate all the circumstances of the ca*se, and they show beyond all
manner of doubt, that no sooner had congress authorized the inhabi
tants of the territory of Kansas to constitute for themselves a civil
government, in a prescribed form, than an armed body of invaders
from the state of Missouri, and from other states and territories, took
possession of the polls, drove away the voters, and holding the ter
ritory in fact under martial law, waged by seditious men, created
and constituted this legislature of Kansas.

From this most unwarrantable proceeding has followed the imbro
glio in which the county finds itself involved. The president, hold
ing that he had no power to correct the evil — that he had no right
to pronounce at all on this fact thus questioned — assumed that it was
his duty to execute the laws of that legislature, while he very pro
perly addressed himself to congress on the subject. Congress was
appealed to ; has had the subject under discussion three months ;
and the house of representatives, more wise, more just, more true to
freedom, than the senate has been to the cause of civil government,
and civil and religious liberty, sent a commission to Kansas to ascer
tain the truth of the case involved. Their report has been made to-
the house of representatives; and it establishes, beyond denial, and
even beyond all question, that there has been no legitimate election,
no constitutional election, no legal election in the territory, and that
there is, of course, no legislature, and there are no laws there.

It strikes me that, after being at sea for the last three months, this
proposition of the honorable senator from Massachusetts is the very
first one which seems to give us a hope of finding any land. It
shows us a safe port. The proposition distinctly is to abrogate the
pretended laws of that usurping and tyrannical legislature.

VOL. IV. 65

514: SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

I do not say that simply this measure will give peace to Kansas ;
I do not say that nothing more will be necessary to give peace and
rescue liberty in Kansas ; but I do say that, so far as it goes, it would
be an advance — the first one that would have been made towards
either of those important objects during the last three months. I
urn prepared at once to give rny support to it. When we shall have
abolished that tyranny and its laws, we shall then be in a condition
to see whether there is not something more which can be done.

Talk about that being a legislature and a government which can
exact obedience from the people of Kansas ! It has not the strength
in itself to stand a day, nor an hour. It is upheld by the bayonets
of the army of the United States. Talk about these being laws
obligatory on the citizens of Kansas, when they were made by inva
ders from the state of Missouri ! Talk about these pretended
enactments as being laws which ought to be respected and obeyed —
laws which disfranchise the legal profession, the first element of
constitutional liberty in every government of the Saxon or Anglo-
Saxon race! Talk about laws to be upheld which deprive persons
accused of crime of trial by a fair and impartial jury, and which
establish a test of opinion as qualifications not only for the exercise
of the ballot, but also for the jury-box! Talk about these being
laws which are obligatory, and are to be maintained for a day or
even for an hour — enactments which deprive men of the liberty of
speech ! Talk about those being laws which are entitled to obedi
ence anywhere under the constitution of the United States — laws
under which the press, the palladium of civil and religious liberty,
is indicted, tried, convicted, and suppressed as a nuisance. I beg
honorable gentlemen to consider well the pass to which they have
brought things in this country. They have brought the country to
the verge of civil war. They propose now a compromise. The
day for compromises is ended.

The honorable senator is glad of it, and so am I. We shall
henceforth take our stand in all these questions upon the constitu
tion of the United States, and those of us who get our feet truly on
it will stand firm. Those who happen not to get that safe footing
will find they may have a slippery and unsubstantial foothold.

The question, the honorable senator says, which is proposed by
his bill, offers no compromise. I beg to correct the honorable gentle
man. The original proposition was, that congress should be left

USURPATIONS IN KANSAS. 515

under the territorial government established by the Missouri legisla
ture, that it should be left subject to all the statutes of that legislature,
and that it should not be admitted in the Union until it should be
able to number ninety-three thousand seven hundred people.

(Mr. BROWN — Ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty.)

I stand corrected, and the correction reminds me of the careful
accuracy of my honorable and excellent friend — now dead — [Mr.
GIDEON LEE], who was a member of the house of representatives
from the city of New York at the time the great fire occurred there.
When an application was made for the remission of duties on account
of the fire, an honorable member, in speaking in support of the
application, said that yesterday morning the sun rose upon a city
that was crowded and compact with the dwellings and warehouses
of a great commercial city, and the sun of the same day set upon
a city of which fifty acres were in ashes ; my honorable friend [Mr.
LEE] corrected the honorable member by saying fifty-two acres and
a half.

Bat, whether it was ninety-three thousand four hundred and
twenty, or ninety-three thousand seven hundred, the practical ques
tion was the same. It was the amount necessary in one of the
states to entitle a district to a representative in congress. What
have we to-day, sir? The proposition of the committee now is, that
the Missouri legislature shall remain in force — so far the same ; but
that all laws passed by the legislature subversive of the freedom of
speech — all laws subversive of a trial by jury — all laws subversive
of citizenship, shall be abrogated ; and finally that, without waiting
for the ninety-three thousand, and that odd fraction, whatever it may
be, that state shall be admitted now into the Union immediately
upon the election of a convention, and the organization of a state
constitution.

I beg my honorable friend from Georgia to consider whether this
is not a compromise. I certainly understand that it is offered as
such, and that it has been accepted as such, not by that portion of
the senate among whom I belong, but by others who could not be
prevailed upon to vote for the bill in the shape in which it was
originally proposed.

I do not know that it is in my power to state a proposition which
would commend itself in my judgment more thoroughly to the pur
pose of settling the whole of this difficulty than the proposition of

516 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

the honorable senator from Massachusetts to abrogate the laws. I
would have preferred that his amendment had gone further, and
declared the territorial legislature itself to be illegal, and therefore
abrogated it. When you shall have once done that, you will then
have removed all of the existing grounds of contention. You will
have then discharged all these prosecutions for constructive treason
under which men, who have assembled according to the constitution,
and according to the settled precedents and customs of the country
to petition congress for redress, have been indicted and are held in
close confinement to be tried for treason. You will then have
abolished all those criminal proceedings in which editors, who have
maintained the cause of justice and civil liberty in that territory y
have been indicted, and are held in duress to be subjected to punish
ment in the penitentiary for maintaining (what is true, in my judg
ment) that slavery is not, and cannot go, into the territory of Kansas
by virtue of the constitution or any existing law of the United
States. Then you will have at last restored the people to the pos
session of their liberties, and it will then be time enough to see what
we shall do to give them a well-digested system of civil government
and municipal laws.

[Mr. Wilson's amendment having failed, Mr. Seward then addressed the senate
on the bill enabling the people of Kansas to form a constitution, and apply for
admission into the Union.]

The daily sessions of the senate usually last three or four hours.
The present one has already reached its fourteenth hour. If I do
not hasten the gleams of the morning sun will pale the lights of the
chandelier before I shall have closed my speech.

The honorable and distinguished senator from Kentucky [Mr.
CRITTENDEN] has appealed eloquently and earnestly to my love of
peace, and to my devotion to the Union. Certainly, every conside
ration weighs upon me as strongly as upon any other American
senator or citizen to make me desire that peace and harmony may
prevail throughout this broad land ; that my own country, worthier
of my love than any other country under the sun, may be united
now, henceforth and forever ; and that it may, by means of such har-'
mony and union, continually rise in prosperity, greatness and glory.

The honorable senator has based on that appeal a remonstrance
against my remark, that " the time for compromises has passed." The
honorable senator from Georgia [Mr. TOOMBS], to whom this bill

THE DAY FOE COMPROMISES. 517

owes its principal features, has disclaimed for it not only the form
bat also the character of a compromise. Assuming, however, with
the senator from Kentucky, that this is its true character, I must
say, nevertheless, that he misunderstands me, when he supposes that
I am opposed to all compromises of all questions, on all occasions.
My position concerning legislative compromises is this, namely :
personal, partisan, temporary and subordinate questions, may law
fully be compromised ; but principles can never be justly or wisely
made the subjects of compromise. By principles I mean the elements
in public questions, of moral rights, political justice, and high na
tional expediency. Does any honorable senator assert a different
maxim on the subject of legislative compromise?

Unlike, perhaps, that honorable senator, I regard slavery as
morally unjust, politically unwise, and socially pernicious, in some
degree, in every community where it exists. Slavery once, and not
long ago, was practically universal. It may be doubted whether,
among all the distinguished men whose co-laborer I am in this august
assembly, there is one who, more than myself, if he could trace his
lineage upward through a period of live hundred or six hundred
years, would not reach the bar sinister. I owe it to wise, virtuous,
and bold legislators, who have gone before me, that I am not myself
a slave, and that, within the state where I live, slavery has forever
ceased to exist. I owe it to mankind and to posterity, that being a
legislator now myself, slavery shall by no act of mine be established
or extended ; and by act of mine, God giving me grace, no human
being shall ever hereafter be made or held a slave. This is a prin
ciple ; and, being a principle, I cannot compromise it. Nevertheless,
I am not, for that reason, to be supposed willing to be either turbu
lent or factious in resisting the majority of my countrymen, when,
overruling me, they compromise principles even so sacred as this. I
abide that reconsideration which I always hopefully believe near,
and am sure is ultimately certain.

It was my fortune to have just come into congress when Califor
nia, a free state, applied for admission into the Union. I insisted
on her admission, without condition, qualification or compromise.
Others here, on the contrary, demanded a compromise which should
settle, as they said, all actual and all possible questions arising
out of the subject of slavery in the United States, then, thence
forth, and forever. I showed that such a compromise was impracti-

518 SPEECHES IX THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

cable. I maintained that questions arising out of slavery, from time
to time, under different circumstances, and in different parts of the
republic, conld only be justly and wisely settled, and indeed could
only be settled at all, severally and distinctly, on the occasions on
which they occurred. I was overruled ; I was censured, how widely,
how severely, all the world knows, for my refusal to join in a mea
sure of peace and harmony, as it was called, which, as I thought, at
the cost of sacrifices of freedom and justice, was expected to termi
nate the discussion of slavery in congress, and to restore harmony
and concord throughout the country, and perpetuate them forever.

That compromise was made here about this hour, in a midsummer
night like this, at the close of a long and stormy debate. Loud
mouthed artillery, from the terrace of the capitol, the next day
announced to the people of the United States that the Wilmot pro
viso was buried under the floor of the senate chamber, and that the
agitation of slavery was buried with it. Wherever I went, here or
abroad, I was pointed out as a chief mourner — the last to leave that
solemn ceremonial. Only four years elapsed, when those who had
effected that compromise found it necessary to open to civilization
the territories of Nebraska and Kansas, and they introduced into the
senate a bill for that purpose. Then, all at once, the Wilmot pro
viso burst the cerements of its grave, and stalked through the senate
chamber, clad in the same fearful horrors that it had worn before its
interment.

, The slavery question being thus reopened, certainly by no act of
mine, or of those who agree with me, the compromise acts of 1850
were reviewed. Those who favored the extension of slavery in the
territories maintained that that compromise drew after it, as a conse
quence, an abrogation of the prohibition of slavery in Kansas and
Nebraska, contained in the Missouri compromise act of 1820. Those
who opposed the extension of slavery denied that consequence. I
was among that number, and was again overruled,. The majority
here then hit upon a new expedient to bind down and confine the
Wilmot proviso in its tomb, and prevent its possible resurrection
forever. That expedient was, that congress should renounce, in
favor of the inhabitants of the new territories, all jurisdiction on
the subject of slavery therein. Having no faith in the justice or
the wisdom of that expedient, I calmly warned the senate that they
were only sending this perplexing question of slavery down to the

THE DAY FOR COMPROMISES. 519

territories, to involve their inhabitants in factious and fruitless con
tests ; and that it would come back again to the senate, red with the
heat of those strifes, to be settled here at last. I insisted then that con
gress ought to discharge its proper responsibility, and decide whether
Kansas and Nebraska should be slave territories or be free territo
ries. The compromise ordnance, from the terrace of the capitol,
announced to the people a new triumph, and I was again pronounced
throughout the length and breadth of the land, a disappointed and
overthrown agitator. Two years have elapsed. What is the result
of this, the second compromise made within six years — a compro
mise consisting in the abnegation of federal power over the subject
of slavery in the territories of the United States? The result, in
its nature, is just what I predicted; while, in its aggravations, it sur
passes all that my fanatical imagination had conceived.

I say again, and with emphasis, we have had enough of compro
mises on the subject of slavery. The day for them has passed. Do
you ask what I would do on these disturbing questions? I answer,
that I would do on these what I would do on all other questions. I
hold this to be a government of majorities, modified indeed by com
plex constitutional limitations, but nevertheless a government of
majorities.

It is the business of congress to adjust and determine all ques
tions which legitimately come before it, and not to compromise them,
or to devolve their decision upon others. True, I know very well
that I might be overruled, and that slavery might be established by
congress in a territorj^, where I should vote to establish freedom. In
that case, slavery must remain there, until, in a constitutional way,
it shall be removed. So, on the other hand, if freedom shall be
established in the territories, where others vote to establish slavery,
they too must submit,' and abide the change they desire. True, I
know there might be a difference of opinion between the house of
representatives and the senate in such a case. In such an event we
must wait until the two houses can agree — to-morrow, the next
month or the next year. The people will ultimately take care to
constitute the two houses so that they shall agree. So much, sir, for
my position uf>on the subject of compromises concerning the subject
of slavery.

The territory of Kansas constitutes one twentv-fiftri part of the
whole dominion of the United States of America, sufficient to con-

520 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

stitute six states of the average size of those now enrolled in the
confederacy. It is a territory which, thirty-five years ago, was with
a peculiar felicity of wisdom consecrated to freedom, and assigned
as an exclusive field of free labor. The distinguished senator from
Delaware [Mr. CLAYTON] now argues to convince us that that benefi
cent act was unconstitutional. The question which is thus raised is
merely incidental and collateral now. I am content, therefore, on
this occasion, to reply, that the act was a compromise ; that it
received the form, name arid character of a compromise, at that
time, by the slaveholding states and the free states, as parties having
conflicting interests to be settled. And it received that form, name,
and character, for the purpose of binding the faith of all parties
against a repeal or disturbance of it, on the ground of alleged uncon
stitutionally, or on any other ground. So it was received and
acquiesced in by the people of the United States. So it took its
place in the national history, and so it was respected and maintained
by all parties until 1854. Congress in that year abrogated the
beneficent guarantee of freedom, and thus offered and exposed the
territory of Kansas, as well as that of Nebraska, to the intrusion of
slavery and slave labor. But congress, nevertheless, replaced the
old covenant of impartial freedom and free labor, with a guarantee
that the inhabitants of Kansas, when coming to organize the terri
torial government after a model prescribed, should be perfectly free
to establish freedom and free labor, and to reject slavery and menial
labor. No sooner had this new congress assembled, than it was
made known to us that that guarantee had failed ; that, in the very
moment of its organization, an armed foreign body entered the
territory, assumed an attitude of actual war, usurped the franchises
of the citizens, seized the machine of government, and converted it
into a tyranny marked by the enforcement of despotic laws, by
foreign legislators, magistrates, and ministerial officers ; and that the
president of the United States was maintaining this despotism in
Kansas with the armed force of the United States. I brought
these facts to the notice of the senate, together with the fact that the
people of Kansas, free American citizens as they were, unwilling to
acquiesce in that usurpation, and unable to submit to mat despotism,
had assembled at Topeka, in the manner customary on such occa
sions and, in acknowledged subjection to the jurisdiction of the
United States, organized themselves, provisionally, into a state, and

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 521

were here, by representatives delegated to both houses, soliciting
admission into the Union. I submitted to the senate that the new
state of Kansas ought to be admitted, not because it would be always
wise to admit whatever new states might come, and in whatever
manner they might come, nor yet because it would have been wise,
under other and different circumstances, to admit even Kansas her
self; but simply because Kansas was held bound, hand and foot,
under a foreign usurpation, at the feet of the president of the
United States, and that her admission now was not only a neces
sary measure of relief and redress, but was the only practicable and
adequate one.

I urged her admission on the senate upon three distinct grounds.
First, that it would secure peace to Kansas and to the country, then
fearfully threatened with commotion and civil war. Secondly, that
it would be the means of protecting property, life, and liberty,
within that territory, then dangerously exposed. Thirdly, that it
would be the means of bringing Kansas into the Union as a free
state, with the institutions of free labor, in compliance with that
original pledge which once had been given the inhabitants of that
territory, and afterwards revoked. I introduced a bill for the admis
sion of the new state of Kansas, and advocated its passage on those
grounds, while I urged my objections against the bill relating to the
same subject, which had been presented to the senate by the com
mittee on territories. There I left the debate, and I return to it now
only because that committee have abandoned their first bill, and
adopted the new one now under consideration. I stand now by rny
own bill, which I maintain to be preferable to the last bill of the
committee, as it was to the first. Some honorable senators seem to
think that it is unreasonable that I do not give up my own bill, and
come down and accept the new one, which they are inclined to treat
as a compromise between my own bill for the immediate admission
of Kansas, under the Topeka constitution, and the first bill of the
committee on territories. Why should I surrender my own bill ?
If it was wise, just, and necessary, when I presented it to the senate,
it is as just, wise^ and necessary now. It was wise, just, and neces
sary then, if the circumstances under which the constitution of
Kansas was adopted were then truly stated and set forth by me, in
my argument delivered in the senate. In making that argument, I
had to rely on probable evidence, for no other evidence then existed.

VOL. IV. 66

522 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Now, a committee of the house of representatives, after having dili
gently inquired on oath, have ascertained and confirmed the truth
of the circumstances of Kansas which I then assumed. I state those
circumstances anew, on the present occasion, in the moderate and
guarded conclusions of the committee of the house of representatives :

" Spurious and pretended legislative, judicial, and executive officers have been
set over them, by whose usurped authority, sustained by the military power of
the government, tyrannical and unconstitutional laws have been enacted and
enforced ;

" The rights of the people to keep and bear arms have been infringed ;

<; Test oaths, of an extraordinary and entangling nature, have been imposed as
a condition of exercising the right of suffrage and holding office ;

" The right of an accused person to a speedy and public trial by an impartial
jury has been denied ;

" The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, has been violated ;

" They have been deprived of life, liberty, and property, without due process
of law ;

" The freedom of speech and of the press has been abridged ;

" The right to choose their representatives has been made of no effect ;

" Murders, robberies, and arsons, have been instigated and encouraged, and the
offenders have been allowed to go unpunished ;

" All these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procure
ment of the present administration."

Why, then, under these circumstances, should I abandon my own
bill ? The honorable committee on territories have shown me
marked attention, by bestowing some criticisms upon that bill.
They inform the senate that the boundaries of the state of Kansas
assigned by the bill differ from the boundaries assigned by the
Topeka constitution. The explanation is a simple one. My bill
was drawn before the Topeka constitution had reached the senate —
certainly, before it had reached me. To avoid all question on the
subject of boundaries, I adopted those which were assigned in the
bill which had been reported by the committee on territories.

Again, the learned committee express a doubt in their report
whether rny bill is framed so as to admit the state of Kansas under
the Topeka constitution. I have only to say. in reply, that the bill
proposes that the state of Kansas shall be admitted immediately.
The state of Kansas certainly has no other constitution than the
Topeka one; and the bill, in form, is mutatis mutandis, identical
with the law under which California was admitted into the Union,

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 52&

and now holds her place in the confederacy. These, sir, are unim
portant matters — matters of mere detail, unworthy to dwell upon at
this hour of the night, and at this late stage in the session of congress.

I object to the new bill of the committee on territories, for
weightier reasons than any of mere criticism on details. I confess,
frankly, that I regard it as a bill of concession, if not of compro
mise. Certainly it goes too far in its concessions to the friends of
freedom in Kansas, to be identical with the bill which it has sup
planted in the affections of the committee on territories. It permits
the people of Kansas to come into the Union with such population as
they may have on the 4th of July next, instead of obliging them to
wait until they shall have a population of ninety-three thousand
four hundred and twenty souls. It seems at least also to waive the
previous proposition of the committee on territories, of an appro-
priation for extraordinary expense to maintain peace and order, in
subjection to the usurping authorities in Kansas. But, while the
bill goes so far, I object against it, that it stops short of a remedy
which would restore peace, safety, and freedom, in Kansas.

I am not bound, by any previous committals, to accept any bill
which stops short of those objects.

First, however, I inquire what substantial objection lies against
my own bill ? There is only one which is now seriously insisted
upon, which is, that the formation and adoption of the Topeka con*
stitution were the acts, not of the whole people, but of one political
party — a portion of the people of Kansas only. The honorable
senator from Georgia says that the constitution received only seven
hundred votes. It is true that the free state party instituted pro
ceedings to call a convention to decide whether it was expedient to
establish a provisional state, and also the proceedings to call a con*
vention to frame the constitution. But they invited all parties, and
all the citizens of Kansas, to participate in the decision of every
question which was thus brought under discussion ; and they pro
vided that the proceedings should stand or fall, according to the will
of the whole people of Kansas, expressed through the ballot boxes
in the customary way. By majorities, thus formally ascertained,
the convention was called and held, and the constitution was
established and promulgated. Who else should have called the
convention, or instituted proceedings towards the adoption of the
constitution ? Not congress, for congress had been silent on the

524 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

subject in the organic law ! Not the president nor the government,
for neither had power. Not the territorial legislature ; that was the
authority which was to be subverted by substituting for it a federal
state. Not those who upheld that legislature, because they were
content. It is the party which needs and desires improvement or
innovation, in every state, that initiates the proceedings by which it
is to be effected. It was unfortunate that the election for the
adoption of the constitution occurred only two days after a new
foray of the Missourians in the territory had terrified and alarmed
the people, and rendered it unsafe for the citizens of Kansas to
attend the polls, in all the districts throughout the territory. This
misfortune, however, resulted from no fault of the convention, or of
the majority who adopted the constitution. The misfortune itself
lends strength to the application for the admission of the state.
And there can be no mistake in assuming that the convention was
•sustained by a majority of the people, since we find, by the report
of the committee of the house of representatives, that elections were
held in seventeen districts, which gave for the constitution seventeen
hundred and thirty-one votes, and only forty six votes against it;
while in the town of Leavenworth its opponents destroyed the ballot
boxes, which were known to contain about five hundred additional
affirmative votes, with only thirty-eight adverse votes. The state
of California was admitted into this Union, upon proceedings no
more legitimate, no more regular, no more warranted by any pre
existing laws, than these.

What California did, was rightly done, but it was not done in
pursuance of any law. It was done without law, and it was justi
fied then as I justify similar proceedings in Kansas now, on the
ground of a high political necessity.

Another though lighter objection has been urged against my bill,
namely: that the Topeka constitution provides that it shall not be
changed in less than nine years. I do not know this fact, but I am
bound to assume it, on the statement of the honorable senator from
Georgia. My answer is, that I am not responsible for that provision
in the constitution. It is an objection of the same character with
one that is made by the honorable senator from Illinois [Mr.
DOUGLAS], namely: that the Topeka constitution excludes free
colored persons from Kansas. I reply to both of these objections.
I take the constitution, as we all must take it, for better or for worse

ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 525

— just as it is — or we cannot admit the state at all. The people in
new states make their constitutions. Oar power is limited to the
admission or rejection of a state, whatever its constitution may be.
Again, it is not clear that the provision complained of by the sena
tor from Georgia will prevent the people of Kansas from subverting
this constitution, and establishing a new one, at any time short of
the expiration of nine years. The constitution of the state of New
York, established in 1821, provided for alterations only to be made
with the consent of two successive legislatures. A party desiring
radical innovation, and finding it impossible to obtain that object in
the form prescribed in the constitution, secured a majority in the
legislature, and, without any constitutional authority, carried
through a law by which proceedings were instituted for calling a
convention, which was subsequently held, and which framed a new
constitution. This new constitution being submitted to the people,
and approved by them, in derogation of the old one, became, and it
yet remains, the supreme law of the land.

(Mr. WELLER, — A state constitution must only be republican in
form.)

I thank the honorable senator for the suggestion, that the only
question necessary and practical here is, whether Kansas has a con
stitution which is republican in form. To most senators, that is-
enough, under any circumstances. I confess it is not enough for me.
If the provisional state of Deseret shall come here with a constitu
tion which shall sanction polygamy, I certainly shall vote against
admitting as a state a community which has revived that eminently
patriarchal institution, without stopping to decide whether the insti
tution is in harmony with republicanism or not.

I pass now from my own bill to consider the new bill presented
by the committee on territories. So far as the subject of slavery is
concerned, the most which can be claimed for this bill is, that it gives
an equal chance to the people of Kansas to choose between freedom
and slavery. I can well understand that the senator from Georgia
and the committee on territories regard this feature of the bill as
being entirely just. I differ from them only because the standard
of political justice which commends itself to me, is a more rigid one.
I recognize no equality, in moral right or political expediency,
between slavery and freedom. I hold the one to be decidedly good,
and the other to be positively bad. I do not think it wise, or just,

526 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED 'STATES SENATE.

or necessary, to give to the people of a territory, where slavery does
not exist, and never has existed, the privilege of choosing slavery.
The inhabitants of a new territory are necessarily in a condition of
pupilage, needing the guardian care as well as counsel of congress.
The experience of Kansas confirms this truth. On the 28th day of
May, 1854, there was no civil community, practically there was not
one lawful citizen within the territory. The Kansas organic law
passed, and lo ! there was at once on the statute book a civil commu
nity there. But what was its condition ? There were a few emi
grants scattered throughout a territory of vast extent, unknown to
each other ; unorganized, absolutely without civil institutions, with
out a treasury, or a militia, or public edifices, without organized
political parties, and without cultivated fields, or workshops, or
established markets, and almost without habitations or homes;
incompetent to self-defense or self-government, they were overborne
by a small intrusive force from an adjoining state; addressed by
foreign factions, with present temptations and seductions, without
having any concert of action amongst themselves, they were appealed
to, on the one side, to institute slavery, not for their own benefit,
but for the supposed benefit of the slaveholding states, and to weaken
the power of the free states — and on the other, by arguments having
little weight, amid the confusion incident to the organization of a
territorv. Thus the greatest political question that could be submit
ted to any people, a question which congress itself has been unable
to solve, was devolved for its settlement upon a community which,
although it possessed extraordinary intelligence, was, by reason of
its immaturity, unable to elect even a legislature and a magistracy
for itself. The result has been, not the voluntary establishment of
popular sovereignty or of self government, with or without slavery,
but a conquest and subjugation of the territory, with the establishment
of slavery, by slaveholders from Missouri. I maintain, and no one
here will deny, that it would have been unwise and injurious to the
people of Kansas, if congress had directly established slavery in that
territory by the organic law. Congress was bound to foresee the
operation of the organic law which it passed. And congress could
not pass a law, the operation of which would be to establish slavery
within the territory by indirect means, with any more wisdom, or
justice, or benevolence, than it could have directly established slavery
there. I say, therefore, that the existing state of things in Kansas

THE PROHIBITION OF SLAVERY. 527

is the result of the wrongful and injurious legislation of congress
itself. I maintain, still more, that since there was a possibility that
slavery might be established within the territory through popular
mistake, or surprise, or conquest, it was a solemn responsibility rest
ing upon congress to withhold from the people therein — so few,
scattered, feeble, unorganized, and deficient in the consolidation
which is essential to every civil state, at least until they should have
attained something more of organization and maturity — the power to
decide so fearful a question. You will tell me that this is a denial of
the capacity and of the right of a civil community to exercise self-
government. It is a very different thing. It is only insisting that a
people must have the necessary elements of a civil community, before
the power of self-government can safely be assumed by them. I
admit and maintain the right of every individual citizen to enjoy and
exercise freedom and self-control, subject to the municipal law of the
land. But I deny, at the same time, that it is a parental right or
duty to refer to the infant child, who is ultimately to become a citi
zen, the choice, during his minority, between health and disease, or
between virtue and crime. The long and short of the whole
matter is, that until the territories of the United States become
matured and qualified to assume all the powers of municipal govern
ment, and to be admitted as states into the Union, they are depen
dencies in pupilage on the federal government, and congress is their
only real and sovereign legislature. If slavery is a good institution,
a necessary one, and one consistent with the constitution of the
United States, we ought at once to establish it by our own act within
every territory of the United States. If, on the contrary, slavery is
the opposite of all these things, as in my judgment it is, then we
ought by our own act to save every territory of the United States
from slavery. On this principle I have acted throughout in regard
to Kansas, as I have acted throughout in regard to Utah and New
Mexico. On this principle, God being my helper, I shall act in
regard to all territories of the United States, so long as I shall remain
here — so long as I shall live.

I do not now pursue the question of the right or of the power of
congress to prohibit slavery in the territories of the United States,
above this level of realities, into the clouds, where the honorable
senator from Delaware has sent it. I do not inquire now whether
congress can lawfully prevent a state from establishing slavery, when

528 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

adopting its first constitution, or when changing an old constitution
for a new one. Practically, that question is immaterial, and merely
a hypothetical one. It assumes that a state in which slavery has no-
existence, and which is left perfectly free to choose liberty and reject
slavery, will nevertheless establish slavery; and this, too, in the
nineteenth century of the Christian era. No state, under such cir
cumstances, has ever made such a dioice; no state, under such
circumstances, ever will. We had one state without slavery when
the revolution began; that state [Massachusetts] is a free state yet.
We had, at the close of the revolution, twelve other states, all which
were slave states. Of these, seven have already abolished slavery.
We have added to these thirteen states eighteen more, and not one
of those eighteen, which was free from slavery while in a territorial
condition, has ever since adopted it. On the other hand, more
than one of those states, which had some territorial or provincial
experience of slavery, have firmly and perseveringly excluded it.
Within the same period slavery has been abolished by Mexico, by
all the Central American states, by Chili and by Peru ; and it now
exists only in one state on the American continent, besides our own
country, and that is the empire of Brazil. During the same period,
no European state has established slavery. Great Britain has abol
ished it ; France and Denmark have abolished it ; Spain is abolishing
it; Russia, and even Turkey, are abolishing it. What wretched
sophistry is this, to charge me with exercising tyranny over the ter
ritories of the United States — the children of the federal republic —
because I deny to them the ruinous privilege of choosing an evil and
a curse, which no matured state, already exempt from it, will adopt,
and which all such states afflicted with it relieve themselves from as
speedily as possible!

I am opposed to this bill for these reasons, which are drawn exclu
sively from its bearings upon the people of Kansas. I am equally
opposed to it, for reasons drawn from its bearings upon the whole
Federal Union. I think that the addition of every new slave state
increases and prolongs the disturbances of peace and harmony in the
country. I know of no evil, social or political, which is ever sup
posed to threaten the stability of the Union, that does not arise
immediately out of the existence of slavery. If this Union is threat
ened in the south, it is because the rights of slaveholders are supposed

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 529

to be endangered. If it is threatened in the north, it is because the
power of slaveholders is supposed to be on the increase.

It is clear that the more we multiply slave states, the more this
fountain of bitterness will overflow. Again, the more we multiply
slave states, the more we hinder the emancipation of slaves in the
old states. That emancipation, although it is to be instituted, man
aged and conducted by those slave states themselves, is a reformation
due from them to themselves and to the whole Union, because upon
it depend the highest possible development of national wealth, and
the highest possible increase of national strength and power. While
I do not maintain that slavery is incompatible with the attainment
of a certain stage of prosperity in some states, under some circum
stances, I do insist, on the contrary, that, all other things being equal,
every state flourishes permanently just in proportion as its laboring
population are intelligent, inventive and free. I am opposed to the
policy of the bill, because the addition of slave states tends to con
tinue and increase the dependence of our country upon the manufac
turing industry and the financial systems of foreign countries, and
thus to build up those great interests in foreign countries, instead of
making our systems of manufactures and finance continental and
independent. During this debate, the bill has been altered (I cannot
say, in parliamentary language, amended) by the incorporation of a
feature which, if the bill were otherwise entirely acceptable, would
necessarily deprive it of my support. The organic law conferred the
right of suffrage not only upon aliens who had become duly natural
ized, but also upon alien inhabitants who have in the forms of law
declared their intention to become citizens. The bill before us now
disfranchises this latter class. I am not to say now for the first time,
that I regard this know-nothing or American policy as being equally
unjust and unwise. I hold that the right of suffrage is coextensive
with the obligation of submission to constituted republican authority^
While this bill overthrows that principle essential to freedom on the
one side, it strikes a blow equally dangerous to freedom on the other,
by an indirect invitation to the slaveholder to bring his bondman
into the territory, and thus practically exclude the disfranchised
European emigrant. As a general fact, labor in Kansas, as in all
our other territories and states, must be performed either by slaves
or by European immigrants. The American people, educated and
trained as they are, do not furnish an adequate supply of native

VOL. IV. 07

630 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

labor. This bill encourages slave labor, and discourages immigrant
free labor.

There is another broad objection to the bill, when regarded as a
measure which may result in the establishment of slavery in the ter
ritories. If I were asked what I think is the real ground of what
ever antagonism exists between the free states and the slave states, I
should say, that it consists in the unequal extent within which the
pure democratic principle has worked out its proper results in the
two sections. In the free states, labor being emancipated, seizes
upon the democratic machinery of the government, and works out
the results of political and social equality with great rapidity and
success. Thus labor rules in the free states. In the slave states,
labor being enslaved, the operation of the pure democratic principle
is hindered, and the consequence is, that capital is more successful
in retaining its ancient sway. I am opposed to the policy of favor
ing the multiplication of slave states, on the ground, broader than
any I have yet taken, that it is injurious to the cause of human
society itself. I think it clear, that if the sense of mankind in all
civilized nations could be taken, it would be found to require that
slavery should be brought to an end wherever it exists, not imme
diately or suddenly, by violence, or without indemnity, but with
moderation, prudence and sagacious administration, and as soon as
it can be done, consistently with equal justice. I am unwilling to
oppose myself or to place my country in an attitude of defiance
against the judgment and benevolence of mankind.

I have sought to find out what plausible ground there can be for
the creation of a slave state in Kansas, by the act or with the con
sent of congress. The only ground which seems to me to reach that
dignity is, that the existing slave states require room for expansion
beyond their borders. I know that growing states need room. The
state of New York, before it even comprehended its own destiny,
or had assumed its true character, had already reproduced itself in
Vermont. Since that time, it has practically extended itself in the
forms of new and additional states upon the shores of all the upper
lakes. I do not, however, see a necessity for more room on the part
of the slave states. Of course, I speak with much hesitation, but,
nevertheless, according to the facts as I understand them. The free
states have an area of 612,597 square miles, and sustain a popula
tion of fourteen millions. The slave states, with only ten millions

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 531

of inhabitants, have an area of 851,508 square miles. The free
states have a population of twenty-two to a square mile. The slave
states have a population of only eleven to a square mile. The
increase of the white population within the last sixty years has been
16,380,604, or 516 per cent ; while the slave population has increased
during the same time only 2,506,416, or 359 per cent. It may be
safely inferred from these facts that the slave states will actually need
no more room within the next half century. Again, if I do not
mistake, regarding the extension of slave territory merely in an
economical aspect, as affecting the price of slaves, I think it clear
that further expansion would be injurious to the slave states them
selves. The cost of an able-bodied slave, though he is inferior in
capacity and intelligence to the white laborer, already exceeds the
full cost of the education and maintenance of a white laborer in
Europe until he attains his maturity. If then, free immigrants
existed in sufficient numbers, and had the disposition to migrate into
slaveholding states, they would supplant slavery there altogether.

Since it thus appears that the slave states have no need for room
for further expansion, the anxiety and solicitude for the safety of the
slave states against an unreasonable excess of slaves within their
territories, which have been so freely and earnestly expressed during
this debate, are quite unreal and groundless.

I pass on to examine the bill in its bearings upon the restoration
of order and the safety of property, liberty and life within the ter
ritory of Kansas. The bill is especially commended to us on the
ground that it will effect those great objects. But it seems to me to
fall short of them altogether. It proposes that the people of the
territory may hold a convention in December next, and adopt a state
constitution. They may refuse to adopt a constitution ; and if they
should adopt one, congress may nevertheless reject the new state.
If the people make it a free state, the senate may reject it, because it
is free. If it is made a slave state, by any means, the house of
representatives may reject it, because it is a slave state. In either
case the remedy is at an end, and the territory will be left just where
it is now. During the intervening interval, and after it, the usurped
and tyrannical government of the Missouri borderers will remain in
the full exercise of their hateful functions. The same popular spirit
of resolute independence which justly resists them now, will con
tinue to resist them hereafter. The territory is practically under

532 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

martial law now, and under martial law it must remain. Whereas,
if you admit the state now under the Topeka constitution, or other
wise abolish the usurpation existing there, it must happen either that
the army may be withdrawn, or that, while it shall maintain peace
and order, oppression will cease.

The bill declares that laws of a certain character shall not be
enforced within the territory, and the honorable senator from Ken
tucky regards this provision as abrogating some of the tyrannical
laws enacted by the usurping legislature. Certainly it does not
abolish all those laws. It is doubtful how many, or which of them,
it does abolish, and whether it will abolish any of them effectually.
If I did not misunderstand the honorable senator from Georgia, the
author of the bill, he gave it as his opinion, that while the bill reas
serts and reenacts the bill of rights contained in the constitution of
the United States, these obnoxious laws of Kansas do not in fact con
flict with that bill of rights. Here, then, will be ample room for
misapprehension, misunderstanding, and conflict. The free state
party will assume that these obnoxious laws of the usurping legisla
ture are annulled. The slave state men, on the other hand, will
maintain that they all remain in force. The conflict between them
will go to the courts of the territory, for their decision. From those
courts there is no appeal in criminal cases to the supreme court of
the United States. How those courts will decide on questions to
which they are virtually a party, we already know too well, because
we know they have already adjudicated that a tavern, in which free
state men are entertained, is a nuisance, and that free state presses
are nuisances, and that even a bridge, over which free state men
travel, is also a nuisance; and that all these nuisances may be
abated, on the presentment of a packed grand jury, without a trial,
and by an armed posse comitatus, consisting of enlisted pro-slavery
bands; and we know, also, that treason to the United States is
adjudged by the same courts to consist not merely in levying war
against the United States, or giving aid and countenance to their
enemies, but in assembling peacefully as citizens, to petition congress
for a redress of grievances.

The process which this bill proposes for taking the census, dis
tricting the territory,- and ascertaining the qualifications of electors
and conducting the elections, is to be confided to a commission
appointed by the president of the United States, by and with the

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 533

advice and consent of the senate. I have already seen who was
first appointed governor of the territory by the president and
senate, and how, and upon what grounds, he was removed by the
president ; and who was appointed his successor by the president
and senate, and how, arid upon what grounds, he is retained by
the president. I have also seen who were appointed judges and
marshals for the territory by the president and senate, and how,
and upon what grounds, they are still retained in office by the
president. I have seen how the governor, judges and marshals
have plunged the territory into all the horrors of anarchy and civil
war, in an effort to compel the people to relinquish the right of
self-government, or to flee from the territory for their lives. I want
no more civil agents within the territory appointed by the present
president of the United States. I said, when I addressed the senate
in April last, that Kansas was brought to a state of revolution by
the oppressions of the president of the United States, and had
assumed an attitude of revolution, which was tolerated, indeed, by
the constitution, but was, nevertheless, an attitude of revolution ;
and that, in this, as in all revolutions, the evil could only be cor
rected by separating the oppressed altogether from their political
relations to the oppressor. I say the same thing now.

I will not dwell minutely on other objections which have been
justly raised by my associates here. I am content to say, in general
terms, that the president of the United States has perpetrated a coup
d'etat, by which the territorial constitution, given to the people of
Kansas by the congress of the United States, has been absolutely
subverted ; that the president holds despotic power over that people,
in the name and the form, indeed, of spurious, legislative, ministe
rial, and judicial authorities; that slavery is practically established
there already by force ; that a portion of the people are slain, while
a larger portion have been expelled from the territory by force;
that the freedom of speech and of the press, and the personal invi
olability of the electors, as well as the purity of the ballot-box, are
subverted, while the leaders of the party of freedom are either dis
persed beyond the territory, or imprisoned within it, on charges of
pretended crimes. The elector can only reach the polls and deposit
his vote under the protection of the army of the United States.
The circumstances are parallel, almost to the line of coincidence,
with those which attended the election by which the republicans of

534 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

France invested Louis Napoleon with the powers of an absolute des
potism. Fix a day upon which the people of Kansas shall decide
between slavery and freedom, and, from that day what remains of
free population will be spirited away. A new and factitious immi
gration of pro-slavery electors will rush into the territory from
adjacent slave states. Order and silence will indeed prevail. The
elector will receive his ballot at the hands of the soldiers who have
restored the territory to this condition of quiet and peace; and the
counting of the ballots will tell the simple story that the Missouri
territorial usurpation is adopted and converted into a state sove
reignty, by the voice of the enslaved people of Kansas.

Here is a premonition of the manner in which a slave state con
vention would be obtained under this bill. It is an extract from the
testimony of Colonel John Scott, of St. Joseph, Missouri, given
before the committee of investigation, and will be found in their
report :

" It is my intention, and the intention of a great many other Missourians now
resident in Missouri, whenever the slavery issue is to be determined upon by the
people of this territory in the adoption of the state constitution, to remove to
this territory in time to acquire the right to become legal voters upon that ques
tion. The leading purpose of our intended removal to the territory is to deter
mine the domestic institutions of this territory, when it comes to be a state;
and we would not come but for that purpose, and would never think of coming
here but for that purpose. I believe there are a great many in Missouri who are
so situated."

We are assured, indeed, that the bill shall be so modified as to
allow the electors, who have fled the territory, to return. Who can
vouch for the ability of those poor emigrants, scattered over the
free states, to return to their homes in the territory, even if they
should be so disposed ? None can be safe in the territory without
arms, or being alone. None can return to the territory in numbers,
and with arms, because such parties are disarmed, and sent back by
the army of the United States.

The honorable senator from Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN], asks me
whether I will do nothing — whether nothing shall be done to com
pose the fatal strife in Kansas, which, he says, no one has depicted
in deeper colors than myself. I answer, Yes. I will vote for the
admission of Kansas into the Union, under the Topeka constitution.
That measure, and that measure only, will restore peace and har
mony, while it will rescue freedom from pe*ril. Take that measure.

THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 535

If such a thing is possible, as turning a free state into a slave state,
you will yet have the opportunity to do so, if the welfare of Kansas,
and of our common country, should seem to you to require it. ]f
you will not adopt that measure, it will then remain for you to pro
pose another remedy; but it must be more just and more tolerant
of freedom than either of those which you have already submitted
to the senate, and it must surrender all the vantage ground in the
territory, which slavery has acquired by fraud or force. If this bill,
now before the senate, is your ultimatum, then the people of Kansas
must trust to that change of public sentiment and of public opinion
now going on throughout the United States, which, although it yet
has to acquire the strength of habit and the power of complete
organization, nevertheless, I think, is sure enough to break all the
fetters which have been already fastened upon them, and all that
remain within the forge of executive despotism. To the people of
Kansas, and to every advocate of their cause, in this the crowning
trial of their fidelity, I say, in the language of the rule I have
adopted for the government of my own conduct,

" Let thy scope

Be one fix'd mind for all ; thy rights approve
To thy own conscience gradually renewed ;
Learn to make Time the father of wise Hope ;
Then trust thy cause to the arm of Fortitude,
The light of Knowledge, and the warmth of Love."

KANSAS AND THE ARMY.1

THIS is a bill appropriating about twelve millions of dollars, to
defray the expenses of the military establishment of the United
States, for the ensuing fiscal year. Its form and effect are those
which distinguish a general appropriation bill for the support of the
army, such as is annually passed by congress. Only one exception
to it, as it came to the senate from the house of representatives, has
been taken here. It contains what is practically an inhibition of the
employment of the army of the United States, by the president, to

1 Speech on the Army Bill in the United States senate, August 7, 1856.

536 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

enforce the so-called laws of the alleged legislature of the territory
of Kansas. The senate regards that inhibition as an obnoxious
feature, and has, by what is called an amendment, proposed to strike
it from the bill, overruling therein my vote ; and the senate now
proposes to pass the bill thus altered here, and to remit it to the
house of representatives, for concurrence in the alteration. In the
hope that that house will insist on the prohibition which has been
disapproved here, and that the senate will, in case of conflict, ulti
mately recede, I shall vote against the passage of the bill in its
present shape.

In submitting my reasons for this course, I have little need to
tread in the several courses of argument which have been opened
by distinguished senators who have gone before me in this debate.
Certainly, however, I shall attempt to emulate the examples of the
honorable senators from Virginia and South Carolina [Mr. HUNTER
and Mr. BUTLER], by avoiding remarks in any degree personal, be
cause, on an occasion of such grave importance, although I may not
be able to act with wisdom, I am sure I can so far practice self-con
trol as to debate with decency, and deport myself with dignity. I
shall neither defend nor arraign any political party, because I should
vote on this occasion just as I am now going to vote, if not merely
one of the parties, but all of the parties in the country stood arrayed
against me.

I shall not reply to any of the criticisms which have been be
stowed upon the inhibition proposed by the house of representatives,
nor shall I attempt to reconcile that inhibition with other bills,
which have been passed by the house of representatives and sent to
this house for concurrence. I shall not even stop to vindicate my
own consistency of action in regard to the territory of Kansas ;
because, first, I am not to assume that what now seems an opening
disagreement between the senate and the house of representatives,
will ripen into a case of decided conflict; and because, secondly, if
it shall so ripen, then there will be time for argument at every stage
of the disagreement ; while its entire progress and consummation
will necessarily be searchingly reviewed throughout the length and
breadth of the country, and the conflict itself will thereafter stand a
landmark for all time in the history of the republic. I shall en
deavor to confine myself closely to the questions which are imme
diately involved, at this hour, in a debate which, in the event

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 537

apprehended, will survive all existing interests and all living states
men.

The prohibition of the employment of the army to enforce alleged
statutes in Kansas, which the house of representatives proposes, and
which the senate disapproves, grows out of the conflict of opinion
which divides the senate unequally, which divides the house of rep
resentatives itself nearly equally, and which, if the prohibition
itself expresses the opinion of a majority of that house, separates it
from the senate and from the president of the United States. It is
manifestly a conflict which divides the country by a parallel of lati
tude. In this conflict, one party maintains, as I do, that the legisla
tion, and the territorial legislature itself, of Kansas, are absolutely
void. The other party, on the contrary, insists that the legislation
and the legislature of the territory of Kansas are valid, and must
remain so until they shall be constitutionally superseded or abrogated.

The senator from Virginia [Mr. HUNTER] argues that the act of
the house of representatives, in inserting the prohibition in this bill,
is revolutionary, and that persistence in it would effect a change of
the constitution of the government. I refrain from arguing that
question elaborately now, because, while I am satisfied, from my
knowledge of the temper and habit of the senate, that it is likely
enough to adhere to the course which it has indicated, I am at the
same time by no means so certain that the house of representatives
will not ultimately recede from the ground which, by the act of a
bare majority, at all times unreliable during the present session, it
has assumed. I speak with the utmost respect towards the house
of representatives, and with entire confidence in the patriotic motives
of all its members ; but I must confess that, in all questions concern
ing freedom and slavery in the United States, I have seen houses of
representatives, when brought into conflict with the senate of the
United States, recede too often and retreat too far to allow me to
assume that in this case the present house of representatives will
maintain the high position it has assumed with firmness and perse
verance to the end. I saw a house of representatives, in 1850,
which was delegated and practically pledged to prohibit the exten
sion of slavery within the unorganized territories of the United
States, then newly acquired from Mexico, refuse to perform that great
duty, and enter into a compromise, which, however intended, practi
cally led to the abandonment of all those territories to universal

VOL. IV. 68

538 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

desecration by slavery. I saw a house of representatives, in 1854,
forget the sacred reverence for freedom of those by whom it was
constituted, and abrogate the time-honored law under which the ter
ritories of Kansas and Nebraska had until that time remained safe,
amid the wreck which followed the unfortunate compromise of 1850,
and thus prepare the way for that invasion by slavery of all that
yet remained for the sway of freedom in the ancient domain of
Louisiana, which has since taken place in Kansas.

Ever since I adopted for myself the policy of opposing the spread
of slavery in the train of our national banner, consecrated to equal
and universal freedom, my hopes have been fixed, not on existing
presidents, senates, or houses of representatives, but on future presi
dents and future congresses — and my hopes and faith grow stronger
and stronger, as each succeeding president, senate, and house of
representatives, fails to adopt and establish that policy, so eminently
constitutional and conservative. My hopes and my faith thus grow
on disappointment, because I see that by degrees, which are marked,
although the progress seems slow, my countrymen, who alone create
presidents and congresses, are coming to apprehend the wisdom and
justice of that beneficent policy, and to accept it. The short-com
ings of the present house of representatives do not discourage me.
I do not even hold that body responsible. I know how, in the very
midst of the canvass in which its members were elected, the public
mind was misled, and diverted to the discussion of false and fraudu
lent issues concerning the principles and policy of the church of
Rome, and the temper, disposition, and conduct of aliens incorpo
rated into the republic. But although I hold the present house of
representatives excusable, I must, nevertheless, in assigning its true
character, be allowed to say of it, that it is deceptive like the moon,
which presents a broad surface, all smooth and luminous when seen
at a distance, but covered with rough and dark mountains when
brought near to the eye by the telescope. I shall vote, therefore, on
this occasion, with the house of representatives, against a majority
of the senate, careless whether that house itself shall, like other
houses of representatives which have gone before it, renounce and
repudiate its own decision which I thus sustain, and complacently
range itself, with the senate and the president of the United States,
against myself and those senators who shall have gone with me to
its support.

KANSAS LAWS. 539

The subject under consideration is legitimately within the jurisdic
tion of congress, and consequently within the jurisdiction of the house
of representatives. There must be authority somewhere to decide
Vhether the territorial legislature of Kansas is a legal and constitu
tional body, and whether its statutes are valid. The president of the
United States has no authority to decide those questions definitely,
because the decision involves an act of sovereign legislation within
the constitutional sphere of congress. The judiciary cannot deci
sively determine those questions, because their own determinations,
in such a case, may be modified or reversed, and* set aside by con
stitutional legislative enactment, and because the judiciary has no
power to apply the means necessary to give effect to its decisions.

The subject is an actual government of the territory of Kansas,
to be established and maintained by constitutional laws. All legisla
tive power over Kansas, as well as all legislative power whatever
permitted by the constitution of the United States, is vested in
congress, and of course in the house of representatives, coordinately
with the senate, and subject to a veto of the president. The house
of representatives may constitutionally pass a bill abrogating the
pretended legislation and legislature of Kansas, or declaring them
to be already absolutely void. The greater includes the less. The
house of representatives may, therefore, lawfully pass a bill prohibit
ing the employment of the army of the United States in executing
laws in Kansas, which it deems pernicious, no matter by whom those
laws were made.

Since the house of representatives has power to pass such a bill
distinctly, it has power, also, to place an equivalent prohibition in
any bill which it has constitutional power to pass. And so it has a
constitutional right to place the prohibition in the annual army ap
propriation bill.

I grant that this mode of reaching the object proposed is an
unusual one, and in some respects an inconvenient one. It is not,
therefore, however, an unconstitutional one, or even necessarily a
wrong one.

It is a right one, if it is necessary to effect the object desired, and
if that object is one that is in itself just, and eminently important to
the peace and happiness of the country, or to the security of the
liberties of the people. The house of representatives, moreover, is
entitled to judge and determine for itself, whether the proceeding

£40 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

is thus necessary, and whether the object of it is thus important. It
is true that the senate may dissent from the house, arid refuse to
•concur in the prohibition. In that case, each of the two houses
exercises an independent right of its OWE, and upon its own proper
responsibility to the people. If the conflict shall continue to the
end, and the bill therefore shall fail, the people will decide between
the two houses, in the elections which will follow, and they will take
care to bring them to an agreement in harmony with the popular
decision.

The proceeding in the present case is thus necessary, and its object
is thus important. Pretended but invalid laws are enacted by usur
pation, and enforced by the president of the United States in the
territory of Kansas, with the terror, if not with an actual application,
-of the military arm of the government. At least, this is the case
assumed by the house of representatives. It is altogether a new
one. It has not occurred before. It has never even been supposed
possible that such a case could happen in a territory of the United
States. The idea has never before entered into the mind of an
American statesman, that citizens of one state could with armed
force enter any other state or territory, and by fraud or force usurp
its government, and establish a tyranny over its people, much less
that a president of the United States would be found to sanction
such a subversion of state authority or of federal authority ; and
still less, that a president thus sanctioning it would employ the
standing army to maintain the odious usurpation and tyranny.

The mere fact, in this case, that the army is required to be em
ployed to execute alleged laws in Kansas, is enough to raise a pre
sumption that those laws are either wrong in principle or destitute
of constitutional authority, and ought not to be executed.

The territory of Kansas, although not a state, is, or ought to be,
nevertheless, a civil community, with a republican system of gov
ernment. In other words, it is de jure, and ought to be de facto, a
republic — an American republic, existing under and by virtue of
the constitution of the United States. If the laws which are to be
executed there are really the statutes of such a republican govern
ment truly existing there, then those laws were made by the people
of Kansas by their own voluntary act. According to the theory of
our government, these laws will be acquiesced in by that people, and
executed with their own consent against all offenders, by means of

A STANDING ARMY. Oil

merely civil police, without the aid of the army of the United
States. The army of the United States is not a mere institution of
domestic police ; nor is it a true or proper function of the army to
execute the domestic laws of the several states and territories. Its
legitimate and proper functions are to repel foreign invasion, and
suppress insurrections of the native Indian tribes. It is only an
occasional and incidental function of that army to suppress insur
rections of citizens seldom expected to occur.

This capitol is surrounded by a national metropolis, and its streets,
lanes, and alleys are doubtless filled with misery and guilt, adequate
to the generation of all sorts of crimes. Yet the laws prescribed for
municipal government within the district of Columbia are executed
without the aid of the army of the United States. Neither house
of congress, nor the common council of Washington, nor the com
mon council of Georgetown, nor the president of the United States,
nor the marshal of the district of Columbia, nor yet the mayors of
either of those cities, nor any court within the district, is attended
by any armed force or detachment, or protected even by an armed
sentinel.

Why is this so ? It is because the people acquiesce, and the laws-
execute themselves. This case of the district of Columbia is the
strongest which can be presented against the principle for which I
contend, for the people of the district are actually disfranchised, out
of regard to the security of the federal government.

Look into the states — into Maryland on one side of the federal
capital, and into Virginia on the other ; into Delaware as you ascend
northward, into Nortli Carolina as you descend southward, into-
Pennsylvania and into South Carolina, into New Jersey and into
Georgia, even into Maine and into Texas ; go eastward — go west
ward, throughout all. the states, throughout even the territories,
Minnesota, Utah, Washington, Oregon, and New Mexico — every
where throughout the republic, from the gulf of St. Lawrence to
the gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific ocean —
everywhere, except in Kansas, the people are dwelling in peaceful
submission to the laws which they themselves have established, free
from any intrusion of the army of the United States. The time-
was, and that not long ago, when a proposition to employ the stand
ing army of the United States as a domestic police would have been,
universally denounced as a premature revelation of a plot, darkly

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

contrived in the chambers of conspiracy, to subvert the liberties of
the people, and to overthrow the republic itself.

The republic stands upon a fundamental principle, that the people,
in the exercise of equal rights, will establish only just and equal
laws, and that their own free and enlightened public opinion is the
only legitimate reliance for the maintenance and execution of such
laws. This principle is not even peculiar to ourselves — it lies at the
foundation of the government of every free people on earth. It is
public opinion, not the imperial army, that executes the laws of the
realm in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Whenever France is free,
it is public opinion that executes the laws of her republican legisla
ture. It is public opinion that executes the laws in all the cantons
of Switzerland. The British constitution is quite as jealous of
standing armies as a police, as our own. Government there, indeed,
maintains standing armies, as it does a great naval force; but it
employs the one, as it does the other, exclusively for defense, or for
conquest, against foreign states. Fearful lest the armed power of
the state might be turned against the people, to enforce obnoxious
edicts or statutes, the British constitution forbids that any regular
army whatever shall be tolerated, on any pretense. The considera
ble military force which is maintained in different and distant parts
of the empire, only exists by a suspension of that part of the con
stitution, which suspension is renewed by Parliament from year to
year, and never for more than one year at a time. Civil liberty, and
a standing army for the purposes of civil police, have never yet
stood together, and never can stand together. If I am to choose
between upholding laws, in any part of this republic, which can
not be maintained without a standing army, or relinquishing the
laws themselves, I give up the laws at once by whomsoever they are
made, and by whatever authority ; for, either our system of govern
ment is radically wrong, or such laws are unjust, unequal, and
pernicious.

Such is the presumption against the pretended laws of Kansas,
which arises out of the proposition to debate. I shall not, however,
in so grave a case, leave my argument to rest upon mere pre
sumption. Listen to rne while I recite some of the principal statutes
of the territorial legislature of Kansas, which the senate, differing
from the house of representatives, proposes to enforce at the point
of the bayonet against citizens of the United States :

SPURIOUS LAWS. 543

"No person who is conscientiously opposed to the holding of slaves, or who does
not admit the right to hold slaves in this territory, shall be a juror in any cause in
which the right to hold any person in slavery is involved, nor in any cause in
which any injury done to, or committed by, any slave, is in issue, nor in any
criminal proceeding for the violation of any law enacted for the protection of slave
property, arid for the punishment of crime committed against the right to such
property."

Here is an edict which subverts that old Saxon institution, which
is essential and indispensable, not only in all republican systems of
government, but even in every free state, whatever may be the form
of its government. The question has been avsked a thousand times,
why does the republican system fail in Spanish America? The
answer is truly given as often, that the republican system fails there,
because the trial by jury has never existed in Spanish America, and
cannot be introduced there.

Lend your ear, if you please, while I repeat another of these
statutes of the territory of Kansas :

" All officers elected or appointed under any existing or subsequently-enacted
laws of this territory, shall take and subscribe the following oath of office : ' I,

, do solemnly swear, upon the holy Evangelists of Almighty God, that I

will support the constitution of the United States, and that I will support and sus
tain the provisions of an act entitled " An act to organize the territories of Ne
braska and Kansas," and the provisions of the law of the United States commonly
known as the "fugitive slave law" and faithfully and impartially, and to the best

of my ability, demean myself in the discharge of my duties in the office of ;

so help me God.' "

Here is an edict which establishes a test oath, based on political
opinion, and, by disfranchising one class of citizens, devolves the
government upon another class, and thus subverts that principle of
equality, without which no truly republican government has ever
existed, or ever can exist.

Excuse me, senators, for calling to your notice a third chapter in
the territorial code of Kansas :

" If any free person, by speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons
have not the right to hold slaves in this territory, or shall introduce into this territory,
print, publish, write, circulate, or cause to be introduced into this territory, written,
printed, published, or circulated, in this territory, any book, paper, magazine pam
phlet, or circular, containing any denial of the right of persons to hold slaves in
'this territory, such person shall be deemed GUILTY OF FELONY, and punished by
imprisonment at hard labor for a term of not less than two years."

" If any person print, write, introduce into, publish, or circulate, or cause to be
brought into, printed, written, published, or circulated, or shall knowingly aid or

544 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

assist in bringing into, printing, publishing, or circulating, within this territory,
any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, hand-bill, or circular, containing any state
ments, arguments, opinion, sentiment, doctrine, advice, or inuendo, calculated to
produce a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious disaffection among the slaves in this
territory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the service of their masters, or
to resist their authority, he shall be guilty of felony, and be punished by imprison
ment and hard labor for a term not less than five years."

Ever since the debate about the extension of slavery in the terri
tories of the United States began, I have, from year to year, from
month to month, and sometimes even from day to day, in this place,
and at other posts of public duty, spoken, written, printed, pub
lished, and circulated speeches, books, and papers, which construc
tively would be pronounced felonious, if such a law as this had been
in force at the place where that duty was performed. I have not
hesitated in the spirit of a free man, and, so far as I can claim such
characters, under the responsibilities of a statesman and a Christian,
to scatter broadcast over the land, and even throughout the territory
of Kansas itself, statements, opinions, and sentiments, which, though
designed for a purpose different from that mentioned in this edict, I
doubt not would, by prejudiced judicial construction, be held to fall
within its inhibition. Whatever other senators may choose to do, I
shall not direct the president of the United States to employ a stand
ing army in destroying the fruits of freedom which spring from
seeds I have conscientiously sown with my own free hand. This
statute, if so you insist on calling it, subverts the liberty of the press
and the liberty of speech. Where on earth is there a free govern
ment where the press is shackled and speech is strangled? When
the republic of France was subverted by the first consul, what else
did he do, but shackle the press and stifle speech? When the
second Napoleon restored the empire on the ruins of the later repub
lic of France, what else did he do, than to shackle the press and
strangle debate? When Santa Anna seized the government of
Mexico, and converted it into a dictatorship, what more had he to
do than shackle the press and stifle political debate?

Behold, senators, another of these statutes. In the chapter which
treats of the writ of habeas corpus we have this limitation :

" No negro or mulatto held as a slave within this territory, or lawfully arrested,
as a fugitive from service from another state or territory, shall be discharged, nor
shall his right of freedom be had under the provisions of this act."

BARBAROUS LAWS. 545

This is an edict, which suspends the writ of habeas corpus. It
relates indeed to a degraded class of society, but still the writ which
is taken away from that class is the writ of habeas corpus, and those
who are to be deprived of it by the edict may be freemen. The
state that begins with denying the habeas corpus to the humblest and
most obscure of freemen, will not be long in reaching a more indis
criminate proscription.

It ought to be sufficient objection here, against all these statutes,
that they conflict with the constitution of the United States, the
highest law recognized in this place. I myself denounce them for
that reason, as I denounce them also because they are repugnant to
the laws of nature, as recognized by nearly all civilized states.

Pardon, I pray you, senators, the prolixity of the next chapter,
which I extract from the Kansas code :

"Every person who may be sentenced by any court of competent jurisdiction,
under any law in force within this territory, to punishment by confinement and
hard labor, shall be deemed a convict, and shall immediately, under the charge of
the keeper of such jail or public prison, or under the charge of such person as the
keeper of such jail or public prison may select, be put to hard labor, as in the first
section of this act, specified, to wit: 'on the streets, roads, public buildings, or
other public works of the territory' ( § 1, page 146) ; and such keeper or other
person, having charge of such convicts, shall cause such convict, while engaged at
such labor, to be securely confined by a chain, six feet in length, of not less than
four-sixteenths nor more than three-eighths of an inch links, with a round ball of
iron, of not less than four nor more than six inches in diameter, attached, which
chain shall be securely fastened to the ankle of such convict with a strong lock and
key; and such keeper, or other person, having charge of such convict, may, if
necessary, confine such convict, while so engaged at hard labor, by other chains, or
other means, in his discretion, so as to keep such convict secure, and prevent his
escape ; and when there shall be two or more convicts under the charge of such-
Keeper, or other person, such convicts shall be fastened together by strong chains,
with strong locks and keys, during the time such convicts shall be engaged in hard
labor without the walls of any jail or prison."

I have devoted, heretofore, no unimportant part of my life to miti
gating the severity of penal codes. The senate of the United States
now informs us, that if I desire the privilege of voting for this bill,
which is designed to maintain the army of the United States in its
integrity, I must consent to send that army into the territory of
Kansas, to fasten chains of iron six feet long, with balls of iron four
inches in diameter, with strong locks, upon the limbs of offenders

VOL. IV. 69

546 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

guilty of speaking, printing and publishing principles and opinions
subversive of the system of slavery.

I have no excessive tenderness in regard to taking life or liberty
as a forfeiture to the majesty of the laws, for the invasion of the
peace and safety of society. Yet I do say, nevertheless, that I
regard chains and balls, and all such implements and instruments of
slavery, with a detestation so profound, that I will sooner take chains
upon rny own frame, and wear them through what may remain of
my own pilgrimage here, than impose them, even where punishment
is deserved, upon the limbs of rny fellow men. I cannot consent to
go backward, and restore barbarism to the penal code of the United
States, even for the sake of an appropriation to maintain the army
of the United States for a single year.

The Kansas code rises, as you advance through it, to a climax of
inhumanity. Here is the next chapter:

" If any person shall aid or assist in enticing, decoying, or persuading, or carry
ing away, or sending ovt of this territory, any slave belonging to another, with
intent to procure or effect the freedom of such slave, or with intent to deprive the
owner thereof of the services of such slave, he shall be adjudged guilty of grand
larceny, and on conviction thereof shall suffer death, or be imprisoned at hard labor
for not less than ten years."

Pray tell me, senators, what you think of that? This statute has
been promulgated in Kansas, a territory of the United States. It
can have become a law there only, directly or indirectly, through
the exercise of the legislative power of the congress of the United
States. The constitution of the United States confers upon congress
no power whatever to consign any human being to a condition of
bondage or slavery to another human being ; but, on the contrary,
prohibits the exercise of a power so inhuman and barbarous.

The constitution of the United States, consequently, confers on
congress no power, directly or indirectly, to make it a crime in one
man to persuade another, reduced to bondage or slavery, to seek his
freedom. I repudiate this pretended law, therefore, and I will not
consent to send the army of the United States to Kansas to execute it.

I am here asked, while voting twelve million dollars to support
the federal army, to make it a crime against the United States, pun
ishable with death, to persuade a slave to escape from bondage, and
to command the army to execute that punishment. I cannot do that.

BARBAROUS LAWS. 547

tn ~~

I call your attention to another of these enactments :

" If any person shall entice, decoy, or carry away out of this territory, any slave
belonging to another, with intent to deprive the owner thereof of the services of
such slaves, or with intent to effect or procure the freedom of such slave, he shall
be adjudged guilty of grand larceny, and, on conviction thereof, shall suffer DEATH
or be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than ten years."

There is no larceny of property of any kind which, in my judg
ment, demands punishment by death. Certainly, I shall not agree
to a law which shall inflict that extreme punishment for constructive
larceny, in a case where it is at least a disputed point in ethics,
whether the offense is malum in se.

Here is another chapter :

" If any slave shall commit petit larceny, or shall steal any neat cattle, sheep or
hog, or be guilty of any misdemeanor, or other offense punishable under the pro
visions of this act only by fine or imprisonment in a county jail, or by both such fine
and imprisonment, he shall, instead of such punishment, be punished, if a male,
by stripes on his bare back not exceeding thirty-nine ; or, if a female, by imprison
ment in a county jail not exceeding twenty-one days, or by stripes not exceeding
twenty-one, at the discretion of the justice."

With repentance and atonement I may hope to be forgiven for
inflicting blows upon the person of a fellow man, equal in strength
and vigor to myself. I should have no hope to be forgiven, much
less to retain my own self-respect, if, on any occasion, under any
circumstances, or upon any pretext, I should ever consent to apply,
or authorize another to apply, a lash to the naked back of a weak,
defenseless, helpless woman.

Call these provisions which I have recited by what name you will
— edicts, ordinances, or statutes — they are the laws which the house
of representatives says shall not be enforced in Kansas by the army
of the United States. I give my thanks to the house of representa
tives, sincere and hearty thanks. I salute the house of representa
tives with the homage of my profound respect. It has vindicated
the constitution of my country ; it has vindicated the cause of free
dom ; it has vindicated the cause of humanity. Even though it shall
tamely rescind this vindication to-morrow, when it shall come into
conflict with the senate of the United States, yet I shall nevertheless
regard this proviso, standing in that case only for a single day, as an
omen of more earnest and firm legislation in that great forum.

548 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

When, hereafter, one shall be looking through the pages of statute
laws, affecting the African race, for a period of more than a quarter
of a century, he will regard this ephemeral recognition of the
equality of men with the affection and hope which the traveler feels
when approaching a green spot in the deserts of Arabia. It must be
other senators, not I, who shall consent to blast this oasis, and dis
appoint all the hopes that already are bursting the bud upon it.

Although the fact is clear that the pretended laws in Kansas can
only be executed by armed force, and therefore are obnoxious to a
presumption that they are founded in injustice ; and although those
laws, upon searching examination, are found to be subversive of the
constitution, and in conflict with all the sentiments of humanity, the
whole case of the house of representatives has nevertheless not yet
been stated. The proceedings which have hitherto taken place in
executing those laws have been unconstitutional in their character,
and attended with grinding oppression and cruel severity. The
senator from Virginia has asked me whether such laws do not exist
in Missouri.

I suppose such laws exist in that state, and in other states. I have
this to say for those states, and for the United States, that a federal
standing army has never been employed in executing such laws in
those states. And how have these atrocious laws been executed in
Kansas ? The marshal of the territory, an officer dependent on the
president of the United States, has enrolled as a volunteer militia, at
the expense of the federal treasury, an armed band of professed pro
pagandists of slavery from other states ; and this so-called militia,
but really unconstitutional regular force, has been converted into a
posse comitatus to execute these atrocious statutes by intimidation, or
by force, as the nature of the resistance encountered seemed to
require. This has been the form of executive action. What has
been the conduct of the judicial department? Courts of the United
States have permitted grand juries to find, and have maintained,
indictments unknown to the laws of the United States, to the com
mon law, and to the laws of all civilized countries — an indictment
of a tavern as a nuisance, because the political opinions of its lodgers
were obnoxious ; an indictment of a bridge over a river for a nui
sance, because those who passed over it were of opinion that the
establishment of slavery in the territory was injurious to its pros
perity ; indictments even of printing presses as nuisances, because

BARBAROUS LAWS. 549

the political opinions which they promulgated were favorable to
the establishment of a free state government. Either with a war
rant from the courts, or without a warrant, but with their conni
vance, bands of soldiers, with arms belonging to the United States,
and enrolled under its flag, and directed by its marshal, combining
with other bands of armed invaders from without the territory, and
without even the pretense of a trial, much less of a judgment, have
abated the alleged nuisance of a tavern by leveling it to the ground,
and the pretended nuisances of the free presses by casting type, and
presses, and compositors' desks, into the Kansas river.

Moreover, when the citizens, whose obedience to these laws was
demanded, sought relief in the only constitutional way which
remained open to them, by establishing conditionally, and subject to
the assent of congress, to be afterwards obtained, a state govern
ment, provisional executive officers, and a provisional legislature,
indictments for constructive treason were found in the same courts,
by packed grand juries, against these provisional executive officers,
and a detachment of the army of the United States entered the legis
lative halls, and expelled the representatives of the people from their
seats. During the intense heat of this almost endless summer, a
regiment of federal cavalry performs its evolutions in ranging over
the prairies of Kansas, holding in its camp, as prisoners under mar
tial law, without bail or mainprize, not less than ten citizens, thus
indicted in those federal courts for the pretended crime of construc
tive treason. The penalty of treason, under the laws of the United
States, is death. What chance for justice attends those citizens. I
will show you. The judge who is to try them procured the indict
ments against them, by a charge to a packed grand jury, in these
words :

" This territory was organized by an act of congress, and, so far, its authority
is from the United States. It has a legislature, elected in pursuance of that organic
act. This legislature, being an instrument of congress by which it governs the
territory, has passed laws. These laws, therefore, are of United States authority
and making ; and all that resist these laws resist the power and authority of the
United States, and are therefore guilty of high treason.

" Now, gentlemen, if you find that any persons have resisted these laws, then
you must, under your oaths, find bills against such persons for high treason. If
you find that no such resistance has been made, but that combinations have been
formed for the purpose of resisting them, and individuals of influence and noto
riety have been aiding and abetting in such combinations, then must you still find
bills for constructive treason," &c.

550 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

4

What will it avail their defense, before such a court and such a
judge, that the constitution of the United States declares, directly
and explicitly, that treason against the United States shall consist
only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies,
giving them aid and comfort?

Thus you see, senators, that the executive authority, not content
with simple oppression, has seized upon the judiciary, and corrupted
and degraded it, for the purpose of executing those pretended and
intolerable laws of Kansas. The judge who presides in the territo
rial courts is a creature of the president of the United States, and
holds his office by the tenure of executive pleasure. While the
sword of executive power is converted in Kansas into an assassin's
dagger, the ermine of justice is stained with the vilest of contami
nations. What cause is there for surprise, then, in the administra
tion of government in Kansas, under such laws, and in a manner so
intolerable, that a civil war has been brought about by affidavits, an
armed force has been employed in executing process for contempt,
and an unauthorized and illegal detachment is enrolled in the ser
vice of the United States, and employed in abating domestic, social,
and political institutions, under the name of nuisances? What
wonder is it that a city has been besieged with fire and sword, be
cause it was supposed to contain within its dwellings individuals
who denied the legality and obligation of the pretended laws?
What wonder that a state, a provisional state, erected in harmony
.with the constitution and with custom, and waiting our assent for
admission into the Union, has been subverted by a mingled pro
cess of indictments and martial demonstrations against constructive
treason ? Who can fail to see through the cloud which executive
usurpation and judicial misconstruction have raised, for the purpose
of covering these transactions in Kansas, that it is devotion to free
dom which alone constitutes any crime in that territory, in the view
of its judges, its ministerial officers, and of the president of the
United States ? And that that crime, in whatever way it may be
committed, in their judgment, constitutes treason ? Who does not
see that devotion to freedom, applauded in all the world besides, in
Kansas is a crime to be expiated with death ?

I have argued thus far, from the nature of the pretended laws of
Kansas, and from the cruel and illegal severity with which they are
executed. I shall draw my next argument from the want of consti-

USURPATION IN KANSAS. 551

tutional authority on the part of the legislature which enacted these
laws. The report of the Kansas investigating committee of the
house of representatives, consisting of the evidence of witnesses,
numbered by hundreds, and biased against the conclusion at which
the house of representatives has arrived, has established the fact
upon which I insisted in opening this debate, on the ninth of April
last, that the legislature of Kansas was chosen, not by the people, bmt
by an armed invasion from adjoining states, which seized the ballot
boxes, usurped the elective franchise, and by fraud and force organized
a government, thereby subverting the organic law, and the authority
of the United States. At another time, and under different circum
stances, a single invader, after the manner adopted by Colonel Wil
liam Walker, in Nicaragua, might have entered the territory of
Kansas with an armed force, and established a successful usurpation
there. Let me suppose that he had done so, and had promulgated
these identical statutes in the name of the territory of Kansas, would
you hold, would the senate hold, would the president of the United
States hold, that such a government, thus established, was a legal
one, and that statutes thus ordained were valid and obligatory ?
That is the present case. It differs only in this : that in the case
supposed, there is a single conqueror, only one local and reckless
usurper ; while in the case of Kansas, an associated band are the con
querors and usurpers.

The territorial legislature of Kansas stands on the foundations of
fraud and force. It attempts to draw over itself the organic law
enacted in 1854, but it is equally subversive of the liberties of the
people of Kansas, and of that organic law, and of the authority
of the United States. The legislature and territorial government of
Kansas stand on no better footing than a coup d'etat, a revolution.
When honorable senators from the other side of this chamber tell
me that I am leading the people of Kansas into revolution, I fear
lessly reply to them that they have stood idly by, and seen a revo
lution effected there. Doubtless they have acted with a sincerity of
purpose and patriotism equal to my own. They see the facts and the
tendency of events, in a light different from that in which these facts
and transactions present themselves to me. They, therefore, insist
upon maintaining that revolution, and giving it the sanction of con
gress, by authorizing the standing army of the United States to
execute the laws which that revolution has promulgated. The

552 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

house of representatives, on the contrary, denounces the revolution,
and stands upon the authority of the United States ; and, for the
purpose of putting an end to that revolution and restoring federal
authority, insists that these pretended laws shall not be executed.
In this great controversy I leave the majority of the senate, and
take my stand by the side of the house of representatives. You
warn me that, if we do not recognize these revolutionary authorities
in Kansas, the territory will be without an organized state at all, and
will relapse into anarchy. The house of representatives meets you
boldly on that issue, and replies that if there are not laws in force,
exclusive of these pretended statutes, adequate to the purposes of
civil government in Kansas, they have invited you in two separate
bills, which they have sent up here, widely variant in character, but
each adapted to the case, to provide for the restoration of regular
and constitutional authority in Kansas. One bill proposes to recog
nize and establish the state of Kansas under the Topeka constitu
tion ; and the other proposes to reorganize the territorial legislature,
with proper amendments of the organic law. Thus far, you have
practically refused to accept either of these propositions. If, when
congress shall have adjourned, the result shall be that Kansas is left
without the protection of adequate laws and civil authority, look
you to that. The responsibility will not rest on me, nor on the
house of representatives.

I desire on this great occasion — perhaps the last one of full debate
during the present session of congress — to deliver my whole mind
upon this important subject. I add, therefore, that the tendency
and end — I will not say object — of the revolution which has been
effected in Kansas, which has been effected by her conquerors,
through the 'countenance and aid of the president of the United
States, are not of such a character as to reconcile me to that revolu
tion. That end is the establishment of human slavery within the
territory of Kansas. If I should go with you and the majority of
the senate in emasculating this army bill, as it came from the house
of representatives, I should thereby show that I was at least indiffer
ent on so great an issue. I could never forgive myself hereafter,
when reviewing the course of my public life, if I had assented
to inflict upon even the present settlers of Kansas, few and poor, and
scattered through its forests and prairies, as they are, what I deem
the mischiefs and evils of a system of compulsory labor, excluding,

USURPATION IN KANSAS. 553

as we know by experience that it always does, the intelligent labor
of free men.

But it is not merely on to-day and on this generation that I am
looking. I cannot restrain my eyes from the effort, at least, to pen
etrate through a period of twenty-five years — of fifty years — of a
hundred years — of even two hundred years — so far, at least, as a
statesman's vision ought to reach beyond the horizon that screens
the future from common observation. All along and through that
dimly-explored vista, I see rising up before me hundreds of thou
sands, millions, even tens of millions, of my countrymen, receiving
their fortunes and fates, as they are being shaped by the action of
the congress of the United States, in this hour of languor, at the
close of a weary day, near the end of a protracted and tedious ses
sion. I shall not, indeed, meet them here on the earth, but I shall
meet them all on that day when I shall give up the final account of
that stewardship which my country has confided to me. If I were
now to consent to such an act, with my existing opinions and con
victions, the fruit of early patriotic and Christian teachings, matured
by reading of history ; by observation in states where freedom
flourishes as well as in societies where slavery is tolerated ; by expe
rience throughout a life which already approaches a climacteric; by
travel in my own and foreign lands; by reflection under the disci
pline of conscience and the responsibilities of duty ; by social con
verse, and by a thousand collisions of debate; I should be obliged,
when that last day shall come to me (as it must come to all), to call
upon the rocks and the mountains to fall upon me, and crush me and
my name, detested then by myself, into that endless oblivion which is
the most unwelcome of all evils, real or imaginary, to the thoughts
of a generous and illuminated human mind. Policy forbids me to
do it. Justice forbids me to do it. Humanity forbids me to do it.
And the constitution of my country — wisest of all constitutions —
most equal of all constitutions — most humane of all constitutions
which the genius of man has ever framed — forbids me to do it.

I have arrived now at another question much debated here,
namely, whether the inhibition which is contained in the bill as it
carne from the house of representatives, and to which the senate
objects, is germane to the bill. If that inhibition really has the
importance with which I have invested it, then the question, whether
it is germane or not, is worthless and trivial.
VOL. IV. 70

554 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

In an act of such high necessity as the resistance and suppression
of revolution subversive of civil government and public liberty,
questions of parliamentary form sink into insignificance; but the
question is germane. It is a normal provision, of a character iden
tical with the bill itself. The bill proposes an appropriation to
defray the expenses of the army of the United States for one year,
and necessarily contemplates the character and nature of the service
in which the army is to be employed. It is framed with such fore
sight as the house of representatives can exercise of the places
where the army shall be employed, whether in the states or in the
territories, or in foreign campaigns, and of the nature and character
of its employments, whether training in camp, building fortifica
tions, suppressing Indian insurrections, repelling invasions, or car
rying the banner of our stars and stripes in conquest over an enemy's
battalions in hostile countries. It is confessed that congress, and
not the president of the United States, has power to direct the des
tination and employment of the army in all these respects.

And now what does the provision propose? Simply this: that
while it leaves the discretion of the president free exercise to employ
the army where he shall think fit in maintaining federal laws, and,
consistently with existing statutes, the laws of ever}^ state in the
Union, and of every territory in the Union, he shall not do this one
thing — employ that army in executing the pretended and obnoxious
statutes of the usurpation in Kansas. On the point, whether this
inhibition is germane to the bill, you, senators, think that you are
making an issue with the house of representatives, on which, when you
go down before the people, the senate will stand and the house will
fall. I know well the conservative power that is lodged in twelve
millions of dollars — Spanish-milled dollars ; but I know, also, the
virtue, the conservative virtue, which resides in the hearts and con
sciences of twenty-five millions of American freemen. The people
of the United States, in this case, will never stop to ask whether
the inhibition is germane or not. They are not yet prepared to
receive their own money back at your hands, on condition of the
surrender of liberty or the denial of justice. But if I grant that
the people will stand by you, and condemn the house of representa
tives, still, in that case, I take my stand with the house of repre
sentatives. The American people have a persevering way of cor
recting to-day their error of yesterday. When the temporary

USURPATION IN KANSAS. 555

inconvenience which they shall have suffered from your act of with
holding from them the twelve millions of dollars which ought to be
disbursed to them through the operations of the army shall have
passed away, they will call you to account for the injustice which
will have inflicted that injury, and will then vindicate their fidelity
to liberty and justice, while sternly bestowing upon you the censure
you have provoked.

Whatever may be the decision, early or late, of the American
people, the- judgment now to be given will go for review to the tri
bunal of the civilized world. It needs little of either learning or
foresight to anticipate the decision of that tribunal on the issue,
whether the senate is right in using bayonets and gunpowder to
execute unconstitutional and tyrannical laws, tending to carry
slavery into free territories, or the house of representatives is right
in maintaining the constitution and the universality of freedom?

The whole question of the propriety of the inhibition, hinges on
the point whether, under the circumstances, it is necessary. I appeal
on that point to the senate itself, to the country, and to the world.
Either the inhibition must be continued in the bill, and so take effect,
or else the army will be employed to enforce these atrocious laws.
Every other effort to defeat and abrogate them has failed. This
attempt is the last that can be made. It is, therefore, this remedy
for the revolution in Kansas which we must adopt, or no remedy.
I go, therefore, with the house of representatives for the inhibition
which it proposes.

You reply, that if the house of representatives persevere, the bill
will fail, and thus the action of the government will be arrested.
But although the house shall persevere in the right, the bill will not
fail, and the action of the government will not be arrested, unless
the senate shall persevere in the wrong. If both shall persevere,
and the action of the government shall be arrested, on whom will
the responsibility fall? Must the house necessarily surrender its
own convictions and adopt yours, in all cases, whether they are right
or wrong ? If so, pray tell me, senators, what is the use of a house
of representatives at all ? The senate will find, if it shall assume
the position of defiance against the house, that it has not weakened
the strength of the house of representatives, but periled its own.

By the letter of the constitution, the house of representatives has
exclusive right to originate all bills for raising revenue. By custom

656 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

inherited from Great Britain, and unbroken since the adoption of the
federal constitution, the house of representatives exclusively originates
all general appropriation bills. This exclusive right and custom of
originating general appropriation bills, involves at least an equal
right on the part of the house of representatives to limit or direct
the application of the moneys appropriated. The house, in view of
the revolution inaugurated in Kansas by the president, with the aid
of the army of the United States, and maintained by the senate,
might lawfully, if in its discretion it should deem such a course
expedient, refuse to appropriate any money whatever for the support
of the army. The greater includes the less. The house may, there
fore, attach the prohibition as a condition of the grant of supplies
for the army. The honorable senator from Maine [Mr. FESSENDEN]
has sagely said, in the course of his excellent speech, that the house
has, by reason of its constitution, a peculiar and superior fitness for
passing on the question involved in this debate. Its members are
fresh from the people, and they go hence directly to render an
account to the people of the administration of the national treasury.
We of the senate are so far removed, by the duration of our terms
of office, as practically to be in a measure irresponsible. The house
of representatives is constituted by direct election by the people
themselves. We of the senate are sent here by the legislatures of
the respective states. They are great political bodies, and justly
represented here as such, to check, if need be, the too volatile action
of the people through the house of representatives. But they are
-corporations, nevertheless, and the senate is a body representing cor
porations.

Moreover, the senate, by force of its constitution as a council of
the president, in appointments to office and in the conduct of foreign
affairs, is more readily inclined towards combination with the presi
dent, and of course to dependence upon him, than the house of rep
resentatives. It is to the house of representatives, therefore, that
the people must look, and it is upon that house, and not upon the
senate, that the people must rely mainly for the rescue of public
liberty, if the time shall ever come when that liberty shall be endan
gered with design or otherwise, by the exercise of the executive
power.

Thus far I have treated this subject as one involving only the
interests of the people of the territory of Kansas. But you will see

USURPATIONS IN KANSAS. 557

at once, without any amplification on my part, that you are estab
lishing, by way of precedent, a system of government for not merely
that territory, but all the territories, present and future, within the
United States. It is worth while to see what that system is. It is
the system of popular sovereignty, founded on the abnegation of
congressional authority, attempted by the Kansas and Nebraska act
of 1854. But it is that system of popular sovereignty, with the
principle of popular sovereignty left out, and that of executive
power, exercised with fraud and armed force, substituted in its place.
Since we have entered upon a career of territorial aggrandizement,
as Rome and Britain and Spain did, respectively, we can look for
ward to no period when what we call territories, but what they called
provinces or colonies, will not constitute a considerable part of our
dominion, and be a theatre for the exercise of cupidity and the dis
play of ambition. Let congress now effectually resign the territories
to military control by the president, or by generals appointed by him,
and two more acts will bring this grand national drama of ours to
its. close. The first of those acts will be the subversion of liberty
in the remaining territories, and then, the Rubicon easily passed, the
second will be the establishment of an empire on the ruins of the
whole republic.

But how is the government to be arrested, even if this army bill
should fail through your persevering dissent from the house of rep
resentatives ? Is the army of the United States indeed and essen
tially a civil institution, a necessary and indispensable institution, in
our republican system? On the contrary, it is an exception, an
anomaly, an antagonistic institution, tolerated, but wisely and justly
regarded with jealousy and apprehension. We maintain a standing
army in time of war, to suppress Indian insurrections, or to repel
foreign invasions ; and we maintain the same standing army in time
of peace, only because it is wise in peace to be prepared for war.
But, whether in peace or war, we maintain it not without some mea
sure of hazard to constitutional liberty. Happily the Indian dis
turbances within our borders have been suppressed ; and if they had
not been, the smallest measure of gentleness and charity toward the
decaying tribes, would more effectually secure the blessings of peace,,
so far as they are concerned, than the employment of many legions.
Happily, also, the dark cloud that seemed gathering over us from
the east, when this session commenced in December last, has been

658 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

dispersed, and we have now a sure prospect of peace with all foreign
nations for many years to come. The army of the United States is
therefore immediately useful or necessary now only as a police to
•execute municipal laws. If the founders of the constitution had
been told that, within seventy years from the day on which they
laid its solid foundations, a standing army would have been found
necessary and indispensable merely to execute municipal laws, they
would have turned shuddering away from the massive despotism
which they had erected.

Eleven days hence congress will adjourn, and it will come back
again one hundred and eight days after that time. No serious dis
aster, nor even any great public inconvenience, can happen within
that period. Congress will be here in ample time to provide, if it
shall be necessary, for the public safety, for expelling Great Britain
from Central America, for conquering Cuba, and for bringing into
subordination any insurrectionary Indian tribes. Everybody will
know that every dollar we owe to contractors, purveyors, merchants,
makers of gunpowder or muskets, or founders of cannon, as well as
every dollar we owe to soldiers or officers, for pay or for rations, is
guarantied by the national faith : and on that faith money can be
raised without any considerable discount.

And now, what other inconveniences are to result from a failure
to pass the army bill ? We are told that law and order will be lost,
and anarchy will prevail in the territory of Kansas, if the army be
not employed there to keep the peace and execute the territorial
laws. Look, I pray you, through this report of the investigating
committee, drawn out to the length of twelve hundred pages, filled
with details of invasions, robberies, mobs, murders and conflagra
tions, and tell me what anarchy could happen, in the absence of
martial law, worse than the anarchy which has marked its establish
ment in the territory ?

Answer me still further, what measure of anarchy could reconcile,
or ought to reconcile, American citizens to a surrender of constitu
tional liberty in any part of the republic?

Answer me further, what is that measure of tranquillity and quiet
that a republican people ought to seek, or can wisely enjoy? It is
not the dead quiet, the stagnant tranquillity of cowardly submission
to usurpation and despotism, but it is just so much of peace, quiet
and tranquillity, as is consistent with the preservation of constitu-

USURPATIONS IN KANSAS. 559

tioiial liberty. It would be a bard alternative ; but, if the senate
should insist on forcing on me or on the people I represent, the
choice between peace under despotism, or turbulence with freedom,
then I must say, promptly and fearlessly, give me so much of safety
us I can have, and yet remain a freeman, and keep all quiet and all
safety beyond that for those who are willing to be slaves.

AUGUST 27, 1856.1

IF the occasion were not a very grave one, I could find amusement
in the dialogue between the senators from Delaware and Louisiana.
They come from slaveholding states, and they agree in refusing all
aid to us in arresting the extension of slavery in the national terri
tories. They agree, also, in declaring that the prohibition of slavery
contained in the Missouri compromise of 1820, was unconstitutional ;
and they concur also in opinions derogatory of the gentlemen here,
whom they, with manifest self-complacency, call free soilers and abo
litionists. And yet, even here in our very presence, they make
bargains and stipulations as to how and when we, the aforesaid free-
soilers and abolitionists, shall debate the questions they choose to
raise in the senate. By and by I shall expect to see them dealing
even in our votes to effect compromises between themselves. They
take these liberties with us in our very presence, on the ground that
we are fanatics. One of them compliments me at the expense of
my associates, by distinguishing me as a leader of the fanatics in the
senate.

I shall show you and them what sort of a fanatic, on the subject
of slavery, I am. From this statement* you can judge of the fanati
cism of my associates. I am, with little caution, also accused of
treasonable opinions and sentiments. I will show you what sort of
traitor I am. Hence you shall judge of the treason of my honored
associates. Hear the evidence, and then answer whether we could
be convicted even of constructive treason in your pro-slavery courts
of Kansas.

The first vote I ever gave in the senate of the United States was
one to place at the head of the cabinet of the president of the United
States the honorable senator at my right hand [Mr. CLAYTON], the
same who deprecates the reproach of seeming cooperation with free

1 Speech on the army bill, at the extraordinary session of the senate.

560 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

soilers and abolitionists. He has told us to-day that free-soilers are
sometimes long-winded. However that may be, we are firm men —
men of perseverance — we are sure-footed, we boast little of speed,
but we think we shall be found to have bottom. Acting on the same
liberal and loyal principle, I afterwards cast a vote here, the effect
of which, if it had been sustained by a majority of the senate, would
have been to raise the honorable senator from Louisiana [Mr. BEN
JAMIN] from the bar of New Orleans, which he so much adorns, to
the bench of the supreme court of the United States. That it was
not successful was the fault, not of the free soilers here, but of others
into whose embraces he has now cast himself, out of horror of those
who then were his supporters.

Were those votes disloyal ? You accuse rne of fanaticism — fanati
cism on the subject of slavery. I put the question to you, sir, [Mr.
BUTLER] — to you, sir, [Mr. BAYARD] — to you, sir, and you — to
every senator from a slave state, to answer, on your word of honor
as a senator and a gentleman, when I have given here even one
sectional or partisan vote, other than on a question which divided,
upon principle, your section and party from my own, and your con
stituents from the people I represent. Whether the question involved
railroads, rivers, harbors, protection on land or on the st-a, fortifica
tions or armed force to defend your homes, or your cities, or your
coasts, or even the payment of expenses incurred by yourselves
alone against uprising Indians or invading foreigners, refer to your
records, and cast up into my teeth one solitary sectional or disloyal
or fanatical vote I ever gave in the senate of the United States. Nay,
more, remove the injunction of secrecy which makes your executive
journal a sealed book, and show one vote that I ever gave here, even
when yourselves were divided, against any person nominated to any
office, by any president of the United States, because he was a slave
holder, or because he belonged to a section of the country or to a
party different from my own. My opinions are always maintained
here by reason and argument, never by passion, prejudice or reta
liation.

Honorable senators are silent. Standing, then, upon the character
for equality, for justice and for loyalty, which I have built, to be a
sure foundation for myself, I can pardon the sensibilities of those who
think that they are to suffer contamination now by an accidental
agreement with me upon a question of vital importance to the coun-

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 561

try and to the rights of man. The time, you see, has been when
such association was not offensive, because it was not useless to them.
That time is coming round again. It will have come when the gov
ernment of our country shall once more be intrusted to an adminis
tration which will protect and defend the territories and the states
of this Union against force and usurpation, let it come from what
quarter it may. Wait, if you please, for that time, now not far dis
tant, I think, and then if my associates and myself prove faithless
to our country or to the Union, accuse us of disloyalty and fanaticism.

There are two reasons why a senator might speak to the question
now before the senate. First, that if possible he might by argument
bring the senate to adopt his own opinion. Second, that failing in
this, he might yet exert an influence upon the opinion of the country.
Neither of these reasons serve to justify me in speaking. I have
already said, during the late session of congress, all that the question
demanded from me, with a view to effect either here or elsewhere.

But since I then spake, circumstances have occurred which, in the
estimation of the senate, and possibly of the country, require that
what was then said shall be reconsidered. The first circumstance is,
that the president, not content with the failure of the army bill by a
disagreement of the two houses, has assumed the responsibility of
convening congress to reconsider that important subject. The
second is, that while in one quarter of the senate there is a persistent
purpose to defeat the army bill again, unless the house of represent
atives shall recede, propositions of concession and conciliation are'
offered in another quarter, while, at the same time, alarms of public
danger are sounded in both these quarters, calculated to induce the
house of representatives and the minority of the senate to surrender
the opinions to which they have hitherto adhered so firmly. Now,.
for myself, I have to say to the president of the United States, that
neither his proclamation nor his special message has affected my
judgment or changed my feelings on this great subject in the least.
The president has done nothing which has made or will make me
take one divergent or even one hesitating step in the line of duty
which I marked out for myself at the last session of congress. I do
not mean to say that he is a bad man, but I do say, upon the respon
sibility of a senator, and as a member of congress, the grand inquest
of the nation, that he is an unjust and tyrannical magistrate. At
the last session I found him employing all his vast and almost

VOL. IV. 71

562 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

boundless power and influence, as a civil magistrate and the head of
the army, to establish not merely unjust, unconstitutional and tyrant
nical laws, but even an armed foreign and seditious usurpation in
the territory of Kansas, organized for the purpose of subverting
constitutional liberty, and establishing unconstitutional and despotic
slavery there. When called to account for that gross violation of
dutjr, the president avowed and justified that usurpation. The house
of representatives, unable to obtain an agreement from the senate on
any adequate measure to overturn that usurpation, and restore con
stitutional freedom in the territory of Kansas, as a last resource
inserted in the army bill a provision which practically prohibits the
president from employing the army of the United States to enforce
the tyrannical laws of that unconstitutional and despotic usurpation.
The senate refused even that small act of grace to the people of
Kansas ; so the arrny bill failed. That is the true state of the case
made up by the house of representatives arid the senate at the late
session of congress, and that is the true state of the case between the
two houses as it exists now at this extra session.

Now to the case thus stated. If the laws of that usurpation were
as just and humane as they are confessedly unjust and barbarous,
I still, deeming them the edicts of a usurpation, of an armed usurp
ation, would not give the president men, materials of war, or money,
to enforce even one of them. I know the value of peace and order
and tranquillity. I know how essential they are to prosperity, not
to say enterprise. But I know also the still greater value of liberty.
When you hear rne justify the despotism of the czar of Russia over
the oppressed Poles, or the treachery by which Louis Napoleon rose
to a throne on the ruins of the republic in France, on the ground
that he preserves domestic peace among his subjects, then you may
expect me to vote supplies of men and money to the president of
the United States to execute the edicts of the Missouri borderers in
the territory of Kansas.

Next for the alarms which are sounded forth throughout the halls
of congress. The president raises the key-note, by striking upon
the fertile string of Indian depredations. The honorable and vene
rable senator from Michigan chimes it. Never, in his eventful life,
has he seen a period so portentous. And the honorable senator from
Delaware seriously gives forth the prediction that the army must be
disbanded, and the Union itself fall asunder. It is a piece of execu-

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 563

live stage management. Congress is called back into the theatre, the
curtain rises slowly, amid the jarring discords which make the thun
der of the political play-house, and then the air is filled with signs
and ghastly spectres. I do not doubt that honorable senators are
sincere. I know that sincerity is easier and more practicable than
dissimulation, to all mankind. It is easier and more natural to me,
and therefore I know it is more natural to others. I therefore hold
(as a general truth) that all men are sincere and ho'nest ; and I hold
him to be merely a fool, who esteems me to be otherwise. But these
sincere senators may dismiss their fears. They have been here now
nearly nine months. In this senate chamber the atmosphere has
become thick, unwholesome and oppressive. We are like an animal
inclosed in an exhausted receiver. The fresh, pure air, such as per
vades tne country, is exhausted, and we are pining, suffering and
suffocating. No wonder that the light grows dim, strange and unna
tural noises rumble in our ears, the pillars of the capitol seem to us
to be tottering, and the very stars of heaven appear to be shooting
from their spheres. Our imagination is diseased by unwholesome
confinement. That is all.

On the fatal day, the 18th day of August, when at high noon this
congress adjourned, I too went forth from the senate chamber,
haunted by spectres of discord which threatened to rend this coun
try asunder, because the army bill had failed ; and these spectres
pursued me along the avenues and humbler pathways to my quiet
dwelling on the bank of the Potomac. Then I sat down to meditate
on that mighty and fearful ruin which I had been warned was to fall
on the capital and on the country, in swift revenge of the failure of
the army bill. The evening shades gathered around me, but they
brought no notes or signs of sorrow, fear or sadness. The parlors
of my neighbor on the right resounded with the tinkling of the
guitar. Fairy-footed children were dancing in the halls of my
neighbor on the left, to the merriest notes the violin could breathe
through its mirth-moving strings. Across the way, the Russian
minister, always watchful of portents of dissension here, worthy the
notice of his sovereign, was entertaining a joyous company in his
lordly halls, as undisturbed by the crashing and falling of this great
republic over his head, as the deaf mutes, who, on the opposite side
of the way, were joining with happier youths than themselves in the
amusements of the eventide. And, though it is strange, it is never-

564 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

theless true, that this condition of happy ignorance of political evil
or danger has continued in that neighborhood ever since.

The state of the case is very different here in the senate chamber.
You can understand the reality of this great ruin. Senators, you
can repeat it to each other ; you can impress each other with the
truth of its existence. You can even produce conviction of that
fearful fact upon the galleries. They are filled with your clients.
The streets around the capitol are filled with them. They perhaps
will groan, or would, if it were respectful to do so, when I express
a doubt whether the ruin is not exaggerated in your speeches. But,
senators, do not let their sympathy mislead and deceive you. They
are interested clients and dependents. They all have long arms and
wide-spreading fingers, to dip, by your gracious permission, into the
treasury, but no strong shoulders to support and bear up the consti
tution of their country. If you rely on their applause and their
sympathies, and go down with us before the people upon this issue,
you may look out at the next session of congress for galleries filled
with other clients just as patriotic, but, at the same time, just as
well satisfied that this country can only be saved from ruin by an
administration of the government which will overturn the Missouri
usurpation, and restore " perfect freedom " to the people of Kansas.
I know something of the temper of legislative galleries, and of the
atmosphere of executive chambers. I warn you not to rely too
much on the purity of the one, or the constancy of the other.

So, this executive stage effect, then, does not change my resolu
tion. What next occurs, to affect it? A by-play is gotten up
between two of the three parties in this house, who assume to act in
the name of all. In a parliamentary sense, there are three parties
here : 1st, the democracy ; 2d, a branch of the opposition once
known as whigs (now, I fear to give offense by using a misnomer,
and therefore do not name it) ; and, 3d, the republicans, black repub
licans, or abolitionists, as the other two parties happily agree in call
ing us who constitute the other, and far the largest branch of the
opposition. But, although there are three parties here, yet, when it
comes to a question of dividing the house into its three constituent
parts, the figure 2 is always used as a divisor ; and the democracy
and the aforesaid nameless band of the opposition are found together,
and the republicans stand alone, in contrast to both. Just now,
however, the two first stand apart, and an interlude of conciliation

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 565

and pacification is enacted between their representatives, the sena
tors from Delaware and Louisiana. We republicans are allowed to
appear as supernumeraries, not in original parts of our own, but just
to give greater effect to the scenes. The senator from Delaware pre
sents a bill — for which all the republicans are to vote, without offer
ing amendments or debate — for repealing certain obnoxious laws in
Kansas ; and the senator from Louisiana presses the democracy in
the senate to pass that bill. Then the house of representatives is to
be deemed refractory, if they do not at once yield their proviso, and
pass the army bill. Thus, this pretty little interlude, like the one
gotten up by the clowns of Athens, that is incorporated into the
Midsummer's Night Dream, happily moves forward the grand plot
of the drama to a successful denouement. Certainly, I do not mean
to assign to those distinguished senators the parts belonging to any
of the subordinates in the interlude. I recognize him from Dela
ware as Oberon, the king of an imaginary realm, and him from
Louisiana as the sprightly and yet efficient Ariel, prime minister to
that gracious but unequally-tempered sovereign. But, alas! the
interlude drags. It does not advance the action of the grand plot,
nor can it proceed itself. Democratic senators, especially the stern
and inflexible senator from Virginia, refuses to concur in giving the
necessary assent of the democratic part of the house to the concilia
tion bill; and we republican senators cannot pass this bill of
conciliation, even if we would. The two senators who get it up are
sure only of their own votes, reinforced by ours. But, let us sup
pose that they bring their interlude to a happy termination. It is a
rule in courts of equity, in furtherance of justice, that what ought to
be done shall be taken to have been done. We will suppose that
this bill of conciliation, which abrogates certain of the obnoxious
laws of Kansas, has passed; and thereupon I am asked to vote for
the army bill, without the proviso of the house of representatives.
I cannot do it. The objection to it remains just as before. Your
bill does not remove all the unconstitutional and despotic laws of
Kansas. The executive courts in Kansas will deny that it removes
any of them, and, above all, the usurpation in Kansas. The forge
in which those tyrannical laws were made remains in full blast, to
produce others as tyrannical as these. There is nothing in this new
and ingenious device to change my purpose, and nothing, as I trust,
to alter the fixed purpose of the house of representatives.

566 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

What next? You come back to argument. You assert that the
course of the house of representatives, in insisting upon this proviso,
is unconstitutional and revolutionary. My excellent friend from
Massachusetts, in his very able speech, has given you the authority of
the Federalist for the very power which the house of representatives
is thus exercising.

The honorable senator from Louisiana breathed on those quota
tions from the Federalist, and they disappeared. He is an ingenious
and eloquent advocate. When I saw this bar of iron, so rough and
black when cold, come out from between his hammer and the anvil,
it seemed perfectly smooth and sparkling. But now, when it has
cooled again, it is just as rough and black as it was before. He
argued that the power of the house of representatives to annex a
condition to a money bill, was confined to the single case when the
senate should refuse its consent to an apportionment bill for raising
the number of representatives of the people with the advance of
population. Now, a simple reading of the text will convict him of
error :

" These considerations seem to afford ample security on this subject (namely, a
conflict in case of augmentation of the number of members of the house of rep
resentatives), and ought alone to satisfy all the doubts and views which have been
indulged in regard to it. Admitting, however, that they should all be insufficient
to subdue the unjust policy of the smaller states, or their predominant influence in
the councils of the senate, a constitutional and infallible resource still remains with
the larger states, by which they will be able at all times to accomplish (what ?)
their just purposes?'

At what time to accomplish ? At all times, to accomplish their
just purposes. Not at one time, one particular purpose only, but
at all times, all their just purposes. Then the house of representa
tives may have more than one just purpose. If more than one just
purpose can be indulged, then the provision is a general one, and
applies to all such just purposes ; and of the justice of any purpose,
as well as of the necessity of resorting to the extreme remedy to
accomplish it, the house of representatives, as a coordinate branch
of the legislature, has equal right with the senate to judge. I think
this a sufficient reply on that subject.

And now, to treat more seriously than I have yet done the argu
ment that the army must and will be disbanded, and that the country
will be abandoned to desolating Indian depredations. You will

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 567

remember that this constitutes the whole, or nearly the whole, argu
ment of the president's message. The picture is drawn, I suppose,
from between the covers of the school-books of past generations.
Senators enlarge. They tell us that the war in Florida, waged, as we
know it is, by only two hundred or three hundred poor straggling
Indians of that peninsula, is not yet ended. Well, it has lasted
more than fifteen years ; and if it has not yet been suppressed by
the army, which has at all times been well supplied, in Heaven's
name when will it end? Would it be unwise to change our policy,
and try to bring it to an end without an army ? They tell us that
Texas is suffering from Indian depredations ; and yet, at this mo
ment, the state of Texas is sending armed colonists to join in the
subjugation of Kansas. They insist that Indian wars are yet raging
in California and Oregon, although General Wool writes to me that
the war is ended, and would have been brought to a close much
sooner, but for the misconduct of the civil authorities there ; while
those civil authorities are sending creditors to us, with accounts
amounting to four millions of dollars advanced to subsist the militia
in their successful efforts at restoring peace and safety in those
regions.

Thus, you see that these pretenses of danger from the Indians
are all moonshine, let in upon the senate through artfully prepared
crevices in the walls of the executive palace.

And now a word in serious earnestness on the subject of the
alarms about the Union. If there is danger of its dissolution, it
must be discoverable in some quarter. There must be somewhere
an enemy to his country and to her constitution. Where is he —
who is he ? Who is it, where is the man, that proposes to scuttle
this noble ark of the constitution, that has rode the waves so gently
in times of calm, so proudly in season of storms and tempests, and
sink it into the depths of the sea, while he will transfer us, for
safety, to some gay-gilded fantastical craft of his own handiwork?
There is no such man in this country, in the north or in the
south, in the east or in the west. We are all on board together,
and all equally watchful of our course, and jealous indeed of the
pilot whom we station at the helm. These attempted alarms about
the safety of the Union are factitious. Congress adjourned on the
18th of August, without passing the army bill, and yet the country
and the constitution remained safe ; for we found them so on the

568 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

2Lst. Congress may adjourn to-morrow, to reassemble on the first
Monday of December next, and we shall find the country and the
constitution then just as safe as they are now. What will happen,
will be simply this: You, the senate, will go down before the people
on the issue which you have made with the house of representatives.
That issue will be tried. If the two houses, after hearing UK- popu
lar verdict, shall be unable to agree when they come together at the
next session in December, take rny word for it, they will certainly
agree at the first session of the newly -elected congress afterwards.

JSTow this is just what the constitution contemplates, and what
congresses are made for. They are not made to agree always. The
two houses must agree, when they can agree in principle. They
must differ, when the flames of truth that burn in their consciences
give out lights of differing hues. The conflict in such cases is neces
sarily inconvenient; but it is temporary, and is necessary to the
true ascertainment and establishment of truth. In such occasional
conflicts dwells the safety, not the danger, of the republic — the
safety, not the peril, of the Union. On the contrary, danger, to
both will be found the most serious, and the most imminent, when
the three main departments of the government — the senate, the
house of representatives, and the president — shall unite and concur
in establishing, by force, revolution, usurpation and slavery in the
territories of the United States. When that shall happen, then look
out for the safety of the states, the pillars of the Union, and for the
liberties that dwell in that noblest of all edifices raised by human
hands.

I am appealed to, to yield before the terrors of civil war. I am
conjured to surrender my positions by the love which I bear to
peace and harmony. I do indeed love peace; I do indeed fear. the
terrors of civil war; but that is not enough to make me surrender
an object more important than peace — liberty. Peace ! The senate
will give peace to Kansas now on one condition — that Kansas will
surrender freedom, and accept slavery. Is there anything new in
this proposition ? Is it not the very proposition that you made
when you passed the Kansas-Nebraska law ? If the people of
Kansas would have accepted slavery, they could have had peace at
the hands of congress eighteen months ago, and there would never
have been a marauder, or even a hostile intruder, from Missouri,
within the territory. They have always had the option of peace;

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 569

they have it now, independently of you ; -they have only to strike
the colors of freedom, and run up the black flag of slavery, and
thereupon peace, order, and tranquillity, will reign throughout the
prairies they have chosen for their abode. Aye, and the longer that
slavery shall last there, down to that period, I know not how distant,
when the African race itself shall rise to assert its own wrongs, the
surer and more profound will be the peace that will prevail there.

Now, even if the people of Kansas were willing to strike the flag
of freedom, which they have defended through so many perils, I
have yet to say, that I am a representative of one of the states of
this Union that claims the right to maintain the balance of freedom
in this council chamber of the states. I want Kansas here a free
state. New York wants her to come here free, if she shall enter
the confederacy at all. We may as well come directly to this issue,
then. You want Kansas organized as a slave state, and you will
give her peace if she will accept slavery; if she do not accept
slavery, she must take war, with its dangers and its desolations.

Senators propose this condition as if it were a new one, offered
now for the first time. They express surprise that I am not alarmed,
when they tell me that civil war, except on the condition of slavery,
is inevitable and imminent. There was civil war in Kansas when
we assembled here in December; a military revolution had been
effected there, an armed usurpation was established there, and there
was opposition and resistance to it ; there was commotion, strife,
bloodshed, then and there. Every day the tragedy has been advanc
ing steadily in the development of the horrors of civil war. Just
as soon as I could get the vantage ground of the Topeka constitution
to stand upon, I called your attention to the existence of that civil
war, explained its causes, and with all the fervency that not merely
love of peace, but love of liberty also, could enkindle, I conjured
you to arrest it before it was too late, by removing the cause of that
civil war. Even now, senators refer to the appeals I then made, so
truthfully, as exaggerations of a fertile imagination. Such was the
answer you then gave me ; and now the answer you give me, now
when I conjure you once more, and more earnestly than ever, to
arrest fratricidal strife, by admitting Kansas under her own free con
stitution, is, that that constitution must be surrendered, or the flames
of civil war must be suffered to burn with new intensity throughout
that ill-fated territory.

VOL. IV. 72

570 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

It is true that I see a new campaign preparing in that quarter.
But, just like those which have occurred there before, it is a cam
paign not organized by the citizens of Kansas against each other,
nor yet organized by emigrants sent thither by the Massachusetts
emigrant aid society, but by invaders who are going forth from all
or many of the slave states, to extirpate the freemen of Kansas, to
seize upon the ballot-boxes by force to usurp the elective franchise,
to create in that way a new legislature and a convention that will
organize a slave state, which even this congress is expected to receive
with open arms as a member of this federal republic. During all
the period of that civil war that has been prevailing in Kansas, the
armed bands that have demolished hotels, sacked cities, overturned
free presses, mobbed ministers of the gospel, and slain the farmer
while inclosing his newly-marked field on the prairie, and the "per
fectly free " immigrant before he had slept one night in the territory
which he had chosen for his home, were not citizens of Kansas, or
adventurers from the free states.

The armed bands that are forming along the banks of the Mis
souri, and in the cities of the southern slave states, to renew the
violence so briefly suspended, are of the same class. I need not be
told here how desperate and reckless they are. Honorable senators
mistake me much, if they suppose that I look with complacency or
calmness on the gathering of the storm anew, and that I do not fear
for the safety of the people upon whom it is so soon to rain down
new desolation. Why should I not share all their alarms and fears?
They are my neighbors, countrymen, and friends. But, at the same
time, honorable senators, in explaining their own positions in this
crisis, will not disturb me by imputing to me responsibilities for the
disasters of the times. Before the so-called compromise of 1850 was
enacted here, there was neither civil war in Kansas, nor any cause
existing that could ever produce civil war or slavery there. I ex
postulated against the compromise, and implored congress not to
disturb the landmarks of freedom. I was answered, that those land
marks of freedom were in that case a mere abstraction, on which it
was only fanaticism and folly to insist. I replied, that if you
yielded that abstraction, and so tolerated slavery in the possessions
acquired from Mexico, that slavery would invade the unoccupied
territory which remained under the protection of the Missouri com
promise of 1820, and that it would crowd you out of all the territo-

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 571

ries of the United States, and engage you in a contest for freedom,
even in the free states. The concessions then demanded were never
theless made.

In 1854, you took advantage of the concessions made in 1850r
and proposed an abrogation of the prohibition of slavery contained
in the compromise of 1820, under the specious pretense of abnegat
ing all federal authority concerning slavery over the territories of
the United States, and granting to the people in those territories per
fect freedom to establish civil liberty there for themselves. I remon
strated and expostulated again, and warned you then that you were
sending the demon of civil strife into the territories. You persisted.
At the beginning of this session, I directed your attention to the
civil war then actually broken out in Kansas, and implored your
interposition to restore peace there, together with that perfect free
dom which had been subverted by the invaders. The civil war was
then there; it remains there yet; it only grows more and more
flagrant. What evil has happened, then, that I have not foreseen
and endeavored to prevent? Who has held executive power in
this land ? Certainly not I. Who has exercised legislative power?
Certainly not I. Who judicial authority ? Certainly not I. Whose
counsels have directed executive, legislative, and judicial powers?
Certainly not mine, but the counsels of those who have been con
stantly my adversaries. Yet there is civil war in Kansas, and it is
the result of unwise and pernicious legislation, tyrannical executive
action, and prostituted judicial authority. He whose penetration
no secret of the human heart escapes, no artful perversion of the
truth baffles — He who makes the hearts of men to love freedom,
even more than peace, and to seek it with untiring perseverance
throughout ages of suffering — He knows where the responsibility
of the disasters that have overtaken the republic belongs. My con
science, on this subject, shrinks not from His awful scrutiny.

And now, as I have heretofore counseled how to continue the
reign of peace before it was broken, and how to restore it when first
it was broken, I will, with deference, advise how to regain its sway,
before it is too late, and before the whole country rages with the
flames hitherto confined within the limits of Kansas. You can do
this only by removing the cause of the civil war in Kansas, the
revolutionary usurpation that exists there. In short, you can only
effectually restore peace to Kansas, and harmony to the country, by

£72 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

granting liberty, with new and sure safeguards. What Kansas
wants, is not merely peace, but that perfect freedom and safety
which you granted, or professed to grant, by the Kansas and No
braska law. You must not merely repeal the laws of the conquerors
of Kansas, but you must abolish the conquest itself. There is only
one alternative — which is, that Missourians will irrigate the soil of
Kansas with the blood of its people, to fertilize that soil, and make
it receive the seeds of slavery. Consider well, I beseech };ou, what
a fearful alternative, how horrible an alternative, this is ! And con
sider — alas, that I must urge it — how dangerous a one it is! All
the principles of our constitution, all the sentiments of mankind, all
nature itself revolts against it. Can it, then, be adopted with suc
cess and safety? Let the trial, if it must come, determine. Some
senator asks, who can tell what is to be the destiny of Kansas? I
can tell. I do not know the fearful horrors through which either
Kansas or the country is to pass ; but be they what they may, the
•destiny of Kansas is freedom.

I turn, for a moment, to the honorable senator from Kentucky
[Mr. CRITTENDEN]. He has laid his peace-offering on the table of
the senate — I ought rather to say, " on the altar of his country."
His years, his eminent position, his unquestioned patriotism, entitle
him to do so, and entitle him not merely to forbearance on this
occasion, but to the homage due to one who sincerely desires to be
a public benefactor. Although he has not spoken so charitably of
me as might become the office he has undertaken, I shall not attempt
to thrust that offering from the altar, or to tear it into pieces. I will
let it lie there, and calmly await the approval of it by the slave
states, in whose name it is presented by him, as one with which the
free states ought also to be satisfied. The slave states have commit
ted themselves to the principle of popular sovereignty in the terri
tories so deeply, that they uphold and maintain even a revolutionary
and usurping authority there as a legitimate one. We shall see
whether they are ready, on the prayer of the senator from Kentucky,
to renounce this principle and its acceptable fruits, and transfer the
legislative authority in Kansas to any depository which will restore
either perfect freedom, or any real freedom whatever, to the people
of Kansas. I will wait and answer, after the democracy on the
other side of the chamber shall have recognized the senator's peace-
offering as their own. In the meantime, I beg to say, with the

KANSAS AND THE ARMY. 57S

highest respect and the utmost kindness to the honorable senator
who leads in this solemn ceremony, that he is not likely to effect a
truce with the house of representatives by such denunciations as he
has indulged in against the free states of the north on this occasion.
No ; to resume his own figure, let me tell him that the priest who
shall, in this conjuncture, lay on the altar of his country a peace-
offering acceptable to the American people, must be a man who not
only loves public tranquillity and is without fear, but who also can
respect the love of justice and truth and the devotion to freedom
which animate the free states of the north.

The honorable senator, after deploring the fanaticism of the north
announces his hope that it will grow more conciliatory. It is not
the character of the north star to change its position or to vary its
light. The mariner singles it out from among all the luminaries of
the heavens, and adopts it as the guide to his course, for its con
stancy. It will not change now. It has been for a time partially
covered with fleeting clouds ; but they are passing away, and it will
stand then and shine steadily upon this nation, until it shall conduct
not only those states which receive its vertical rays, but even those
which enjoy only its angular beams, into the haven of impartial and
enduring freedom. The Romans in their southern capital, and under
their sunny skies, thought, when the Northmen for a time withdrew
from the borders of the city, that those Northmen would change
and relent, and become more conciliatory. Did the Northmen in
deed change ? No, not until they had mingled their own blood
with the blood of Italy, and restored it to a better and purer free
dom than it had ever known before.

I think that France and England, and especially Turkey, is ex
pecting that the north of Europe will become more conciliatory,
more generous. Do you believe this? No; the north of Europe
changes not. It is again to spread over the southern plains, and
reinvigorate the natives of the Mediterranean. No more will the
north of America change. You may resist it if you will, but it
will persevere peacefully, if you will suffer it to do so; but it will
persevere constantly, nevertheless, in the extension of freedom in
the territories of the United States, and by its example in inducing-
the southern states to abolish slavery among themselves.

And, now, what do senators expect to gain by persisting in the
miserable issue they have made up with the house of representa-

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

tives? — an issue upon our own relative power, under the constitu
tion, as a branch of the national legislature — a question merely
personal. I have no reason to despise, as I have no motive to
undervalue, the power or the dignity of the seriate of the United
States. Contrary to what I had ever before expected or dreamed, I,
myself, am a member of the senate. My own fortunes and fame,
.such as they are, are bound up in the fortunes and fame of the senate.
For me there is no higher ambition than the place I hold in the
seriate ; there is no lane or open way for me to any other depart
ment of my country's service. As I would leave a fair name, and,
if possible, one that might in future times arrest the eye of the
curious and inquisitive student who shall be prying into my
country's history, so I am careful never to do an act, to speak a
word, or think a thought, unbecoming to the senate of the United
States. I therefore stand with you all for the dignity, and honor,
and independence, of the senate. But I confess to you frankly my
opinion, that the senate will defend its dignity and independence
effectually, not by joining puerile issues with the house of represent
atives on questions of equality or preeminence, but in the same
way that every citizen, who is a constituent of either house of
congress, maintains his dignity and independence — namely, by
doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly, under all the
vicissitudes and in all the scenes of human activity and endurance.

FREEDOM IN KANSAS.1

EIGHT years ago we slew the Wilmot proviso in the senate cham
ber, and buried it with triumphal demonstrations under the floors of
the capitol. Four years later, we exploded altogether the time-honored
system of governing the territories by federal rules and regulations,
and published and proclaimed in its stead a new gospel of popular
sovereignty, whose ways, like those of wisdom, were to be ways of
pleasantness, and all of whose paths were supposed to be flowery
paths of peace. Nevertheless, the question whether there shall be
slavery or no slavery in the territories, is again the stirring passage
of the day. The restless proviso has burst the cerements of the

1 Speech In the Senate, March 3, 1858, on the Lecompton constitution. See ante page 50.

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 575

grave, and, striking hands here in our very presence with the gentle
spirit of popular sovereignty, run mad, is seen raging freely in our
halls, scattering dismay among the administration benches, in both
houses of congress. . Thus an old and unwelcome lesson is read to
us anew. The question of slavery in the federal territories, which
are the nurseries of future states, independently of all its moral and
humane elements, involves a dynastical struggle of two antagonisti-
cal systems, the labor of slaves and the labor of freemen, for mastery
in the Federal Union. One of these systems partakes of an aristo
cratic character ; the other is purely democratic. Each one of the
existing states has staked, or it will ultimately stake, not only its
internal welfare, but also its influence in the federal councils, on
the decision of that contest. Such a struggle is not to be arrested,
quelled or reconciled, by temporary expedients or compromises.

I always engage reluctantly in these discussions, which awaken
passion just in the degree that their importance demands the impar
tial umpirage of reason. This reluctance deepens now, when I look
around me and count the able contestants who have newly entered
the lists on either side ; and shadowy forms of many great and
honored statesmen who once were eloquent in these disputes, but
whose tongues have since become string] ess instruments, rise up
before me. It is, however, a maxim in military science, that in pre
paration for war, every one should think as if the last event de
pended on his counsel, and in every great battle each one should
fight as if he were the only champion. The principle perhaps is
equally sound in political affairs. If it be possible, I shall perform
my present duty in such a way as to wound no just sensibilities. I
must, however, review the action of presidents, senates and con
gresses. I do indeed, with all my heart, reject the instruction given
by the Italian master of political science, which teaches that all men
are bad by nature, and that they will not fail to show this depravity
whenever they have a fair opportunity. But jealousy of executive
power is a high, practical virtue in republics; and we shall find it
hard to deny the justice of the character of free legislative bodies,
which Charles James Fox drew, when he said that the British house
of commons, of which he was at the moment equally an ornament
and an idol, like every other popular assembly, must be viewed as a
mass of men capable of too much attachment and too much ani
mosity, capable of being biased by weak and even wicked motives,

576 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

and liable to be governed by ministerial influence, by caprice, and
by corruption.

I propose to inquire, in the first place, why the question before us
is attended by real or apparent dangers.

I think our apprehensions are in part due to the intrinsic import
ance of the transaction concerned. Whenever we add a new column
to the federal colonnade, we need to lay its foundation so firmly, to
shape its shaft with such just proportions, to poise it with such
exactness, and to adjust its connections with the existing structure
so carefully, that instead of falling prematurely, and dragging other
and venerable columns with it to the ground, it may stand erect for
ever, increasing the grandeur and the stability of the whole massive
and imperial fabric. Still, the admission of a new state is not neces
sarily or even customarily attended by either embarrassments or
alarms. We have already admitted eighteen new states without
serious commotions, except in the cases of Missouri, Texas and Cali
fornia. We are even now admitting two others, Minnesota and
Oregon ; and these transactions go on so smoothly that only close
observers are aware that we are thus consolidating our dominion on
the shores of lake Superior, and almost at the gates of the Arctic
ocean.

It is possible that the apprehended difficulties in the present case
have some relation to the dispute concerning slavery, which is raging
within the territory of Kansas. Yet it must be remembered that
nine of the new states which have been admitted, expressly esta
blished slavery, or tolerated it, and nine of them forbade it. The
excitement, therefore, is due to peculiar circumstances. I think
there are three of them, namely :

First. That whereas, in the beginning, the ascendency of the slave
states was absolute, it is now being reversed.

Second. That whereas, heretofore, the national government favored
this change of balance from the slave states to the free states, it has
now reversed this policy, and opposes the change.

Third. That national intervention in the territories, in favor of
slave labor and slave states, is opposed to the natural, social and
moral developments of the republic.

It seems almost unnecessary to demonstrate the first of these pro
positions. In the beginning, there were twelve slave states, and
only one that was free. Now, six of those twelve have become

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 577

free; and there are sixteen free states to fifteen slave states. If the
three candidates now here, Kansas, Minnesota and Oregon, shall be
admitted as free states, then there will be nineteen free states to
fifteen slave states. Originally, there were twenty-four senators of
slave states, and only two of a free state ; now there are thirty-two
senators of free states, and thirty of slave states. In the first con
stitutional congress, the slave states had fifty-seven representatives,
and the one free state had only eight ; now, the free states have one
hundred and forty-four representatives, while the slave states have
only ninety. These changes have happened in a period during
which the slave states have almost uninterruptedly exercised para
mount influence in the government, and notwithstanding the consti
tution itself has opposed well-known checks to the relative increase
of representation of free states. I assume, therefore, the truth of
my first proposition.

I suggested a second circumstance, namely: That whereas, in the
earlier age of the republic, the national government favored this
change, yet it has since altogether reversed that policy, and it now
opposes the change. I do not claim that heretofore the national
government always, or even habitually, intervened in the territories
in favor of the free states, but only that such intervention prepon
derated. While slavery existed in all of the states but one, at the
beginning, yet it was far less intense in the northern than in some
of the southern states. All of the former contemplated an early
emancipation. The fathers seem not to have anticipated an enlarge
ment of the national territory. Consequently, they expected that
all the new states to be thereafter admitted would be organized upon
subdivisions of the then existing states, or upon divisions of the
then existing national domain. That domain lay behind the thir
teen states, and stretched from the lakes to the gulf, and was bounded
westward by the Mississippi. It was naturally divided by the Ohio
river, and the northwest territory and the southwest territory were
organized on that division. It was foreseen, even then, that the
new states to be admitted would ultimately overbalance the thirteen
original ones. They were, however, mainly to be yet planted and
matured in the desert, with the agency of human labor.

The fathers knew only of two kinds of Libor, the same which
now exist among ourselves — namely, the labor of African slaves
and the labor of freemen. The former then predominated in this
VOL. IV. 7:3

578 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

country, as it did throughout the continent. A confessed deficiency
of slave labor could be supplied only by domestic increase, and by
continuance of the then existing importation from Africa. The
supply of free labor depended on domestic increase, and a voluntary
immigration from Europe. Settlements, which had thus early taken
on a free-labor character or a slave-labor character, were already
maturing in those parts of old states which were to be ultimately
detached and formed into new states. When new states of this
class were organized, they were admitted promptly, either as free
states or as slave states, without objection. Thus Vermont, a free
state, was admitted in 1791; Kentucky, a slave state, in 1792; and
Tennessee, also a slave state, in 1796. Five new states were con
templated to be erected in the northwest territory. Practically it
was unoccupied, and therefore open to labor of either kind. The
one kind or the other, in the absence of any anticipated emulation,
would predominate, just as congress should intervene to favor it.
Congress intervened in favor of free labor. This indeed was an act
of the continental congress, but it was confirmed by the first consti
tutional congress. The fathers simultaneously adopted three other
measures of less direct intervention. First, they initiated in 1789,
and completed in 1808, the absolute suppression of the African slave
trade. Secondly, they organized systems of foreign commerce and
navigation, which stimulated voluntary immigration from Europe.
Thirdly, they established an easy, simple and uniform process of
naturalization. The change of the balance of power from the slave
states to the free states, which we are now witnessing, is due chiefly
to those four early measures of national intervention in favor of free
labor. It would have taken place much sooner, if the borders of the
republic had remained unchanged. The purchase of Louisiana and
the acquisition of Florida, however, were transactions resulting from
high political necessities, in disregard of the question between free
labor and slave labor. In admitting the ne\\ state of Louisiana,
which was organized on the slave-labor settlement of New Orleans,
congress practised the same neutrality which it had before exercised
in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. No serious dispute arose
until 1819, when Missouri, organized within the former province of
Louisiana, upon a slave-labor settlement in St. Louis, applied for
admission as a slave state, and Arkansas was manifestly preparing to
appear soon in the same character. The balance of power between

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 579

the slave states and the free states was already reduced to an equi
librium, and the eleven free states had an equal representation with
the eleven slave states in the senate of the United States. The slave
states unanimously insisted on an unqualified admission of Missouri.
The free states, with less unanimity, demanded that the new state
should renounce slavery. The controversy seemed to shake the
Union to its foundations, and it was terminated by a compromise.
Missouri was admitted as a slave state. Arkansas, rather by impli
cation than by express agreement, was to be admitted, and it was
afterwards admitted as a slave state. On the other hand, slavery
was forever prohibited in all that part of the old province of Louisi
ana yet remaining unoccupied, which lay north of the parallel of
36° 30' north latitude. The reservation for free labor included the
immense region now known as the territories of Kansas and Ne
braska, and seemed ample for eight, ten, or more free states. The
severity of the struggle and the conditions of the compromise, indi
cated very plainly, however, that the vigor of national intervention
in favor of free labor and free states was exhausted. Still, the exist
ing statutes were adequate to secure an ultimate ascendency of the
free states.

The policy of intervention in favor of slave labor and slave states
began with the further removal of the borders of the republic. I
cheerfully admit that this policy has not been persistent or exclusive,
and claim only that it has been and yet is predominant. I am not
now to deplore the annexation of Texas. I remark simply that it
was a bold measure, of doubtful constitutionality, distinctly adopted
as an act of intervention in favor of slave labor, and made or intended
to be made most effective by the stipulation that the new state of
Texas may hereafter be divided and so reorganized as to constitute
five slave states. This great act cast a long shadow before it — a
shadow which perplexed the people of the free states. It was then
that a feeble social movement, which aimed by moral persuasion at
the manumission of slaves, gave place to political organizations,
which have ever since gone on increasing in magnitude and energy,
directed against a further extension of slavery in the United States.
The war between the United States and Mexico, and the acquisition
of the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and Upper California, the
fruits of that war, were so immediately and directly consequences of
the annexation of Texas, that all of those transactions in fact may

580 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

be regarded as constituting one act of intervention in favor of slave
labor and slave states. The field of the strife between the two sys
tems had become .widely enlarged. Indeed, it was now continental.
The amazing mineral wealth of California stimulated settlement there
into a rapidity like that of vegetation. The Mexican laws which
prevailed in the newly acquired territories, dedicated them to free
labor, and thus the astounding question arose for the first time,
whether the United States of America, whose constitution is based
on the principle of the political equality of all men, would blight
and curse with slavery a conquered land which enjoyed universal
freedom. The slave states denied the obligation of these laws, and
insisted on their abrogation. The free states maintained them, and
demanded their confirmation through the enactment of the Wilmot
proviso. The slave states and the free states were yet in equilibrium.
The controversy continued here two years. The settlers of the new
territories became impatient, and precipitated a solution of the ques
tion. They organized new free states in California and New Mexico.
The Mormons also framed a government in Utah. Congress, after a
bewildering excitement, determined the matter by another compro
mise. It admitted California a free state, dismembered New Mexico,
transferring a large district free from slavery to Texas, whose laws
carried slavery over it, and subjected the residue to a territorial gov
ernment, as it also subjected Utah, and stipulated that the future
states to be organized in those territories should be admitted either
as free states or as slave states, as they should elect. I pass over the
portions of this arrrangement which did not bear directly on the
point in conflict. The federal government presented this compro
mise to the people as a comprehensive, final and perpetual adjust
ment of all then existing and all future questions having any relation
to the subject of slavery within the territories or elsewhere. The
country accepted it with that proverbial facility which free states
practice, when time brings on a stern conflict which popular passions
provoke, and at a distance defy. This halcyon peace, however, had
not ceased to be celebrated, when new-born necessities of trade,
travel and labor required an opening of the region in the old pro
vince of Louisiana north of 36° 30', which had been reserved in
1820, and dedicated to free labor and free states. The old question
was revived in regard to that territory, and took the narrow name
of the Kansas question, just as the stream which lake Superior dis-

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 581

charges, now contracting itself into rivers and precipitating itself
down rapids and cataracts, and now spreading out its waters into
broad seas, assumes a new name with every change of form, but
continues, nevertheless, the same majestic and irresistible flood under
every change, increasing in depth and in volume until it loses itself
in the all-absorbing ocean.

No one had ever said or even thought that the law of freedom in
this region could be repealed, impaired or evaded. Its constitution
ality had indeed been questioned at the time of its enactment ; but
this, with all other objections, had been surrendered as part of the
compromise. It was regarded as bearing the sanction of the public
faith, as it certainly had those of time and acquiescence. But the
.slaveholding people of Missouri looked across the border into Kan
sas, and coveted the land. The slave states could not fail to sympa
thise with them. It seemed as if no organization of government
•could be effected in the territory. The senator from Illinois projected
& scheme. Under his vigorous leading, congress created two terri
tories, Nebraska and Kansas. The former (the more northern one)
might, it was supposed, be settled without slavery, and become a free
state, or several free states. The latter (the southern one) was acces
sible to the slave states, bordered on one of them, and was regarded
as containing a region inviting to slaveholders. So it might be settled
by them, and become one or more slave states. Thus indirectly a
further compfomise might be effected, if the Missouri prohibition of
1820 should be abrogated. Congress abrogated it, with the special
iind effective cooperation of the president, and thus the national
government directly intervened in favor of slave labor. Loud
remonstrances against the measure, on the ground of its violation of
the national faith, were silenced by clamorous avowals of a discovery
that congress had never had any right to intervene in the territories
for or against slavery, but that the citizens of the United States
residing within a territory, had, like the people of every state, exclu
sive authority and jurisdiction over slavery, as one of the domestic
relations. The Kansas-Nebraska act only recognized and affirmed
this right, as it was said. The theory was not indeed new, but a
vagrant one, which had for some time gone about seeking among
political parties the charity of adoption, under the name of squatter
sovereignty. It was now brought to the font and baptized with the
more attractive appellation of popular sovereignty. It was idle for

582 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

a time to say that, under the Missouri prohibition, freemen in the ter
ritory had all the rights which freemen could desire — perfect free
dom to do everything but establish slavery. Popular sovereignty
offered the indulgence of a taste of the fruit of the tree of the-
knowledge of evil as well as of good — a more perfect freedom.
Insomuch as the proposition seemed to come from a free state, the
slave states could not resist its seductions, although sagacious men-
saw that they were delusive. Consequently a small and ineffectual
stream of slave labor was at once forced into Kansas, engineered by
a large number of politicians, advocates at once of slavery and of the
federal administration, who proceeded with great haste to prepare
the means so to carry the first election as to obtain the laws neces
sary for the protection of slavery. It is one thing, however, to
expunge statutes from a national code, and quite another to subvert
a national institution, even though it be only a monument of free
dom located in the desert. Nebraska was resigned to free labor
without a struggle, and Kansas became the theatre of the first actual
national conflict between slaveholding and free-labor immigrants,
met face to face, to organize, through the machinery of republican
action, a civil community.

The parties differed as widely in their appointments, conduct and
bearing, as in their principles. The free laborers came into the ter
ritory with money, horses, cattle, implements and engines, with
energies concentrated by associations and strengthened by the recog
nition of some of the states. They marked out farms and sites for
mills, towns and cities, and proceeded at once to build, to plow, and
to sow. They proposed to debate, to discuss, to organize peacefully,
and to vote, and to abide the canvass. The slave-labor party entered
the territory irregularly, staked out possessions, marked them, and
then, in most instances, withdrew to the states from which they had
come, to sell their new acquisitions, or to return and resume them,
as circumstances should render one course or the other expedient.
They left armed men in the territory to keep watch and guard, and
to summon external aid, either to vote or to fight, as should be found
necessary. They were fortified by the favor of the administration, and
assumed to act with its authority. Intolerant of debate, and defiant,
they hurried on the elections which were to be so perverted that a
usurpation should be established. They rang out their summons
when the appointed time came, and armed bands of partisans, from

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 583

states near and remote, invaded and entered the territory, with ban
ners, ammunition, provisions and forage, and encamped around the
polls. They seized the ballot-boxes, replaced the j udges of elections
with partisans of their own, drove away their opponents, filled the
boxes with as many votes as the exigencies demanded, and, leaving
the results to be returned by reliable hands, they marched back
again to their distant homes, to celebrate the conquest, and exult in
the prospect of the establishment of slavery upon the soil so long
consecrated to freedom. Thus, in a single day, they became parents
of a state without affection for it, and childless again without bereave
ment. In this first hour of trial, the new system of popular sove
reignty signally failed — failed because it is impossible to organize, by
one single act, in one day, a community perfectly free, perfectly
sovereign, and perfectly constituted, out of elements unassimilated,
unarranged and uucomposed. Free labor rightfully won the day.
Slave labor wrested the victory to itself by fraud and violence.
Instead of a free republican government in the territory, such as
popular sovereignty had promised, there was then and thenceforth a,
hateful usurpation. This usurpation proceeded without delay, and
without compunction, to disfranchise the people. It transferred the
slave code of Missouri to Kansas, without stopping in all cases to
substitute the name of the new territory for that of the old state.
It practically suspended popular elections for three years — the usurp
ing legislature assigning that term for its own members, while it
committed all subordinate trusts to agents appointed by itself. It
barred the. courts and the juries to its adversaries by test oaths, and
made it a crime to think what one pleased, and to write and print
what one thought. It borrowed all the enginer^v of tyranny but the
torture from the practice of the Stuarts. The party of free labor
appealed to the governor (Reeder) to correct the false election returns.
He intervened, but ineffectually, arid yet even for that intervention
was denounced by the administration organs, and, after long and
unacceptable explanations, he was removed from office by the presi
dent. The new governor (Shannon) sustained for a while the usurpa
tion, but failed to effect the subjugation of the people, although he
organized as a militia an armed partisan band of adventurers who
had intruded themselves into the territory to force slavery upon the
people. With the active cooperation of this band, the party of slave
labor disarmed the free-state emigrants who had now learned the

584 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

necessity of being prepared for self-defense, on the borders of the
territory and on the distant roads and rivers which led into it.
They destroyed a bridge that free-labor men used in their way to the
seat of government, sacked a hotel where they lodged, and broke
up and cast into the river a press which was the organ of their cause.

The people of Kansas, thus deprived, not merely of self-govern
ment, but even of peace, tranquillity and security, fell back on the
inalienable revolutionary right of voluntary reorganization. They
determined, however, with admirable temper, judgment, and loyalty,
to conduct their proceedings for this purpose in deference and sub
ordination to the authority of the Federal Union, and according to
the line of safe precedents.

After due elections, open to all the inhabitants of the territory,
they organized provisionally a state government atTopeka; and by
the hands of provisional senators, and a provisional representative,
they submitted their constitution to congress, and prayed to be
admitted as a free state into the Federal Union. The federal autho
rities lent no aid to this movement, but, on the contrary, the presi
dent and senate contemptuously rejected it, and denounced it as
treason, and all its actors and abettors as disloyal to the Union. An
army was dispatched into the territory, intended indeed to preserve
peace, but at the same time to obey and sustain the usurpation. The
provisional legislature, which had met to confer, and to adopt further
means to urge the prayers of the people upon congress, were dis
persed by the army, and the state officers provisionally elected, who
had committed no criminal act, were arrested, indicted, and held in
the federal camp as state prisoners. Nevertheless, the people of
Kansas did not acquiesce. The usurpation remained a barren autho
rity, defied, derided and despised.

A national election was now approaching. Excitement within and
sympathies without the territory must be allayed. Governor Shan
non was removed, and Mr. Greary was appointed his successor. He
exacted submission to the statutes of the usurpation, but promised
equality in their administration. He induced a repeal of some of
those statutes which were most obviously unconstitutional, and
declared an amnesty for political offenses. He persuaded the legisla
ture of the usurpation to ordain a call for a convention atLecornpton,
to form a constitution, if the measure should be approved by a popu
lar vote, nt an election to be held for that purpose. To vote at such

THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 585

an election was to recognize and tolerate the usurpation, as well as
to submit to disfranchising laws, and to hazard a renewal of the
frauds and violence by which the usurpation had been established.
On no account would the legislature agree that the projected consti
tution should be submitted to the people, after it should have been
perfected by the convention. The refusal of this just measure, so
necessary to the public security in case of surprise and fraud, was a
confession of the purpose on the part of the usurpation to -carry a
constitution into effect by surprise and fraud. The governor insisted
on this provision, and demanded of the president of the United
States the removal of a partial and tyrannical judge. He failed to
gain either measure, and incurred the displeasure of the usurpation
by seeking them. He fled from the territory. The free state party
stood aloof from the polls, and a canvass showed that some twenty-
three hundred, less than a third of the people of the territory, had
sanctioned the call of a convention, while the presence of the army
alone held the territory under a forced truce.

At this juncture, the new federal administration came in, under a
president who had obtained success by the intervention at the polls
of a third party — an ephemeral organization, built upon a foreign
and frivolous issue, which had just strength enough and life enough
to give to a pro-slavery party the aid required to produce that un
toward result. The new president, under a show of moderation,
masked a more effectual intervention than that of his predecessor,
in favor of slave labor and a slave state. Before coming into office,
he approached, or was approached, by the supreme court of the
United States. On their docket was, through some chance or design,
an action which an obscure negro man in Missouri had brought for
his freedom against his reputed master. The court had arrived at
the conclusion, on solemn argument, that insomuch as this unfortu
nate negro had, through some ignorance or chicane in special plead
ing, "admitted what could not have been proved, that he had
descended from some African who had once been held in bondage,
that therefore he was not, in view of the constitution, a citizen of
the United States, and therefore could not implead the reputed mas
ter in the federal courts; and on this ground the supreme court were
prepared to dismiss the action, for want of jurisdiction over the
suitor's person. This decision, certainly as repugnant to the Decla
ration of Independence and to the spirit of the constitution, as to

VOL. IV 74

586 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

the instincts of humanity, nevertheless would be one which would
exhaust all the power of the tribunal, and exclude consideration of
all other questions that had been raised upon the record. The
counsel who had appeared for the negro had volunteered from
motives of charity, and, ignorant of course of the disposition which
was to be made of the cause, had argued that his client had been
freed from slavery by operation of the Missouri prohibition of 1820.
The opposing counsel, paid by the defending slaveholder, had
insisted, in reply, that that famous statute was unconstitutional.
The mock debate had been heard in the chamber of the court in the
basement of the capitol, in the presence of the curious visitors at the
seat of government, whom the dullness of a judicial investigation
could not disgust. The court did not hesitate to please the incoming
president, by seizing this extraneous and idle forensic discussion, and
converting it into an occasion for pronouncing an opinion that the
Missouri prohibition was void, and that, by force of the constitution,
slavery existed, with all the elements of property in man over man,
in all the territories of the United States, paramount to any popular
sovereignty within the territories, and even to the authority of con
gress itself.

In this ill-omened act, the supreme court forgot its own dignity,
which had always before been maintained with just judicial jealousy.
They forgot that the province of a court is simply "jus dicere" and
not at all "jus dare.'11 They forgot, also, that one "foul sentence
does more harm than many foul examples; for the last do but cor
rupt the stream, while the former corrupteth the fountain." And
they and the president alike forgot that judicial usurpation is more
odious arid intolerable than any other among the manifold practices
of tyranny.

The day of inauguration came — the first one among all the cele
brations of that great national pageant that was to be desecrated by
a coalition between the executive and judicial departments, to under
mine the national legislature and the liberties of the people. The
president, attended by the usual lengthened procession, arrived and
took his seat on the portico. The supreme court attended him there,
in robes which yet exacted public reverence. The people, unaware
of the import of the whisperings carried on between the president
and the chief justice, and imbued with veneration for both, filled the
avenues and gardens far away as the eye could reach. The presi-

THE PRESIDENT AND DRED SCOTT. 587

dent addressed them in words as* bland as those which the worst of
all the Roman emperors pronounced when he assumed the purple.
He announced (vaguely, indeed, but with self-satisfaction) the forth
coming extra-judicial exposition of the constitution, and pledged his
submission to it as authoritative and final. The chief justice and
his associates remained silent. The senate, too, were there — consti
tutional witnesses of the transfer of administration. They too were
silent, although the promised usurpation was to subvert the autho
rity over more than half of the empire which congress had assumed
cotemporaneously with the birth of the nation, and had exercised
without interruption for near seventy years. It cost the president,
under the circumstances, little exercise of magnanimity now to pro
mise to the people of Kansas, on whose neck he had, with the aid
of the supreme court, hung the millstone of slavery, a fair trial in
their attempt to cast it off, and hurl it to the earth, when they should
come to organize a state government. Alas! that even this cheap
promise, uttered under such great solemnities, was only made to be
broken !

The pageant ended. On the 5th of March, the judges, without
even exchanging their silken robes for courtiers' gowns, paid their
salutations to the president, in the executive palace. Doubtlessly
the president received them as graciously as Charles the First did the
judges who had at his instance subverted the statutes of English
liberty. On the 6th of March, the supreme court dismissed the
negro suitor, Dred Scott, to return to his bondage; and having thus
disposed of that private action for an alleged private wrong, on the
ground of want of jurisdiction in the case, they proceeded with
amusing solemnity to pronounce the opinion, that if they had had
such jurisdiction, still the unfortunate negro would have had to
remain in bondage, unrelieved, because the Missouri prohibition
violates rights of general property involved in slavery, paramount
to the authority of congress. A few days later, copies of this
opinion were multiplied by the senate's press, and scattered in the
name of the senate broadcast over the land, and their publication
has not yet been disowned by the senate. Simultaneously, Dred
Scott, w'io had played the hand of dummy in this interesting politi
cal game, unwittingly, yet to the complete satisfaction of his-
adversary, was voluntarily emancipated; and thus received from his

588 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

master, as a reward, the freedom wUich the court had denied him as
-a right.

The new president of the United States having organized this
formidable judicial battery at the capitol, was now ready to begin
his active demonstrations of intervention in the territory. Here
occurred, not a new want, but an old one revived — a governor for
Kansas. Robert J. Walker, born and reared in Pennsylvania, a free
state, but long a citizen and resident of Mississippi, a slave state,
eminent for talent and industry, devoted to the president and his
party, plausible and persevering, untiring and efficient, seemed just
the man to conduct the fraudulent inchoate proceedings of the pro
jected Lecompton convention to a conclusion, by dividing the friends
of free labor in the territory, or by casting upon them the responsi
bility of defeating their own favorite policy by impracticability and
contumacy. He wanted for this purpose only an army and full
command of the executive exchequer of promises of favor and of
threats of punishment. Frederick P. Stanton, of Tennessee, honor
able and capable, of persuasive address, but honest ambition, was
appointed his secretary. The new agents soon found they had
assumed a task that would tax all their energies and require all their
adroitness. On the one side, the slave-labor party were determined
to circumvent the people, and secure, through the Lecompton con
vention, a slave state. On the other, the people were watchful, and
determined not to be circumvented, and in no case to submit.
Elections for delegates to that body were at hand. The legislature
bad required a census and registry of voters to be made by autho
rities designated by itself, and this duty had been only partially
performed in fifteen of the thirty-four counties, and altogether omit
ted in the other nineteen. The party of slave labor insisted on
payment of taxes as a condition of suffrage. The free-labor party
deemed the whole proceeding void, by reason of the usurpation
practised, and of the defective arrangements for the election. They
discovered a design to surprise in the refusal of any guaranty that
the constitution, when framed, should be submitted to the people for
their acceptance or rejection, preparatory to an application under it
for the admission of Kansas into the Union. The governor, draw
ing from the ample treasury of the executive at his command, made
due exhibitions of the army, and threatened the people with an
acceptance of the Lecompton constitution, however obnoxious to

THE LECOMPTON FKAUD. 589

them, if they should refuse to vote. With these menaces, he judi
ciously mingled promises of fabulous quantities of land for the
endowment of roads and education. He dispensed with the test
oaths and taxes, lamented the defects of census and registry, and
promised the rejection of the constitution, by himself, by the presi
dent, and by congress, if a full, fair, and complete submission of
the constitution should not be made by the convention ; and he-
obtained and published pledges of such submission by the party
conventions which nominated the candidates for delegates, and even
by an imposing number of those candidates themselves. The people
stood aloof, and refused to vote. The army protected the polls.
The slave-labor party alone voted, and voted without legal restraint,
and so achieved an easy formal success by casting some two thousand
ballots.

Just in this conjuncture, however, the term of three years' service
which the usurping legislature had fixed for its own members ex
pired, and elections, authorized by itself, were to be held, for the
choice, not only of new members, but of a delegate to congress.
While the Lecompton convention was assembling, the free-labor
party determined to attend these territorial elections, and contest,
through them, for self-government within the territory. They put
candidates in nomination, on the express ground of repudiation of
the whole Lecompton proceeding. The Lecompton convention
prudently adjourned to a day beyond the elections. The parties
contended at the ballot-boxes, and the result was a complete and
conclusive triumph of the free-labor party. For a moment, this
victory, so important, was jeoparded by the fraudulent presentation
of spurious and fabricated returns of elections in almost uninhabited
districts, sufficient to transfer the triumph to the slave-labor party,
and the free-state party was proceeding to vindicate it by force.
The governor and secretary detected, proved, and exposed, this
atrocious fraud. The Lecompton convention denounced them, and
complaints against them poured in upon the president, from the slave-
holding states. They were doomed from that time. The president
was silent. The Lecompton convention proceeded, and framed a
constitution which declares slavery perpetual and irreversible, and
postpones any alteration of its own provisions until after 1864, by
which time they hoped that slavery might have gained too deep a
hold in the soil of Kansas to be in danger of being uprooted. All

690 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

this was easy ; but now came the question whether the constitution
should be submitted to the people. It was confessed that it was
obnoxious to them, and, if submitted, would be rejected with indig
nation and contempt. An official emissary from Washington is
supposed to have suggested the solution which was adopted. This
was a submission in form, but not in fact. The president of the con
vention, without any laws to preserve the parity of the franchise by
penalties for its violation, was authorized to designate his own
agents, altogether irrespectively of the territorial authorities, and
with their aid to hold an election, in which there should be no vote
allowed or received, if against the constitution itself. Each voter
was permitted to cast a ballot " for the constitution with slavery,"
or " for the constitution with no slavery ;" and it was further pro
vided, that the constitution should stand entire, if a majority of
votes should be cast for the constitution with slavery, while on the
other hand, if the majority of votes cast should be " for the consti
tution with no slavery," then the existing slavery should not be
disturbed, but should remain, with its continuance, by the succession
of its unhappy victims by descent forever. But even this miserable
shadow of a choice between forms of a slave state constitution was
made to depend on the taking of a test oath to support and main
tain it in the form which should be preferred by the majority of
those who should vote on complying with that humiliation. The
governor saw that by conniving at this pitiful and wicked juggle he
should both shipwreck his fame and become responsible for civil
war. He remonstrated, and appealed to his chief, the president of
the United States, to condemn it. Denunciation followed him from
the Lecornpton party within the territory, and denunciations no less
violent from the slave states were his greeting at the national capital.
The president disappointed his most effective friend and wisest
counselor.1 This present congress had now assembled. The presi
dent, as if fearful of delay, forestalled our attention with recom
mendations to overlook the manifest objections to the transaction,
and to regard the anticipated result of this mock election, then not
yet held, as equivalent to an acceptance of the constitution by the
people of Kansas, alleging that the refusal of the people to vote
either the ballot for the " constitution with slavery," or the false and
deceitful ballot for the "constitution with no slavery,*" would justly

1 See Robert J. Walker's testimony, ante, page 51.

THE LECOMPTON FRAUD. 591

be regarded as drawing after it the consequences of actual acceptance
and adoption of the constitution itself. His argument was apolo
getic, as it lamented that the constitution had not been fairly sub
mitted ; and Jesuitical, as it urged that the people might, when once
admitted as a state, change the constitution at their pleasure, in
defiance of the- provision which postpones any change seven years.

Copies of the message containing these arguments were transmit
ted to the territory, to confound and dishearten the free-state party,
and obtain a surrender, at the election to be held on the 21st of
December, on the questions submitted by the convention. The people,
however, were neither misled nor intimidated. Alarmed by this act
of connivance by the president of the United States with their
oppressors, they began to prepare for the last abitrament of nations.
The secretary, Mr. Stanton, now governor ad interim, issued his pro
clamation, calling the new territorial legislature to assemble to
provide for preserving the public peace. An executive spy dispatched
information of this proceeding to the president by telegraph, and
instantly Mr. Stanton ceased to be secretary and governpr ad interim,
being removed by the president, by and with the advice and consent
of the senate of the United States. Thus the service of Frederick
P. Stanton came to an abrupt end, but in a manner most honorable
to himself. His chief; Mr. Walker, was less wise and less fortunate.
He resigned. Psetus Thrasea (we are informed by Tacitus) had been
often present in the senate, when the fathers descended to unworthy
acts, and did not rise in opposition ; but on this occasion when Nero
procured from them a decree to celebrate, as a festival, the day on
which he bad murdered his mother, Agrippina, Pa3tus left his seat,
and walked out of the chamber — thus by his virtue provoking-
future vengeance, and yet doing no service to the cause of liberty.
Possibly Eobert J. Walker may find a less stern historian.

The new secretary, Mr. Denver, became governor of Kansas, the
fifth incumbent of that office appointed within less than four years,
the legal term of one. Happily, however, for the honor of the
country, three of the recalls were made on the ground of the virtues
of the parties disgraced. The pro-consuls of the Koman provinces
were brought back to the capital to answer for their crimes.

The proceeding which the late secretary Stanton had so wisely
instituted, nevertheless, went on ; and it has become, as I trust, the
principal means of rescuing from tyranny the people whom he gov-

592 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

erned so briefly and yet so well. The Lecampton constitution had
directed, that on the 4th of January elections should be held to fill
the state offices and the offices of members of the legislature and
member of congress-, to assume their trusts when the new state
should be admitted into the Union. The legislature of the territory
now enacted salutary laws for preserving the purity of elections in
all cases. It directed the Lecompton constitution to be submitted to
a fair vote on that day, the ballots being made to express a consent
to the constitution, or a rejection of it, with or without slavery.
The free-labor party debated anxiously on the question, whether,
besides voting against that constitution, they should, under protest,
vote also for officers to assume the trusts created by it, if congress
should admit the state under it. After a majority had decided that
no such votes should be cast, a minority hastily rejected the decision,
and nominated candidates for those places, to be supported under
protest. The success of the movement, made under the most serious
disadvantages, is conclusive evidence of their strength. While the
election held on the 21st of December, allowing all fraudulent votes,
showed some six thousand majority for the constitution with slavery,
over some five hundred votes for the constitution without slavery,
the election on the 4th of January showed an aggregate majority of
eleven thousand against the constitution itself in any form, with the
choice, under protest, of a representative in congress, and. of a large
majority of all the candidates nominated by the free-labor party for
the various executive and legislative trusts under the Lecompton
constitution.

The territorial legislature has abolished slavery by a law to take
effect in March, 1858, though the Lecompton constitution contains
provisions anticipating, and designed to defeat, this great act of
justice and humanity. It has organized a militia, which stands
ready for the defense of the rights of the people against any power.
The president of the Lecompton constitution has fled the territory,
charged with an attempt to procure fraudulent returns to reverse
the already declared results of the last election, and he holds the
public in suspense as to his success until after his arrival at the
capital, and the decision of congress on the acceptance of the Le
compton constitution. In the meantime, the territorial legislature
has called a convention, subject to the popular approval, to be held
in March next, and to form a constitution to be submitted to the

THE LECOMPTON FRAUD 593

people, and, when adopted, to be the organic law of the new state
of Kansas, subject to her admission into the Union. The president
of the United States, having received the Lecornpton constitution
has submitted it to congress, and insisting that the vote taken on.
the juggle of the Lecornpton convention, held on the 21st of Decem
ber, is legally conclusive of its acceptance by the people, and abso
lute against the fair, direct, and unimpeachable Dejection of it by
that people, made On the 4th of January last, he recommends and
urges and implores the admission of Kansas as a state into the Fed
eral Union, under that false, pretended, and spurious constitution.
I refrain from any examination of this extraordinary message. My
recital is less complete than I have hoped, if it does not overthrow
all the president's arguments in favor of the acceptance of the
Lecompton constitution as an act of the people of Kansas, however
specious, and without descending to any details. In congress, those
who seek the admission of Kansas under that constitution, strive to
delay the admission of Minnesota, until their opponents shall com
promise on that paramount question.

This is a concise account of the national intervention in the terri
tories in favor of slave labor and slave states, since 1820. No wonder
that the question before us excites apprehensions and alarms. There
is at last a north side of this chamber, a north side of the chamber
of representatives, a north side of the Union, as well as south sides
of all these. Each of them is watchful, jealous, and resolute. If it
l>e true, as has so often been asserted, that this Union cannot survive
the decision by congress of a direct question involving the adoption
of a free state which will establish the ascendency of free states
under the constitution, and draw after it the restoration of the influ
ence of freedom in the domestic and foreign conduct of the govern
ment, then the day of dissolution is at hand.

I have thus arrived at the third circumstance attending the Kansas
question which I have thought worthy of consideration, namely,
that the national intervention in the territories in favor of slave
labor and slave states is opposed to the material, moral, and social
developments of the republic. The proposition seems to involve a
paradox, but it is easy to understand that the checks which the
constitution applies, through wise precaution, to the relative increase
of the representation of the free states in the house of representa
tives, and especially in the senate, cooperating with the differences

VOL. IV 75

594 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

of temper and political activity between the two classes of states,
may direct the government of the Federal Union in one course,
•while the tendencies of the nation itself, popularly regarded, are in a
direction exactly opposite.

The ease and success which attended the earlier policy of inter
vention in favor of free labor and free states, and the resistance which
the converse policy of intervention in favor of slave labor and slave
states encounters, sufficiently establish the existence of the antago
nism between the government and the nation which I have asserted.
A vessel moves quietly and peacefully while it descends with the
current. You mark its wav by the foam on its track only when it
is forced against the tide. I will not dwell on other proofs-^-such as
the more rapid growth of the free states, the ruptures of ecclesias
tical Federal Unions, and the demoralization and disorganization of
political parties.

I have shown why it is that the Kansas question is attended by
difficulties and dangers only by way of preparation for submitting
my opinions in regard to the manner in which that question ought
to be determined and settled. I think, with great deference to the
judgments of others, that the expedient, peaceful and right way to
determine it, is to reverse the existing policy of intervention in favor
of slave labor and slave states. It would be wise to restore the Mis
souri prohibition of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, There was
peace in the territories and in the states until that great statute of
freedom was subverted. It is true that there were frequent debates
here on the subject of slavery, and that there were profound sympa
thies among the people, awakened by or responding to those debates.
But what was congress instituted for but debate ? What makes the
American people to differ from all other nations, but this — that while
among them power enforces silence, here all public questions are
referred to debate, free debate in congress. Do you tell me that the
supreme court of the United States has removed the foundations of
that great statute? I reply that they have done no such thing;
they could not do it. They have remanded the negro man, Dred
Scott, to the custody of his master. With that decree we have
nothing here, at least nothing now, to do. This is the extent of the
judgment rendered, the extent of any judgment they could render.
Already the pretended further decision is subverted in Kansas. So
it will be in every free state and in every free territory of the United

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 595

States. The supreme court, also, can reverse its spurious judgment
more easily than we could reconcile the people to its usurpation.
The supreme court attempts to command the people of the United
States to accept the principles that one man can own other men, and
that they must guaranty the inviolability of that false and pernicious
property. The people of the United States never can, and they never
will, accept principles so unconstitutional and so abhorrent. Never,
never. Let the court recede. Whether it recede or not, we shall
reorganize the court, and thus reform its political sentiments and
practices, and bring them into harmony with the constitution and
with the laws of nature. In doing so, we shall not only reassume our
own just authority, but we shall restore that high tribunal itself to
the position it ought to maintain, since so many invaluable rights of
citizens, and even of states themselves, depend upon its impartiality
and its wisdom.

Do you tell me that the slave states will not acquiesce, but will
agitate? Think first whether the free states will acquiesce in a
decision that shall not only be unjust, but fraudulent. True, they
will not menace the republic. They have an easy and simple remedy,
namely, to take the government out of unjust and unfaithful hands,
and commit it to those which will be just and faithful. They are
ready to do this now. They want only a little more harmony of
purpose, and a little more completeness of organization. These
will result from only the least addition to the pressure of slavery
upon them. You are lending all that is necessary, and even more,
in this Tery act. But will the slave states agitate ? Why ? Because
they have lost at last a battle that they could not win, unwisely pro
voked, fought with all the advantages of strategy and intervention,
and on a field chosen by themselves. What would they gain? Can
they compel Kansas to adopt slavery against her will ? Would it
be reasonable or just to do it, if they could? Was negro servitude
ever forced by the sword on any people that inherited the blood
which circulates in our veins, and the sentiments which make us a
free people ? If they will agitate on such a ground as this, then
how, or when, by what concessions we can make, will they ever be
satisfied ? To what end would they agitate ? It can now be only to
divide the Union. Will they not need some fairer or more plausible
excuse for a proposition so desperate? How would they improve
their condition, by drawing down a certain ruin upon themselves?

596 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Would they gain any new security for slavery ? Would they not
hazard securities that are invaluable? They who talk so idly, talk
what they do not know themselves. No man when cool can pro
mise what he shall do when he shall be inflamed ; no man inflamed
can speak for his actions when time and necessity shall bring reflec
tion. Much less can any one speak for states in such emergencies.

But I shall not insist, now, on so radical a measure as the restora
tion of the Missouri prohibition. I know how difficult it is for power
to relinquish even a pernicious and suicidal policy all at once. We
may attain the same result, in this particular case of Kansas, with
out going back so far. Go back only to the ground assumed in
1854, the ground of popular sovereignty. Happily for the authors
of that measure, the zealous and energetic resistance of abuses
practised under it has so far been effective that popular sovereignty
in Kansas may now be made a fact, and liberty there may be rescued
from danger through its free exercise. Popular sovereignty is an
epic of two parts. Part the first presents freedom in Kansas lost.
Part the second, if you will so consent to write it, shall be freedom
in Kansas regained. It is on this ground that I hail the eminent
senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS] and his associates, the distin
guished senator from Michigan [Mr. STUART], and the youthful, but
most brave senator from California [Mr. BRODERICK]. The late Mr.
Clay told us that Providence has many ways for saving nations.
God forbid that I should consent to see freedom wounded, because
my own lead or even my own agency in saving it should be rejected.
I will cheerfully cooperate with these new defenders of this sacred
cause in Kansas, and I will award them all due praise, when we
shall have been successful, for their large share of merit in its de
liverance.

Will you tell me that it is difficult to induce the senate and the
house of representatives to take that short backward step ? On the
contrary, the hardest task that an executive dictator ever set, or par
liamentary manager ever undertook, is to prevent this very step
from being taken. Let the president take off his hand, and the bow,
bent so long, and held to its tension by so hard a pressure, will
relax, and straighten itself at once.

Consider now, if you please, the consequences of your refusal. If
you attempt to coerce Kansas into the Union, under the Lecompton
constitution, the people of that territory will resort to civil war.

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 597

You are pledged to put down that resolution by the sword. Will
.the people listen to your voice amid the thunders of your cannon ?
Let but one drop of the blood of a free citizen be shed there, by the
federal army, and the countenance of every representative of a free
state, in either house of congress, will blanch, and his tongue will
refuse to utter the vote necessary to sustain the army in the butchery
•of his fellow citizens.

Practically, you have already one intestine and territorial war —
a war against Brigham Young, in Utah. Can you carry on two,
and confine the strife within the territories ? Can you win both ?
A wise nation will never provoke more than one enemy at one time.
I know that you argue that the free state men of Kansas are imprac
ticable, factious, seditious. Answer me three questions : Are they
not a majority, and so proclaimed by the people of Kansas? Is not
this quarrel, for the right of governing themselves, conceded by the
federal constitution? Is the tyranny of forcing a hateful govern
ment upon them, less intolerable than three cents impost on a pound
of tea, or five cents stamp duty on a promissory note? You say
that they can change this Lecornpton constitutio j, when it shall once
Lave been forced upon them. Let it be abandoned now. What
guaranty can you give against your own intervention to pi-event that
future change ? What security can you give for your own adherence
to the construction of the constitution which you adopt, from expe
diency, to-day? What better is a constitution than a by-law of a
•corporation, if it may be forced on a state to-day, and rejected to
morrow, in derogation of its own express inhibition ?

I perceive that, in the way of argument, I have passed already
from the ground of expediency, on which I was standing, to that of
light and justice. Among all our refinements of constitutional
learning, one principle, one fundamental principle, has been faith
fully preserved, namely : That the new states must come voluntarily
into the Union ; they must not be forced into it. "Unite or die,"
was the motto addressed to the states in the time of the revolution.
Though Kansas should perish, she cannot be brought into the Union
by force.

So long as the states shall come in by free consent, their admission
will be an act of union, and this will be a confederacv. Whenever
they shall be brought in by fraud or force, their admission will be
.an act of consolidation, and the nation, ceasing to be a confederacy,

598 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

will become in reality an empire. All our elementary instruction is
wrong, or else this change of the constitution will subvert the liber
ties of the American people.

You argue the consent of Kansas from documentary proofs, from
her forced and partial acquiescence, under your tyrannical rule, from
elections fraudulently conducted, from her own contumac}r, and from
your own records, made up here against her. I answer the whole
argument at once: Kansas protests here, and stands by your confes
sion, in an attitude of rebellion at home, to resist the annexation
which you contend she is soliciting at your hands.

If your proofs were a thousand times stronger, I would not hold
the people of Kansas bound by them. They all are contradicted by
stern facts. A people can be bound by no action conducted in their
name, and pretending to their sanction, unless they enjoy perfect
freedom and safety in giving that consent. You have held the peo
ple of Kansas in duress from the first hour of their attempted
organization as a community. To crown this duress by an act, at
once forcing slavery on them, which they hate, and them into a union
with you, on terms which they abhor, would be but to illustrate anewr
and on a grand scale, the maxim, " Prosperwn et felix scehis virtus-
vocatiir"1 It is an occasion for joy and triumph, when a community
that has gathered itself together under circumstances of privation
and exile, and proceeded through a season of territorial or provin
cial dependence on distant-central authority, becomes a state, in the
full enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and rises into the dignity
of a member of this imperial Union. But, in the case of Kansas,
her whole existence has been, and it yet is, a trial, a tempest, a
chaos — and now you propose to make' her nuptials a celebration of
the funeral of her freedom. The people of Kansas are entitled to
save that freedom, for they have won it back when it had been
wrested from them by invasion and usurpation. You are great and
strong. On this continent there is no power can resist you. On
any other, there is hardly a power that would not reluctantly engage
with you — but you can never, never conquer Kansas. Your power,
like a throne which is built of pine boards, and covered with pur
ple, is weakness, except it be defended by a people confiding in you.
because satisfied that you are just, and grateful for the freedom that,,
under you, they enjoy.

1 Wickedness, when successful and prosperous, is called virtue.

FREEDOM IN KANSAS.

In view once more of this subject of slavery, I submit that our
own dignity requires that we shall give over this champerty with
slaveholders, which we practice in prescribing acquiescence in their
rule as a condition of toleration of self-government in the territories.
We are defeated in it. We may wisely give it up, and admit Kan
sas as a free state, since she will consent to be admitted only in that
character.

If I could at all suppose it desirable or expedient to enlarge the
field of slave labor and of slaveholding sway in this republic, I
should, nevertheless, maintain that it is wise to relinquish the effort
to sustain slavery in Kansas. The question, in regard to that terri
tory, has risen from a private one about slavery as a domestic insti
tution, to one of slavery as a national policy. At every step you
have been failing. Will you go on still further, ever confident, and
yet ever unsuccessful ?

I believe to some extent in the isothermal theory. I think there
are regions, beginning at the north pole, and Ftretchiug southward,
where slavery will die out soon, if it be planted ; and I know, too
well, that in the tropics, and to some extent northward of them,
slavery lives long and is hard to extirpate. But I cannot find a cer
tain boundary. I am sure, however, that 36° 30 is too far north.
I think it is a movable boundary, and that every year it advances
towards a more southern parallel.

But is there just now a real want of a new state for the employ
ment of slave labor ? I see and feel the need of room for a new
state to be assigned to free labor, of room for such a new state almost
every year. I think I see how it arises. Free white men abound in
this country and in Europe, and even in Asia. Economically speak
ing, their labor is cheap — there is a surplus of it. Under improved
conditions of society, life grows longer and men multiply faster.
Wars, which sometimes waste them, grow less frequent and less
destructive. Invention is continually producing machines and
engines, artificial laborers, crowding them from one field of industry
to another — ever more from the eastern regions of this continent to
the west, ever more from the overcrowded eastern continent to the
prairies and the wildernesses in our own. But I do not see any such
overflowing of the African slave population in this country, even
where it is unresisted. Free labor has been obstructed in Kansas.
There are, nevertheless, fifty thousand or sixty thousand freemen

600 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

gathered there already — gathered there within four years. Slave-
labor has been free to importation. There are only one hundred to
two hundred slaves there. To settle and occupy a new slave state
anywhere is, pari gassu^ to depopulate old slave states. Whence,
then, are the supply of slaves to come, and how? Only by reviving
the African slave trade. But this is forbidden. Visionaries dream
that the prohibition can be repealed. The idea is insane. A repub
lic of thirty millions of freemen, with a free white laboring popula
tion so dense as already to crowd on subsistence, to be brought to
import negroes from Africa to supplant them as cultivators, and so
to subject themselves to starvation. Though Africa is yet unorgan
ized and unable to protect itself, still it has already exchanged, in a
large degree, its wars to make slaves, and its commerce in slaves, for
legitimate agriculture and slaves. All European states are interested
in the civilization of that continent, and they will not consent that
we shall arrest it. The Christian church cannot be forced back two
centuries, and be made to sanction the African slave trade as a mis
sionary enterprise.

Every nation has always some ruling idea, which, however, changes
with the several stages of its development. A ruling idea of the
colonies on this continent, two hundred years ago, was labor to sub
due and reclaim nature. Then African slavery was seized and
employed as an auxiliary, under a seeming necessity. That idea has
ceased forever. It has given place to a new one. Aggrandizement
of the nation, not indeed as it once was, to make a small state great,
but to make a state already great the greatest of all states. It still
demands labor, but it is no longer the ignorant labor of barbarians,
but labor perfected by knowledge and skill, and combination with
all the scientific principles of mechanism. It demands, not the labor
of slaves, which needs to be watched and defended, but voluntary,
enlightened labor, stimulated by interest, affection and ambition. It
needs that every man shall own the land he tills ; that every head
shall be fit for the helmet, and every hand fit for the sword, and
every mind ready and qualified for counsel. To attempt to aggran
dize a country with slaves for its inhabitants, would be to try to
make a large body of empire with feeble sinews and empty veins.

The expansion of territory to make slave states, will only fail to
be a great crime because it is impracticable, and therefore will turn
out to be a stupendous imbecility. A free republican government

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 601

like this, notwithstanding all its constitutional checks, cannot long
resist and counteract the progress of society. Slavery, wherever and
whenever, and in whatsoever form it exists, is exceptional, local and
short-lived. Freedom is the common right, interest and ultimate
destiny of all mankind. All other nations have already abolished,
or are about abolishing, slavery. Does this fact mean nothing? All
parties in this country that have tolerated the extension of slavery,
except one, has perished for that error already. Thnt last one, the
democratic party, is hurrying on, irretrievably, toward the same fate.
All administrations that have avowed this policy, have gone down
dishonored for that cause, except the present one. A pit deeper and
darker still is opening to receive this administration, because it sins
more deeply than its predecessors. There is a meaning in all these
facts, which it becomes us to study well. The nation has advanced
another stage ; it has reached the point where intervention by the
government, for slavery and slave states, will no longer be tolerated.
Free labor has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its power,
and its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume the government of
the republic. It will henceforth meet you boldly and resolutely
here; it will meet you everywhere, in the territories or out of them,
wherever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in
California and in Kansas; it will invade you soon in Delaware,
Marj'land, Virginia, Missouri and Texas. It will meet you in Ari
zona, in Central America, and even in Cuba. The invasion will be
not merely harmless, but beneficent, if you yield seasonably to its
just and moderated demands. It proved so in New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and the other slave states which have already
yielded in that way to its advances. You may, indeed, get a start
under or near the tropics, and seem safe for a time, but it will be only
a short time. Even there you will found states only for free labor
to maintain and occupy. The interests of the white races demands
the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation
shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions
against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is
all that remains for you to decide. For the failure of your system
of slave labor throughout the republic, the responsibility will rest,
not on the agitators you condemn, or on the political parties you
arraign, or even altogether on yourselves, but it will be due to the
inherent error of the system itself, and to the error which thrusts it
VOL. IV. 76

602 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

forward to oppose and resist the destiny, not more of the African
than that of the white races. The white man noeds this continent to
labor upon. His head is clear, his arm is strong, and bis necessities
are fixed. He must and will have it. To secure it he will oblige
the government of the United States to abandon intervention in
favor of slave labor and slave states, and go backward forty years,
and resume the original policy of intervention in favor of free labor
and free states. The fall of the castle of San Juan d'Ulloa deter
mined the fate of Mexico, although sore sieges and severe pitched
battles intervened before the capture of the capital of the Aztecs.
The defeats you have encountered in California and in Kansas, deter
mine the fate of the principle for which you have been contending.
It is for yourselves, not for us, to decide how long and through what
further mortifications and disasters the contest shall be protracted,
before freedom shall enjoy her already assured triumph. I would
have it ended now, and would have the wounds of society bound up
and healed. But this can be done only in one way. It cannot be
done by offering further resistance, nor by any evasion or partial
surrender, nor by forcing Kansas into the Union as a slave state,
against her will, leaving her to cast off slavery afterwards, as she best
may ; nor by compelling Minnesota and Oregon to wait, and wear the
humiliating costume of territories at the doors of congress, until the
people of Kansas, or their true defenders here, shall be brought to
dishonorable compromises. It can be done only by the simplest and
direct admission of the three new states as free states, without quali
fication, condition, reservation or compromise, and by the abandon
ment of all further attempts to extend slavery under the federal
constitution. You have unwisely pushed the controversy so far,
that only these broad concessions will now be accepted by the interest
of free labor and free states. For myself, I see this fact, perhaps
the more distinctly now because I have so long foreseen it. I can
therefore counsel nothing less than those concessions. I know the
hazards I incur in taking this position. I know how men and par
ties, now earnest and zealous and bold, may yet fall away from me
as the controversy shall wax warm, and alarms and dangers now
unlocked for shall stare them in the face, as men and parties, equally
earnest, bold and zealous, have done in like circumstances before.
But it is the same position I took in the case of California eight years
i\go. It is the same I maintained on the great occasion of the organ-

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 603

ization of Kansas and Nebraska, four years ago. Time and added
experience have vindicated it since, and I assume it again, to be
maintained to the last, with confidence that it will be justified, ulti
mately, by the country and by the civilized world. You may refuse
to yield it now and for a short period, but your refusal will only
animate the friends of freedom with the courage and the resolution,
and produce the union among them, which alone are necessary on
their part to attain the position itself simultaneously with the impend
ing overthrow of the existing federal administration and the consti
tution of a new and more independent congress.

This expansion of the empire of free white men is to be conducted
through the process of admitting new states, and not otherwise. The
white man, whether you consent or not, will make the states to be
admitted, and he will make them all free states. We must admit
them, and admit them all free ; otherwise they will become inde
pendent and foreign states, constituting a new empire to contend with
us for the continent. To admit them is a simple, easy and natural
policy. It is not new to us or to our times. It began with the
voluntary union of the first thirteen. It has continued to go onr
overriding all resistance ever since. It will go on until the ends of the
continent are the borders of our Union. Thus we become colaborers
with our fathers, and even with our posterity throughout many ap-es.
After times, contemplating the whole vast structure, completed and
perfected, will forget the dates, and the eras, and the individualities
of the builders in their successive generations. It will be one great
republic, founded by one body of benefactors. I wonder that the
president of the United States undervalues the Kansas question,
when it is a part of a transaction so immense and sublime. Far
from sympathizing with him in his desire to deprecate it and to be
rid of it, I felicitate myself on my humble relation to it, for I know
that heaven cannot grant, nor man desire, a more favorable occasion
to acquire fame, than he enjoys who is engaged in laying the foun
dations of a great empire ; and I know, also, that while mankind
have often deified their benefactors, no nation has ever yet bestowed
honors on the memories of the founders of slavery.

I have always believed that this glorious federal constitution of
ours is adapted to the inevitable expansion of the empire which I
have so feebly presented. It has been perverted often loy miscon
struction, and it has yet to be perverted many times, and widely,.

604 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

hereafter ; but it has inherent strength and vigor that will cast off
.all the webs which the everchanging interests of classes may weave
around it. If it foil us now, it will, however, not be our fault, but
because an inevitable crisis, like that of youth or of manhood, is to
be encountered by a constitution proved in that case to be inadequate
to the trial. I am sure that no patriot, who views the subject ; s I
•do, could wish to evade or delay the trial. By delay we could only
extend slavery, at the most, throughout the Atlantic region of the
continent. The Pacific slope is free, and it always must and will be
free. The mountain barriers that separate us from that portion of
our empire, are quite enough to alienate us too widely, possibly to
separate us too soon. Let us only become all slaveholdirig states on
this side of those barriers, while only free states are organized and per
petuated on the other side, and then indeed there will come a division
of the great American family into two nations, equally ambitious for
•complete control over the continent, and a conflict between them, over
which the world will mourn, as the greatest and last to be retrieved
of all the calamities that have ever befallen the human race.

APRIL 30, 1858. '

THIS debate has manifestly lost some of its interest, although it
rapidly approaches a yet undetermined conclusion. The length of
time it has occupied may account in a degree for the decline of
•excitement. Eepetition of the same topics, and even of the same
arguments, not indeed too often for duly enlightening the minds of
the people of the United States, yet too frequent for patient endu
rance here, is a further cause. I think, however, that something is
due also to the change of form which the subject has at last assumed.
We began with high-sounding themes, nothing less than popular
sovereignty, and we rose speedily and justly into the region of the
rights of human nature. The question wore this dignity when we
gave it to the committee of conference. It comes back from the
conference chamber, reduced into a mere artifice — if it were respect
ful, I should say a trick — of legislative legerdemain. It is assumed
that one or both of two irreconcilable factions are to be deceived;
all that seems to be left for us to discuss, or the public to consider,

1 Closing speech in the Senate on the Lecompton constitution and the English Conference Bill.
Sec ante page 50.

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 605

is, who shall be the dupe? This is that kind of debate for which I
have the least taste, and, as I think, the least talent.

The bill of the conference committee on Kansas was gotten up to
favor a purpose of self-deception ; gotten up with care, so that it
could not be explained satisfactorily by the one faction to the other,
or even to itself.

To use equivocation in legislation is an act of immorality deserv
ing of severe censure. What reverence, what respect, what sub
mission, what obedience, can you expect from the citizen, if legisla
tures resort to such reprehensible practices in making the laws ?
There are very bad consequences of this immoral transaction lying
in the future, if they be not prevented by the vigilance and resolu
tion of the people. The measure in that case will draw after it, not
merely the admission of one or more slave states into this Union, to
increase already our too serious embarrassments resulting from
antagonisms between the states, but all the grave consequences which
must result from the establishment of a belt of slave states in the
centre of the continent, from our northern to our southern border,
directly across our great highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
You have only by this, or by any other means, direct or indirect, to
fix slavery there, and you will have raised a wall of separation
between the eastern and the western, the Atlantic and the Pacific
portions of the empire, more insurmountable than the ridges of the
Kocky mountains, or the snow-clad summits of the further range
that projects its shadow far abroad upon the waves of the Pacific.

It amuses me much when I hear patriotic and sagacious men pre-
die^ing the removal of this capital from the falls of the Potomac to
the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela, or sometimes, with
a longer forecast, to Cincinnati, the queen city of Ohio, or further on
to St. Louis, and so settling and fixing the centre of power in the val
ley of the Mississippi. If you will only confine this institution of
slavery within its present ample boundaries, giving it no further
room nor verge, the capital of this country may remain where it is,
but the centre of the Union will fall nearer the valley of Mexico
than the valley of the Mississippi. Then that federal authority will
grasp the equator on the one side, and the northern pole on the other.
But no such promise, no such hope, awaits the republic, if you sepa
rate the free Atlantic states from the free states of the Pacific coast.

606 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

While this bill ignores the actual dispute out of which it origi
nated, it suppresses with double care the great controlling political
fact which lies everywhere just beneath the surface of the whole
debate. If Kansas shall come into the Union under the Lecompton
constitution, she will come in as a slave state. If she come under
any other constitution, it is hoped by those who advocate freedom
that she will come as a free state. This bill gives to Kansas the
choice of being a slave state, and only that choice. You have
already induced the supreme court of the United States so to per
vert your constitution, that the president, on their authority, declares
that Kansas, while she is a territory, is as much a slave state as South
Carolina. The change you offer her is, that if she will accept the Le
compton constitution, she shall be recognized in name and form as a
slave state, in lieu of remaining a slave state in the form and stature
of a territory. Your bill docs indeed say that in the future — God
knows how far in the future it may be — if the people of Kansas, if
they shall now reject the Lecompton constitution, may make a consti
tution for themselves, and send it here for your consideration ; but it
shall not be done until they shall have a largely-augmented popula
tion. This postponement is a mockery ! When the people of Kan
sas shall come here with a free constitution, years hence, they will
do only what they did two years ago. You refused them then.
When they come here with a constitution making them a free state,
and submit it to you, they will have a constitution that contains just
what they had in the Missouri prohibition of slavery, thirty -eight
years ago ; and you struck that prohibition from the statute book.
When they come, years hence, be they few or many, and asked to
be admitted a free state, they will be just exactly in the same attitude
they maintain now, and demanding then only what they demand
now, and what you refuse them.

You are only asking us to wager against chance, backed by device
and fraud. Here is a piece of silver, of the coin of the United
States. On this side is the eagle ; on the other, the figure emblem
atical of liberty. You cover it with your hand, and say to Kansas,
wager whether the "eagle" or "liberty" is uppermost. Say
" eagle," and you have " slavery ;" say " liberty," and still " slavery "
wins the wager. This bill is no new piece of music. It is Lecomp
ton over again, only with a new variation ; but the abhorrent air of
fraud pervades the whole arrangement of the composition.

FREEDOM IX KANSAS. 607

I beg now to say most distinctly that this bill mast in both houses
owe its passage to the votes of representatives of the free states of
the north and west. I beg, therefore, to ask the honorable senator
from Pennsylvania, himself a representative of the first state in this
Union that after the revolution moved for universal freedom, what
the people of Kansas have done, that they shall not be indulged at
least in an equal ehoiee between liberty and slavery ? I ask my
venerable and esteemed friend from Rhode Island, the land of Roger
AVilliams, how he supposes that he can reconcile that proud and
patriotic free state, that one which was earliest and most completely
free of all the states in this Union, to this bill, which gives state
power and prestige and a dowry of lands to Kansas if she will
choose slavery, and gives her provincial degradation and debasement,
with poverty, if she elects freedom ? I ask my excellent friend from
Iowa, he who represents a state carved out of that rich and beautiful
domain which, having been acquired by purchase from France, was
dedicated to freedom by the Missouri compromise — the same great
act which originally guarantied freedom to Kansas, but which guar
anty was broken to Kansas, though preserved to Iowa — I ask him
what answer he will give to that gallant people, for having planted
on their border a state which was denied the liberty to choose on
equal terms between freedom and slavery? I will not ask the hon
orable senator from California, whose state was saved to freedom by
efforts other than his own, but who knows that, by that very salva
tion, there was saved to California resources of wealth and strength,
and power, which secure her control over the Pacific coast of this
continent, and render her self-sustaining and almost defiant — I will
not ask him for an explanation. I said, when California was admit
ted, that the slave states need not fear her ; that though settled by a
population chiefly from the free states, California, owing to a disas
trous conjunction of parties at the time, would prove for years to
come the strongest slave state in the Union. I will not ask the hon
orable senator from Ohio, for I have already interpreted, according
to rny humble ability, the views by which he reconciles this measure
to the judgment of his great constituency. I would, indeed, ask the
honorable senators from Indiana, but they may have that question to
settle at home speedily, without being interrogated here.

My honorable friend from Vermont reminds me that I have for
gotten New Jersey. I will speak for New Jersey myself. The

608 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

blood of men who hazarded life, fame, and fortune, for freedom, in
the "Jerseys," courses through my own veins. I know the blue
hills of the Jerseys well. They are mingled with all the fond recol
lections of my childhood. I will answer, that the votes which are
given here for this Lecompton bill are the last votes which in ten
years will be given for slavery by representatives of New Jersey.

I have shown that this bill gives to the people of Kansas only
the show of a choice between freedom and slavery. I have next to
show -that it provides for overriding, counteracting, and defeating
this very shadow of a choice, if it shall be in favor of freedom.
The bill provides, not that the people of Kansas or their legislature
or their authorities shall appoint the commissions under whom the
contemplated election shall be held and its results ascertained, but a
board, to consist of five persons ; and, while it allows two to be
named by the people of Kansas, it asks three for the president of
the United States. Now there have been five agents appointed
already by the president of the United States and his predecessor,
to hold elections and return results in the territory of Kansas, and
every one of them has been repudiated, dishonored, and disgraced,
for having struggled to prevent fraud, and to ascertain and certify
the truth about these elections. The ghosts on the banks of the
Styx constitute a cloud scarcely more dense than the spirits of the
departed governors of Kansas, wandering in exile and sorrow for
having certified the truth against falsehood in regard to the elections
between freedom and slavery in Kansas.

I am accustomed to measure my words, when I speak of other
men, even of public men. Knowing how liable I am to err myself,
I think I have so much of charity as induces a favorable judgment
of an adversary, to the full measure that I ask and expect it for
myself. But though it is with pain and shame and mortification,
yet I do confess that I cannot trust the president of the United
States. It is the most humiliating confession I have ever made in
the presence of my countrymen and before the world ; for whenever
I have looked over the long roll of kings, princes, doges, and
emperors, and have seen how their careers, so often began in fraud,
culminated in assassination, and ended in violence, I have said that
a complete demonstration of the success of the American constitu
tion is found in the fact that, with all its defects, and amid the erratic
and sometimes tumultuous movements of the people, the catalogue

COMPROMISES AND PEACE. 609

of names of those who have filled the presidency exhibits a splendor
of virtue far outshining that of any dynasty that has ever ruled any
nation on the face of the whole earth. If the president of the
United States had ever allowed, not to say if he had enforced, fair
ness in the elections of Kansas, she would not be a suppliant,
trembling with dismay and apprehension in the senate of the United
States to-day. I know that, in speaking thus plainly, I shall wound
the sensibilities of some public-spirited and patriotic men. They
will cry shame upon me, when I disparage the fame of the president
of the United States. But I am used to that. The world is used
to that. I remember that there were patriots in Virginia who cried
shame on Patrick Henry, when he denounced George III. There
were not wanting patriots in the senate of Rome, who heard with
pain Cato denounce the first Caesar. Those who have dragged
liberty down from her shrine, and trampled her into the dust, have
not often been those who in senates accused emperors, kings, or
presidents.

Upon what ground is this bill, thus shown to be so gravel v objec
tionable, recommended to us? First, it is commended as a com
promise. The honorable chairman tells us, that where there is a
difference between two parties or interests, there can never be a
settlement unless there is a compromise ; that the house of repre
sentatives have given up something, and that the senate have given
up something to the house, although everybody except myself has
failed in finding out what there is either given or gotten. Still we
are to accept the bill as a compromise. If it is a compromise urged
upon me, it must be one that gives me something of freedom in
exchange for much of slavery. What do I get of freedom for
Kansas ? The privilege for that people to make a constitution
when they shall have a population of one hundred thousand souls,,
and coming here then and presenting that constitution to congress-
for its approval. Very well. Is Kansas to be a free state then ?
No. Then Kansas shall be admitted either free or slave, just
exactly as the people shall desire. Well, that is just what the
Kansas-Nebraska act gave us in 1854. We have had that great
privilege ever since. We could always make a constitution, and
come here and obtain admission, either free or slave, as we pleased,
according to the text of your st-itute book. But we have come here
and demanded freedom, and have been contumaciously spurned from.

VOL. T\7.

610 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

your presence. We refuse to be admitted a slave state, and we are%
remanded home to try it over again, and reconcile ourselves to
slavery, under the penalty of coming here no more until we number
one hundred thousand souls. If Kansas shall do this, and be docile
and quiet, you think now that you will admit her when she come as
a free state, half a dozen or a dozen years hence. But you hope,
nevertheless, that in the meantime she will be demoralized, and so
will come at last a slave state. I tell you, moreover, that when she
shall corne again as a free state, as she will, you will then be unable
to satisfy yourselves upon her full compliance with all the forms
required to be observed by a state in reaching that happy condition.
Let us not deceive ourselves. There is no freedom for Kansas
under this bill.

But a compromise is made between .two contending parties, by
their representatives. Who are the parties here ? The real parties
in this dispute are, on the one side, the free state party of Kansas
and the republican party of the Union ; and on the other hand, the
slave state party of Kansas and the democracy of the Union. This
compromise is one made between the two factions of the democratic
party, excluding every free state man of Kansas and every repre
sentative of the republican party in congress. There is not one in
our whole number who consents to this bargain. It is, therefore,
just no compromise at all ; it is only the pretense of compromise. I
was born suspicious of legislative compromises. That temper has
grown on me more and more every day of my life. I have studied
their dangers, and seen the evils that resulted from them ; and I
made up my mind, when I came here, that I would harden my face
as a flint against any compromise whatever between slavery and
freedom. This so-called compromise, however, inspires me with
hope unknown before. I look on it with more; complacency than I
have ever looked on any other ; for it is such a weak and pitiful
imitation of the great compromises which have been hallowed in the
respect and affection of the people of the United States for genera
tions, that it will bring the whole system of compromises itself,
henceforth and forever, into ridicule and unmitigated contempt.

The honorable senator from Virginia and the honorable senator
from Missouri commend the bill to us as a measure of peace ; at
least, the honorable senator from Virginia promises that it will bring
a truce for four or five years. There is no peace in this world for

COMPROMISES AND PEACE. 611

compromisers ; there is no peace for those who practice evasion ;
there is no peace in a republican land for any statesmen but those
who act directly, and boldly abide the popular judgment whenever
it may be fairly and clearly and fully ascertained, without attempt
ing to falsify the issue submitted, or to corrupt the tribunal.

Beneath the thin gauze that is spread over this signal of truce, I
see distinctly mingled stains of fraud and blood, black spots and
red, the true unerring marks of a piratical flag. If you mean by
troubles to be composed, apprehensions of civil commotion, of vio
lence, of turbulence, of sedition, of faction and civil war, I tell you
frankly that you need be at no pains to make peace to prevent those
dire evils. This cause of equal and impartial freedom in the states
has at last become strong enough to work its way through lawful and
constitutional forms to its destined and final triumph. But if you
mean, on the other hand, that agitation which has already given to
that great cause the strength and power it now exhibits, and if you
expect that that agitation will be arrested or suppressed by this or
by any other legislative device of this nature, then let me tell you
that you reckon altogether wildly.

I smile when I hear senators talk about the people getting tired of
Kansas and this eternal agitation of slavery. They consult the com
mercial presses of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston,
and those oracles respond with assurances that the people are ex
hausted, and willing and impatient to have the Kansas question ended
in anyway, with popular sovereignty or without, with fairness or with
out, with or without slavery. They see only the eddy ; they do not
stretch their vision far enough to see the tide. They make the same
mistake which the felon did a few months ago, when in the darkness
of the winter's night, on the bank of the Genesee, he slew his brother,
and precipitated the mangled body down into the river, just below
the first fall, and just above the other, thence to float down the last
cataract, and be buried forever in the lake below. But when the
morning came, the corpse of the victim lay floating on the shallow
water by the river side. He had mistaken the eddy near the shore
for the full and ever-swelling flood which man can by no art or
power compress or restrain. Senators, you shall have peace in Kan
sas, you will have peace in Kansas. It will come, not by reason
of what you do to court or compel it, but in spite of yourselves ;

612 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

but it will come in the train of the triumph of peace-giving policy
and principles.

How do you expect to get peace by this bill? By this bill, if it
works as you expect, you will get a slave state one way or another.
You will get a slave state in one case by a popular election, under
the operation of bribes and menaces. Will the people of Kansas
remain corrupted after they have accepted your bribe and escaped
your terrors ? That is not in keeping with the character of the
American people. You will get it by fraud — by a certificate from
the president that popular sovereignty has gone in favor of Lecomp-
ton, when, in feet, it has gone the other way. Will that make peace?
I should like to be near by, and see the new slave state attempted
to be organized under the Lecompton constitution.

I remember that legislators as wise as we — the world thought
them much wiser — who had seats in St. Stephen's chapel, and had
a president whom they honored as much as we do ours, though they
called him a king, insisted that the people of New York should live
under what to them was a slave constitution, while they had made
up their minds to have a free one, established by themselves. The
Provincial British government went on board the Halifax packet,
and thence sent forth its remonstrances and denunciations, under
cover of his majesty's guns. They were, however, merely brutum
fulmen. After a short time, the British government and the British
ship disappeared together below the Neversink, to return no more
forever. The British parliament undertook, also, to rule Virginia
under a slave constitution as it was regarded by her. But, as the
strife rose higher, the provincial authority, with the prestige and
power of the British empire to back it, took refuge on board the
schooner Fowey, and descended to Hampton Koads. There it com
mitted a few pitiful invasions upon the property of patriotic plant
ers and citizens of that great state, and then disappeared forever.

Your Lecompton government of Kansas will be afloat on the Mis
souri river when it begins. The Missouri will not be wide enough
for its safety. It must go down, and pass into the broader channel
of the Mississippi ; and when you next look for it, you will find it
stranded on the beach of the gulf of Mexico. There is to be no
Lecompton state, no slave state, in Kansas. Nevertheless, you enact
by this law that there shall be a slave state in Kansas, and there
shall be no other. Well, if you shall pass the bill to-day, as you

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 613

say you will, it will reach Kansas in about ten days. In about ten
days more, the new state of Kansas will be organized under the new
Leavenworth free-state constitution, and about the seventh day of
June, when you are impatient to go home, Kansas will be beleaguer
ing you here for admission as a free state. She will be telling yon
that she knows nothing about your projected slave state within her
borders. She has not seen it ; it is not there at all. You of course
will spurn her from your path, and will go home. The people of
Kansas will then appeal to the popular elections throughout the
United States, which are to send to this capitol twenty new senators
and a whole house of representatives about the first Tuesday in
November next. Now, I ask the honorable supporters of this bill
here, belonging to the free states, about how many democratic sena
tors and representatives they expect will be returned by the people
upon the passage of this bill? I ask for information. The honor
able senator from California [Mr. BKODERICK] has spoken for the
only free state that I thought was hopelessly lost to us for a quarter
of a century. For all the rest, I think that, if it were not presump
tuous, I might speak myself. But I leave the representatives of
those states to speak.

The people of Kansas will come here on the first Monday in De
cember next, when you assemble here, and they will ask you to
admit them as a free state. Have you any law that will prevent
their coming in that character, and for that purpose? The consti
tution of the United States declares that the people may petition
congress, and they may petition for what they please. • The people
of Kansas may petition to be admitted as a free state under the
Leavenworth constitution. Have you any constitutional prohibition
to prevent me from voting in favor of their prayer? I shall vote
for their admission as a free state, in spite of a thousand such laws as
this. I tell you, moreover, that you, yourselves, or a large number
of you, will vote for it also, to prevent the question going over to
the next congress, then already elected, because that congress would
vote for it if you do not anticipate them, to save yourselves the
credit of stanching the wounds of bleeding Kansas, and establish
ing forever the cause of freedom. All this will happen unless you
send armies to suppress such proceedings in Kansas. Well, I should
like to see the bill introduced into congress now, to levy or supply
.an army to subjugate freemen and extirpate freedom in Kansas.

614 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

That game is ended. You cannot even pass a bill to maintain, or
rather to regain, your authority in Utah against polygamists, with
out infinite trouble.

You will fail in obtaining a support of this policy, in the contest
before you, because, for the first time, you will go before the people
of the United States stripped naked of every pretense of equality or
impartiality between freedom and slavery, much more of that virtue
which is the only mantle that can now cover and conceal political
faults in this country — devotion to freedom and free labor. The
honorable senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS], the honorable sena
tor from Michigan [Mr. STUART], and the honorable senator from
California [Mr. B RODERICK], with their associates in the house, and
the honorable senator from Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN], and the
honorable senator from Tennessee [Mr. BELL], have stripped you
bare of all pretenses to fairness in the exercise of maintaining your
own avowed policy of popular sovereignty. You will go before the
people no longer in the character of a party that balances equally
between freedom and slavery, but in the detested character of a party
intervening for slavery against freedom. You will meet in the elec
tions, not as heretofore, two or three factions, giving you a triumph
by their divisions, which you could not win by your own numbers,
but one party only, and that party combined, resolute and animated
by a sincere, deep and common devotion to the principles it main
tains. On the other hand, you yourselves, no longer united, will
reach the polls in jealous divisions and under different stand
ards — one faction wanting slavery absolutely and without regard to
partisan success or popular consent, the other hesitating and halting
on the position of no slavery anywhere, unless the people choose it.

Let rne try for a moment to lift this debate up from these tempo
rary, ephemeral and collateral incidents, to that height of argument
where it belongs. The sixteenth century dawned on the decay
throughout Europe and the world of a slave civilization, derived
from early antiquity, and left as a legacy by the Latin or southern
states of the continent of Europe, on the fall of the Koman empire.
But it dawned also upon the rise of a new and better civilization —
the civilization of freedom — the civilization since developed of the
German and Sclavonic races; the civilization of Germany and of
England, of Scotland, and Ireland, and Switzerland, in short, the now
well-defined civilization of western Europe.

BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. ft 15

The principle of the old Latin civilization, which was passing
away, was that labor must be involuntary, must be secured by fraud
and force, and must be converted into property, and bought and sold
as merchandise. The new civilization was based on the principle
of the freedom of labor, that it must be voluntary, and that it should
be not only a political power, but that it should even become the
ascendant and dominating political power throughout the world.
While Portugal and Spain proved themselves competent to open and
lead the great career of discovery, and the one revealed interior and
southern Africa, and the other America, to the eyes of an astonished
world, these two nations were, less than any others, qualified to inau
gurate civilization on either continent. The Portuguese, with a
cupidity and cruelty unparalleled, doomed Africa to remain perpetu
ally in the barbarism with which she had been cursed from her
earliest history, by establishing there the African slave trade, in
which ten men were sold in exchange for one horse; and the Span
iards compelled America to receive, and for a while to remain incum-
bered with the civilization of labor by African slaves, captured and
sold to them by the Portuguese. Our constitution and our Union
came into being seventy years ago, in a conjuncture when it was
necessary to decide between those two systems of civilization found
existing together within our borders. The states which have founded
or adopted the new civilization are before you. Contemplate them,
and say whether the world has ever seen communities so perfect and
so prosperous. You see, also, the states which were founded on or
have retained the old declining civilization of the Roman empire.

All our new states have to choose between the two systems. We
have a voice, at least an influence, in determining their decision.
You are bent on forcing that old and effete civilization upon new
regions where political and social evil has until now been unknown.

This question in regard to Kansas ought to have been settled fifty-
five years ago, in 1803, when Kansas was added to the national terri
tory by the treaty with France, as part of the Louisiana purchase.
It was omitted then. It recurred in 1820, and then it was well and
wisely settled, by dedicating Kansas forever to impartial freedom.
In 1854 you repealed that law, but the law you thus repealed was a
statute of the Almighty, written upon the rivers and prairies and
rocks of Kansas, as well as in the very constitution of American
society. All you have done since consists of fruitless efforts to carry

616 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

the ill-judged repeal of a benignant policy into effect, in defiance of
the laws of nature. In what you have done heretofore, you have
had what the whole world received as an excuse. It was the action
indeed of the slave states, but it was not on their own motion. The
suggestion came to them from senators from the free states, and it
was not in human nature that they should resist it.

So, in 1856, when Kansas came here as a free state under the Topeka
constitution and you rejected her, you still had the show of an
excuse, for those same representatives of the free states assured you
that the people of the free states would acquiesce. But you are now,
after having failed in these efforts to establish slavery in Kansas,
persisting in and renewing them without that excuse. Two of those
senators, one of them the leader in the repeal of the Missouri com
promise, the other hardly less effective in that transaction, now
remonstrate with you against further prosecution of your attempt,
as impossible. Still another, from Michigan, remonstrates — I mean
the late distinguished senator from Michigan, now at the head of the
department of state [General CASS]. I do not say that he remon
strates by speech, but I do say that the retirement of that eminent
man from this chamber, so suited to his talents, his genius, his tastes
and his fame, into a closet in an executive department of the govern
ment, under an appointment by the president of the United States,
is a louder remonstrance than any words he could utter, if his con
stituents had allowed him to retain his place among us, the representa
tives of the states.

Even that is not all. At last a new voice issues from your own
region, from the south, from the slave states, and protests against
your further persistence in this mad enterprise. The cohorts are
gathering in the south ; the men of conservatism, who, as they have
heretofore moderated in favor of slavery against freedom, will now
be obliged, in consistency with their just and well-established charact .
ter and their political patriotism, to moderate against you in favor of
freedom, when the people are demanding freedom, and rising up
unanimously against slavery.

This whole controversy is at last reduced and contracted into a
quarrel on your part for revenge against these wise advisers. Instead
of listening to their counsels, you will suppress their remonstrances
and punish their authors as mutineers. Well this is a matter of small
consequence to me. To myself, personally, the future of these dis-

FREEDOM IN KANSAS. 617

tinguished senators, and their associates in the house of representa
tives, is nothing, except so far as the positions which they shall
maintain shall bear on the result of the present contest to establish a
new and better policy in the country. I know not, indeed, whether
I shall be found hereafter laboring with them in efforts to promote
the public welfare, or whether they will return to your councils, and
labor in your own ranks as heretofore. Nevertheless, I am sure of
this — that you will not succeed in discrediting and proscribing them ;
for either you provide for yourselves a defeat, which the signs of the
times indicate, or, in lieu of that, you will go down to 1860 under
the influence of sentiments and feelings very different from that of
1858. A party in power in the first year of an administration, is
apt to be bold and violent. A party going out of power at the ciose
of an administration generally is tirnid and hesitating. You will
search the summits in New Hampshire, the plains in Mexico, and
the halls of St. James in London, to find a presidential candidate in
1860, who was against the conference-Lecompton-Karisas bill in 1858;
and then, if these honorable gentlemen with whom I have labored
for a short time so pleasantly, shall be found yet remaining within
your political communion, I think I can promise them that you will
come to a much better understanding with them than you have now.1
While I am yet speaking, I learn that this bill, of so much evil
omen, has passed the house of representatives. I confess to you
that it produces in my mind, if some disappointment, no discourage
ment. I confess that I am prepared for this conclusion ; and that
now, when it has come (for what remains to be done in this chamber
is a matter of course), it is to rne utterly indifferent. I have known
all the while that this was to be either our last defeat or our first
victory. Either result was sure to be quite welcome. For Kansas,
for freedom in Kansas, I have not so much concern as I have about
the place where I shall sleep to-night, although my house is hard by
the place where I stand. Kansas is the Cinderella of the American
family. She is insulted, she is buffeted, she is smitten and disgraced,
she is turned out of the dwelling, and the door is locked against her.
There is always, however, a fairy that takes care of the younger
daughter, if she be the most virtuous, the most truthful, the meek
est, and the most enduring inmate of the domestic circle. Kansas

1 These predictions were singularly verified at the Charleston and Baltimore conventions of
18150. See Memoir ante page 74.

VOL. IV. 78

618 SPEECHES IX 'THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

will live and survive your persecution. She will live to defend,
protect and sustain you. The time will come when her elder sisters — •
sisters now so arrogant, Louisiana, Virginia and Pennsylvania —
will repent themselves of all the injustice they have done to her.
Her trials have not been imposed on her for naught. She has been
made to take the hard and hazardous position of being the first of
the states to vindicate practically by labor, by toil, through desola
tion, through suffering and blood, the principle that freedom is better
for states and for the republic than slavery. She will endure the
trial nobly to the end, as she has borne it hitherto ; and as she has
been the first, so she will be the last to contend and to suffer. Every
territory that shall come into the Union hereafter, profiting by the
sufferings and atonement of Kansas, will come into the Union a free
state. This unnecessary strife, so unwisely provoked by slavery,
draws to its end. The effort to make slave states within our domain,
is against reason and against nature. The trees do not spring up
from the roots and seeds scattered by the parent trunks in the forest
more naturally than new free states spring up from the political roots
projected and the social seed scattered by the old free states. New
stars do not form themselves out of the nebulas in the recesses of
space, and come out to adorn and illuminate the blue expanse above
us more necessarily or more 'harmoniously than new free states
shape themselves out of the ever-developing elements of our benign
civilization, and rise to take their places in this great political con
stellation. Keason arid hope rejoice in this majestic and magnificent
process. Let, then, nature, reason and hope have their heaven-
appointed way. Eesist them no longer!

NOTE.— While these pages are going through the press (January, 1861), the struggle for the
admission of Kansas has ended. On the 30th day of January, the president signed the act of
admission, and Kansas became a free state. The bill was moved in the senate by Mr. Seward
on the twenty-first, and passed on the same day : ayes 36, nays 16. See Memoir ante page 117.

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.1

IN coming forward among the political astrologers, it shall be an
error of judgment, and not of disposition, if my interpretation of
the feverish dreams which are disturbing the country shall tend to
foment, rather than to allay, the national excitement. I shall say
nothing unnecessarily of persons, because, in our system, the public
welfare and happiness depend chiefly on institutions, and very little
on men. I shall allude but briefly to incidental topics, because they
are ephemeral, and because, even in the rnidst of appeals to passion
and prejudice, it is always safe to submit solid truth to the deliberate
consideration of an honest and enlightened people.

It will be an overflowing source of 'shame, as well as of sorrowr
if we, thirty millions — Europeans by extraction, Americans by
birth or discipline, and Christians in faith, and meaning to be such
in practice — cannot so combine prudence with humanity, in our con
duct concerning the one disturbing subject of slavery, as not only
to preserve our unequaled institutions of freedom, but also to enjoy
their benefits with contentment and harmony.

a guiltless slave exists, be he Caucasian, American,
Malay or Africanders trTesubiectof two distinct and opposite
ideas — one that he is wrongly, the other that he is riahtly_a__sIayLe,
The balance of numbers on either side, however great, never com
pletely extinguishes this difference of opinion, for there are always
some defenders of slavery, outside, even if there are none inside of
a free state, while also there are always outside, if there are not
inside of every slave state, many who assert with Milton, that "no
man who knows aught can be so stupid as to deny that all men natu
rally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God him
self, and were by privilege above all the creatures, born to command
and not to obey." It often, perhaps generally, happens, however,

1 Speech in the United States Senate, February 29, 1860. The bill before the Senate being " the
admission of Kansas," Mr. Seward commenced by saying: "The admission of Kansas into
the Union, without further delay, seems to me equally necessary, just and wise. In recorded
debates I have already anticipated the arguments for this conclusion."

620 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

that in considering the subject of slavery, society seems to overlook
the natural right, or personal interest of the slave himself, and to act
exclusively for the welfare of the citizen. But this fact does not
materially affect ultimate results, for the elementary question of the
rightful ness or wrongfulness of slavery inheres in every form that
discussion concerning it assumes. What is just to one class of men
can never be injurious to any other; and what is unjust to any con
dition of persons in a state, is necessarily injurious in some degree
to the whole community. An economical question early arises out
of the subject of slavery — labor either of freemen or of slaves is the
cardinal necessity of society. Some states choose the one kind, some
the other. Hence, two municipal systems widely different arise.
The slave state strikes down and affects to extinguish the person
ality of the laborer, not only as a member of the political body, but
also as a parent, husband, child, neighbor or friend. He thus
becomes, in a political view, merely property, without moral capacity,
and without domestic, moral, and social relations, duties, rights, and
remedies — a chattel, an object of bargain, sale, gift, inheritance or
theft. His earnings are compensated and his wrongs atoned, not to
himself, but to his owner. The state protects not the slave as a man,
"but the capital of another man, which he represents. On the other
hand, the state which rejects slavery encourages and animates and
invigorates the laborer by maintaining and developing his natural
personality in all the rights and faculties of manhood, and generally
with the privileges of citizenship. In the one case, capital invested
in slaves becomes a great political force ; while in the other, labor,
thus elevated and enfranchised, becomes the dominating political
power. It thus happens that we may, for convenience sake, and
not inaccurately, call slave states capital states, and free states labor
states.

So soon as a state feels the impulses of commerce, or enterprise, or
ambition, its citizens begin to study the effects of these systems of capi-
'tal and labor respectively on its intelligence, its virtue, its tranquillity,
its integrity or unity, its defense, its prosperity, its liberty, its happi
ness, its aggrandizement, and its fame. In other words, the great ques
tion arises, whether slavery is a moral, social and political good, or a
moral, social and political evil. This is the slavery question at home.
But there is a mutual bond of amity and brotherhood between man
.and man throughout the world. Nations examine freely the political

LABOR AND CAPITAL. 621

s}rstems of each other, and of all preceding times, and accordingly
as they approve or disapprove of the two systems of capital and
labor respectively they sanction and prosecute, or condemn and
prohibit, commerce in men. Thus, in one way or in another, the
slavery question, which so many among us, who are more willing to
rule than patient in studying the condition of society, think is a
merely accidental or unnecessary question that might and ought to
be settled and dismissed at once, is, on the contrary, a world-wide
and enduring subject of political consideration and civil administra
tion. Men, states and nations entertain it, not voluntarily, but be
cause the progress of society continually brings it into their way..
They divide upon it, not perversely, but because, owing to differ
ences of constitution, condition or circumstances, they cannot agree.
The fathers of the republic encountered it. They oven adjusted
it so that it might have given us much less than our present disquiet,
had not circumstances afterwards occurred which they, wise as they
were, had not clearly foreseen. Although they had inherited, yet
they generally condemned the practice of slavery, and hoped for its
discontinuance. They expressed this when they asserted in the
Declaration of Independence, as a fundamental principle of American
society, that all men are created equal, and have inalienable rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Each state, however,
reserved to itself exclusive political power over the subject of slavery
within its own borders. Nevertheless, it unavoidably presented itself
in their consultation on a bond of Federal Union. The new govern
ment was to be a representative one. Slaves were capital in some
states, in others capital had no investments in labor. Should those
slaves be represented as capital or as persons, taxed as capital or as
persons, or should they not be represented or taxed at all ? The
fathers disagreed, debated long, and compromised at last. Each state,
they determined, shall have two senators in congress. Three-fifths of
the slaves shall be elsewhere represented, and be taxed as persons.
What should be done if the slave should escape into a labor state?
Should that state confess him to be a chattel, and restore him as
such, or might it regard him as a person, and harbor and protect him
as a man ? They compromised again, and decided that no person
held to labor or service in one state by the laws thereof, escaping into
another, shall, by any law or regulation of that state, be discharged

C22 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

from such labor or service, but shall be delivered up on claim to
the person to whom such labor or service shall be due.

Free laborers would immigrate, and slaves might be imported into
the states. The fathers agreed that congress may establish uniform
laws of naturalization, and it might prohibit the importation of
persons after 1808. Communities in the southwest, detached from
the southern states, were growing up, in the practice of slavery, to
be capital states. New states would soon grow up in the northwest,
while as yet capital stood aloof, and labor had not lifted the axe to
begin there its endless but beneficent task. The fathers authorized
congress to make all needful rules and regulations concerning the
management and disposition of the public lands, and to admit new
states. So the constitution, while it does not disturb or affect the
system of capital in slaves, existing in any state under its own laws,
does, at the same time, recognize every human being when within any
exclusive sphere of federal jurisdiction, not as capital but as a person.

What was the action of the fathers in congress? They admitted
the new states of the southwest as capital states, because it was
practically impossible to do otherwise, and by the ordinance of
1787, confirmed in 1789, they provided for the organization and
admission of only labor states in the northwest. They directed
fugitives from service to be restored not as chattels, but as persons.
They awarded naturalization to immigrant free laborers, and they
prohibited the trade in African labor. This disposition of the whole
subject was in harmony with the conditions of society, and, in the
main, with the spirit of the age. The seven northern states content
edly became labor states by their own acts. The six southern states,
with equal tranquillity, and by their own determination, remained
capital states.

The circumstances which the fathers did not clearly foresee were
two, namely, the rei'nvigoration of slavery, consequent on the
increased consumption of cotton, and the extension of the national
domain across the Mississippi, and these occurred before 1820. The
state of Louisiana, formed on a slaveholding French settlement,
within the newly acquired Louisianian territory, had then already
been admitted into the Union. There yet remained, however, a vast
region, which included Arkansas and Missouri, together with the
then unoccupied, and even unnamed, Kansas and Nebraska.
Arkansas, a slaveholding community, was nearly ready to apply,

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 623

and Missouri, another such territory, was actually applying for
admission into the Federal Union. The existing capital states
seconded these applications, and claimed that the whole Louisianian
territory was rightfully open to slavery, and to the organization of
future slave states. The labor states maintained that congress had
supreme legislative power within the domain, and could and ought
to exclude slavery there. The question thus opened was one which
related not at all to slavery in the existing capital states. It was
purely and simply a national question whether the common interest
of the whole republic required that Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas,
and Nebraska, should become capital states, with all the evils and
dangers of slavery, or be labor states, with all the securities, benefits,
and blessings of freedom. On the decision was suspended the ques
tion, as was thought, whether ultimately the interior of this new
continent should be an asylum for the oppressed and the exile,
coming year after year, and age after age, voluntarily from every
other civilized land, as well as for the children of misfortune in our
own, or whether, through the renewal of the African slave trade,
those magnificent and luxuriant regions should be surrendered to
the control of capital, wringing out the fruits of the earth through
the impoverishing toil of negro slaves. That question of 1820 was
identically the question of 1860, so far as principle, and even the
field of its application, was concerned. Every element of the con
troversy now present entered it then ; the right-fulness or the wrong-
fulness of slavery ; its effects, present and future ; the constitutional
authority of congress ; the claims of the states and of their citizens;
the nature of the Federal Union, whether it is a compact between
the states, or an independent government ; the springs of its powers,
and the ligatures upon their exercise. All these were discussed
with zeal and ability which have never been surpassed. History
tells us, I know not how truly, that the Union reeled under the
vehemence of that great debate. Patriotism took counsel from pru
dence, and enforced a settlement which has proved to be not a final
one ; and which, as is now seen, practically left open all the great
political issues which were involved. Missouri and Arkansas were
admitted as capital states, while labor obtained, as a reservation, the
abridged, but yet comprehensive field of Kansas and Nebraska.

Now, when the present conditions of the various parts of the
Louisianian territory are observed, and we see that capital retains

624: SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

undisputed possession of what it then obtained, while labor is con
vulsing the country with so hard and so prolonged a struggle to-
regain the lost equivalent, which was then guaranteed to it under
circumstances of so great solemnity, we may well desire not to be
undeceived if the Missouri compromise was indeed unnecessarily
accepted by the free states, influenced by exaggerations of the
dangers of disunion. The Missouri debate disclosed truths of great
moment for ulterior use :

1st. That it is easy to combine the capital states in defense of
even external interests, while it is hard to unite the labor states in a
common policy.

2d. That the labor states have a natural loyalty to the Unionr
while the capital states have a natural facility for alarming that loy
alty by threatening disunion.

3d. That the capital states do not practically distinguish between
legitimate and constitutional resistance to the extension of slavery in
the common territories of the Union, and unconstitutional aggression
against slavery established by local laws in the capital states.

The early political parties were organized without reference to
slavery. But since 1820, European questions have left us practi
cally unconcerned. There has been a great increase of invention,
mining, manufacture and cultivation. Steam on land and on water
has quickened commerce. The press and the telegraph have attained
prodigious activity, and the social intercourse between the states and
their citizens has been immeasurably augmented ; and consequently
their mutual relations affecting slavery have been, for many years,
subjects of earnest and often excited discussion. It is in my way
only to show how such disputes have operated on the course of
political events, not to reopen them for argument here. There was
a slave insurrection in Virginia. Virginia and Kentucky debated,
and, to the great sorrow of the free states, rejected the system of
voluntary labor. The colonization society was established with
much favor in the capital states. Emancipation societies arose in
the free states. South Carolina instituted proceedings to nullify
obnoxious federal revenue laws. The capital states complained of
courts and legislatures in the labor states, for interpreting the con
stitutional provision for the surrender of fugitives from service, so as
to treat them as persons, and not property, and they discriminated
against colored persons of the labor states, when they came to the

THE CALIFORNIA COMPROMISE. 625

capital states. They denied in congress the right of petition, and
embarrassed or denied freedom of debate on the subject of slavery.
Presses, which undertook the defense of the labor system in the
capital states, were suppressed by violence, and even in the labor
states public assemblages, convened to consider slavery qnstionsr
were dispersed by mobs sympathizing with the capital states.

The whig party, being generally an opposition party, practised
some forbearance toward the interest of labor. The democratic
party, not without demonstrations of dissent, was generally found
sustaining the policy of capital. A disposition towards the removal
of slavery from the presence of the national capital appeared in the
District of Columbia. Mr. Van Buren, a democratic president,
launched a prospective veto against the anticipated measure. A
democratic congress brought Texas into the Union, stipulating prac
tically for its future reorganization in four slave states. Mexico was
incensed. War ensued. The labor states asked that the Mexican
law of liberty, which covered the territories brought in by the treaty
of peace, might remain and be confirmed. The democratic party
refused. The Missouri debate of 1820 recurred now, under circum
stances of heat and excitement, in relation to these conquests. Thq
defenders of labor took alarm lest the number of new capital states
might become so great as to enable that class of states to dictate the
whole policy of the government; and in case of constitutional resist
ance, then to form a new slaveholding confederacy around the gulf
of Mexico. By this time the capital states seemed to have become
fixed in a determination that the federal government, and even the
labor states, should recognize their slaves, though outside of the
slave states, and within the territories of the United States, as pro
perty of which the master could not be in any way, or by any autho
rity, divested ; and the labor states having become now more essen
tially democratic than ever before, by reason of the great development
of free labor, more firmly than ever insisted on the constitutional
doctrine, that slaves voluntarily carried by their masters into the
common territories or into labor states, are persons — men.

Under the auspicious influence of a whig success, California and
New Mexico appeared before congress as labor states. The capital
states refused to consent to their admission into the Union; and
again threats of disunion carried terror and consternation through
out the land. Another compromise was made. Specific enactments

VOL. IV. V9

626 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

admitted California as a labor state, and remanded New Mexico and
Utah to remain territories, with the right to choose freedom or
slavery when ripened into states, while they gave new remedies
for the recaption of fugitives from service, and abolished the open
slave market in the District of Columbia. These new enactments,
collated with the existing statutes, namely, the ordinance of 1787, the
Missouri prohibitory law of 1820, and the articles of Texas annexa
tion, disposed by law of the subject of slavery in all the territories
of the United States. And so the compromise of 1850 was pro
nounced a full, final, absolute and comprehensive settlement of all
existing and all possible disputes concerning slavery under the fede
ral authority. The two great parties, fearful for the Union, struck
hands in making and in presenting this as an adjustment, never
afterwards to be opened, disturbed or even questioned, and the peo
ple accepted it by majorities unknown before. The new president,
chosen over an illustrious rival, unequivocally on the ground of
greater ability, even if not more reliable purpose, to maintain the
new treaty inviolate, made haste to justify this expectation when
congress assembled. He said :

;' When the grave shall have closed over all who are now endeavoring to meet
the obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be recurred to as a period filled with
anxiety and apprehension. A successful war has just terminated ; peace brought
•with it a great augmentation of territory. Disturbing questions arose bearing
upon the domestic institutions of a portion of the confederacy, and involving the
constitutional rights ot the states. But, notwithstanding differences of opinion
and sentiment, in relation to details and specific provisions, the acquiescence of
distinguished citizens, whose devotion to the Union can never be doubted, has
given renewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of security and
repose to the public mind throughout the confederacy. That this repose is to
suffer no shock during my official term, if I have the power to avert it, those who
placed me here may be assured."

Hardly, however, had these inspiring sounds died away, through
out a reassured and delighted land, before the national repose was
shocked again — shocked, indeed, as it had never before been, and
smitten this time by a blow from the very hand that had just re
leased the chords of the national harp from their utterance of that
exalted symphony of peace.

Kansas and Nebraska, the long-devoted reservation of labor and
freedom, saved in the agony of national fear in 1820, and saved
again in the panic of 1850, were now to be opened by congress, that

THE NEBRASKA MEASURE. 627

the never-ending course of seed- time and harvest might begin. The
slave capitalists of Missouri, from their own well-assured homes on
the eastern banks of their noble river, looked down upon and cov
eted the fertile prairies of Kansas ; while a sudden terror ran through
all the capital states, when they saw a seeming certainty that at last
a new labor state would be built on their western border, inevitably
fraught, as they said, with a near or remote abolition of slavery.
What could be done ? Congress could hardly be expected to inter
vene directly for their safety so soon after the compromise of 1850.
The labor hive of the free states was distant — the wa}7 new, unknown
and not without perils. Missouri was near and watchful, and held
the keys of the gates of Kansas. She might seize the new and
smiling territory by surprbe, if only congress would remove the
barrier established in 1820. The conjuncture was favorable. Clay
and Webster, the distinguished citizens whose unquestionable devo
tion to the Union was manifested by their acquiescence in the com
promise of 1850, had gone down already into their honored graves.
The labor states had dismissed many of their representatives here
for too great fidelity to freedom, and too great distrust of the efficacy
of that new bond of peace, and had replaced them with partisans
who were only timid, but not unwilling. The democratic president
and congress hesitated, but not long. They revised the last great
compromise, and found, with delighted surprise, that it was so. far
from confirming the law of freedom of 1820, that, on the other hand,
it exactly provided for the abrogation of that venerated statute ; nay,
that the compromise itself actually killed the spirit of the Missouri
law, and devolved on congress the duty of removing the lifeless
letter from the national code. The deed was done. The new enact
ment not only repealed the Missouri prohibition of slavery, but it
pronounced the people of Kansas and Nebraska perfectly free to
establish freedom or slavery, and pledged congress to admit them in
due time as states, either of capital or of labor, into the Union.
The whig representatives of the capital states, in an hour of strange
bewilderment, concurred ; and the whig party instantly went down,
never to rise again. Democrats seceded, and stood aloof; the coun
try was confounded; and, amid the perplexities of the hour, a
republican party was seen gathering itself together with much earn
estness, but with little show of organization, to rescue, if it were not

628 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

now too late, the cause of freedom and labor, so unexpectedly an'd
grievously imperiled in the territories of the United States.

I will not linger over the sequel. The popular sovereignty of
Kansas proved to be the state sovereignty of Missouri, not only in
the persons of the rulers, but even in the letter of an arbitrary and
cruel code. The perfect freedom proved to be a hateful and intoler
able bondage. From 1855 to 1860, Kansas, sustained and encou
raged only by the republican party, has been engaged in successive
and ever- varying struggles, which have taxed all her virtue, wisdornr
moderation, energies, and resources, and often even her physical
strength and martial courage, to save herself from being betrayed
into the Union as a slave state. Nebraska, though choosing free
dom, is, through the direct exercise of the executive power, over
riding her own will, held as a slave territory ; and New Mexico
has relapsed voluntarily into the practice of slavery, from which she
had redeemed herself while she yet remained a part of the Mexican
republic. Meantime the democratic party, advancing from the
ground of popular sovereignty as far as that ground is from the
ordinance of 1787, now stands on the position that both territorial
governments and congress are incompetent to legislate against slavery
in the territories, while they are not only competent, but are obliged,,
when it is necessary, to legislate for its protection there.

In this new and extreme position the democratic party now masks
itself behind the battery of the supreme court, as if it were possibly
a true construction of the constitution, that the power of deciding
practically forever between freedom and slavery in a portion of the
continent far exceeding all that is yet organized, should be renounced
by congress, which alone possesses any legislative authority, and
should be assumed and exercised by a court which can only take cog
nizance of the great question collaterally, in a private action between
individuals, and which action the constitution will not suffer the court
to entertain, if it involves twenty dollars of money, without the
overruling intervention of a jury of twelve good and lawful men of
the neighborhood where the litigation arises. The independent, ever-
renewed, and ever-recurring representative parliament, diet, congress,
or legislature, is the one chief, paramount, essential, indispensable
institution in a republic. Even liberty, guaranteed by organic law,
yet if it be held by other tenure than the guardian care of such a
representative popular assembly, is but precariously maintained,

THE DECADENCE OF LIBERTY 629

•while slavery, enforced by an irresponsible judicial tribunal, is the
completest possible development of despotism.

Did ever the annals of any government show a more rapid or
more complete departure from the wisdom and virtue of its founders?
Did ever the government of a great empire, founded on the rights
of human labor, slide away so fast and so far, and moor itself so
tenaciously on the basis of capital, and that capital invested in labor
ing men ? Did ever a free representative legislature, invested with
powers so great, and with the guardianship of rights so important,
of trusts so sacred, of interests so precious, and of hopes at once so
noble and so comprehensive, surrender and renounce them all so
unnecessarily, so unwisely, so fatally, and so ingloriously ? If it be
true, as every instinct of our nature, and every precept of political
experience teaches us, that

"111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay ;"

then where in Ireland, in Italy, in Poland, or in Hungary, has any
ruler prepared for a generous and confiding people disappointments,
<lisasters, and calamities equal to those which the government of the
United States holds now suspended over so large a portion of the
continent of North America ?

Citizens of the United States, in the spirit of this policy, sub
verted the free republic of Nicaragua, and opened it to slavery and
the African slave trade, and held it in that condition waiting annex
ation to the United States, until its sovereignty was restored by a
combination of sister republics exposed to the same danger, and
.apprehensive of similar subversion. Other citizens reopened the
foreign slave trade in violation of our laws and treaties; and, after
a suspension of that shameful traffic for fifty years, savage Africans
have been once more landed on our shores and distributed, unre
claimed and with impunity, among our plantations.

For this policy, so far as the government has sanctioned it, the
democratic party avows itself responsible. Everywhere complaint
against it is denounced, and its opponents proscribed. When Kan
sas was writhing under the wounds of incipient, servile war, because
of her resistance, the democratic press deridingly said, " Let her
bleed." Official integrity has been cause for rebuke and punish
ment, when it resisted frauds designed to promote the extension of
slavery. Throughout the whole republic there is not one known

630 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

dissenter from that policy remaining in place, if within reach of the
executive arm. Nor over the face of the whole world is there to be
found one representative of our country who is not an apologist for
the extension of slavery.

It is in America that these things have happened. In the nine
teenth century, the era of the world's greatest progress, and while
all nations but ourselves have been either abridging or altogether
suppressing commerce in men ; at the very moment when the Rus
sian serf is emancipated, and the Georgian captive, the Nubian priso
ner, and the Abyssinian savage are lifted up to freedom by the
successor of Mohammed. The world, prepossessed in our behalf by
our early devotion to the rights of human nature, as no nation ever
before engaged its respect and sympathies, asks, in wonder and
amazement, what all this demoralization means ? It has' an excuse
better than the world can imagine, better than we are generally con
scious of ourselves — a virtuous excuse. We have loved not free
dom so much less, but the Union of our country so much more.
We have been made to believe, from time to time, that in a crisis
both of these precious institutions could not be saved together, and
therefore we have, from time to time, surrendered safeguards of
freedom to propitiate the loyalty of capital, and stay its hands from
doing violence to the Union. The true state of the case, however,
ought not to be a mystery to ourselves. Prescience, indeed, is not
given to statesmen ; but we are without excuse when we fail to
apprehend the logic of current events. Let parties or the govern
ment choose or do what they may, the people of the United States
do not prefer the wealth of the few to the liberty of the many, capi
tal to labor, African slaves to white freemen, in the national territo
ries and in future states. That question has never been distinctly
recognized or acted on by them. The republican party embodies the
popular protest and reaction against a policy which has been fastened
upon the nation by surprise, and which its reason and conscience,
concurring with the reason and conscience of mankind, condemn.

The choice of the nation is now between the democratic party and
the republican party. Its principles and policy are, therefore, justly
and even necessarily examined. I know of only one policy which
it has adopted or avowed, namely, the saving of the territories of the
United States, if possible, by constitutional and lawful means, from
being homes for slavery and polygamy. Who, that considers where

... THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 631

this nation exists, of what races it is composed, in what age of the
world it acts its part on the public stage, and what are its predomi
nant institutions, customs, habits and sentiments, doubts that the
republican party can and will, if unwaveringly faithful to that policy,
and just and loyal in all beside, carry it into triumphal success? To
doubt is to be uncertain whether civilization can improve or Christi
anity save mankind.

I may, perhaps, infer from the necessity of the case, that it will, in
all courts and places, stand by the freedom of speech and of the
press, and will maintain the constitutional rights of freemen every
where ; that it will favor the speedy improvement of the public
domain by homestead laws, and will encourage mining, manufacture
and internal commerce, with needful connections between the Atlan
tic and Pacific states — for all these are important interests of freedom.
For all the rest, the national emergencies, not individual influences,
must determine, as society goes on, the policy and character of the
republican party. Already bearing its part in legislation and in
treaties, it feels the necessity of being practical in its care of the
national health and life, while it leaves metaphysical speculation to
those whose duty it is to cultivate the ennobling science of political
philosophy.

But in the midst of these subjects, or rather before fully reaching
them, the republican party encounters, unexpectedly, a new and
potential issue — one prior, and therefore paramount to all others, one
of national life and death. Just as if so much had not been already
conceded — nay, just as if nothing at all had ever been conceded to
the interest of capital invested in men, we hear menaces of disunion,
louder, more distinct, more emphatic, than ever, with the condition
annexed, that the}' shall be executed the moment that a republican,
administration, though constitutionally elected, shall assume the
government.

I do not certainly know that the people are prepared to call such
an administration to power. I know only, that through a succession
of floods which never greatly excite, and ebbs which never entirely
discourage me, the volume of republicanism rises continually higher
and higher. They are probably wise, whose apprehensions admon
ish them that it is already strong enough for effect.

Hitherto the republican party has been content with one self-
interrogatory — how many votes can it cast? These threats enforce

632 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

another — has it determination enough to cast them? This latter
question touches its spirit and pride. I am quite sure, however, that,
as it has hitherto practised self-denial in so many other forms, it will
in this emergency lay aside all impatience of temper, together with
all ambition, and will consider these extraordinary declamations seri
ously and with a just moderation. It would be a waste of words to
demonstrate that they are unconstitutional, and equally idle to show
that the responsibility for disunion attempted or effected, must rest,
not with those who, in the exercise of constitutional authority, main
tain the government, but with those who unconstitutionally engage
in the mad work of subverting it.

What are the excuses for these menaces? They resolve them
selves into this, that the republican party in the north is hostile to
the south. But it already is proved to be a majority in the north ;
it is therefore practically the people of the north. Will it not still
be the same north that has forborne with you so long and conceded
to you so much ? Can you justly assume that affection which has
been so complying, can all at once change to hatred intense and
inexorable?

You say that the republican party is a sectional one. Is the
democratic party less sectional? Is it easier for -us to bear your
sectional sway than for you to bear ours? Is it unreasonable that
for once we should alternate ? But is the republican party sectional ?
Not unless the democratic party is. The republican party prevails
in the house of representatives sometimes ; the democratic party in
the senate always. Which of the two is the most proscriptive?
Corne, come, come, if you will, into the free states, into the state of
New York, anywhere from lake Erie to Sag Harbor, among my
neighbors in the Owasco valley, hold your conventions, nominate
your candidates, address the people, submit to them fully, earnestly,
eloquently, all your complaints and grievances of northern disloy
alty, oppression, perfidy; keep nothing back, speak just as freely
and loudly there as you do here ; you will have hospitable welcomes,
and appreciating audiences, with ballot-boxes open for all the votes
you can win. Are you less sectional than this? Extend to us the
same privileges, and I will engage that you will very soon have in
the south as many republicans as we have democrats in the north.
There is, however, a better test of nationality than the accidental
location of parties. Our policy of labor in the territories was not

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 633

sectional in the first forty years of the republic. Its nature inheres.
It will be national again, during the third forty years, and forever
afterwards. It is not wise and beneficent for us alone or injurious
to you alone. Its effects are equal, and the same for us all.

You accuse the republican party of ulterior and secret designs.
How can a party that counts its votes in this land of free speech and
free press by the hundreds of thousands, have any secret designs?
Who is the conjurer, and where are the hidden springs by which he
can control its uncongregated and widely-dispersed masses, and
direct them to objects unseen and purposes unavowed? But what
are these hidden puiposes? You name only one. That one is to
introduce negro equality among you. Suppose we had the power
to change your social system : what warrant have you for supposing
that we should carry negro equality there? We know, and we will
show you, if you will only give heed, that what our system of labor
works out, wherever it works out anything, is the equality of white
men. The laborer in the free states, no matter how humble his
occupation, is a white man, and he is politically the equal of his
employer. Eighteen of our thirty-three states are free-labor states.
They are : Maine, New Hampshire. Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California,
and Oregon. I do not array them in contrast with the capital states.
I am no assailant of states. All of the states are parcels of my own
country — the best of them not so wise and great as I am sure it will
hereafter be; the state least developed and perfected among them all
is wiser and better than any foreign state I know. Is it then in any,
and in which, of the states I have named that negro equality offends
the white man's pride? Throughout the wide world, where is the
state where class and caste are so utterly extinguished as they are in
each and every one of them? Let the European immigrant, who
avoids the African as if his skin exhaled contagion, answer. You
find him always in the state where labor is ever free. Did Wash
ington, Jefferson, and Henry, when they implored you to relinquish
your system and accept the one we have adopted, propose to sink
you down to the level of the African, or was it their desire to exalt
all white men to a common political elevation?

But we do not seek to force, or even to intrude, our system on you.
We are excluded justly, wisely and contentedly from all political

VOL. IV. 80

634 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

power and responsibility in your capital states. You are sovereign
on the subject of slavery within your own borders, as we are on the
same subject within our borders. It is well and wisely so arranged.
Use your authority to maintain what system you please. We are
not distrustful of the result. We have wisely, as we think, exercised
ours to protect and perfect the manhood of the members of the state.
The whole sovereignty upon domestic concerns within the Union, is
•divided between us by unmistakable boundaries. You have your
fifteen distinct parts ; we eighteen parts, equally distinct. Each
must be maintained in order that the whole may be preserved. If
ours shall be assailed, within or without, by any enemy, or for any
cause, and we shall have need, we shall expect you to defend.it. If
yours shall be so assailed, in the emergenc3r, no matter what the cause
or the pretext, or who the foe, we shall defend your sovereignty as
the equivalent of our own. We cannot, indeed, accept your system
of capital or its ethics. That would be to surrender and subvert our
own, which we esteem to be better. Besides, if we could, what need
for any division into states at all? You are equally at liberty to
reject our system and its ethics, and to maintain the superiority of
your own by all the forces of persuasion and argument. We must,
indeed, mutually discuss both systems. All the world discusses all
systems. Especially must we discuss them since we have to decide
as a nation which of the two we ought to engraft on the new and
future states growing up in the great public domain. Discussion,
then, being unavoidable, what could be more wise than to conduct
it with mutual toleration and in a fraternal spirit?

You complain that republicans discourse too boldly and directly,
when they express with confidence their belief that the system of
labor will, in the end, be universally accepted by the capital states,
acting for themselves and in conformity with their own constitutions,
while they sanction too unreservedly books designed to advocate
emancipation. But surely you can hardly expect the federal govern
ment or the political parties of the nation to maintain a censorship
of the press or of debate. Would you yourselves consent to the
establishment of such a censorship as a permanent institution ? The
theory of our system is, that error of opinion may in all cases safely
be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Will it be claimed
that more of moderation and tenderness in debate are exhibited on
your side of the great argument than on our own? We all learned

JEFFERSON ON EMANCIPATION. 635

our polemics, as well as our principles, from a common master. We
are sure that we do not, on our side, exceed his lessons and example.
Thomas Jefferson addressed Dr. Price, an Englishman, concerning
his treatise on emancipation in America, in this fashion :

" Southward of the Chesapeake your book will find but few readers concurring
with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of
the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a
respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice — a minority which, for weight
and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number who have not
the courage to divest their families of a property which, however, keeps their
consciences unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake you may find here and there
an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here and there a robber or a mur
derer ; but in no greater number." * * * * " This (Virginia) is the next
state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in con
flict with avarice and oppression — a conflict where the sacred side is gaining daily
new recruits from the influx into office of young men, grown and growing np.'r
******* " Be not, then, discouraged. What you have written will
do a great deal of good ; and could you still trouble yourself about our welfare, no-
man is more able to help the laboring side."

You see that whether we go for or against slavery anywhere, we
must follow southern guides. You may change your pilots with the
winds or the currents, but we, whose nativity, reckoned under the
north star, has rendered us somewhat superstitious, must be excused
for constancy in following the guidance of those who framed the
national ship and gave us the chart for its noble voyage.

A profound respect and a friendly regard for the vice-president of
the United States, has induced me to weigh carefully the testimony
he has given on the subject of the hostility against the south, imputed
to the republican party, as derived from the relations of the repre
sentatives of the two parties at this capital. He says that he has seen
here in the representatives of the lower southern states a most reso
lute and earnest spirit of resistance to the republican party; that he
perceives a sensible loss of that spirit of brotherhood and that feel
ing of loyalty, together with that love for a common country, which
are at last the surest cement of the Union ; so that, in the present
unhappy condition of affairs, he is almost tempted to exclaim that
we are dissolving week by week and month by month ; that the
threads are gradually fretting themselves asunder; and a stranger
might suppose that the executive of the United States was the pre
sident of two hostile republics. It is not for me to raise a doubt

636 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

upon the correctness of this dark picture, so fur as the southern
groups upon the canvas are concerned, but I must be indulged in
the opinion that I can pronounce as accurately concerning the north
ern or republican representatives here as any one. I know their
public haunts and their private ways. We are not a hostile republic
or representatives of one. We confer together, but only as the
organs of every party do and must do in a political system which
obliges us to act sometimes as partisans, while it requires us always
to be patriots and statesmen. Differences of opinion, even on the
subject of slavery, with us are political, not social or personal, dif
ferences. There is not one disunionist or disloyalist among us all.
We are altogether unconscious of any process of dissolution going
•on among us or around us. We have never been more patient, and
never loved the representatives of other sections more than now.
WTe bear the same testimony for the people around us here, who,
though in the very centre where the bolt of disunion must fall first
and with most fearful effect, seem less disturbed now than ever
before. We bear the same testimony for all the districts and states
we represent. The people of the north are not enemies, but friends
and brethren of the south, faithful and true as in the days when
death has dealt his arrows promiscuously among them on common
bat'le-fields of freedom.

We will not suffer ourselves here to dwell on any evidence of a
different temper in the south ; but we shall be content with express
ing our belief that hostility that is not designedly provoked, and that
cannot provoke retaliation, is an anomaly that must be traced to
casual excitements, which cannot perpetuate alienation.

A canvass for a presidential election, in some respects more impor
tant perhaps than any since 1800, has recently begun. The house
of representatives was to be organized by a majority, while no party
could cast more than a plurality of votes. The gloom of the late
tnigedj in Virginia rested on the capitol from the day when congress
assembled. While the two great political parties were peacefully,
I aw fully 'and constitutionally, though zealously, conducting the great
national issue between free labor and capital labor for the territories
to its proper solution, through the trials of the ballot, operating
directly or indirectly on the various departments of the government,
a band of exceptional men, contemptuous equally of that great
question and of the parties to the controversy, and impatient of the

THE JOHN BROWN INVASION. 637

constitutional system which confines the citizens of every state to-
political action by suffrage, in organized parties within their own
borders, inspired by an enthusiasm peculiar to themselves, and exas
perated by grievances and wrongs that some of them had suffered by
inroads of armed propagandists of slavery in Kansas, unlawful as
their own retaliation was, attempted to subvert slavery in Virginia
by conspiracy, ambush, invasion and force. The method jve have
adopted, of appealing to the reason and judgment of the people^
to be pronounced by suffrage, is the only one by which free govern
ment can be maintained anywhere, and the only one as yet devised
which is in marked harmony with the spirit of the Christian religion.
While generous and charitable natures will probably concede that
John Brown and his associates acted on earnest though fatally erro
neous convictions, yet all good citizens will nevertheless agree that
this attempt to execute an unlawful purpose in Virginia by invasion,
involving servile war, was an act of sedition and treason, and crimi
nal in just the extent that it affected the public peace and was-^'
destructive of human happiness and human life. / It is a painful
reflection that, after so long an experience of the beneficent working
of our system as we have enjoyed, we have had these new illustra
tions in Kansas and Virginia of the existence among us of a class of
men so misguided and so desperate as to seek to enforce their peculiar
principles by the sword, drawing after it a need for the further illus
tration by their punishment of that great moral truth, especially
applicable in a republic, that they who take up the sword as a wea
pon of controversy, shall perish by the sword. In the latter case,
the lamented deaths of so many citizens, slain from an ambush and
by surprise — all the more lamentable because they were innocent
victims of a frenzy kindled without their agency, in far distant fires —
the deaths even of the offenders themselves, pitiable, although neces
sary and just, because they acted under delirium, which blinded their
judgments to the real nature of their criminal enterprise; the alarm
and consternation naturally awakened throughout .the country,
exciting, for the moment, the fear that our whole system, with all its-
securities for life and liberty, was coming to an end — a fear none the
more endurable because continually aggravated by new chimeras to
which the great leading event lent an air of probability ; surely all
these constituted a sum of public misery, which ought to have satis
fied the most morbid appetite for social horrors. But, as in the case

€38 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

of the gunpowder plot, and the Salem witchcraft, and the New York
colonial negro plot, so now ; the original actors were swiftly followed
by another and kindred class, who sought to prolong and widen the
public distress by attempting to direct the indignation which it had
excited, against parties guiltless equally of complicity and of sympa
thy with the offenders.

Posterity will decide in all the recent cases where political respon
sibility for public disasters must fall ; and posterity will give little
Leed to our interested instructions. It was not until the gloomy
reign of Domitian had ended, and liberty and virtue had found
assured refuge under the sway of the milder Nerva, that the histo
rian arose whose narrative of that period of tyranny and terror has
been accepted by mankind.

The republican party being thus vindicated against the charge of
hostility to the south which has been offered in excuse for the
menaces of unconstitutional resistance in the event of its success, I
feel well assured that it will sustain me in meeting them in the
spirit of the defender of the English commonwealth :

. " Surely they that shall boast as we do to be a free nation, and having the
power, shall not also have the courage to remove, constitutionally, every gov
ernor, whether he be the supreme or subordinate, may please their fancy with a
ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to cozen babies, but are, indeed, under tyranny
and servitude, as wanting that power, which is the root and source of all liberty,
to dispose of and economize in the land which God hath given them, of members
of family in their own home and free inheritance. Without which natural and
essential power of a free nation, though bearing their heads, they can, in due
esteem, be thought no better than slaves and vassals born in the tenure and occu
pation of another inheriting lord, whose government, though not illegal or intol
erable, hangs on them as a lordly scourge, not as a free government."

The republican party knows, as the whole country will ultimately
come to understand, that the noblest objects of national life must
perish, if that life itself shall be lost, and, therefore, it will accept
the issue tendered. It will take up the word Union, which others
are so willing to renounce, and, combining it with that other glori
ous thought, Liberty, which has been its inspiration so long, it will
move firmly onward, with the motto inscribed on its banner,
" UNION and LIBERTY, come what may, in victory as in defeat, in
power as out of power, now and forever."

If the republican party maintain the Union, who and what party
is to assail it? Only the democratic party, for there is no other.

LOYALTY TO THE UNION. 639

"Will the democratic party take up the assault ? The menaces of
disunion are made, though not in its name, jet in its behalf. It
must avow or disavow them. Its silence, thus far, is portentous,
but is not alarming. The effect of the intimidation, if successful,
would be to continue the rule of the democratic party, though a
minority, by terror. It certainly ought to need no more than this
to secure the success of the republican party. If, indeed, the time
has come when the democratic party must rule by terror, instead of
ruling through conceded public confidence, then it is quite certain
that it cannot be dismissed from power too soon. Ruling on that
odious principle, it could not long save either the constitution or
public liberty. But I shall not believe the democratic party will
consent to stand in this position, though it does, through the action,
of its representatives, seem to cover and sustain those who threaten
disunion. I know the democracy of the north. I know them now
in their waning strength. I do not know a possible disunionist
among them all. I believe they will be as faithful to the Union
now as they were in the bygone days when their ranks were full,
and their challenge to the combat was always the war-cry of victory.
But, if it shall prove otherwise, then the world will all the sooner
know that every party in this country must stand on Union ground;
that the American people will sustain no party that is not capable
of making a sacrifice of its ambition on the altar of the country ;
that although a party may have never so much of prestige, and
never such traditional merit, yet, if it be lacking in the one virtue
of loyalty to the Union, all its advantages will be unavailing; and
then obnoxious as, through long-cherished and obstinate prejudices,
the republican party is in the capital states, yet even there it will
advance like an army with banners, winning the favor of the whole
people, and it will be armed with the national confidence and sup
port, when it shall be found the only party that defends and main
tains the integrity of the Union.

Those who seek to awaken the terrors of disunion seem to me to
have too hastily considered the conditions under which they are to
make their attempt. Who believes that a republican administration
and congress could practise tyranny under a constitution which
interposes so many checks as ours ? Yet that tyranny must not only
be practised, but must be intolerable, and there must be no remain-

640 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

ing hope for constitutional relief, before forcible resistance can find
ground to stand on anywhere.

The people of the United States, acting in conformity with the
constitution, are the supreme tribunal to try and determine all poli
tical issues. They are as competent to decide the issues of to-day as
they have been heretofore to decide the issues of other days. They
can reconsider hereafter, and reverse, if need be, the judgment they
shall pronounce to-day, as they have more than once reconsidered
and reversed their judgments in former times. It needs no revolu
tion to correct any error, or prevent any danger, under any circum
stances.

Nor is any new or special cause for revolution likely to occur
under a republican administration. We are engaged in no new
transaction, not even in a new dispute. Our fathers undertook a
great work for themselves, for us, and for our successors — to erect
a free and federal empire, whose arches shall span the North
American continent, and reflect the rays of the sun throughout his
whole passage from the one to the other of the great oceans. They
erected thirteen of its columns all at once. These are standing n.ow,,
the admiration of mankind. Their successors added twenty more ;
even we who are here have shaped and elevated three of those
twenty, and all these are as firm and steadfast as the first thirteen ;
and more will yet be necessary when we shall have rested from our
labors. Some among us prefer for these columns a composite mate
rial ;- others the pure white marble. Our fathers and our predecessors
differed in the same way, and on the same point. What execrations
should we not all unite in pronouncing on any statesman who here
tofore, from mere disappointment and disgust at being overruled in
his choice of materials for any new column then to be quarried,
should have laid violent hands on the imperfect structure, and
brought it down to the earth, there to remain a wreck, instead of a
citadel of a world's best hopes !

I remain now in the opinion I have uniformly expressed here and
elsewhere, that these hasty threats of disunion are so unnatural that
they will find no hand to execute them. We are of one race, lan
guage, liberty and faith, engaged, indeed, in varied industry ; but
even that industry, so diversified, brings us into more intimate rela
tions with each other than any other people, however homogeneous,
and though living under a consolidated government, ever maintained.

LOYALTY TO THE UNION. 641

We languish throughout, if one joint of our federal frame is smitten *
while it is certain that a part dissevered must perish. You may
refine as you please about the structure of the government, and say
that it is a compact, and that a breach, by one of the states or by
congress, of any one article, absolves all the members from allegi
ance, and that the states may separate when they have, or fancy
they have, cause for war. But once try to subvert it, and you will
find that it is a government of the whole people — as individuals, as
well as a compact of states ; that every individual member of the
body politic is conscious of his interest and power in it, and knows
that he will be helpless, powerless, hopeless, when it shall have gone
down. Mankind have a natural right, a natural instinct, and a natu
ral capacity for self-government; and when, as here, they are suf
ficiently ripened by culture, they will and must have self-government,
and no other. The framers of our constitution, with a wisdom that
surpassed all previous understanding among men, adapted it to these
inherent elements of human nature. He strangely, blindly, misun
derstands the anatomy of the great system who thinks that its only
bonds, or even its strongest ligaments, are the written compact or
even the multiplied and thoroughly ramified roads and thoroughfares,
of trade, commerce and social intercourse. These are strong indeed -
but its chiefest instruments of cohesion — those which render it in
separable and indivisible — are the millions of fibres of millions of
contented, happy human hearts, binding by their affections, their
ambitions and their best hopes, equally the high and the low, the
rich and the poor, the wise and the unwise, the learned and the untu
tored, even the good and the bad, to a government, the first, the last,
and the only such one that has ever existed, which takes equal heed
always of their wants, their wishes and their opinions; and appeals-
to them all, individually, once in a year, or two years, or at least irn
four years, for their expressed consent and renewal, without which,
it must cease. No ; go where you will, and to what class you mayr
with commissions for your fatal service in one hand, and your
bounty counted by the hundred or the thousand pieces of silver in
the other, a thousand resisters will rise up for every recruit you can
engage. On the banks equally of the St. Lawrence and of the Rio
Grande, on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, on the shores of the
gulf of Mexico, and in the delves of the Rocky mountains, among
the fishermen on the banks of Newfoundland, the weavers ancE
VOL. IV. 81

642 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

spinners of Massachusetts, the stevedores of New York, the miners
of Pennsylvania, Pike's Peak and California, the wheat-growers of
Indiana, the cotton and the sugar planters on the Mississippi, among
the voluntary citizens from every other land, not less than the native
born, the Christian and the Jew, among the Indians on the prairies,
the contumacious Mormons in Deseret, the Africans free, the Afri
cans in bondage, the inmates of hospitals and alms-houses, and even
the criminals in the penitentiaries, rehearse the story of your wrongs
and their own, never so eloquently and never so mournfully, and
appeal to them to rise. They will ask you, " Is this all ?" " Are
you more just than Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more humane
than Jefferson?" "What new form of government or of union
have you the power to establish, or even the cunning to devise, that
will be more just, more safe, more free, more gentle, more benefi
cent, or more glorious than this?" And by these simple interroga
tories you will be silenced and confounded.

We are perpetually forgetting this subtle and complex, yet obvious
and natural mechanism of our constitution; and because we do for
get it, we are continually wondering how it is that a confederacy of
thirty and more states, covering regions so vast, and regulating
interests so various of so many millions of men, constituted and
conditioned so diversely, works right on. We are continually look
ing to see it stop and stand still, or fall suddenly into pieces. But,
in truth, it will not stop ; it cannot stop ; it was made not to stop,
but to keep in motion — in motion always, and without force. For
my own part, as this wonderful machine, when it had newly come
from the hands of its almost divine inventors, was the admiration
of my earlier years, although it was then but imperfectly known
abroad, so now, when it forms the central figure in the economy of
the world's civilization, and the best sympathies of mankind favor
its continuance, I expect that it will stand and work right on until
men shall fear its failure no more than we now apprehend that the
sun will cease to hold his eternal place in the heavens.

Nevertheless, I do not expect to see this purely popular though
majestic system always working on unattended by the presence and
exhibition of human temper and human passions. That would be
to expect to enjoy rewards, benefits and blessings, without labor,
care and watchfulness — an expectation contrary to divine appoint
ment. These are the discipline of the American citizen, and he

THE UNION EVERLASTING. 643

must inure himself to it. When, as now, a great policy, fastened
upon the country through its doubts and fears, confirmed by its
habits, and strengthened by personal interests and ambitions, is to
be relaxed and changed, in order that the nation may have its just
and natural and free developments, then, indeed, all the winds of
controversy are let loose upon us from all points of the political
compass — we see objects and men only through mazes, mists, and
doubtful and lurid lights. The earth seems to be heaving under our
feet, and the pillars of the noble fabric that protects us to be trem
bling before our eyes. But the appointed end of all this agitation
comes at last, and always seasonably; the tumults of the people
subside ; the country becomes calm once more ; and then we find
that only our senses have been disturbed, and that they have betrayed
us. The earth is firm as always before, and the wonderful struc
ture, for whose safety we have feared so anxiously, now more firmly
fixed than ever, still stands unmoved, enduring and immovable.

NOTE — THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN 1856. — In 1855-6 the state of the
country was hardly less disturbed than in 1860-1. Threats of rebellion and
secession abounded in congress and in the southern states. The following extract
is from a speech made by Mr. Seward in the senate March 12, 1856 :

" My.own idea *s> th&t there is no necessity for violence or civil^war ; and that^
if prudence~an^'1iioderation be exercised in copgre8Sr this great question, like all
others, will finally reach its settlement without disturbing the peace of the
country, or endangering the safety of the Union ; but, at the same time, it is not
conducive to~such a settlement of it to add anything more to the terrors which
impend over the settlers in Kansas. I suppose, from what I hear in these reports,
that the people of Kansas will be here as a free state, and will appear by senators
in congress authorized to present their constitution. When they come it will be
a question to be settled here, and not elsewhere. Let me say, by way of caution,
that he was a wise man who remarked that ' it is the misfortune of mankind that
just on those occasions on which the greatest calmness and reason are most neces
sary, those are just the occasions on which calmness and reason are most likely to
be forgotten.' For my own part, I propose to remain cool — to meet this question
here, in this place, on its own merits ; and, if I can, to secure the admission of
the state of Kansas into this Union under the constitution which she has adopted,
and which she is preparing to submit for our acceptance."

NOTE TO PAGE 637. — John Brown. Alexander Hamilton said of Andre : " Never,
perhaps, did any man suffer death with more justice or deserve it less." Ed.

SECESSION

NOTE — THE NEW ENGLAND DINNER. — The annual festival of the New England
society of New York was held at the Astor House on the evening of the 21st of
December, 1860. Mr. Seward had declined a courteous invitation to the dinner
and his letter of declination had been read at the table. Happening, however, to
arrive at the Astor House about eleven o'clock that evening on a hurried return
from Auburn to Washington, he was literally forced into the company as they
were about to break up. The secession movements in the south occupied the
thoughts of everybody. Mr. Seward had reasons for prudence and even reticence
which were unknown to the public. His speech excited the deepest interest.
Although not made in the senate it properly finds a place here in connection with
those delivered in that body on the same subject.

THESE are extraordinary times, and extraordinary events are
transpiring in our day, and it was men of New England, who lived
in a period only two or three times as long ago as the length of the
life I have lived, I remember that these men of New England in
vented the greatest political discovery of the world — a confederation
of republican states in America. The first confederation of republican
states in America, was the invention of men of New England. The
great discovery after having been in successful operation through many
years in the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and Con
necticut and New Haven, and after having been sanctioned by the
wisdom and experience of Dr. Franklin — came ultimately to be
adopted by the people of the thirteen British colonies of this conti
nent south of the river St. Lawrence. It has been reserved for our
day and for this very hour to witness an invention of another kind
— of an opposite nature — by a portion of our countrymen residing
south of the Potomac.

The Yankees invented confederation — the people of South Caro
lina have invented secession. The wisdom of the latter is to be tried
against the experience of the former. At first glance it exhibits this
singularly anomaly — a state which has, in the senate of the United
States, two seats, a state consisting of seven hundred thousand peo-

SECESSION. 645

pie of all conditions, and of whom two hundred and seventy-four
thousand are white, having two seats in the senate of the United
States, equal to the representation of any other state in the Union,
and having six members in the house of representatives, each of
them paid three thousand dollars a year out of a treasury to which
they contribute a very small part — going out of the Union to stand
by itself, and to send to the congress of the United States three com
missioners, to stand outside of the bar and negotiate for their inte
rests, and be paid by themselves, instead of two senators and six
representatives in congress — equal members with all the representa
tives in the confederacy. This is the experiment which is to be
tried. Whether states of North America will find it wise to refuse
to occupy seats within the halls of congress of the United States, to
be paid by the United States for going there, and to exercise the
powers conferred upon them as such representatives, or in lieu of
that send commissioners to present their claims, will be seen in the
sequel. This is the latest political invention of the times. I must
•say to you that I do not think it is likely to be followed by many
other states on this continent, or to be persevered in long, because it
is manifestly very much inferior to the system which already exists.
The state of South Carolina desires to go out of the Union, and
just at the moment I am going back to Washington for the purpose
of admitting Kansas in. I venture to say further that for every
state on this continent which will go out of the Union and stay out,
there stand ready at least two states on this continent of North
America who will be glad to come in, and take their places with us.
They will do so for this simple reason, that every state on this con
tinent must be a democratic or republican state. You gentlemen
from New England don't like to hear the word democratic always,
therefore I use the word republican. No republican state on this
continent, or any other, can stand alone ; and the reason is a simple
one. So much liberty, so much individual independence, so much
scope for rivalry and emulation, are too much of freedom for any
one state, standing singly, to maintain. Therefore, it is, as you have
seen, that the moment it was thought there was to be a break in this
great national confederacy, you began to hear at once of secession,
not only in South Carolina, but also in California — secession in New
England, and last, the secession of New York city and Long Island
from the state of New York. Admit the right to dissolve this

646 SPEECH AT THE NEW ENGLAND DINNER.

American Union, and there is no one state winch may not choose
new associations for either advantage or safety. Renewing perpetu
ally the principles of secession, we shall go on until we are brought
into the condition of the people of Central America.

Eepublican states are like sheaves in the harvest field ; put them
up singly and they are liable to be blown down by every gust of
wind. Stack them together and they defy the fiercest storms;/ and
so you. have seen that these thirteen republican states fell under the
conviction, severally, that they could not stand alone, and so the
thirteen came together. What under Heaven kept the • state of
Michigan, the states of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Louisiana
— what kept each of these states from setting up in themselves state
independence. Nothing, but the conviction that no one could stand
alone, and so each claimed the right to be united to the other repub
lican states of this continent. So it was with Texas. She was
independent — why did she not remain so ? You know how much
it tried us to admit her into the Union, but it tried her much harder
to stay out so long. Why is not Kansas content to remain out ?
Simply because of the sympathy and interest which require that all
republican states on this continent shall be one. Let South Carolina,
Alabama, Louisiana, or any other state go out, and while she is
rushing out you will see Canada and all the Mexican states attempt
ing to rush in. It is the system discovered by our fathers — it is all
concentrated in those three words, " E Pluribus Unum" There is
no such thing as one separated from the many in republican states.

And now one word concerning the anomalous condition of our
affairs — produced by this frenzy of some of the American states to-
secede from the Union. It has taken the American people and the
world by surprise ? Why has it taken them so' by surprise ? Only
because it is unwise and unnatural. It is wise that all the republi
can states of this continent should be confederated. It is unwise
that any of them should attempt to separate, and yet it ought not
to have taken us by surprise. Whoever could have imagined that
a machine so complicated, so vast, so new, untried as this confedera
ted system of republican states, should be exempt from the common
lot of states which have figured in the history of the world ? A
more complex system of political government was never devised,
never conceived, among men. How strange it is, how unreasonable
it is, that we should be surprised that a pin may occasionally drop

SECESSION. 647

out of this machinery, and that the wheels shall drag, or that the
gudgeon shall be worn, until the wheels themselves shall cease to
play with their regular activity. What human society was ever
exempted from the experience of a necessity of repairing its political
system of government for more than a period of seventy }^ears ?
We have tried it in our state. Every state in this Union is just
like the federal government. No state is more than seventy years
old, and there i.s not any one state of this Union with a constitution
which is more than twenty-five years old — every state has repaired
and remodeled its constitution once in every twenty-five years, and
it is not certain that any one state can adopt a constitution which
will last more than twenty-five years without being repaired and
restored. But in our own state the constitution adopted about
twenty-five years ago, contains a provision, tbat in 1866, without any
special appeal to the people whatever, a convention shall come
together in the state of New York, to make a new constitution. I.s
it strange, then, that this complex system of our government should
be found to work after the lapse of seventy years a little roughly,
and that it requires that the engineer should look into the various
parts of the engine, and see where the gudgeon is worn out, and
watch that the main wheel is kept in motion ? A child can draw a.
pin from the mightiest engine, and arrest its motion, and the engineer
cannot see it when it is being done, but if the engine be rightly
devised, and strongly constructed, he has only to see where the pin
has been withdrawn and replace it, and the engine will go on more
strongly and more vigorously than ever. We are a family of thirty-
three states, and next Monday I hope we are to be a family of
thirty-four.

Would it not be strange if in a family of thirty-four members
there should be, once in the course of a few years, one, or two, or
three, or four, of the members of the family who would become dis
contented and wish to withdraw for a while to see how much better
they can manage their own fortunes alone. I think nothing strange
of that. I only wonder that nobody has ever withdrawn before, to
see how much better they could get along on their own hooks, than
to go along in this plain old-fashioned way under the direction of
Uncle Sam. Massachusetts, and some of the New England states,
they say, when I was a boy, got the same idea of contumacy toward
the common parent and want of affection for the whole family, and

648 SPEECH AT THE NEW ENGLAND DINNER.

they got up the "Hartford Convention." I hope you don't consider
that personal. Well, they say that somebody in Massachusetts, T
don't know who, tried it. All that I know is, that for the first
twenty years of my political life, somehow or other, I was held
responsible for the Hartford Convention.

I have made this singular discovery, that whereas, when Massa
chusetts, or any New England state, threatens to go out of the Union,
the democratic party all insist that it is high treason, and ought to
be punished by coercion, while, when one of the southern states gets
hold of the same idea, the same party think it excusable, and that it
'is very doubtful whether they ought not to be helped out of the
Union, and be given a good dowry besides. Now, I believe, among
all the truths, that, whether it is Massachusetts or South Carolina
or whether it is New York or Louisiana, it will turn out exactly the
same way in every case — that there is no such thing in the book —
no such thing in reason — no such thing in philosophy — no such
thing in nature, as any state existing on the continent of North
America, long out of the United States of America. Don't believe
a word of it — I don't believe it for many reasons — some I have
named, and for one, I don't see any other good reason given for it.
The best reason I hear is, that the people of some of the southern
states hate us of the free states very badly, and they say that we
hate them, and that all love is lost between us. I don't believe a
word of that.

On the other hand, I do know for myself, and for you, that bating
some differences of opinion about advantage, and about proscription,
and about freedom and slavery, and all that, they are merely family
differences, concerning which we do not take any outsiders in any
part of the world into our counsel on either side. There is not a
state outside of the American Union that I like half so well as I do
the state of South Carolina — neither England, nor Ireland, nor Scot
land, nor France, nor even Turkey, although from Turkey they have
sent me some Arabian horses, while from South Carolina they send
me nothing but curses, still I like South Carolina better than any of
them. I do not know but I have a presumption about it. I do believe
if there was anybody to overhear the state of South Carolina when
she is talking to herself, that she would confess she likes us tolera
bly well ; and I am very sure that if anybody was to make a descent
upon New York to-morrow — whether Louis Napoleon, or the prince

SECESSION. 649

or his mother, or the emperor of Russia or Austria — If either of
them were to make a descent upon the city of New York to-mor
row, I believe all the hills of South Carolina would pour forth their
population to the rescue of New York. God knows how this may
be, or when the present excitement may end. I do not pretend to
know, I only conjecture ; but this I do know, that if any one of
these powers were to make a descent upon Charleston and South.
Carolina, I know who would go to their rescue. We would all go.
We all know that ; everybody knows that : therefore they do not
humbug me with their secession. I do not think they will humbug
you, and I do not believe that if they do not humbug you or me,
that they will succeed very long in humbugging themselves.

Now, this is the ultimate result of all this business. These states
were always intended to remain together. They always shall. Talk
of taking one star out of this glorious constellation ! It is something
which cannot be done. I do not see any fewer stars now than I did
last winter ; on the contrary, I expect to see more. The question
then is, when at this time people are struggling under a delusion that
they are getting out of the Union, and going to set up for them
selves, what are we to do in order to hold them in? I do not know
any better rule than the rule which every good New England man,
I suppose, though I have not much acquaintance with New England
— every father of a family in New York, who is a sensible man — I
suppose New England fathers do the same thing — the rule which
they practise. It is this — if a good man wishes to keep his family
together it is the easiest thing in the world. When one gets discon
tented, begins to quarrel, to complain, does his father quarrel with
him, tease him, threaten him, coerce him? No; that is just the
way to get rid of a family.

But, on the other hand, if you wish to keep them together, you
tiave only one thing to do — to be patient, kind, forbearing, and wait
until they come to reflect for themselves. The south is to us what
the wife is to the husband. I do not know a man in the world who
cannot get rid of his wife if he tries to do so. I can put him in the
way to do it at once. He has only two things to do — one is to be
unfaithful to her, the other is to be out of temper with her, and she
will be glad to leave him. That is the most simple way. I do not
know a man on earth — I do not think but that even Socrates could
have got rid of his wife if he desired to do so, in this way ; but if
VOL. IV. 82

650 SPEECH AT THE NEW ENGLAND DINNER.

he wished to keep his wife, he must keep his virtue and his temper
also.

In all this business, I propose that we should keep our own virtue,
which in politics consists in remembering that men must differ — that
brethren, even of the same family, must differ, and that if we keep
entirely cool, and entirely calm, and entirely kind, a debate will
ensue, which will be kind of itself, and it will prove to us very soon
that either we are wrong, and should make concessions to our offended
brothers, or else that we are right, and they will acquiesce, and come
back into fraternal relations with us.

I do not desire to anticipate any questions. We have a great
many statesmen who assume to know at once what the south pro
poses to do; what the government proposes to do; whether they
intend to coerce our southern brethren back into their allegiance.
Then they ask us, of course, as they may rightly do, what will be
the value of a fraternity which is compulsory ? All I have to say
on that subject is, that it was so long time ago as in the days of Mr.
Thomas More, when he made the discovery, and so announced it in
his writings, " that there are a great many school-masters, but very
few who know how to instruct children, and a great many who know
how to whip them."

I propose to have no questions on that subject — to hear their com
plaints — redress them if we can, and expect them to be withdrawn
if they are unreasonable. I know that the necessities which cre
ated this Union are stronger to-day than they were when the Union
was cemented, and that those necessities are as enduring as the pas
sions of man are short-lived and evanescent.

NOTE.— See speech in state senate January 10, 1834, Vol. I., p. 16; do United States senate
March 11, 1850, Vol. I., pp. 81-89 ; address at Auburn July 4, 1825, Vol. III., p. 193; speech Octo
ber, 1844, Vol. III., pp. 245 and 267; letter May, 1845, Vol. III., p. 440, &c., &c.

THE STATE OF THE UNION.1

CONGRESS adjourned last summer amid auspices of national abun
dance, contentment, tranquillity and happiness. It has reassembled
this winter in the presence of derangement of business and disturb
ance of public as well as private credit, and in the face of seditious
combinations to overthrow the Union. The alarm is appalling; for
Union is not more the body than Liberty is the soul of the nation.
The American citizen has been accustomed to believe the republic
immortal. He shrinks from the sight of convulsions indicative of
its sudden death. The report of our condition has gone over the
seas, and we who have so long and with much complacency studied
the endless agitations of society in the Old World, believing ourselves
exempt from such disturbances, now, in our turn, seem to be falling
into a momentous and disastrous revolution.

I know how difficult it is to decide, amid so many and so various
counsels, what ought to be and even what can be done. Certainly,
however, it is time for every senator to declare himself. I, therefore,
following the example of the noble senator from Tennessee [Mr.
JOHNSON], avow my adherence to the Union in its integrity and with
all its parts, with my friends, with my party, with my state, with my
country, or without either, as they may determine ; in every event,
whether of peace or of war ; with every consequence of honor or
dishonor, of life or death. Although I lament the occasion, I hail
with cheerfulness the duty of lifting up my voice among distracted
debates, for my whole country and its inestimable Union.

Hitherto the exhibitions of spirit and resolution here, as elsewhere,
have been chiefly made on the side of disunion. I do not regret this.
Disunion is so unnatural that it must plainly reveal itself before its
presence can be realized. I like best, also, the courage that rises
slowly under the pressure of severe provocation. If it be a Christian
duty to forgive to the stranger even seventy times seven offenses, it

i Speech in the Senate of the United States, January 12, 1861.

652 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

is the highest patriotism to endure without complaint the passionate
waywardness of political brethren so long as there is hope that they
may come to a better mind.

I think it is easy to pronounce what measures or conduct will not
save the Union. I agree with the honorable senator from North
Carolina [Mr. CLTNGMAN], that mere eulogiurns will not save it. Yet
I think that as prayer brings us nearer to God, though it cannot
move Him toward us, so there is healing and saving virtue in every
word of devotion to the Union that is spoken, and in every sigh that
its danger draws forth. I know, at least, that, like truth, it dt rives
strength from every irreverent act that is committed, and every blas
phemous phrase that is uttered against it.

The Union cannot be^ved by mutual criminationsconcernin^ our
jesj^ectiye shares of responsibility for them present evils. He whose
conscience acquits him will naturally be slow to accuse others whose
•cooperation he needs. History only can adjust that great account.

A continuance of the debate on the constitutional power of con
gress over the subject of slavery in the territories, will not save the
Union. The opinions of parties and sections on that question, have
become dogmatical, and it is this circumstance that has produced the
existing alienation. A truce, at least during the debate on the
Union, is essential to reconciliation.

cannot be saved by proving that secession i

unconstitutional. Persons bent on that fearful step will not stand
long enough on forms of law to be dislodged ; and loyal men do not
need such narrow ground to stand upon.

I fear that Tjttjp. ^rnnrp^will Jy gnippH froni djy»-ii88Jng the right of

the federal government to coerce seceding states into obedience. Tf
disunion is to go on, this question will give place to the more prac
tical one, whether many seceding states have a right to coerce the
remaining members to acquiesce in a dissolution.

I dread, as in my innernjK)sX^oulJabhor, civilw^r, I do not know
"what theUmon would be worth if savKihy the use of the sword.
Yet for all this, I do not agree with those who, with a desire to avert
that great calamity, advise a conventional or unopposed separation,
with a view to what they call a reconstruction. It is enough for me,
first, that in this plan, destruction goes before reconstruction ; and
secondly, that the strength of the vase in which the hopes of the
nation are held, consists chief! v in its remaining unbroken.

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 655

Congressional compromises are not likely to save the^ Union. I
know, indeed, that tradition favors tins form of remedy. But it is
essential to its success, in any case, that there be found a preponder
ating mass of citizens, so far neutral on the issue which separates
parties, that they can intervene, strike down clashing weapons, and
compel an accommodation. Moderate concessions are not customarily
asked by a force with its guns in battery ; nor are liberal concessions
apt to be given by an opposing force not less confident of its own
right and its own strength. I think, also, that there is a prevailing
conviction that legislative compromises which sacrifice honestly cher
ished principles, while they anticipate future exigencies, even if they
do not assume extra-constitutional powers, are less sure to avert immi
nent evils than they are certain to produce ultimately even greater
dangers.

Indeed, I think it will be wise to discard two prevalent ideas or
prejudices, namely : first, that the Union is to be saved by somebody
in particular; and secondly, that it is to be saved by some cunning
arid insincere compact of pacification. If I remember rightly, I
said something like this here so long ago as 1850, and afterwards
in 1854.

The present danger discloses itself in this form: Discontented citi
zens have obtained political power in certain states, and they are
using this authority to overthrow the federal government. They
delude themselves with a belief that the state power they have
acquired enables them to discharge themselves of allegiance to the
whole republic. The president says that no state has a right to secede,
but we have no constitutional power to make war against a state.
The dilemma results from an assumption that those who, in such a
case, act against the federal government, act lawfully as a state;
although manifestly they have perverted the power of the state to
an unconstitutional purpose. A class of politicians in New England
set up this theory and attempted to practise upon it in our war
with Great Britain. Mr. Jefferson did not hesitate to say that states
must be kept within their constitutional sphere by impulsion, if they
could not be held there by attraction. Secession was then held to
be inadmissible in the face of a public enemy. But if it is untenable
in one case, it is necessarily so in all others. I fully admit the ori
ginality, the sovereignty and the independence of the several states
within their sphere. But I hold the federal government to be equally

654 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

original, sovereign and independent within its sphere. And the
government of the state can no more absolve the people residing
within its limits from allegiance to the Union, than the government
of the Union can absolve them from allegiance to the state. The
constitution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance
thereof, are the supreme law of the land, paramount to all legislation
of the states, whether made under the constitution, or by even their
organic conventions. The Union can be dissolved, not by secession,
without arrned force, but only by the voluntary consent of the people
of the United States, collected in the manner prescribed by the con
stitution of the United States.

Congress, in the present case, ought not to be impassive. It
ought, if it can, to redress any real grievances of the offended states,
and then it ought to supply the president with all the means neces
sary to maintain the Union in the full exhibition and discreet exer
cise of its authority. Beyond this, with the proper activity on the
part of the executive, the responsibility of saving the Union belongs
to the people, and they are abundantly competent to discharge it.

I propose, therefore, with great deference, to address myself less to
the senate than to the country, upon the momentous subject, asking
a hearing, not less from the people within what are called the seceding,
than from those who reside within the adhering states.

Union is an old, fixed, settled habit of the American people,
resulting from convictions of its necessity, and therefore not likely
to be hastily discarded. The early states, while existing as colonies,
were combined, though imperfectly, through a common allegiance to
the British crown. When that allegiance ceased, no one was so pre
sumptuous as to suppose political existence compatible with disunion;
and, therefore, on the same day that they declared themselves inde
pendent, they proclaimed themselves also confederated states. Expe
rience in war and in peace, from 1776 until 1787, only convinced
them of the necessity of converting that loose confederacy into a
more perfect and a perpetual Union. They acted with a coolness
very different from the intemperate conduct of those who now on
one side threaten, and those who on the other rashly defy disunion.
They considered the continuance of the Union as a subject compre
hending nothing less than the safety and welfare of all the parts of
which the country was composed, and the fate of an empire in many
respects the most interesting in the world. I enter upon the subject

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 655

of continuing the Union now, deeply impressed with the same gene
rous and loyal conviction. How could it be otherwise, when, instead
of only thirteen, the country is now composed of thirty-three parts ;
and the empire embraces, instead of only four millions, no less than
thirty millions of inhabitants.1

The founders of the constitution, moreover, regarded the Union as
no mere national or American interest. On the contrary, they con
fessed, with deep sensibility, that it seemed to them to have been
reserved for the people of this country to decide whether societies of
men are really capable of establishing good government upon reflec
tion and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for
their political constitutions on accident and force. They feared,
therefore, that their failure to continue and perfect the Union would
be a misfortune to the nations. How much more would its overthrow
now be a calamity to mankind!

Some form of government is indispensable here as elsewhere.
Whatever form we have, every individual citizen and every state
must cede to it some natural rights, to invest the government with
the requisite power. The simple question, therefore, for us now to
decide, while laying aside all pique, passion and prejudice, is, whether
it conduces more to the interests of the people of this country to
remain, for the general purposes of peace and war, commerce, inland
and foreign, postal communications at home and abroad, the care and
disposition of the public domain, colonization, the organization and
admission of new states, and, generally, the enlargement of empire,
one nation under our present constitution, than it would be to divide
themselves into separate confederacies or states.

Our country remains now as it was in 1787 — composed, not of
detached and distant territories, but of one whole well-connected and
fertile region, lying within the temperate zone, with climates and soils
hardly more various than those of France or of Italy. This slight
diversity quickens and amplifies manufactures and commerce. Our
rivers and valleys, as improved by art, furnish us a system of high
ways unequaled in the world. The different forms of labor, if
slavery were not perverted to purposes of political ambition, need
not constitute an element of strife in the confederacy.

Notwithstanding recent vehement expressions and manifestations

1 The materials and even the form of this part of the argument are drawn from the opening
numbers of the Federalist.

656 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

of intolerance in some quarters, produced by intense partisan excite
ment, we are, in fact, a homogeneous people, chiefly of one stock,
with accessions well assimilated. We have, practically, only one-
language, one religion, one system of government, and manners and
customs common to all. Why, then, shall we not remain henceforth,
as hitherto, one people?

The first object of every human society is safety, or security, for
which, if need be, they will, and they must, sacrifice every other.
This security is of two kinds : one, exemption from foreign aggres
sion and influence ; the other, exemption from domestic tyranny
and sedition.

Foreign wars come from either violations of treaties or domestic-
disturbance. The Union has, thus far, proved itself an almost per
fect shield against such wars. The United States, continually enlarg
ing their diplomatic acquaintance, have now treaties with France,
the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, Prussia, Spain, Russia,
Denmark, Mexico, Brazil, Austria, Turkey, Chili, Siam, Muscat,.
Venezuela, Peru, Greece, Sardinia, Ecuador, Hanover, Portugal,
New Grenada, Hesse Cassel, Wurtemburg, China, Bavaria, Saxony,
Nassau, Switzerland, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Guatemala, the Hawa-
ian Islands, San Salvador, Borneo, Costa Eica, Peru, Bremen, the
Argentine Confederation, Loo Choo, Japan, Brunswick, Persia,
Baden, Belgium, and Paraguay. Nevertheless, the United States,
within their entire existence under the federal constitution, have
had flagrant wars with only four states, two of which were insignifi
cant powers on the coast of Barbary; and have had direct hostilities,,
amounting to reprisals, against only two or three more : and they
are now at peace with the whole world. If the Union should be
divided into only two confederacies, each of them would need to-
make as many treaties as we have now ; and, of course, would be
liable to give as many causes of war as we now do. But we know,
from the sad experience of other nations, that disjntegration^jrpr'.ft
begun, inevitably continues untJLevp" the greatest, empire crumbles
into jnany parts. Each confederation that shall ultimately arise out
of the ruin of the Union will have necessity for as many treaties as
we now have, and will incur liabilities for war as often as we now
do, by breaking them. It is the multiplication of treaties, and the
want of confederation, that makes war the normal condition of
society in western Europe and in Spanish America. It is Union

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 657

that, notwithstanding our world- wide intercourse, makes peace the
habit of the American people.

I will not descend so low as to ask whether new confederacies
would be able or willing to bear the grievous expense of maintaining
the diplomatic relations which cannot be dispensed with except by
withdrawing from foreign commerce. Our federal government is
better able to avoid giving just causes of war than several confed
eracies, because it can conform the action of all the states to com
pacts. It can have but one construction, and only one tribunal to
pronounce that construction, of every treaty. Local and temporary
interests and passions, or personal cupidity and ambition, can drive
small confederacies or states more easily than a great republic, into
indiscreet violations of treaties.

The United States, being a great and formidable power, can,
always secure favorable and satisfactory treaties. Indeed, every
treaty we have was voluntarily made. Small confederacies, or
states, must take such treaties as they can get, and give whatever
treaties are exacted. A humiliating, or even an unsatisfactory
treaty, is a chronic cause of foreign war.

The chapter of wars resulting from unjustifiable causes would, in
case of division, amplify itself in proportion to the number of new
confederacies and their irritability. Our disputes with Great Britain
about Oregon, the boundary of Maine, the patriot insurrection in
Canada, and the island of San Juan ; the border strifes between
Texas and Mexico ; the incursions of the late William Walker into
Mexico and Central America ; all these were cases in which war
was prevented only by the imperturbability of the federal govern
ment.

This government not only gives fewer causes of war, whether
just or unjust, than smaller confederacies would ; but it always has
a greater ability to accommodate them by the exercise of more cool
ness and courage, the use of more various and more liberal meansy
and the display, if need be, of greater force. Every one knows
how placable we ourselves are in controversies with Great Britain,
France, and Spain ; and yet how exacting we have been in our in
tercourse with New Granada, Paraguay, and San Juan de Nicaragua.

No one will dispute our forefathers' maxim, that the common
safety of all is the safety of each of the states. While they remain
united the federal government combines all the materials and all

VOL. IV. 83

658 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

the forces of the several states ; organizes their defenses on one gen
eral principle ; harmonizes and assimilates them with one system ;
watches for them with a single eye, which it turns in all directions ;
and moves all agents under the control of one executive head. A
nation so constituted is safe against assault or even insult. War
produces always a speedy exhaustion of money and a severe strain
upon credit. The treasuries and credits of small confederacies would
often prove inadequate. Those of the Union are always ample.

I have thus far kept out of view the relations which must arise
between the confederacies themselves. They would be small and
inconsiderable nations bordering on each other, and therefore,
according to all political philosophy, natural enemies. In addition
to the many treaties which each must make with foreign powers,
and the causes of war which they would give by violating them,
each of the confederacies must also maintain treaties with all the
others, and so be liable to give them frequent offense. They would
necessarily have different interests resulting from their establishment
of different policies of revenue, of mining, manufactures, and navi
gation, of immigration, and perhaps the slave trade. Each would
stipulate with foreign nations for advantages peculiar to itself and
injurious to its rivals.

If, indeed, it were necessary that the Union should be broken up,
it would be in the last degree important that the new confederacies
to be formed should be as nearly as possible equal in strength and
power, that mutual fear and mutual respect might inspire them
with caution against mutual offense. But such equality could not
long be maintained ; one confederacy would rise in the scale of
political importance ; and the others would view it thenceforward
with envy and apprehension. Jealousies would bring on frequent
and retaliatory wars, and all these wars, from the peculiar circum
stances of the confederacies, would have the nature and character of
civil war. Dissolution, therefore, is, for the people of this country,
perpetual civil war. To mitigate it, and obtain occasional rest, what
could they accept but the system of adjusting the balance of power
which has obtained in Europe, in which the few strong nations dic
tate the very terms on which all the others shall be content to live.
When this hateful system should fail at last, foreign nations would
intervene, now in favor of one and then in aid of another ; and
thus our country, after having expelled all European powers from

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 659

the continent, would relapse into an aggravated form of its colonial
experience, and, like Italy, Turkey, India, and China, become the
theatre of transatlantic intervention and rapacity.

If, however, we grant to the new confederacies an exemption from
complications among each other and with foreign states, still there is
too much reason to believe that not one of them could long maintain
a republican form of government. Universal suffrage and the ab
sence of a standing army are essential to the republican system.
The world has yet to see a single self-sustaining state of that kind,
or even any confederation of such states, except our own. Canada
leans on Great Britain not unwillingly, and Switzerland is guaran
teed by interested monarchical states. Our own experiment has
thus far been successful ; because, by the continual addition of new
states, the influence of each of the members of the Union is con
stantly restrained and reduced. No one, of course, can foretell the
way and manner of travel ; but history indicates with unerring cer
tainty the end which the several confederacies would reach. Licen
tiousness would render life intolerable : and they would sooner or
later purchase tranquillity and domestic safety by the surrender of
liberty, and yield themselves up to the protection of military
despotism.

Indulge me in one or two details under this head. First, it is
only sixty days since this disunion movement began ; already those
who are engaged in it have canvassed with portentous freedom the
possible recombinations of the states when dissevered, and the feasi
ble alliances of those recombinations with European nations ; alli
ances as unnatural, and which would prove ultimately as pestilential
to society here as that of the Tlascalans with the Spaniard, who
promised them revenge upon their ancient enemies, the Aztecs.

Secondly, The disunion movement arises partly out of a dispute
over the common domain of the United States. Hitherto the Union
has confined this controversy within the bounds of political debate
by referring it, with all other national ones, to the arbitrament of the
ballot-box. Does any suppose that disunion would transfer the
whole domain to either party, or that any other umpire than war
would, after dissolution, be invoked ?

Thirdly, This movement arises, in another view, out of the rela
tion of African slaves to the dynastic population of the country.
Freedom is to them, as to all mankind, the chief object of desire.

660 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Hitherto, under the operation of the Union, they have practically
remained ignorant of the controversy, especially of its bearing on
themselves. Can we hope that flagrant civil war shall rage among
ourselves in their very presence, and yet that they will remain stupid
and idle spectators ? Does history furnish us any satisfactory instruc
tion upon the horrors of civil war among a people so brave, so skilled
inarms, so earnest in conviction, and so intent in purpose as we are?
Is it a mere chimera which suggests an aggravation of those horrors
beyond endurance when, on either side, there shall occur the inter
vention of an uprising ferocious African slave population of four,
or six, perhaps twenty millions?

The opinions of mankind change, and with them the politics of
nations. One hundred years ago all the commercial European states
were engaged in transferring negro slaves from Africa to this hemi
sphere. To-day all those states are firmly set in hostility to the
extension and even to the practice of slavery. Opposition to it takes
two forms : one, European, which is simple, direct abolition, effected,
if need be, by compulsion ; the other, American, which seeks to
arrest the African slave trade, and resist the entrance of domestic
slavery into territories where it is yet unknown, while it leaves the
disposition of existing slavery to the considerate action of the states
by which it is retained. It is the Union that restricts the opposition
to slavery in this country within these limits. If dissolution pre
vail, what guarantee shall there be against the full development here
of the fearful arid uncompromising hostility to slavery which else
where pervades the world, and of which the recent invasion of
Virginia was an illustration ?

I have designedly dwelt so long on the probable effects of dis
union upon the safety of the American people as to leave me little
time to consider the evils which must follow in its train. But
practically, the loss of safety involves every other form of public
calamity. When once the guardian angel has taken flight, every
thing is lost.

Dissolution would not only arrest but extinguish the greatness of
our country. Even if separate confederacies could exist and endure,
they could severally preserve no share of the common prestige of the
Union. If the constellation is to be broken up, the stars, whether
scattered widely apart or grouped in smaller clusters, will thence
forth shed only feeble, glimmering and lurid lights. Nor will great

THE STATE OF THE UNION 661

achievements be possible for the new confederacies. Dissolution
would signalize its triumph by acts of wantonness which would
shock and astound the world. It would provincialize Mount Ver-
non and give this capitol over to desolation at the very moment
when the dome is rising over our heads that was to be crowned with,
the statue of Liberty. After this there would remain for disunion no
;act of stupendous infamy to be committed. No petty confederacy
that shall follow the United States can prolong, or even renew, the
majestic drama of national progress. Perhaps it is to be arrested
because its sublimity is incapable of continuance. Let it be so, if we
have indeed become degenerate. After Washington, and the inflexi
ble Adams, Henry, and the peerless Hamilton, Jefferson, and the
majestic Clay, Webster, and the acute Calhoun, Jackson, the modest
Taylor, and Scott who rises in greatness under the burden of years,
.and Franklin, and Fulton, and Whitney, and Morse, have all per
formed their parts, let the curtain fall !

While listening to these debates, I have sometimes forgotten my
self in marking their contrasted effects upon the page who customa
rily stands on the dais before me, and the venerable secretary who
sits behind him. The youth exhibits intense but pleased emotion in
the excitement, while at every irreverent word that is uttered against
the Union the eyes of the aged man are suffused with tears. Let
him weep no more. Rather rejoice, for yours has been a lot of rare
felicity. You have seen and been apart of all the greatness of your
•country, the towering national greatness of all the world. Weep
only you, and weep with all the bitterness of anguish, who are just
stepping on the threshold of life; for that greatness perishes prema
turely and exists not for you, nor for me, nor for any that shall
•come after us.

The public prosperity! How could it survive the storm? Its
elements are industry in the culture of every fruit; mining of all
the metals; commerce at home and on every sea; material improve
ment that knows no obstacle and has no end; invention that ranges
throughout the domain of nature; increase of knowledge as broad
as the human mind can explore ; perfection of art as high as human
genius can reach ; and social refinement working for the renovation
of the world. How could our successors prosecute these noble
•objects in the midst of brutalizing civil conflict? What guaranties
will capital invested for such purposes have, that will outweigh the

662 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

premium offered by political and military ambition ? What leisure
will the citizen have for study, or invention, or art, under the reign
of conscription ; nay, what interest in them will society feel, when fear
and hate shall have taken possession of the national mind ? Let the
miner in California take heed; for its golden wealth will become the
prize of the nation that can command the most iron. Let the bor
derer take care; for the Indian will again lurk around his dwelling.
Let the pioneer come back into our denser settlements; for the rail
road, the post road and the telegraph advance not one furlong fur
ther into the wilderness. With standing armies consuming the
substance of our people on the land, and our navy and our postal
steamers withdrawn from the ocean, who will protect or respect, or
who will even know by name, our petty confederacies ? The Ameri
can man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient
port in the Mediterranean. All the world wondered at it, and talked
of it. Salvos of artillery, from forts and shipping in the harbor,
saluted its flag. Princes and princesses and merchants paid it
homage, and all the people blessed it as a harbinger of hope for
their own ultimate freedom. I imagine now the same noble ves
sel again entering the same haven. The flag of thirty-three stars
and thirteen stripes has been hauled down, and in its place a signal
is run up which flaunts the device of a lone star or a palmetto tree.
Men ask, " Who is the stranger that thus steals into our waters ?""
The answer, contemptuously given, is, " She comes from one of the
obscure republics of North America. Let her pass on."

Lastly, public liberty, our own peculiar liberty, must languish for
a time, and then cease to live. And such a liberty ! Free move
ment everywhere through our own land and throughout the world ;
free speech, free press, free suffrage ; the freedom of every subject
to vote on every law, and for or against every agent who expounds,
administers or executes it. Unstable and jealous confederacies, con
stantly apprehending assaults without and treason within, formida
ble only to each other and contemptible to all beside ; how long will
it be before, on the plea of public safety, they will surrender all this
inestimable and unequaled liberty, and accept the hateful and intole
rable espionage of military despotism ?

And now, what is the cause for this sudden and eternal sacrifice
of so much safety, greatness, happiness and freedom? Have foreign
nations combined, and are they coming in rage upon us ? No. So-

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 663

far from being enemies, there is not a nation on earth that is not an
interested admiring friend. Even the London Times, by no means
partial to us, says :

" It is quite possible that the problem of a democratic republic may be solved
by its overthrow in a few days, in a spirit of folly, selfishness, and short-sighted
ness.

Has the federal government become tyrannical or oppressive, or even
rigorous or unsocial ? Has the constitution lost its spirit, and all at
once collapsed into a lifeless letter? No; the federal government
smiles more benignantly, and works to-day more beneficently, than
ever. The constitution is even the chosen model for the organiza
tion of the newly rising confederacies.

The occasion is the election of a president of the United States,
who is unacceptable to a portion of the people. I state the case
accurately. There was no movement of disunion before the bal
lots which expressed that choice were cast. Disunion began as
soon as the result was announced. The justification it assigned was,
that Abraham Lincoln had been elected, while the success of either
one of three other candidates would have been acquiesced in. Was
the election illegal ? No ; it is unimpeached. Is the candidate per
sonally offensive? No; he is a man of unblemished virtue and:
amiable manners. Is an election of president an unfrequent or
extraordinary transaction ? No ; we never had a chief magistrate
otherwise designated than by such election, and that form of choice
is renewed every four years. Does any one even propose to change
the mode of appointing the chief magistrate ? No ; election by
universal suffrage, as modified by the constitution, is the one crown
ing franchise of the American people. To save it they would defy
the world. Is it apprehended that the new president will usurp des
potic powers ? No ; while he is of all men the most unambitious,
he is, by the partial success of those who opposed his election, sub
jected to such restraints that he cannot, without their consent,
appoint a minister, or even a police agent, negotiate a treaty, or pro
cure the passage of a law, and can hardly draw a musket from the
public arsenals to defend his own person.

What, then, is the ground of discontent ? It is that the disunion-
ists did not accept as conclusive the arguments which were urged in
behalf of the successful candidate in the canvass. This is all. Were
their own arguments against him more satisfactory to his supporters?

664 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Of course they were not ; they could not be. Does the constitution,
in letter or spirit, require or imply that the arguments of one party
shall be satisfactory to the other? No; that is impossible. What
is the constitutional remedy for this inevitable dissatisfaction ? Re
newed debate and ultimate rehearing in a subsequent election. Have
the now successful majority perverted power to purposes of oppres
sion? No; they have never before held power. Alas! how prone
we are to undervalue privileges and blessings. How gladly, how
proudly, would the people of any nation in Europe accept, on such
terms as we enjoy it, the boon of electing a chief magistrate every
four years by free, equal and universal suffrage! How thankfully
would they cast aside all their own systems of government, and
accept this republic of ours, with all its short-comings and its dis
appointments, maintain it with their arms, and cherish it in their
hearts. Is it not the very boon for which they supplicate God with
out ceasing, and even wage war, with intermissions only resulting
from exhaustion? How strange are the times in which we live!
The coming spring season on one side of the Atlantic will open on
a general conflict, waged to obtain, through whatever indirection,
just such a system as ours ; and on this side of the Atlantic, within
the same parallels of latitude, it will open on fraternal war, waged
in a moment of frenzied discontent to overthrow and annihilate the
same institutions. Do men, indeed, live only for themselves, to
revenge their own wrongs, or to gratify their own ambition? Rather
do not men live least of all for themselves, and chiefly for posterity
and for their fellow-men ! Have the American people, then, become
all of a sudden unnatural, as well as unpatriotic? and will they dis
inherit their children of the precious estate held only in trust for
them, and deprive the world of the best hopes it has enjoyed since
the human race began its slow and painful, yet needful and wisely
appointed progress ?

Here I might close my plea for the American Union ; but it is
necessary, if not to exhaust the argument, at least to exhibit the
whole case. The disunionists, consciously unable to stand on their
mere disappointment in the recent election, have attempted to enlarge
their ground. More than thirty years there has existed a consider
able — though not heretofore a formidable — mass of citizens in certain
states, situate near or around the delta of the Mississippi, who
believe that the Union is less conducive to the welfare and greatness

THE STATE OF THE UNIOK. 665

of those states than a smaller confederacy, embracing only slave
states, would be. This class has availed itself of the discontents
resulting from the election to put into operation the machinery of
dissolution, long ago prepared and waiting only for occasion. In
other states there is a soreness because of the want of sympathy in
the free states with the efforts of slaveholders for the recapture of
fugitives from service. In all the slave states there is a restlessness
resulting from the resistance which has been so determinedly made,
within the last few years, in the free states, to the extension of
slavery in the common territories of the United States. The repub
lican party, which cast its votes for the successful presidential
candidate, on the ground of that policy, has been allowed, practi
cally, no representation, no utterance by speech or through the press,
in the slave states; while its policy, principles, and sentiments, and
•even its temper, have been so misrepresented as to excite apprehen
sions that it denies important constitutional obligations, and aims
•even at interference with slavery and its overthrow by state autho
rities or intervention of the federal government. Considerable
masses even in the free states, interested in the success of these
misrepresentations as a means of partisan strategy, have lent their
sympathy to the party claiming to be aggrieved. While the result
of the election brings the republican party necessarily into the fore
ground in resisting disunion, the prejudices against them, which I
have described, have deprived them of the cooperation of many
good and patriotic citizens. On a complex issue between the repub
lican party and the disunionists, although it involves the direst
national calamities, the result might be doubtful ; for the republi
can party is weak in a large part of the Union. But on a direct
issue, with all who cherish the Union on one side, and all who desire
its dissolution by force on the other, the verdict would be prompt
and almost unanimous. I desire thus to simplify the issue, and for
that purpose to separate from it all collateral questions, and relieve
it of all partisan passions and prejudices.

I consider the idea of the withdrawal of the gulf states, and their
permanent reorganization with or without others in a distinct con
federacy, as a means of advantage to themselves, so certainly unwise
and so obviously impossible of execution, when the purpose is
understood, that I dismiss it with the discussion I have already
incidentally bestowed upon it.

VOL. IV. 84

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

The case is different, however, in regard to the other subjects
which I have brought in this connection before the senate. Beyond
a doubt, Union is vitally important to the republican citizens of the
United States ; but it is just as important to the whole people. Repub-
licanism and Union are, therefore, not convertible terms. Republi
canism is subordinate to the Union, as everything else is and ought
to be — republicanism, democracy, every other political name and
thing ; all are subordinate — and they ought to disappear in the
presence of the great question of Union. So far as I am concerned,
it shall be so ; it should be so if the question were sure to be tried,
as it ought only to be determined, by the peaceful ordeal of the
ballot. It shall be so all the more since there is on one side pre
paredness to refer to it the arbitrament of civil war. I have such
faith in this republican system of ours, that there is no political good
which I desire that I am not content to seek through its peaceful
forms of administration without invoking revolutionary action. If
others shall invoke that form of action to oppose and overthrow
government, they shall not, so far as it depends on me, have the
excuse that I obstinately left myself to be misunderstood. In such
a case I can afford to meet prejudice with conciliation ; exaction
with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the
right hand of peace. Therefore, so far as the abstract question
whether, by the con stitutipn of the United States, the bondsmen^
who is made such by the laws of a state, is still a man or only
property, I answer that, within that state, its laws on that subject
_are supreme.; that when he has escaped from that state into another,
the constitution regards him as a bondsman who may not, by any

. ~— ,?.-! ' " ** •* ~ ** '

law or regulation of that state, be discharged from _ his jseryjce^ but
shall be delivered up, on claim, to the party to. whom his _s_endce. is.
due. While prudence and justice would combine in persuading you
to modify the acts of congress on that subject, so as not to oblige
private persons to assist in their execution, and to protect freemen
from being, by abuse of the laws, carried into slavery, I agree that
all laws of the states, whether free states or slave states, which relate
to this class of persons, or any others recently coming from or resi
dent in other states, and which laws contravene the constitution of
the United States, or any law of congress passed in conformity

thereto, ought tojpa, repealed.
.t^Z'Z&t^z^

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 667

Secondly : Experience in public affairs has confirmed my opinionr
that domestic slavery, existing in any state, is wisely left by the
constitution of the United States exclusively to the care, manage
ment, and disposition of that state ; and if it were in my power, I
would not alter the constitution in that respect. If misapprehension
of my position needs so strong a remedy/I am willing to vote for
an amendment of the constitution, declaring that it shall not, by any
future amendment, be so altered as to confer on congress a power to
abolish or interfere with slavery in any state.

Tliirdly : While I think that congress has exclusive and sovereign
authority to legislate on all subjects whatever, in the common terri
tories of the United States, and while I certainly shall never, directly
or indirectly, give my vote to establish or sanction slavery in such
territories, or anywhere else in the world, yet the question what con
stitutional laws shall at any time be passed in regard to the territo
ries, is, like every other question, to be determinined on practical
grounds. I voted for enabling acts in the cases of Oregon, Minnesota
and Kansas, without being able to secure in them such provisions as
I would have preferred; and yet I voted wisely. So, now, I am
well satisfied that, under existing circumstances, a happy and satis
factory solution of the difficulties in the remaining territories would
be obtained by similar laws, providing for their organization, if such
organization were otherwise practicable. If, therefore, Kansas were
admitted as a state under the Wyandotte constitution, as I think she
ought to be, and if the organic laws of all the other territories could
be repealed, I could vote to authorize the organization and admission
of two new states which should include them, reserving the right to
effect subdivisions of them, whenever necessary, into several conve-
nient states ; but I do not find that such reservations could be con
stitutionally made. Without them, the ulterior embarrassments
which would result from the hasty incorporation of states of such
vast extent and various interests and character, would outweigh all
the immediate advantages of such a measure. But if the measure
were practicable, I should prefer a different course, namely : when
the eccentric movements of secession and disunion shall have ended,
in whatever form that end may come, and the angry excitement of
the hour shall have subsided, and calmness once more shall have
resuui'd its accustomed sway over the public mind, then, and not
until tlu-n — one, two or three years hence — I should cheerfully advise

668 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

a convention of the people, to be assembled in pursuance of the con
stitution, to consider and decide whether any and what amendments
of the organic national law ought to be made. A republican now —
as I have heretofore been a member of other parties existing in my
day — I nevertheless hold and cherish, as I have always done, the
principle that this government exists in its present form only by the
consent of the governed, and that it is as necessary as it is wise, to
resort to the people for revisions of the organic law whenever the
troubles and dangers of the state certainly transcend the powers
delegated by it to the public authorities. Nor ought the suggestion to
excite surprise. Government in any form is a machine ; this is the
most complex one that the mind of man has ever invented, or the
hand of man has ever framed. Perfect as it is, it ought to be
expected that it will, at least as often as once in a century, require
some modification to adapt it to the changes of society and alterna
tions of empire.

Fourthly : I hold myself ready now, as always heretofore, to vote
for any properly guarded laws which shall be deemed necessary to
prevent mutual invasions of states by citizens of other states, and
punish those who shall aid and abet them.

Fifthly: Notwithstanding the arguments of the gallant senator
from Oregon [General LANE], I remain of the opinion that physical
bonds, such as hjghwjays, railroads',' rivers and canals, are vastly more
powerful for holding civil communities together than any merecove-
nants, though written on parchment or engraved upon iron. I remain,
therefore, constant to my purpose to secure, if possible, the construc
tion of two Pacific railways, one of which shall connect the ports
around the mouths of the Mississippi, and the other the towns on
the Missouri and the lakes, with the harbors on our western coast.

If, in the expression of these views, I have not proposed what is
desired or expected by many others, they will do me the justice to
Relieve that I am as far from having suggested what, in many respects,
would have been in harmony with cherished convictions of my own.
I learned early from Jefferson that, in political affairs, we cannot
always do what seems to us absolutely best. Those with whom we
must necessarily act, entertaining different views, have the power and
the right of carrying them into practice. We must be content to
lead when we can, and to follow when we cannot lead ; and if we
cannot, at any time, do for our country all the good that we would

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 669

wish, we must be satisfied with doing for her all the good that we
can.

Having submitted my own opinions on this great crisis, it remains
only to say, that I shall cheerfully lend to the government my best

yet jengrgetic efforts_it shall make ta

preserve the public peace, and to maintain and preserve the Union
advising, only, that it practises far as rjossible, the utmost modera
tion, forbearance and conciliation.

And now what are the auspices of the country ? I know that we
are in the midst of alarms, and somewhat exposed to accidents una
voidable in seasons of tempestuous passions. We already have
disorder, and violence has begun. I know not to what extent it
may go. Still my faith in the constitution and in the Union abides,
because my faith in the wisdom and virtue of the American people
remains unshaken. Coolness, calmness and resolution are elements
of their character. These have been temporarily displaced, but they
are reappearing. Soon enough, I trust, for safety, it will be seen
that sedition and violence are only local and temporary, and that
loyalty and affection to the Union are the natural sentiments of the
whole country. Whatever dangers there shall be, there will be the
determination to meet them ; whatever sacrifices, private' or public,
shall be needful for the Union, they will be made. I feel sure that
the hour has not come for this great nation to fall. This people,
which has been studying to become wiser and better as it has grown
older, is not yet perverse or wicked enough to deserve so dreadful
and severe a punishment as dissolution. This Union has not yet
accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly designed by
Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of states
and empires. JSTo ; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would
rise again and reappear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It
is the only government that can stand here. Woe ! woe ! to the man
that madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure;
and men, in^jafter times, sball^ declare that this generation, which
sjLV^ed the Union frpm. aucft. jmddea and unloaked^fpr_dangers, sur-
passed in magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations Jin
the eternal principles of liberty, justice and humanity^

THE STATE OF THE UNION.1

I HAVE received a communication from a committee of twenty-
five citizens of New York, who are charged with the duty of
presenting to the senate of the United States the petition of the
inhabitants of that city, praying for the exercise of the best wisdom
of congress in finding some plan for the adjustment of the troubles
which disturb the peace and happiness and endanger the safety of
the nation.

Excepting the house of representatives, this senate chamber is the
largest hall that is, or ever has been, occupied by a legislative assem
bly since the world began. The memorial which I am charged to
present is of such a length that, if extended, it would cross the sen
ate chamber, in its extremest length, eighteen times. I have already
presented memorials from the city of New York signed by citizens
of that place to the number of twenty-five thousand. This memo
rial bears the signatures of thirty-eight thousand more, making, in
the whole, sixty -three thousand of the inhabitants of that city who
have signed this appeal to the senate. The committee who have
charge of this memorial are a fair representation — I might almost
say an embodiment — of the citizens who direct and wield the com
merce of the great emporium of our country, the commerce of a
continent, and a commerce which this present year, owing to the dis
tractions of the times, is put, for the first time, in the condition of
proving itself to be the controlling commerce of the world. The
memorial which they present may be regarded as a fair expression
of the interest which is felt by that great commercial community,
and probably a fair exponent of the interest in the same great sub
ject which is felt by the whole commercial interest of the United
States. In any other part of the world, such a communication
would command obedience. In England, France, Kussia, Prussia,
or Germany, a demonstration of the will of the commerce of the

1 Speech in the Senate on presenting the New York Union petition, January 30, 1861

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 671

country decides the questions of war or of peace. Happily, that is
not the case in this great republic. The interest of commerce is but
one. The interest of agriculture, manufactures, and mining, each
of them, is another. Each is entitled to, and each secures, equal
respect; and the consideration which they obtain is due, not to their
number, not to their wealth, but is due to the circumstances under
which they lend their advice to the government. But I do not hesi
tate to say that the character of these petitioners entitle them to the
respectful attention and consideration of congress.

They have asked me to support this petition. I have not yet
found, though I have anxiously waited and hoped for, that manifes
tation of temper on the part of the people of the country and their
representatives which would justify me in saying that the seceding
states, or those who sympathize with them, have made propositions
which the citizens of the adhering states could accept; or, as I desire
to speak with impartiality upon this as upon all other occasions, to
put the proposition in another form, that this or any other of the
various propositions which have come from citizens of the adhering
states, or those wrho desire to adhere to the Union, would be accepta
ble and satisfactory to the other party. I have thought it my duty
to hold myself open and ready for the best adjustment which could
be practically made; and I have therefore been obliged to ask this
committee to be content with the assurance that I would express to
the public and to the senate that the spirit in which they come is
perfectly commendable and perfectly satisfactory. It is gratifying
to me to see that the proper spirit, the spirit jQf_^ybernal kindness,
of conciliation and affection, is adopted by so large a portion of my
fellow citizens of the state to which I belong.

I have asked them, also, in return for performing my duty on this
occasion, that when they have arrived at home, they will act in the
same spirit and manifest their devotion to the Union above all other
interests and all other sentiments, by speaking for the Union, by
voting for the Union, and if it should be demanded by lending and
even giving their money for the Union, and fighting in the last resort
for the Union ; taking care always that speaking goes before voting,
voting goes before giving money, and all go before a battle, which I
should regard as hazardous and dangerous, and therefore the last, as
it would be the most painful measure to be resorted to for the salva
tion of the Union.

672 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

This is the spirit in which I have determined for myself to come
up to this great question, and to pass through it, as I sincerely
believe we shall pass through it. For, although this great contro
versy has not been already settled, I do not, therefore, any the less
calculate upon and hope and expect that it will be peacefully settled,
and settled for the Union. I have not been so rash as to expect that
in sixty days, which have been allowed to us since the meeting of
congress — and I will be frank in saying that I have not expected
that in the ninety days which are the allotted term of congress — this
great controversy would certainly be adjusted, peace restored, and
the Union firmly reestablished. I knew that sixty days, or ninety
days, was the term that was fixed with definite objects and purposes
by that portion of my fellow citizens who have thought that it would
advance the interests of the states to which they belonged to dissever
the Union. I have not expected that reason and judgment would
come back to the people and become so pervading, so universal, as
that they would appreciate the danger and be able to agree on the
remedies. Still, I have been willing that it should be tried, though
unsuccessfully ; but my confidence has remained the same, for this
simple reason : that as I have not believed that the passion and
frenzy of the hour -could overturn this great fabric of constitutional
liberty and empire in ninety days, so I have felt sure that there
would be time, even after the expiration of ninety days, for the
restoration of all that had been lost, and for the reestablishment of
all that was in danger.

A great many and very various interests and elements are brought
into conflict in this sudden crisis ; a great many personal ambitions ;
a great many sectional interests; and it would be strange if they
could all be accommodated and arranged and harmonized, so as to
admit and give full effect to the one profoundest, strongest, and most
enduring sentiment or passion of the United States — that of devotion
to the Union. These, whether you call them secession or revolution
on the one side, or coercion or defiance on the other, are all to sub
side and pass away before the Union is to become the grand absorb
ing object of interest, affection and duty, upon the part of the citi
zens of the United States. A great many partisan interests are to
be repressed, suppressed, and to give place — partisan interests
expressed by the Charleston platform, by the Baltimore platform,
by the Chicago platform, and by the popular sovereignty platform

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 673

— if indeed the Union is in danger and is to be saved ; and with
these interests, and with these platforms, everybody standing upon
them or connected with them, is to pass away, if the Union is in
danger and is to be saved, before the Union can be saved. But it
will require a very short time, if this Union is in danger and does
require to be saved, for all these interests and all these platforms and
all these men to disappear. You and I, and every one who shall
oppose, resist, stand in the way of the preservation of this Union r
will appear but as moths on a summer evening, when the whirlwind
of popular indignation arises that shall be excited at the full disco
very that this Union is endangered through faction, or even impracti
cability on our part.

I have hope, confidence, that all this is to come around just as I
have said, and quite soon enough ; because I perceive, although we
may shut our eyes to it, that the country and mankind cannot shut
their eyes to the true nature of this crisis. There has been a real, a
vital question in this country for twelve years at _jgast— a _gjiestio.n
of slavery in the terri tories^f ._ the Uni ted Stajgs._ It was strongest
in its development in 1850, when all the Pacific coast, and all the/
territory intervening between it and the Louisiana purchase, were
thrown upon our hands all of a sudden, for the purpose of our
organizing in them free and independent republican governments, as
a basis of future states. It has been an earnest, and I regret to say,
an angry controversy ; but the admission of Kansas into the Union
yesterday settled at least all that was vital or important in the ques
tion, leaving behind nothing but the passions which the contest had
engendered. Kansas is in the Union ; California and Oregon are in
the Union ; and now the same contest divides and distracts this
Union for freedom and slavery in the territories of the United
States, just as before.

What is the extent of the territories which remain after the admis
sion of Minnesota, of Oregon, of California, and of Kansas? One
million sixty-three thousand five hundred and seven square miles,
an area twenty-four times that of the state of New York, the largest
of the old and fully developed states. Twenty-four such states as
this of New York are yet to be organized within the remaining terri
tories of the United States. Now, under what is accepted by the
administration of the government as a judicial decree, upheld by it,
put in practical operation by it, every inch of that territory is slave

VOL. IV. 85

674

SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

territory — I speak of that decision not as I accept it, but as it is
accepted and enforced by the existing administration — every foot of
it slave territory as much as South Carolina. Over a considerable
portion of it a slave code, made by a government created by the
congress of the United States, is enforced ; so that, according to the
claims of those who insist upon a right in the territory of the United
States for slavery, the whole of this one million sixty -three thousand
square miles is slave territory. How many slaves are there in it?
How many have been brought into it during these twelve years in
which it has been not only relinquished to slavery, but in which the
court and the legislature and the administration have maintained,
protected, defended, and guaranteed slavery there? Twenty -four
African slaves; one slave for every forty -four thousand square
miles ; one slave for every one of the twenty -four states which, sup
posing them each to be of the dimensions of New York or Penn
sylvania or Indiana, are to cover that portion of the area of our
republic. I hayejollowed this. thing in good faith, whhjzeal and
energy^ but I confess that I have no fears of slavery now, wherein
the peculiar condition of things which has existed, slavery has suc
ceeded in planting only one slave upon every forty-four thousand
square miles of territory.

This, then, has ceased to be a practical question^ In lieu of it
comes up a great and vital and fearful question — ^£J£££&£*\j£
imon or dissolution of the Union ; the question of country or of
no country;tfeez^ie^TonoTnope, the question of greatness, or the
question of sinking forever under the contempt of mankind. Why
then, should I despair that a great people of thirty millions will be
able to meet this crisis ? I have no fear. This is a confederacy.
It is not an imperial government, nor the government of a single
state ; it is a confederacy ; and it is, as it ought to be, dependent
upon the continued assent of all the members of the confederacy to
its existence, and subject to dissolution by their action ; but that
assent is to be always taken by virtue of the original assent and
held, until, in the form prescribed by the constitution itself, and in
the time and in the manner and with all the conditions which the
constitution prescribes, those who constitute the Union shall declare
that it shall be no longer. The thirty days, and sixty days, and
ninety days, given us by the disunionists may not be enough for
their policy and their purposes. I hope and trust that it may be

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 675

time enough for the policy and purposes of the lovers of the Union.
God grant that it may be so ! But if this term shall turn out not to
he enough, then I see how and when all these great controversies
will be settled, just as our forefathers foresaw when they framed the
constitution. They provided, seventy years ago, that this present
controversy, this whole controversy, shall be submitted to the people
of the United States in convention, called according to the forms of
the constitution, and acting in the manner prescribed by it. Then
this country will find sudden relief in the prompt and unanimous
adoption of the measures necessary for its salvation ; and the world
will see how well and how wisely a great, enlightened, educated,
Christian people, consisting of thirty -four sovereign states, can adjust
difficulties which had seemed, even to themselves, as well as to man
kind, to be insurmountable.

Mr. MASON (after other remarks) said : I can understand, Mr. President, what
the senator means when he recommends to his constituents to speak for the
Union ; we have had a great deal of that ; I can understand what he means when
he recommends them to vote for the Union, because he coupled it with a recom
mendation that they should go into state convention ; but I demand to know
what he means by their contributing money for the Union.

I will explain to the honorable senator, if he wishes. During the
present session of congress, the government of this Union has seen
a sudden depreciation of its credit. From one condition of things
which existed a year or two ago, when all the stocks of the Union
were at a premium, they have fallen until recently, at one time, the
credit of the Union was at a discount of thirty per cent, while the
credit of the state of New York, on her six per cent stock, all the
while commands a premium. The commercial community, who
to-day petition congress, have the treasure of the commercial city in
their keeping. I have recommended to these gentlemen here, publicly,
as I have heretofore recommended to them privately, that they should
advance to the Union money on loans and on treasury notes, as they
are now furnishing in that way to the Union the funds with which
the president of the United States, the departments, the congress,
the courts, yourself and myself, the senator from Virginia, thearrny,
navy, and every branch of the government, is actually sustained,
I have recommended to them, in this crisis, that they sustain the
government of their country with the credit to which it is entitled
at their hands.

676 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

I contemplated, after the expiration of all the multitudinous trials
they are making to save this Union by compromise, a convention
of the people of the United States, called in constitutional form ;
and when that shall have been held, or refused to be held, and found
to be impossible to obtain ; if, then, this Union is to stand or fall by
the force of arms, I have advised my people to do, as I shall be ready
to do myself, stand in the breach, and stand with it or perish with it,

Mr. MASON. — Then we have it definite. I want to bring the honorable senator
the exponent of the new administration, to the policy which is to be adopted. I
understand from him now, that remedies failing through the constitution by the
conventions of the states, his recommendation is battle and bloodshed to preserve
the Union ; and his recommendation to his people is, that they shall contribute
the money which shall march the army upon the south ; for what ? To preserve
the Union?

I look to no such contingency as seceded states and a dissevered
Union. I look to no such condition of things. The honorable
senator and I differ in regard to the future. He, with an earnest
will and ardent imagination, sees this country hereafter rent and dis
severed, and then recombined into separate confederacies. I see no-
such thing in the future ; but j^dojsee, through the return of reason
and judgment to the American people, a return of public harmony^
and the consolidation of the Union firmeiHEan ever before. The
honorable senator from Virginia can very easily see that we may
differ in our anticipations and expectations of the future, because we
differ so much in regard to the actual, living present. Here I am in
the Union of the United States, this same blessed, glorious, nobly-
inherited, God-given Union, in the senate chamber of the United
States, pleading for it, maintaining it, and defending it.

The honorable senator from Virginia says it is gone, there is no
Union ; and yet he is here on this same floor with me. Where, then,
is he ? In the Union, or out of the Union ? He is actually present
here ; and in spite of himself I hold him to be still with myself in
this glorious old Union. I will not strain the remark, which he means
to put forth with candor and frankness. I therefore assume that he
infers because some other senators were here a short time ago, his
associates and mine, and are not here now, but have withdrawn, under
circumstances known to the world, and which, for obvious reasons, I
refrain from commenting on, therefore their states are gone and the
Union is gone with them. The senate chamber is here ; the states

THE STATE OF THE UNION. 677

are here ; the Union is here still. Here they will all be ; and I
expect that, in the exercise of public reason, the free choice of these
states, these places will all be filled. If I contemplate in any case
that it may be necessary to fight for this Union, it is because treason
and sedition may arise, not alone or only in a state of the south, but
in states of the north, anywhere and everywhere, be excited and
.armed, so as to assail the Union ; and whenever it shall come to
that, whether it is in my own state or in any other state of the Union,
then I expect that, whatever can be done having been done — as I
have already indicated that all shall be done which reason can do —
then I expect that what is right to be done shall be done in the way in
which treason in the last resort is necessarily as well as lawfully met

Mr. MASON. — Mr. President, giving the honorable senator the full advantage of
his present commentary upon the speech that preceded it, I yet place before the
American people the fact that he proposes but one remedy, either to preserve this
Union or to restore it, and that is the ultima ratio regum.

Mr. SEWARD. — Not to restore — preserve.

Mr. MASON. — I will take his own language. Let the facts be what they may, he
presents but one remedy — the argument of the tyrant — force, compulsion, power.
This is the only resort that the honorable senator has evinced, either in his speech
or in his commentary. He says he is for punishing sedition and treason, whether
it is found in the south or in the north.

I have been surprised at the delusion which the honorable sena
tor from Virginia has been able to practise upon himself, so as to
make out of a speech, peaceful, fraternal, cordial, such as I have
made, a declaration of war. I cannot account for it, how it is that,
while his sense of honor remains clear and bright — as I confess with
pleasure it does — he avoids by design personalities which might irri
tate, yet his judgment is, somehow or other, so under the influence
of his passion that he can see nothing but war in a speech which
proposes simply this : that since this Union is in danger, every other
question should be subordinate to the consideration and the removal
of that danger by the pacific, constitutional action of the American
people ; by speech first, by vote, by consultation, by supplying and
maintaining the credit of the government, and, in the last alterna
tive, after having exhausted all the existing means of settlement,
.and all others that might be suggested ; and finally, after a constitu
tional convention of the United States, called in the forms of the
•constitution — then, to stand by this good old flag, and, if it is to fall
from its eminence, be wrapped in its folds.

678 SPEECHES IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

That honorable senator could have recollected that I came into
the committee of thirteen ; that I listened to every proposition that
was made ; that I gave it deliberate — will any one say it was not
fraternal ? — consideration. Will any one say that I offered up no
prejudices, no concessions, to propitiate an arrangement ? Which
one of all the propositions that have been made have I refused to
consider? None. When I have voted to substitute a constitutional
provision for the settlement of this question, such as that which was
offered by the honorable senator from New Hampshire [Mr. CLARK],
in preference to the proposition which requires us to take, in an
unconstitutional and ineffectual way, the sentiments of the people
on the proposition of the honorable senator from Kentucky, did I
do it in a spirit otherwise than that which belongs to a representa
tive of the people who seek concessions ? In regard to this very
proceeding of the honorable senator's state which he so proudly com
mends, and in terms to which I respond, have I not recommended
to my own state, and is it not acting, in sending commissioners to
meet the other states in that convention ? Does not the honorable
senator know that the state of New York stands ready to hear and
consider every plan, whether within the forms of the constitu
tion or without them, to settle this question peacefully and without
resort to the sword, and that I am with the state of New York in
that action ? It is simply because I have learned from the interest
in which — the honorable senator will excuse me for saying — I under
stood him to speak, that neither any suggestion that has been made
yet and considered, nor any that that convention can make and con
sider arid submit, or any other that has yet been projected, will be
satisfactory to that interest of secession or disunion in which interest
he speaks. I then have submitted alone that further one : that when
all these have failed, then the states of this Union, according to the
forms of the constitution, and in the spirit in which it was made,
shall take up this controversy about twenty-four negro slaves scat
tered over a territory of one million fifty thousand square miles,
and say whether, with the honorable senator from Virginia, they are
willing to sacrifice all this liberty, all this greatness, all this happi
ness, and all this hope, because they have not intelligence, wisdom
and virtue enough to adjust a controversy so frivolous and con
temptible.

APPENDIX.

THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM.1

CHICAGO, MAY, 1860.

Resolved. That we, the delegated representatives of the republican electors of
the United States, in convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to
our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations :

FIRST. That the history of the nation during the last four years has fully
established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of
the republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are perma
nent in their nature, and now more than ever before demand its peaceful and
constitutional triumph.

SECOND. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the declaration
of independence and embodied in the federal constitution, i: That all men are
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed," is essential to the preservation of our
republican institutions ; and that the federal constitution, the rights of the states,
and the Union of the states, must and shall be preserved.

THIRD. That to the Union of the states this nation owes its unprecedented
increase in population; its surprising development of material resources ; its rapid
augmentation of wealth ; its happiness at home and its honor abroad ; and we
hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may ;
and we congratulate the country that no republican member of congress has
uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion, so often made by democratic
members, without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and
we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their
ascendency, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal
of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people
pternly to rebuke and forever silence.

FOURTH. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and espe
cially the right of each state, to order and control its own domestic institutions
according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power
on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends, and we
denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory,
no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

FIFTH. That the present democratic administration has far exceeded our worst
apprehension in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest,
us is especially evident in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton
constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas — in construing the personal
relation between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons
— in its attempted enforcement everywhere, on land and sea, through the inter
vention of congress' and of the federal courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely
local interest, and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power entrusted to it
by a confiding people.

SIXTH. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which
pervades every department of the federal government; that a return to rigid

1 See ante, page 76.

680 APPENDIX.

economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of
the public treasury by favored partisans ; while the recent startling developments
of frauds and corruptions at the federal metropolis, show that an entire change of
Administration is imperatively demanded.

SEVENTH. That the new dogma that the constitution of its own force carries
slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political
heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with
riotemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent, is revolu
tionary in its tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

EIGHTH. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is
that of freedom ; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery
in all our national territory, ordained that no "person should be deprived of life,
liberty or property, without due process of law!" it becomes our duty, by legislation,
whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the constitu
tion against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of congress, of
u territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in
any territory of the United States.

NINTH. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under
the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime
against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age, and we call upon
congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression
of that execrable traffic.

TENTH. That in the recent vetoes by the federal governors of the acts of the
legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those territories, we
find a practical illustration of the boasted democratic principle of non-intervention
and popular sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstra
tion of the deception and fraud involved therein.

ELEVENTH. That Kansas should of right be immediately admitted as a state,
under the constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted
by the house of representatives.

TWELFTH. That while providing revenue1 for the support of the general govern
ment by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these
imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole
country, and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the
workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and
manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the
nation commercial prosperity and independence.

THIRTEENTH. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public
lands held by actual settlers, and against any view of the free homestead policy
which regards the settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty, and we
demand the passage by congress of the complete and satisfactory homestead mea
sure which has already passed the house.

FOURTEENTH. That the republican party is opposed to any change in our naturali
zation laws, or any state legislation by which the rights of citizenship hitherto
accorded by emigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired ; and in
favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens,
whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.

FIFTEENTH. That appropriation by congress for river and harbor improvements of
a national character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing
commerce, are authorized by the constitution and justified by the obligation of
government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

SIXTEENTH. That a railroad to the Pacific ocean is imperatively demanded by
the interests of the whole country ; that the federal government ought to render
immediate and efficient aid in its construction ; and that, as preliminary thereto, a
daily overland mail should be promptly established.

SeVENTEENTH. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views,
we invite the cooperation of all citizens, however differing on other questions
who substantially agree with us in their affirmance and support.

SPEECHES AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION.1

WM. M. EVARTS, Chairman of the New York Delegation :

The state of New York, by a full delegation, with complete unanimity of pur
pose at home, came to this convention and presented to its choice one of its
citizens, who had served the state from boyhood up, who had labored for and
loved it We came from a great state, with, as we thought, a great statesman,
and our love of the great republic, from which we are all delegates, the great
American Union, and our love of the great republican party of the Union, and
our love of our statesman and candidate, made us think ^hat we did our duty to
the country, and the whole country, in expressing our love and preference for him.
For, it was from Gov. Seward that most of us learned to love republican principles
and the republican party. His fidelity to the country, the constitution and the
laws; his fidelity to the party and the principle that the majority govern; his
interest in the advancement of our party to its victory, that our country may rise
to its true glory, induces me to assume to speak his sentiments, as I do, indeed,
the opinions of our whole delegation when I move you, as I do now, that the
nomination of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, as the republican candidate for the
sum-ages of the whole country for the office of chief magistrate of the American
Union, be made unanimous.
JOHN A. ANDREW, Chairman of the Massachusetts Delegation :

I am deputed by the united voice of the Massachusetts delegation to second
the motion'just proposed by the distinguished citizen of New York, who repre
sents the delegation of that noble state. I second that motion, therefore, in the
name of Massachusetts, that the nomination of Abraham Lincoln be made unani
mous. Gentlemen, the people of Massachusetts hold in their heart of hearts,
next to their reverence and love for Christian faith, their reverence and love for
the doctrine of equal and impartial liberty. We are republicans, more than a
hundred thousand strong, of the old stamp of the Revolution. We have come
up here — the delegation from Massachusetts — from the ground where on Bunker's
Hill the Yankees of New England met the deadly fire of Britain. We have come
from Concord, where was spilled the first blood of the Revolution ; from Lexing
ton, where the embattled farmers fired the shot that was heard around the world.
We have come from Faneuil Hall, where spoke the patriots and sages and orators
of the earliest and best days of American history, where our fathers heard pro
pounded those doctrines and principles of liberty and human equality which found
their enunciation and exposition in the constitution of Massachusetts, and by
which, under judicial decision, human slavery was banished from the venerable
soil of that ancient commonwealth, before the Colonies became a united People.
We have come from the shadow of the old South church, where American liberty
was baptized in the waters of religion. We hold the purpose firm and strong, as
we have held it through the tedious struggle of years now gone by, to rescue,
before we die, the holy ark of American liberty from the grasp of the Philistines.
Yes, sir, whether in the majority, or without the majority of the American
people, there we stand. Whether in victory or in defeat, there we stand,
and, as said the Apostle, "having done all, still there we will stand, and
because of our love and of our faith." The affection of our hearts and the judg
ment of our intellects bound our political fortunes to William Henry Seward, of New-
York, him who is the brightest and most shining light of this political generation,
him who by the unanimous selection of the foes of our cause and our men, has for
years been the determined standard-bearer of liberty — William H. Seward —
whether in the legislature of his native state of New York, whether as governor
of that imperial commonwealth, or whether as senator of the United States,

1 See Memoir, ante page 78.

VOL. IV. 86

682 APPENJVIX.

or as a tribune of the people, ever faithful, ever true. In the thickest and the
hottest of every battle, there waved the white plume of the gallant leader of
New York. And by no hand of Massachusetts was it for him to be stricken
down. Dearly as we love triumph, we are used to momentary defeat because we
know we are right; and whatever storms assail our ship, before whatever irales
she may reel and quake, we know that if the bark sinks it is but to another sea.
We know that this cause of ours is bound to triumph, and that the American
people will, one day, be convinced, if not in 1860, that the path of duty and
patriotism leads in the direction of the republican cause. It was not for us
to strike down William Henry Seward, of New York. But, as we love the cause,
and as we respect our own convictions, and as we mean to be faithful to the only
organization on earth which is in the van of the cause of freedom, so do we. with
entire fidelity of heart^with entire concurrence of judgment, with the firmest and
most fixed purpose of our will, adopt the opinion of the majority of this convention.

CARL SCHURZ, of Wisconsin :

I am commissioned by the delegation of Wisconsin to second the motion made
by the distinguished gentleman from New York. The delegates of Wisconsin
were directed to cast their votes unanimously for William H. Seward, and it is
unnecessary to say that the instructions we received added but solemn obligations
of our constitute!] ts to the spontaneous impulses of our hearts. It would be need
less to say anything in praise of Mr. Seward. His claims stand recorded in the
annals of the country, and they are reported in the hearts of the people. He
needs no eulogy here, and my vote can add nothing to so powerful a testimony.
We went for him because we considered him the foremost among the best, and
to whatever may be said in his praise I will add but one thing. I now am
speaking in the spirit of Mr. Seward, when I say that his ambition will be satisfied
with the success of the cause which was the dream of his youth, and to which he
has devoted all the days of his manhood — even if the name of Wm. H. Seward
should remain in history an instance of the highest merit uncrowned with the
highest honor. We stood by Mr. Seward to the last, and we stand by him now
in supporting Mr. Lincoln. With the platform we adopted yesterday, and with
the candidate who so fairly represents it, as Mr. Lincoln does, we defy all the
passion and prejudice that may be enforced against us by our opponents. We
defy the whole slave power and the whole vassalage of hell. Aye, and we defy
the "Little Giant" himself. Again, I say we stand by Mr. Seward as we did
before — for we know that he will be at the head of our column, joining in the
battle-cry that joins us now, "Lincoln and victory."

AUSTIN BLAIR, of Michigan :

Like my friend who has just taken his seat, the state of Michigan, from first
to last, has cast her vote for the great statesman of New York. She has nothing
to take back. She has not sent me forward to worship the rising sun, but she has
put me forward to say that, at your behests here to-day, she lays down her first,
best loved candidate to take up yours, with some bleeding of the heart, with some
quivering in the veins ; but she does not fear that the fame of Seward will suffer,
for she knows that his fame is a portion of the history of the American Union ;
it will be written and read and beloved long after the temporary excitement of
this day has passed away, and when presidents are themselves forgotten in the obli
vion which comes over all temporal things. We stand by him still. We have
followed him with a single eye and with unwavering faith in times past. We
marshal now behind him in the grand column which shall go out to battle for
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and to conquer ; for mark you, what has happened
to-day will happen in November next — Lincoln will be elected with just such a
shout as has been given to-day in this vast assemblage.

O. H. BROWNING, of Illinois :

On behalf of the Illinois delegation I have been requested to make some proper
response to the speeches that we have heard from our friends of the other states.

SPEECHES AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. 683

Illinois ought hardly on this occasion to be expected to make a speech, or called
upon to do so. I desire to say, gentlemen of the convention, that in the con
test through which we have just passed, we have been actuated by no feeling of
hostility to the illustrious statesman from New York, who was in competition with
our own loved and gallant son. No republican who has a love of freedom in his
heart, and who has marked the course of Gov. Seward, of New York, in the
councils of our nation, who has witnessed the many occasions upon which he has
risen to the very hight of moral sublimity in his conflicts with the enemies of free
institutions ; no heart that has the love of freedom in it and has witnessed these
great conflicts of his, can do otherwise than venerate his name. On this occasion
I desire to say, only, that the hearts of the Illinois delegation are to-day filled
with emotions of gratification for which they have no utterance. We are not
more overcome by the triumph of our noble Lincoln, loving him as we do, knowing
the purity of his past life, the integrity of his character, and devotion to the princi
ples of our party, and the gallantry with which we will be conducted through
this contest, than we are by the magnanimity of our friends of the great and
glorious state of New York, in moving to make this nomination unanimous.

JOHN D. BALDWIN, Worcester, Massachusetts :

I went to the Chicago convention feeling it my duty to do everything in my
power to secure the nomination of Mr. Seward. This was required by the
preferences of those I represented and by my own sentiments. It is now-
unnecessary to go into an extended eulogy of Mr. Seward. He is one of the
great men of the age, whose fame is as wide as the civilized world. He is thought
of in Europe as we think of him here. One evening, after Charles Sumner's
return from Europe, at a supper where I heard him relate many incidents con
nected with his stay in Europe, Mr. Sumner spoke of Win. E. Gladstone, the
coining man in Great Britain, as " the most accomplished orator that speaks in the
English language, and gave the company Mr. Gladstone's opinion of Mr. Seward.
It was as follows: "Mr. Seward's argument in the Freeman case is the greatest
forensic effort in the English language." An English gentleman present replied:
u The greatest ? Mr. Gladstone, you forget Erskine." "No," replied Mr. Glad
stone, UI do not forget Mr. Erskine; Mr. Seward's argument is the greatest
forensic effort in the language." And he is regarded abroad, as well as at home,
as one of the most philosophic and profound statesmen living. Mr. Seward could
not be made greater by the presidency, and he can feel, as we do, that it is better
to be William H. Seward than to be president.

THE REPUBLICAN CENTRAL COMMITTEE: -^EW YORK, May 19 1860.

To Hon. William H. Seward — Dear Sir- — We_^d4Hess you w^h feelings of
regret that cannot be sufficiently expressed._The refuTroTThet^tncitgo convention'
has been more than a "surprise to the republicans of New York. That you, who
have been the earliest defender of republican principles — the acknowledged head
and leader of the party — who have given direction to its movements, and form
and substance to its acts — that you should have been put aside upon the narrow
ground of expediency, we can hardly realize or believe. Whatever the decision
of this, or a hundred other conventions, we recognize in you the real leader of
the republican party ; and the citizens of every state and of all creeds and parties,
and the history of our country will confirm this judgment.

As that leader — as one to whom we shall hereafter as in times past look for
counsel and direction, the republicans of this city desire, that you should be with
them at the first public meeting which will be held. Your presence will at least
alleviate their disappointment, and revive their exertions; and will also enable-
them again to evidence their undiminished confidence and attachment, and their
gratitude for all that you have done for the welfare of our country and the pre
servation of her liberties.

CHARLES C. NOTT, WILLIAM H. BULL, A. J. WILLIAMSON, C. S. SPENCER,

F. W. SHEPHERD, Committee, &c.

684 APPENDIX.

RECEPTION SPEECHES.1

BOSTON — GOVERNOR BANKS :

I know it is a custom of the people of Boston to welcome, with warm hearts
and enthusiastic words of friendship, every man of name and fame who does us
the honor to visit this our loved city. Here, at least, there are none whom we
fear; and from whatever quarter of the world a man shall come, who has served
his people in his day or way, we can afford, and we will give, our welcome. But I
am glad to say, fellow citizens, that, like other human beings, we have our friends,
and among others there is none that finds a warmer place in the hearts of the
people of the old Bay state than the renowned statesman of New York.

Though not so well known to us personally as he should be, as citizens of Boston
and as citizens of Massachusetts, for many long years we have watched his career,
directing the interests of the Empire state and developing the material wealth of
that portion of the continent; and, enjoying, as we have, both as citizens of the
metropolis of New England and of the commonwealth, the efforts of his eloquence,
his industry, his wisdom, and his great and far-reaching experience in the councils
•of the nation, I know you will welcome him as he deserves, and I know that you
will speak for him and for the people of the commonwealth, when I shall have
presented him to you.

Governor SEWARD — Our friends have met here at a few moments' call. They
know what hospitality is due to you — that you come at the close of a long day's
travel at the warmest season of the year — and we cannot demand or expect much
from you : but a little is required in obedience to that respect and esteem which
the people of this commonwealth entertain for you ; and I am sure that its citi
zens would grieve if we were to allow you to pass through this metropolis without
.a word of welcome, without a cheer that should come from the hearts of the peo
ple of Massachusetts.

Fellow citizens, I present to you the Honorable William H. Seward, of the
United States senate, respected and loved by the people of all the states.

LANSING, Mich. — J. W. LONGYEAR, Esq. :

I have been appointed by a large and enthusiastic meeting of my republican
fellow citizens, to discharge the honorable and agreeable duty of expressing to
you their affectionate esteem, and their heartfelt welcome to our infant city ; and
it is here upon the eve of the decision, a final decision it is to be hoped, of one
of the most important political contests by which the republic has ever been agi
tated, that we welcome you among us for your countenance, your counsel, and
your advice. It is here amidst a population emigrated mainly from your native
state, here amidst institutions of government, copied mainly from those under
which you live, we welcome you ; and here, noble senator from the Empire state,
amidst your ardent admirers, who were second to none in their zeal and exertions
to see you the standard-bearer in this decisive contest, that we welcome you, and
we thrice welcome you, sir, for the reason that while the republicans in national
convention assembled, saw fit, in their wisdom, to choose another, you are not
found deserting your post of duty, but like the true soldier ready and willing to do
your duty with knapsack and bayonet, if required, although qualified to fill the
highest grade of office.

This contest in which so ferocious a war is now raging, is not, as our opponents
would urge, of one section of the republic against the other, or of one interest
against another, but that of free institutions, free soil, free labor, and free speech,
against slavery and its concomitant evils ; not a war against the domestic institu
tions of the states as they now exist, but against the extension of that baleful
curse of African slavery into territory now free! It is the contest of freedom
against slavery, and it is owing to the patriotic manner in which you have devoted

1 See ante page 81.

RECEPTION SPEECHES. 685

your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor, to the support of the former, that
you now owe this enthusiastic reception.

To you, sentiments expressed by yourself, in years gone by, to one of the
nation's most honored sons, now gone to his final rest, upon an occasion similar to
this, may, in these, your riper years, be appropriately applied to yourself: " Such
honors frequently attend public functionaries, and such a one may sometimes
find it difficult to determine how much of the homage he receives is paid to his
own worth, how much proceeds from the habitual reverence of good republican
citizens to constitute elective authority, and how much from the spirit of venal
adulation.

"You, sir, labor under no such embarrassment. The office you hold, though
honorable, is purely legislative. You are not in a position, or in nomination for
a position, in which you can have any patronage to bestow, and yet your hands
are uplifted, and your exertions bestowed to secure blessings on your country.

:' The homage paid you, dear sir, is sincere, for it has its sources in the just senti
ments and irrepressible affections of a free people, their love of truth, their admira
tion of wisdom, their reverence for virtue, and their gratitude for beneficence."

The praises we bestow are not of a purely partisan nature. Men of all parties
come here to see and hear you, and that with the profoundest respect as one of
the great statesmen of the age ; and " the praises we bestow are already echoed
back to us by voices which come rich and full across the Atlantic, hailing you as
the indefatigable champion of humanity."

MADISON, Wis., — CHAUNCEY ABBOTT, Esq. r1

In behalf of the citizens of Madison, I welcome you, sir, to our midst ; and it
is with more satisfaction that I do so, inasmuch as I feel the assurance which I
convey to you, that it is not merely a formal, but a most hearty and cordial wel
come, which general public sentiment extends to you. However flattering any
personal preferences or partialities may be, we must still feel that the general and
enthusiastic welcome which the people award to you, arises from a sentiment that
you are engaged in the great cause of constitutional and political liberty, so-
near and dear to the people of this state, and of this region. There is a common
sentiment and feeling that the great country lying northwest of the Ohio, conse
crated to liberty and free institutions, and free government, by the ordinance of
1787, established by the founder of the government, has been preserved to freedom,
in a great measure, by the earnest, zealous, able, efforts put forth by you. It is
for this reason that the people are so glad to welcome you among them ; hoping
that you may receive such assurances of their confidence and support as may
enable you hereafter to go forth in association with your fellows, to carry out
your peaceful and successful issues in the cause of constitutional freedom and free
government, in which cause we pledge you our support and our aid. Sir, you are
most welcome among us. The governor of the state will now speak in behalf of
the people of the state generally.

Gov. RANDALL :

You need, sir, no formal introduction to the people of Wisconsin. The gather
ing throngs that have met you on your way hither, are evidences to you how
deeply your name and deeds are engraven on the hearts of this people. We are
a young state — a state but twelve years of age — a state containing eight hundred
thousand inhabitants — a state marvelous in its prosperity, great in its resources,
agricultural, mineral and commercial. On its west it has a great commercial high
way, another on its east. Iron roads, binding together its rich, growing cities,
traverse all its length and breadth. The farms of the people are like gardens, and
the cities are set like bright jewels in the crown of their prosperity.

We have grown strong and flourished under the tree of liberty planted here by
Virginia. Wisconsin is the daughter of Virginia, and the child has not forgotten,
the early taught lessons of the parent. There shall be no slavery or involuntary

1 See ante, page 90.

€86 APPENDIX.

servitude here forever. To-day the light of other days is around our people ; the
light of the days of Madison and Jefferson ; and we have looked upon you as one
of those who have stood forward in maintaining constitutional law and correct
principle. You have done more than most men in public life. You have given a
moral tone to the politics of the country. Going into the senate all alone, and
standing there alone, feeling that

" Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just,"

You have given to politics a moral tone, and directed the intellect of this great
people.

You have done more than most men have, to correct and manufacture and tame
public sentiment within correct limits. In all the great measures of public policy
ior the benefit of the great west, your thoughts and words have been foremost in
their advocacy. You have done much in favor of giving farms to the free settlers
here, and whenever measures for the benefit of our commercial interest have been
pending, your voice and vote have been given for them.

We feel, therefore, to you a debt of gratitude under these considerations. You
were the first choice of the people of Wisconsin, as their candidate for the presi
dency of the United States. Yielding to the will of the national convention that
met at Chicago, while we abated not one jot or tittle in our affection for you, Lin
coln became, by the action of the convention, its first choice. We do battle to
day for him, and are proud to know that you stand in the forefront of that battle,
and that we follow so illustrious a leader. He is our Moses, and you are our great
High Priest, holding up his right hand, while the fight is going on.

Again, sir, in behalf of the free people, I welcome you to Wisconsin and its
capital.

SAINT PAUL, Minn., — JUDGE GOODRICH :l

GENTLEMEN — WIDE-AWAKES — FELLOW CITIZENS : The act of presenting to you
the illustrious patriot and statesman who has ever occupied the highest niche in
the temple of your affections — the man upon whom the eye of the nation has long
been hopefully and anxiously fixed — the man

" Whose control has been felt.
Even in our nation's destiny;
Whose name adorns and dignifies the scroll
Whose leaves contain your country's history."

The man to whose form and features the artist of our day is eager to give immor
tality, is among the most pleasing incidents of my life. This vast concourse shall
dissolve from the face of the earth; the daguerrean impression shall fade away;
the photograph shall vanish ; the bronze shall corrode and become as dross ; and
the marble that shall symbolize the man shall crumble to dust beneath the all-con
quering hand of time that shall be lifted up during the reign of that glorious im
mortality which awaits his deeds ; the man that is revered by the great and good
of all parties — by the north and the south, the east and the west — by the soldier
in his camp — the peasant in his cot — the plowman in his field — the mechanic in
his shop — the merchant and banker who whiten the bosom of every sea beneath
the sun with the rich sails of our commerce, by " they who go down to the sea in
great ships," the stern warrior clad in mail, and the sage in the halls of the national
councils.

I have traversed our state, I have looked abroad, I know that

" Throughout the land, o'er vale, o'er hill,

Are faces that attest the same,
That kindle like a fire new stirred,
At the sound of SEWARD'S name."'

Lastingly exalted is his fame, wherever eminent public service, unbending integ
rity, undying devotion to a righteous cause, transcendent genius, lofty deeds and
high moral daring shall cause a thrill, or challenge the admiration of the human
heart, there will the name of WILLIAM H. SEWARD be held up to high and noble
commendation. Generations yet unborn shall rise up and swell the trumpet of his

1 See ante, page 94.

RECEPTION SPEECHES. 687

fame, while envy, and jealousy, and blind partisan bigotry, and partisan domina
tion shall stand overwhelmed and blinded amid the transcendent effulgence that
shall emanate from the pages of that history wherein is weighed the actions of
men at the gates of eternity.

[Turning to Governor Seward, he said :]

HONORED SIR : In the name and on behalf of the freemen of Minnesota, I bid
you welcome — welcome to our rising city, our infant state — our homes, our altars,
and our fires.

FELLOW CITIZENS: Governor Seward, of New York, who has received at the
hands of a grateful people, who have thronged the waysides to honor him as he
journeyed hither, one continued ovation from his own "sweet Auburn," along the
shores of the great lakes to the falls of St. Anthony, in the language of Burke I
can truly say that the people have everywhere " leaped upon him like children
upon a long absent father," now stands before you.

Hon. JOHN W. NORTH :

Fellow Citizens : We have met to-day to listen to a statesman who has long held
a high place in the affections of our people ; as well for his services to our territory
and state, as for his lifelong devotion to the service of our common country ; one
who, by the united voice of friends and opponents, has been classed at the head
of our living statesmen.

There is nothing remarkable in the homage that is paid to power, or in the
empty praise that follows the rising fortunes of the mere politician. But when
the people — unmoved by other considerations than those of genuine esteem and
profound gratitude for noble services — come forth, as on the present occasion, in
unprecedented numbers, to testify their appreciation of political integrity, profound
statesmanship, and genuine manhood, it may well be marked as an exponent of
the public virtue, and a guaranty that such qualities will continue to be sought for
in our public servants. It teaches, also, that there are sublimer heights than those
of official position or the chair of state — more enduring glory than a term of office
or the brief prerogatives of power.

When profligate statesmen were framing mischief by law, and setting at defiance
every principle of morality in the wild frenzy of partisan legislation, there was
one to remind them that there was a " higher law" than the enactments of men,
and which could not be thwarted or evaded by all their arts. When the body
politic was convulsed by a disease too deep to be discovered by the political
quacks who are ever administering anodynes and saving the Union, there was one
who could discern the real sources of evil, and, from the serene heights of political
philosophy, inform bewildered politicians that this was " no ephemeral struggle."
caused by a few fanatics, but "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and endu
ring forces" and which could not be terminated until our country became wholly
slave territory or wholly free.

And now, when the spirit of slavery has seized the reins of government, con
trolled its legislation, grasped free territory, and degraded the judiciary so low as
to teach the inhuman doctrine that one portion of the people " have no rights "
that the other portion " are bound to respect," there is one to tell them the simple
but sublime truth that " the whole race suffers when injustice is done to the hum
blest and most despised of its members."

These, fellow citizens, are noble sentiments, and worthy of the statesman of
your choice — a statesman whose patriotism is not bounded by sectional lines
of mountains and rivers, nor his philanthropy by nationality — a friend of the
oppressed of every land — a friend alike of the north and of the south, of the east
and of the west, of the older states and the infant territories. I have the honor
to introduce to you the honorable William H. Seward, of New York.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., — JOHN HUTCHINSON, Esq. :

Senator Seward : In behalf of the citizens of Minneapolis, of Hennepin county,
and this northwestern state, I take pleasure in extending to you a heartfelt welcome.

688 APPENDIX.

We welcome you as the friend of freedom; we welcome you as the expounder
and bold advocate of constitutional rights, and the true embodiment of republican
principles. It is with unfeigned joy that we look upon you, for the first time, to
day, on our own soil. We are not unmindful, sir, of the fact that much of your
life has been devoted to the good of your country, and that in the American sen
ate you have ever been foremost in cementing into one common brotherhood this
glorious confederacy, ever toiling assiduously for the supremacy of right and
for our national prosperity, ever supporting those measures founded in justice,
truth and equality, and ever fearlessly opposing tyranny, oppression and wrong.

And while the republicans of Minnesota were foremost, in the convention at Chi
cago, in presenting you as our standard-bearer, yet they were among the first to-
acquiesce and show their fidelity to principle by their firm and enthusiastic sup
port of the present nominee. Asking you to take one hasty glance at our
unequaled products and vast resources, I again bid you welcome, and have the
honor, fellow citizens, to present to you the first living American statesman
and senator, WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

DUBUQUE, IOWA, — W. B. ALLISON, Esq. :l

Senator Seward : In the name and on behalf of the republicans of the state of
Iowa, on behalf of the thousands now present, and especially on behalf of the
people of this city, whom you have honored by coming among us, I convey to you
a cordial, sincere and heartfelt welcome, and an assurance oif the exalted sense
which we entertain of your character and public services.

The highest moral and intellectual qualities, steadily and triumphantly devoted
to the noblest purposes, always command the respect and admiration of an enlight
ened and Christian people. Though few of the vast multitude now present have
ever before met you face to face, yet all have long since learned to admire the elo
quent zeal with which you have, for a series of years, maintained that our govern
ment was formed, in part, to foster and protect free labor, and to discourage and
prohibit, whenever it has the power, slave labor. We all remember with what
patriotic devotion you have ever opposed the federal recognition of human bond
age, and with what power and eloquence you have battled against the apolo
gists for and supporters of this fivefold barbarism. We remember your gallant
but unavailing services in the great contest of 1854, in opposition to the ruthless
hands that tore from the statute books the Missouri restriction, which had so long
stood as a wall against the encroachments of human servitude.

Iowa was the first sovereign state that indorsed your efforts, and at the ballot
box placed the seal of condemnation upon that act of perjury ; and up to this hour
has stood true to the position then taken.

We remember your eloquent appeals in behalf of the citizens of Kansas in the
hour of need and of peril. We remember, also, that your voice and your vote in
the senate have ever been in favor of a policy tending to build up and unfold the
infant settlements in our expansive west. Especially do we remember your aid in
securing to our own state the munificent land grants which will advance us at least
a decade in all that develops our material progress. We remember that you have
ever aided in the improvement of our own western rivers and harbors — the great
natural highways by which we are enabled cheaply to reach the markets of the
east. We remember that the cause of domestic industry, of education, of what
ever, in short, is calculated to render us a prosperous, united and happy people,
has found in you a watchful and efficient advocate.

With all these memories clustering about us and clinging to us, the enthusiasm
with which we to-day greet you is but the spontaneous effusion of grateful and
patriotic hearts. We recognize you as once the forerunner and now the champion
of that million army which marches under the broad banner of republicanism. It
is eminently fitting that the people of one sovereign state should assemble to hear
and interchange sentiments with the distinguished men of other sovereign stales.

1 See ante, page 96.

RECEPTION SPEECHES.

We are bound together by a thousand ties of interest, of sympathy, of affection
and of duty. We have one common origin, one common constitution, one com
mon country, and one common destiny. Especially is it fitting, then, at this hour
of general distrust and alarm, that we should inquire "where we are, and whither
we are tending."

It has been said the noblest homage a freeman can give, or a freeman receive, is
the homage of hearts ; that homage the thousand hearts that encircle you tender
to you to-day, not the homage due a senator alone, but due the distinguished
scholar and statesman whose fame is commensurate with the civilized world, and
whose name is sacred to the oppressed everywhere. I do but echo the language
of the throng that has crowded around you when I say again that to you we extend
a cordial and friendly greeting.

SAINT JOSEPH, Mo., — T. J. BOYNTON, Esq. i1

Senator SEWARD : I have been delegated by the republicans of St. Joseph to bid
you, in their name, and in the name of all our citizens, welcome to our city. We
greet you as the foremost man of this age — as the man whose philosophical states
manship has won for him a name which is as broad as the globe, and which will
live forever — as the man whose views are more consonant with that spirit of pro
gress which is abroad in the world than the views of any other man of any coun
try. We greet you as the citizen of our country, the broad philanthropy of whose
teachings has done most to educate that spirit of progress and give it the true
direction.

In one of your late speeches, you have predicted that the time is not distant
when the Empire State and the Keystone State and the Old Dominion of the
country will lie here in the Mississippi valley. This is a subject in which we, im
mediately, of the Missouri valley, are vitally interested. As selfish men, we have
peculiar reason to greet you cordially ; for when those measures which are matters
of life or death for us have been deserted by those who should have been their
proper and peculiar advocates, they have been championed by yourself. Some of
us are republicans, but we are all business men ; and we watch the fate, in con
gress, of those measures for the development of the west on which depends the
prosperity or the decline of our city with the most anxious solicitude. We have
ever found you our foremost, our most steadfast friend. But I will not weary you,
nor those who are waiting to hear you. Once again, as republicans, as citizens of
St. Joseph and of the great West, we bid you welcome.

LEAVENWORTH, Kansas, — A. CARTER WILDER, Esq. :2

Sir: I am charged with the very honorable and grateful duty of expressing to-
you the profound regard and affectionate esteem of my fellow citizens assembled
before you ; and to extend to you a most cordial welcome to this metropolis of
Kansas. We have watched, with pride and gratification, the demonstrations of
respect and kindness which have attended every step of your journey from Auburn
to Leavenworth. Such sincere homage is due to your character and illustrious
public services ; and no people have more reason to manifest their gratitude for
your fidelity and friendship than the free people of Kansas.

Though holding a seat in the United States senate from the state of New York,
Kansas and the Pacific claim you as their senator and statesman. For when you
retire, as perhaps you will do on the fourth of March next, from the place to which
the empire state deputed you as her senator, and when one who reads the record
of your speeches and your votes is asked what state did the occupant of that va
cant chair represent, he will be forced to answer, I cannot tell !

Judging from your acts, it would seem that, whosoever were weak and lowly,
whosoever brought peril and reproach upon their advocate, whosoever could do-
nothing in return for countenance and support rendered, they were the persons
whom you put yourself forward to represent and defend. You took upon your
self the burdens which others rejected, and braved the unpopularity by which.

1 See ante page 98. 2 See ante page 100.
VOL. IV. 87

690 APPENDIX.

others were dismayed. And thus the heart of the American people is with the
man who was always in advance of their opinions, always seeing clear at the hour
the truth which was to dawn upon their vision after it had been derided for many
days; always combating boldly for the right, which had not yet become respected
and acknowledged.

LAWRENCE, Kansas, — Mayor

WILLIAM H. SEWARD: The people of Lawrence, through a committee of citizens,
and through their municipal authorities, have requested me to extend to you, and
to the ladies and gentlemen constituting your party, a hearty welcome to the hos
pitalities of their city, and to assure you that they appreciate highly the distin
guished compliment paid them, in being thus favored with an opportunity of
seeing, hearing, and greeting the great republican chief whose name and fame are
known and honored throughout the civilized world.

As we stand here, to-day, upon the ground where the Kansas rebellion, so-
called. had its origin, and against which were directed, most frequently and per
sistently, the fierce and violent assaults of the myrmidons of slavery, and look
back upon those scenes of oppression and wrong, and feel that we have in our
midst the great and good man who, by his eloquent appeals and timely remon
strance, roused the great freedom-loving heart of the north to generous sympathy
and noble deeds in our behalf, the occasion becomes one of deep and solemn
interest,

In contemplating your distinguished and self-sacrificing services in defense of
our cause — services which have enshrined the name of William H. Seward in the
hearts of the freemen of Kansas — we are moved, by every sentiment of manly
gratitude, and by every feeling of devotion to true greatness and real worth, to
pray, with earnestness, God bless, and preserve for a long life of usefulness to the
world, the purest patriot and the greatest statesman of the age.

Again we welcome you to the heart of " the Saratoga of Freedom."

Governor ROBINSON:*

The freemen of Kansas will not permit that Lawrence alone shall have the honor
of bidding you welcome to the state of their adoption. Hence are they here in
person, from every county and hamlet, and they bid me give words to their wel
come, so far as hearts, throbbing with admiration and love, have utterance.

Owing to the recent settlement of our territory, the rudeness of our homes, the
unparalleled obstacles thrown in the way of our progress, and the unprecedented
drouth and consequent distress among our people, we cannot hope to receive you
with that pomp and circumstance which have marked your progress hither ; but
we bring, what other states have not to give — hearts overflowing with gratitude
and respect due to the deliverer of a people from present and impending evil.

In the days of our political thraldom, when we were mocked with the promise
of sovereignty, that we might be enslaved; when our people were persecuted,
defrauded, plundered and murdered, that they might be driven to despair and
crushed out ; then it was that you, our honored guest, stood by us, denounced the
tyranny, and interpreted the " handwriting upon the wall " in the ears of the
whole nation, until the knees of the tyrant trembled with fear, and his heel was
removed from the necks of our people.

The contest which has waged in this country since Kansas was opened to settle
ment, and before, is not local, but general; is not one of arms, but of ideas. It
is true that there has been an occasional collision of arms in Kansas, and a bloody
hand struck down one of the noblest and most gifted members of the senate ; but
here, our weapons of war are exchanged for husbandry — and, like truth crushed
to earth, Charles Sumner has risen, and is found in the thickest of the conflict.

With this exception, this warfare has been one of ideas, of mind, of intellect,
not carnal, but spiritual ; and it is in such a conflict we recognize William H. Sew
ard as commander-in-chief of freedom's host, and as such we welcome him to our

1 See ante page 101.

RECEPTION SPEECHES. 691

hearts and home?. His distinguished staff we also welcome as most worthy aids
to such a general in such a cause.

In 1854, on the floor of the senate of the United States, you accepted the chal
lenge of the slave power in these memorable words: " Come on, then, gentlemen
of the slave states ; since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf
of freedom. We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and
God give the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers as it is in right."

Six years have elapsed, and to-day we present you Kansas free, to grace your
triumph, with a constitution adopted by her people, without a stain of slavery to
mar its beauty.

The times are most auspicious. The clouds that have so long darkened our
political horizon are fast dispersing southward, and victory is marching upon vic
tory throughout the entire north. With propriety, therefore, may we greet you
on this occasion, as a conquering hero, fresh from the field of battle. God grant
these triumphs may extend till they shall place the honest statesman of Illinois in
the seat of power, with our guest at his right hand, when the conflict between
freedom and the federal power shall be effectually and forever repressed.

Again, I welcome you to Kansas. In behalf of the people of whatever party,
I welcome you as a statesman whom all Christendom is proud to honor. In behalf
of those who battled for freedom on the soil of Kansas, I welcome you as their
champion and defender. And in behalf of all the people, of whatever age, con
dition or sex, I welcome you as their deliverer from despotic rule and the blighting
curse of human slavery.

CHICAGO, — JOHN WENTWORTH, Mayor:1

Senator SEWARD : In welcoming you to our city, I should do injustice to the
sentiments of the friends of free labor did I not congratulate you on the fresh lau
rels you have acquired by the different speeches you have made on your western
tour. They have placed the devotees of human liberty under additional obliga
tions to you, and given them new proof that you had " rather be Right than be
President." The truths, which you have uttered with so much eloquence and
directness, will outlive the messages of presidents, and reproduce themselves at
every attempt of avarice to make merchandise of Humanity. We consider our
selves under the greater obligations to you for the frankness and candor wifh.
which you have presented the sole issue of the day; since timid men, over-anx
ious for success, sometimes manifest a disposition to detract from the moral force
of our certainly approaching victory by denying our faith and otherwise lowering
our standard. It was our presidential candidate who uttered the words of pro
phetic truth, that these United States must eventually all be free or all be slave.
Most heartily do we thank you for keeping this "irrepressible conflict" before the
people in your travels; and never have yovu presented it with more persuasive
accuracy than in your recent speeches. The laborers of this country must own.
themselves, and the least we can do to effect this object is, in the language of our
presidential candidate, "to arrest the further spread of slavery, and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinc
tion." Speeches like yours are the most effective weapons in the Avarfare for this
extinction. We want no hostile incursions, servile insurrections, nor any illegal
act of any kind. They will only retard the progress of the anti-slavery move
ment. All that is wanted is a corrected southern opinion, reformed legislation, a
rightfully interpreted constitution, and that you, sir, shall remain in the senate to
originate and advocate measures until this nation shall claim you from the service
of the state of New York, and make you the successor of one whose proverbial
honesty and published opinions made him the nearest to your own personality that
the late convention could get, without depriving the country of your invaluable
services in the senate.

1 See ante page 108.

692 APPENDIX.

SPEECH ON INAUGURATION DAY.

Mr. Seward's senatorial office expired with the third day of March, 1861. On the fourth, a
delegation from the State of New York, several hundred in "number, who were in Washington
to witness Mr, Lincoln's inauguration, called upon Mr. Seward. The visit was a token of
respect and affection. After a few introductory remarks by James Kelly, Esq., Mr. Sewaid
epoke as follows :

FRIENDS, FELLOW CITIZENS AND NEIGHBORS : — I am very deeply affected by this
unexpected demonstration of affection on the part of the people of the state of
New York. So many familiar faces, seen at this distance from home, and under
the circumstances which surround me, awaken memories and sympathies that I
should find it difficult to describe. It is just twelve years since I came, a stranger
and alone, to this Capital, to represent, in the councils of the Union, the great state
from which you have come. This day closes that service of twelve years — a period
which now in retrospect seems so short, and yet it has filled up the one-sixth
part of the constitutional duration of this great empire. At this hour I appear
before you a voluntary citizen, but, God be thanked ! a citizen now as always, of
the state of New York — one of yourselves — your equal — no longer bearing the
responsibilities of a representative. My public acts throughout that long, and to
me trying period, are all upon record in the journals and debates of congress. It
is almost fearful to think that they are imperishable. Looking backward upon
them, I wrill say and maintain here, and now, that I claim for them all the merit
of good motives and honest intentions. Here in this presence, before you, a fair
delegation of the constituency I have served; and in the presence of the God
who is to be our common judge, I declare that there is not one word of that
record which I desire should be obliterated. Although a representative of one
state only, I have been all the while conscious that I was also a legislator for all
the states — for the whole republic — and I am not ashamed to appeal to every
citizen of New York and ask him to say what I have neglected. I am not afraid
to appeal to every section — to the east, to the west, to the north, and to the south,
equally — and to every state in every section, and to every man. to every woman,
to every human being, freeman or bondsman, to say whether, in any word or deed
of mine, I have done him wrong. And in labors which demanded abilities I could
not claim, and trials which exacted some equanimity of temper, I have here in this
Capital neither received nor given personal offense. I have not one enemy in this
section to forgive. I know of no one who will utter a personal complaint against
me. I have done little good, indeed — far less than I have wished — but I have
been sustained and supported by the people of New York with a generosity that
is unparalleled. I know why this is so. The people of New York are habitually
constant, and faithful to conscience, to truth, to liberty, to their country, and to
their God. They have thought that I endeavored to be likewise faithful. I know
their character well, and I know that in the new emergency which our country
is now entering upon, they will be equally faithful. I rely on their intelligence,
and their patriotism, as I do on the intelligence and patriotism of the whole people
of the United States. They will preserve the inestimable legacy of civil and reli
gious liberty which they have received from their heroic fathers. The adminis
tration which you have come here to inaugurate comes into power under circum
stances of embarrassment and peril ; but I believe I know the character and
purposes of the Chief Magistrate : I believe that, while he will be firm, he will
be also just to every state and every section, and every citizen; that he will
defend and protect the rights and interests, the peace and the prosperity of all
the states equally and alike, while he will practise the moderation that springs
from virtue, and the affection that arises from patriotism in confederated states.
Under his guidance, and with the blessing of God, I believe and trust, and confi
dently expect, that an administration that is inaugurated amid some distrust
and painful apprehensions, will close upon a reunited, restored, prosperous, free
and happy republic. The state of New York, the greatest and most powerful of
the states, will lead all other states in the way of conciliation ; and as the path of
wisdom is always the path of peace, so I am sure that now we shall find that the
way of conciliation is the way of wisdom. •

INDEX TO VOLUME IV.

•.. PAGE>

Abbott, Chauncey, Speech, 90, 685

Adams, Charles Francis, 82, 93

Adams, John, 127, 175, 329, 373

Adams, John Quincy, ... 33, 90, 305, 391

Addresses and Orations, 121

Address, American Institute, .... 23, 144

of Mich. Agricultural College, 88

at Plymouth, 179

at Yale College, 160

Admission of Kansas, 117, 479-619

Advent of the Republican Party. 225

Aggressions of Slavery, 36

Agricultural College Bill, 63

Albany Bridge Case, 56

Albany Speeches, 35, 225

Allison, Wm. B., Speech, 96, 688

America, Destiny of, 121

American Independence, its True Basis, 144

American Institute, '. . . . 23, 144

Amistad Case, The, 57

Andrew, Governor, Speech of, 681

APPENDIX, 679

Aristocracy Resisted, 325

Army Bill, The, 54, 535, 559

Army, A Standing, , 87, 541

Astor House, Speech at, 644

Atchison, Reception and Speech,.... 103

Auburn Speeches,.. 35, 67, 114, 276, 422

B.

Baldwin, John 'D., Speech, 683

Ballots for President, Chicago, 77

Banks, Governor, Speech, 81, 684

Barbarism and Civilization, 615

Barbarous Laws, 512, 545

Biography of De Witt Clinton, 206

Blair, Austin, Speech, 682

Boston, Speech 82

Boynton, T. J., Speech, 98, -689

Broderick's Death 70

Broderick and Douglas, 596

Brown, John, 68, 71, 358, 637

Browning, 0. H., Speech, 682

Buffalo Speeches, 35, 111, 241

c.

Calhoun, John C., 478

California, Admission of, 17, 625

Campaign Speeches, 84, 225

PAQJU
Cass, General 616

Celebration of Victory, 115

Chicago Convention,. 76, 681

Platform, 679

Speeches, 108, 348

Chillicothe Speech, 97

Clay, Henry 16, 448, 596, 627

Clayton, John M., 26, 44

Clergymen's Petition, 29

Cleveland Speeches, 110, 384, 430

Clinton, De Witt, George and James, . 206

Columbus Oration, 23, 121

Compensation of Members of Congress, 31
Compromises, 16, 24, 438, 448/514, 572

Compromise and Calhoun, 478

Compromises and Concessions, 602

Compromise and the Constitution, 478, 621
Compromises and Crittenden, 516, 534, 572

Compromises, Distrust of, 610

Compromise, The Day for, 519

Compromise of 1 850, 570, 625

Compromises Ended, 478, 514

Compromises and Henry Clay, . . .448, 627
Compromise, The Lecompton- English, . 604
Compromise, The Missouri, 438, 579, 623

Compromise and Peace, 610

Compromise and Secession, 509

Compromises and the Union, 516

Compromises and Webster, 449, 627

Conflict, Irrepressible, 56, 279, 389,

399, 412, 568, 619
Constitution Interpreted, The, . . . 329, 553

Consular Appointments, 58

Convention, Baltimore, 20, 74

Charleston, 74

Chicago, 76

Cincinnati, 42

Constitutional, 667

Philadelphia, 42

Pittsburgh, 41

Court, The Supreme, 49

Crisis, Impending, Helper's, 70, 635

Crittenden, John J., 516, 534, 572

Cuba Question, The, 57, 61

D.

Death of Broderick, 70

Decadence of Liberty, 303, 629

Defeat of Whig Party, 22

Deitzler, Mayor. Speech, 101, 690

Democratic Element, The, 319, 459

694

INDEX TO VOL. IV.

PAGE.

Demoralization, 303, 355, 425

Destiny of America, 121

Minnesota, 347

the West, 319, 330, 368

Detroit Speeches, 43, 84, 253, 303

Development of America. 160

Disunion and Secession, 344, 410, 418,

421, 429, 479, 644, 651, 670

Douglas, Broderick and Stuart, 596

Dred Scott Case, 47, 585

Dubuque Speeches, 96, 368

Duties on Railroad Iron, 50

E.

Elections in 1852, 21

1856, 43

1858, 56

1859, 69

1860, 73, 114, 422

Election, The Night before, 422

Emigrant Aid Societies, 490

English Bill. The, 53, 604

Equality, Political, 319, 330, 368, 397

Equal Rights, 337

European Tour, 63

Evarts, William M., Speech, 681

F.

Famine in Kansas, 110, 388

Fanaticism, The Charge of, 559

Fathers of the Republic, Policy, 397

Federalist, The, quoted, 655

Field, Cyrus W., 45

Filibusters' Schemes, 55

Fillmore, Millard, 19

Francis, John W., 414

Fraud of Lecompton — English, 604

Freedom, Struggle for, 1850, 15

saved by Kansas, 385

and Public Faith, 433

in Kansas, 574

Free Schools, 411, 427

Free Speech, 97, 106, 341, 381, 544

Fugitive Slave Bill, 32

Fulton, Robert, 374

Fusion Creed, The, 428

Future, The Past and the, 430

Future, Young Men and the, 384

G.

Goodrich, Aaron, Judge, 94, 686

H.

Hamilton, Alexander, 127, 661

Harper's Ferry Captured, 68

Helper's Book, 70. 635

Henry, Patrick, 140, 376

Higher Law, The, 126, 464

*• PAGO,

Illinois, Visit to, 107

Impending Crisis, Helper's, 70, 635

Impeachment of President, 479, 503

Indiana Senators, 57,59

Intellectual Development of the People, 1 60-
Interpretation of the Constitution, . . . 329

Iowa, Speeches in, 96, 368

Irrepressible Conflict, . . 56, 289, 389,

399, 412, 619
Isothermal Theory, The, 599-

J.

Jefferson, Thomas, 374, 376, 435, 661, 668

Jefferson on Emancipation, 635

Jefferson on the Union, 653

K.

Kalamazoo Speech, 89

Kane, Judge, 36, 286

Kane, Thomas L., 54

Kansas, 281, 512, 618, 643

Admission of, 39. 117, 619, 643
Affairs,.. 37, 50, 57, 117, 433, 479

and the Army, 535

Elections, 496

Laws, 501, 512, 545

and the President 481, 503

the Savior of Freedom, . . . 385, 673

Speeches in, 101, 103, 385

King, Eufus, 310, 375, 391, 414

Know Nothingism, 283

L.

Labor States and Capital States, 621

La Crosse Speech, 93, 409, 421

Lansing Speech, 85

Lawrence Speech, 101, 385

Laws, Bogus, 512, 545

Leavenworth Speech, 102

Lecompton Constitution, 51, 574

Lee, Gideon, Anecdote of, 515

Lemrnon Case, The, 36

Letter approving Lincoln's Nomination, 79

on Nebraska Bill, 27, 432

to Republican Committee, 79*

John Quincy Adams, 33

New York, 27, 79, 432

Liberty and the Pilgrims, 179

Lincoln, Abraham, . 77, 84, 107, 114,

346, 348, 362, 416, 663

Longyear, J. W., Speech, 86, 684

M.

Madison Speeches, 90, 319, 329

Mails, Overland, 61

Mail Steamers, 31

Mann, Horace 3f>3

Mason, Senator, 675-

Homestead Bill, The, 29, 31, 58 j Massachusetts. IWonse of, . . 486, 491, 644

INDEX TO VOL. IV.

695

PAGE.

MEMOIR, 13-1 18

Merchants of New York, Petition, ... 670

Michigan, Speeches in, 84

Minnesota, Admission of, 54

Minnesota, Speeches in, 94, 330

Missouri Compromise, 25, 389, 433

Missouri, Speeches in, 97

Moral Development of the People, 160

More, Sir Thomas, 650

Mormons, The, 54

K

National Divergence, ., 303

National Idea, The, 330, 348

Nebraska and Kansas,. . 24, 433, 464, 627

Negro Question, The, 369

New England Clergy, The, 29

New England Dinner Speech, ... 117, 644

New Haven, Address at. 160

New Orleans and New York, 417

New York City, Early History of,. ... 410

Defense of, 487

Letter to, 27, 79

Merchants' Petition, 670

Speeches, 64, 114, 410

Night Before Election, The, 422

Nominating Conventions, 21, 41, 74

Nomination of Lincoln, Mr. Sewardon, 78

North, John W., Speech, 95, 687

Northwest, The, . 94, 327, 331

Nye, General James W., 93, 103, 110

O.

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES, 121

Oration at American Institute, ... 23, 144

Columbus, 23, 121

Plymouth, 36, 179

Yale College, 30, 160

Oregon, Admission of, 54

Overland Mails, 61

P.

Pacific Railroad, 24, 31, 57

Palace Garden Speech, 114

Past and the Future, The, 430

Patterson, George W., 93

Phi Beta Kappa, Yale College, 160

Phillips, Wendell, 36

Physical Development, 160

PieVce, Franklin, 20, 479, 481, 503

Pilgrims ;:nd Liberty, 179

Platforms 20, 42, 74, 76, 680

Plymouth Oration, 36, 179

Policy, Protective, '. 158

of the Fathers, 397

The Republican, 368

Political Equality, the National Idea, . 330

Parties of the Day, 276

Speeches, 223

Pomeroy, General, 103

PAAK.
Postage, Cheap, 63

President, The, Impeached, 503

Presidential Elections. 21, 43, 114

Presidential Nominations.. . 20, 42, 74, 76

Privileged Class. The, 225

Protective Policy, 158

Puritans, The, 179

E.

Randall, Governor, Speech, 90, 685

Reception at Atchison, 103

Auburn, 67

Boston. 81

Buffalo, Ill

Chicago, 108

Chillicothe, 97

Cleveland, 110

Detroit, 84

Dubuque, 96

Kalamazoo, 89

La Crbsse, 93

Lansing, 85

Lawrence. 101

Leavenworth, 102

Madison, 90

Milwaukee, 90

New York, 64, 66

St. Joseph, 98

St. Louis, 106

St. Paul, 94

Springfield, 111., 107

Reelection of Mr. Seward, 33

Reformation Begun, 359

Republican Conventions 41, 76

Republican Party, The, 41, 44, 76, 117,

225, 276, 287, 368, 410, 631

Republican Party Organized, 41

Republican Party Prophesied, 44

Robinson, Governor, Speech,. ... 101, 690
Rochester, Speech at, 56, 289

S.

Saint Paul Speech, 94, 330

Saint Louis Speech, 106

Saint Joseph Speech, 98

Schurz, Carl, Speech of, 682

Scott, General, 20, 661

Secession, 421, 509, 644, 651, 670

(See Disunion and Union.)

Secretary of State, Appointed, 117

Seneca Falls Speech, 387

Slavery, . . 225, 241, 253, 303 to 397,

.517, 527, 619, 651, 666, 673

Slave Trade, The, 80, 409

Speaker, Contests, 15, 38, 70

SPEECHES, Albany, 35, 225

Atchison, 103

Auburn. . 67, 114, 115, 276, 422

Astor House, 644

Buffalo, 35, 241

INDEX TO VOL. IV.

PAGE.

SPEECHES, Chicago 108, 348

Chillicothe, 97

Cleveland, 110, 384, 430

Chicago Convention, 680

Detroit, 43, 84, 253, 303

Dubuque, 96, 368

Kalamazoo, 89

La Crosse, 93, 409, 421

Lansing, 85

Lawrence, 101, 385

Leavenworth, 102

Madison, 90, 319, 329

New England Dinner, 644

New York, 64, 114, 410

Rochester, 56, 289

St. Joseph, 98

St Louis, 106

St. Paul, 94, 330

Seneca Falls, 397

Springfield, 107

Return from Europe. 64

Retiring from Senate, 692

SPEECHES.

(Political.)

Constitution Interpreted, ... 329

Contest and Crisis, 241

Democratic Element, 319

Disunion and Secession, ... 421

Dominant Class, 253

Equality Political, 330

Idea, The National, 330, 348, 368
Irrepressible Conflict,. . . 56, 289
Kansas Savior of Freedom, 385

National Divergence, 303

National Idea, The, 330, 348

Night before Election, The, . 422

One Idea, The, 368

Past and Future, The, 430

Political Equality, 330

Policy of the Fathers, 397

Political Parties, 276

Republican Party, The, 225

Republican Policy, 368

Republicans and Secession, . 410
Secession, N. E. Dinner, . . . 644

Trade in Slaves, 409

Young Men and the Future, 384

SPEECHES.

(Senate.)

Admission of Kansas,. 479, 619
Army and Kansas, .... 535, 559
Country, the State of, 619,

651. 670

Freedom in Kansas, ... 574J 604
Freedom and Public Faith, . 433

Kansas Affairs, 433 to 619

Merchants' Memorial, 670

Nebraska and Kansas, . 433, 464

SPEECHES.

(Senate.) PACK

Repeal of Mo. Compromise, 432

Second, on Nebraska, 464

State of the Country, 619

State of the Union, 651-670

Speeches to Mr. Seward, 684

Springfield Speech, 107

State of the Country, the Union, 619, 670

Sumner, Charles, 33, 40

Supreme Court, The, 49, 585, 595

T.

Tallmadge, James, 145

Tariff, The, 31, 46, 50, 80, 144, 154

Taylor, President, 16, 661

Telegraphs, Atlantic, Pacific, 45

Tompkius, Daniel D., 218

Tour through Europe, 63

New England, St

the West, 84

Trade in Slaves, 409

True Basis of Independence, 144

Trumbull, Senator, 356

u.

Union, The, . . 18, 344, 396, 441, 567,

619, 644, 651
(See Disunion and Secession.)

Union and Liberty, 638

Union, Loyalty to the. 639, 669

Union, The State of the, 619, 651, 670

Usurpations in Kansas, 512, 551

Utah, Affairs of, 54

Y.

Valetudinarians and Minnesota, 334

Van Buren, Martin, 287, 305. 625

Vermont, Visit to, 81

w.

Walker, William, 55

War, Civil, deprecated, 652

Washburn, Israel, Jr., 81

Washington, George, 127, 373

Webster, Daniel, 16, 449, 627, 661

Wentworth, John, 108, 691

Western Speeches, 84, 253. 303

Whig Party, 15, 22

Wilder, A. C., 100, 689

Williamson, Passmore, 36

Wilmot Proviso, 16, 518

Wisconsin, Speeches in, 90, 319, 320

Y.

Yale College Oration, 30, 160

Yale College, Degree conferred by, . . 30
Young Men and the Future, H84

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