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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis
+
+Author: Jefferson Davis
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2002 [eBook #5205]
+[Most recently updated: December 25, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Dave Maddock and Curtis Weyant
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES OF THE HONORABLE JEFFERSON DAVIS  ***
+
+
+
+
+Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis,
+
+of Mississippi,
+
+Delivered During the Summer of 1858:
+
+
+
+
+On Fourth of July, 1858, at Sea.
+At Serenade, at Portland, Maine.
+At Portland Convention, Maine.
+At Belfast Encampment, Maine.
+At Belfast Banquet, Maine.
+At Portland Meeting, Maine.
+At Fair at Augusta, Maine.
+At Faneuil Hall, Boston.
+At New York Meeting.
+Before Mississippi Legislature.
+&c. &c.
+
+
+BALTIMORE . . . PRINTED BY JOHN MURPHY & CO.
+MARBLE BUILDING, 182 BALTIMORE STREET.
+1859.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Extracts From Speeches in U.S. Senate
+ On Fourth of July, 1858, At Sea
+ Speech at the Portland Serenade
+ Speech at the Portland Convention
+ Speech at Belfast Encampment
+ Banquet After Encampment at Belfast
+ Speech at the Portland Meeting
+ Speech at State Fair at Augusta, ME
+ Speech at the Grand Ratification Meeting, Faneuil Hall
+ Speech in the City of New York
+ Speech Before the Mississippi Legislature
+
+
+
+
+To the People of Mississippi.
+
+
+I have been induced by the persistent misrepresentation of popular
+Addresses made by me at the North and the South during the year 1858,
+to collect them, and with extracts from speeches made by me in the
+Senate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected form; to the end
+that the case may be fairly before those by whose judgment I am willing
+to stand or fall.
+
+Jefferson Davis.
+
+
+
+
+Extracts From Speeches in U.S. Senate.
+
+
+In the Senate of the United States, May 8, 1850, in presenting the
+Resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi:
+
+It is my opinion that justice will not be done to the South, unless
+from other promptings than are about us here—that we shall have no
+substantial consideration offered to us for the surrender of an equal
+claim to California. No security against future harassment by Congress
+will probably be given. The rain-bow which some have seen, I fear was
+set before the termination of the storm. If this be so, those who have
+been first to hope, to relax their energies, to trust in compromise
+promises, will often be the first to sound the alarm when danger again
+approaches. Therefore I say, if a reckless and self-sustaining majority
+shall trample upon her rights, if the Constitutional equality of the
+States is to be overthrown by force, private and political rights to be
+borne down by force of numbers, then, sir, when that victory over
+Constitutional rights is achieved, the shout of triumph which announces
+it, before it is half uttered, will be checked by the united, the
+determined action of the South, and every breeze will bring to the
+marauding destroyers of those rights, the warning: woe, woe to the
+riders who trample them down! I submit the report and resolutions, and
+ask that they may be read and printed for the use of the
+Senate.—(_Cong. Globe_, p. 943-4.)
+
+
+In the Senate of the United States, June 27, 1850, on the Compromise
+Bill:
+
+If I have a superstition, sir, which governs my mind and holds it
+captive, it is a superstitious reverence for the Union. If one can
+inherit a sentiment, I may be said to have inherited this from my
+revolutionary father. And if education can develop a sentiment in the
+heart and mind of man, surely mine has been such as would most develop
+feelings of attachment for the Union. But, sir, I have an allegiance to
+the State which I represent here. I have an allegiance to those who
+have entrusted their interests to me, which every consideration of
+faith and of duty, which every feeling of honor, tells me is above all
+other political considerations. I trust I shall never find my
+allegiance there and here in conflict. God forbid that the day should
+ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the
+Union. If, sir, we have reached that hour in the progress of our
+institutions, it is past the age to which the Union should have lived.
+If we have got to the point when it is treason to the United States to
+protect the rights and interests of our constituents, I ask why should
+they longer be represented here? why longer remain a part of the Union?
+If there is a dominant party in this Union which can deny to us
+equality, and the rights we derive through the Constitution; if we are
+no longer the freemen our fathers left us; if we are to be crushed by
+the power of an unrestrained majority, this is not the Union for which
+the blood of the Revolution was shed; this is not the Union I was
+taught from my cradle to revere; this is not the Union in the service
+of which a large portion of my life has been passed; this is not the
+Union for which our fathers pledged their property, their lives, and
+sacred honor. No, sir, this would be a central Government, raised on
+the destruction of all the principles of the Constitution, and the
+first, the highest obligation of every man who has sworn to support
+that Constitution would be resistance to such usurpation. This is my
+position.
+
+My colleague has truly represented the people of Mississippi as
+ardently attached to the Union. I think he has not gone beyond the
+truth when he has placed Mississippi one of the first, if not the
+first, of the States of the Confederation in attachment to it. But,
+sir, even that deep attachment and habitual reverence for the Union,
+common to us all—even that, it may become necessary to try by the
+touchstone of reason. It is not impossible that they should unfurl the
+flag of disunion. It is not impossible that violations of the
+Constitution and of their rights, should drive them to that dread
+extremity. I feel well assured that they will never reach it until it
+has been twice and three times justified. If, when thus fully
+warranted, they want a standard bearer, in default of a better, I am at
+their command.—(_Cong. Globe_, p. 995-6)
+
+
+
+
+On Fourth of July, 1858, At Sea.
+
+[From the Boston Post.]
+
+
+The fine ship _Joseph Whitney_, from Baltimore, Captain S. Howes, was
+making for this port on the day of the celebration of the nation’s
+birth, and among an unusually brilliant array of passengers from
+different parts of the country, was the distinguished Senator,
+Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. The patriotic suggestion of the
+captain, to celebrate the day in a manner befitting the great
+anniversary, met with a hearty response from the company, among whom
+were zealous republicans, democrats and Americans. A committee was
+appointed to invite the Senator to make an address, and he consented.
+
+First, the Declaration of Independence was read by Sebastian F.
+Streeter, Esq., of Baltimore, when Senator Davis made an address of
+singular felicity of diction and impassioned eloquence, and of such a
+character as to command the admiration of those who listened to it. He
+commenced by happy allusions to the array of beauty and intelligence
+that stood before him from all parts of our common country; he then
+passed in review the condition of the feeble and separate colonies of
+1776, and contrasted with it the country now—the only proper republic
+on earth, as it stood before the world in its wonderful progress in
+art, and agriculture, and commerce, and all the elements that
+constitute a great nation. When thus sailing on the Atlantic, looking
+to the coast of the United States, he was reminded of those bold
+refugees from the British and French oppression who crosses these water
+to found a home in what was then a wilderness. The memory, too, arose
+of the many sorrowing hearts and oppressed spirits since born over
+these waves to that refuge from political oppression which our fathers
+founded as the home of liberty and the asylum of mankind. Her terrtiory
+{sic}, which now stretches from ocean to ocean, contains a vast
+interior yet unpeopled; and, with a destiny of still further and
+continued expansion of area, why should the gate of the temple be now
+shut upon sorrowing mankind? Rather let it be that the gate should be
+forever open, and an emblematic flag, hereafter as heretofore, wave a
+welcome to all to come to the modern Abdella—fugitives from political
+oppression.
+
+Senator Davis dwelt at some length on the right of search question—on
+the insulting claim which Great Britain made to a peace-right to visit
+our ships. Under the pretence of stopping the slave trade—a trade
+against which the United States was the first nation to raise its
+voice—she had interrupted and destroyed a lucrative commerce we had
+enjoyed in ivory and other products on the coast of Africa. The late
+outrages in the Gulf found us, as a people, with domestic quarrels on
+our hands; but if this power counted on existing divisions and on
+making them wider, the result showed how great was her error. The
+insult was resented by a united people; the Senate, as one man, leaped
+up against British pretensions; while England, as suddenly, astonished,
+withdrew her pretensions. The claim she so long preferred is given
+up—entirely abandoned. The same spirit that resented insult in the past
+will resent it in the future. I stand, said the Senator, substantially
+on the deck of an American vessel; it is American soil; the American
+flag floats over it; its right to course the ocean pathway is perfect.
+When the blue firmament reflected its own color in the sea, it was the
+unappropriated property of mankind; and it was arrogant and idle for
+any nation to deny to the United States her full enjoyment of this
+common property. It was for the full and undisturbed enjoyment of this
+right that out fathers, when much less prepared for war than we are
+now, engaged in the conflict of 1812; and for this right we were ready
+to strike in 1858. Let a feign power, under any pretence whatever,
+insult the American flag, and it will find that we are not a divided
+people, but that a mighty arm will be raised to smite down the
+insulter, and this great country will continue united.
+
+Trifling politicians in the South, or in the North, or in the West, may
+continue to talk otherwise, but it will be of no avail. They are like
+the mosquitoes around the ox: they annoy, but they cannot wound, and
+never kill. There was a common interest which run through all the
+diversified occupations and various products of these sovereign States;
+there was a common sentiment of nationality which beat in every
+American bosom; there were common memories sweet to us all, and, though
+clouds had occasionally darkened our political sky, the good sense and
+the good feeling of the people had thus far averted any catastrophe
+destructive of our constitution and the Union. It was in fraternity and
+an elevation of principle which rose superior to sectional or
+individual aggrandizement that the foundations of our Union were laid;
+and if we, the present generation, be worthy of our ancestry, we shall
+not only protect those foundations from destruction, but build higher
+and wider this temple of liberty, and inscribe perpetuity upon its
+tablet.
+
+In the course of his beautiful speech, senator Davis passed a noble
+eulogium on our mother country; and dwelt on the many reasons why the
+most cordial friendship should be maintained with her; and he concluded
+by a tribute to the fair sex—the women—beautiful woman; to the wondrous
+educational influence as the mother which she exercised over the minds
+of men. It is ever, at all times, felt and operative—upon the dreary
+waste of ocean, on the lonely prairie, in the troublous contests at the
+national halls. And when the arm is moved in the deadly conflicts of
+the battle-field, and the foe is vanquished, then the gentle influences
+instilled by women do their work, and the heart melts into tears of
+pity and prompts to deeds of mercy.
+
+After this intellectual repast, then succeeded congratulations; the air
+was made vocal with song; while, through the foresight of the gallant
+captain, at the evening hour, the sky about the good ship Joseph
+Whitney was brilliant with those various pyrotechnic displays which
+must be so grateful to the spirit of patriotic John Adams, of bonfire
+and illumination-memory.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at the Portland Serenade,
+
+July 9th, 1858.
+
+
+After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and as
+soon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided,
+he spoke in substance as follows:
+
+Fellow Countrymen:—Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of
+your kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your
+purpose as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not
+less gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders
+an expression of regard to her sister Mississippi. It is moreover, with
+feelings of profound gratification that I witness this indication of
+that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone
+can keep us, one people. At a period, but as yesterday when compared
+with the life of nations, these States were separate, and in sorts
+respects opposing colonies; their only relation to each other was that
+of a common allegiance to the government of Great Britain. So separate,
+indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when Gen. Stark, of
+Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the head waters of the
+Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albnny {sic} where they
+went to sell furs, and again led away a captive, without interference
+on the part of the inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or
+obtain his release. United as we now are, were a citizen of the United
+States, as an act of hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in
+any quarter of the world, whether on land or sea, the people of each
+and every State of the Union, with one heart, and with one voice, would
+demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother’s blood cried
+to us from the ground. Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the justice
+with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation and
+blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole,
+so that shoulder to shoulder they entered on the trial of the
+revolution, step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached the
+height of national independence and founded the constitutional
+representative liberty, which is our birthright.
+
+When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in
+disregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did
+not stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether
+the pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in it the
+infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, in
+defence of which they made common cause; Massachusetts, Virginia and
+South Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost in
+the struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorable
+grave.
+
+Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the revolution, dignified by
+its noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to
+each other by its glorious memories, they abandoned the confederacy,
+not to fly apart when the outward pressure of hostile fleets and armies
+were removed, but to draw closer their embrace in the formation of a
+more perfect union. By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our
+Constitution was formed. It stands a monument of principle, of
+forecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made each willing to
+sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice or temporary good to the
+general welfare, and the perpetuity of the Republican institutions
+which they had passed through fire and blood to secure. The grants were
+as broad as were necessary for the functions of the general agent, and
+the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing both him who gave
+and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domestic government,
+requisite in the social organization of each community, was retained by
+the States and the people thereof; and these it was made the duty of
+all to defend and maintain.
+
+Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers
+bequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes,
+yes, the heart responds, and the judgment answers, the task is easily
+performed. It but requires that each should attend to that which most
+concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to
+act. That each should adhere to the terms of a written compact and that
+all should cooperate for that which interest, duty and honor demand.
+For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we
+have a national executive and a national legislature. Representatives
+and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts
+affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole
+people. He who holding either seat would confine his investigations to
+the mere interests of his immediate constituents would be derelict to
+his plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section
+would be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depositary
+if not a treacherous guardian of the inheritance with which we are
+blessed.
+
+No one, more than myself; recognizes the binding force of the
+allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but
+that State being a party to our compact, a member of our union, fealty
+to the federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the
+allegiance due to one of the United States. Washington was not less a
+Virginian when he commanded at Boston; nor did Gates or Greene weaken
+the bonds which bound them to their several States, by their campaigns
+in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his own State, will he
+strive to honor by preserving her name and her fame free from the
+tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations, and to fulfil her
+duties to her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by
+the names and the deeds of those who have well understood, and
+discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated, that we can no
+longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was
+formed, lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is
+narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North
+not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to
+her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the
+world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with
+the United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact, that the
+industry and persevering intelligence of the North, has placed her
+mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world—that our
+mother country, whose haughty minister some eighty odd years ago
+declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are
+now the United States, was brought some four years ago to recognize our
+pre-eminence by sending a commission to examine our work shops, and our
+machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for
+their defence? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North,
+South, East, and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the
+enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the Yankee sailor, who has
+borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, and caused the name and
+the character of the United States to be known and respected wherever
+there is wealth enough to woo commerce, and intelligence enough to
+honor merit? So long as we preserve, and appreciate the achievements of
+Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Hamilton, of Hancock,
+and of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole country, and lived for
+mankind, we cannot sink to the petty strife which would sap the
+foundations, and destroy the political fabric our fathers erected, and
+bequeathed as an inheritance to our posterity forever.
+
+Since the formation of the Constitution, a vast extension of territory,
+and the varied relations arising there from, have presented problems
+which could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for
+admiration—even wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law
+should have been found so fully adequate to all the wants of
+government, new in its organization, and new in many of the principles
+on which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as to the
+consequences of territorial expansion, must give way before the
+evidence which the past affords. The general government, strictly
+confined to its delegated functions, and the States left in the
+undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice which
+fits our government for immeasurable domain, and might, under a
+millennium of nations, embrace mankind.
+
+From the slope of the Atlantic our population with ceaseless tide has
+poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with
+eddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific, from the West and
+the East the tides are rushing towards each other—and the mind is
+carried to the day when all the cultivable and will be inhabited, and
+the American people will sign for more wildernesses to conquer. But
+there is here a physico-political problem presented for our solution.
+Were it was purely physical—your past triumphs would leave but little
+doubt of your capacity to solve it.
+
+A community, which, when less than twenty thousand, conceived the grand
+project of crossing the White Mountains, and, unaided, save by the
+stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure gave, successfully
+executed the herculean work, might well be impatient, if it were
+suggested that a physical problem was before us, too difficult for
+their mastery. The history of man teaches that high mountains and wide
+deserts have resisted the permanent extension of empire, and have
+formed the immutable boundaries of States. From time to time, under
+some able leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of Asia swept
+over the adjacent country, and rolled their conquering columns over
+Southern Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few generations, the
+physical law to which I have referred, has asserted its supremacy, and
+the boundaries of those States differ little now from those which
+obtained three thousand years ago. Rome flew her conquering eagles over
+the then known world, and has now subsided into the little territory on
+which her great city was originally built. The Alps and the Pyrenees
+have been unable to restrain imperial France; but her expansion was a
+leverish action; her advance and her retreat were tracked with blood,
+and those mountain ridges are the re-established limits of her empire.
+Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a dividing barrier to us? Were ours a
+central consolidated government, instead of a Union of sovereign
+States, our fate might be learned from the history of other nations.
+Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is
+not our case. Each State having sole charge of its local interests and
+domestic affairs, the problem which to others has been insoluble, to us
+is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication and co-operation
+among all parts of our continent-wide republic. The network of
+railroads which bind the North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic
+and the valley of the Mississippi, together testify that our people
+have the power to perform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to
+do.
+
+We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses;
+the time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three; it
+may be more. Because of the desert character of the interior country
+the work will be difficult and expensive. It will require the efforts
+of an united people. The bickerings of little politicians, the
+jealousies of sections, must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal
+for the common good. If the object be obstructed by contention and
+division as to whether the route to be selected shall be northern,
+southern or central, the handwriting is on the wall, and it requires
+little skill to see that failure is the interpretation of the
+inscription. You are a practical people and may ask, how is that
+contest to be avoided? By taking the question out of the hands of
+politicians altogether. Let the Government give such aid as it is
+proper for it to render to the Company which shall propose the most
+feasible and advantageous plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment
+sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and the difficulties
+will diminish as did those which you overcame when you connected your
+harbor with the Canadian Provinces.
+
+It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate the proprieties
+of the occasion, were I to detain the vast concourse which stands
+before me, by entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by
+further indulging in the expression of such reflections as
+circumstances suggest.
+
+I came to your city in quest of health and repose. From the moment I
+entered it you have showered upon me kindness and hospitality. Though
+my experience has taught me to anticipate good rather than evil from my
+fellow man, it had not prepared me to expect such unremitting attention
+as has here been bestowed. I have been jocularly asked in relation to
+my coming here, whether I had secured a guaranty {sic} for my safety,
+and lo, I have found it. I stand in the midst of thousands of my fellow
+citizens. But my friend, I came neither distrusting, not apprehensive,
+of which you have proof in the fact that I brought with me the objects
+of tenderest affection and solicitude—my wife and my children; they
+have shared with me your hospitality, and will alike remain your
+debtors. If at some future time, when I am mingled with the dust, and
+the arm of my infant son has been nerved for deeds of manhood, the
+storm of war should burst upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his
+inheriting the instincts of his ancestors and mine, I may pledge him in
+that perilous hour to stand by your side in the defence of your hearth
+stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flag whose constellation
+though torn and smoked in many a battle, by sea and land, has never
+been stained with dishonor, and will I trust forever fly as free as the
+breeze which unfolds it.
+
+A stranger to you, the salubrity of your location and the beauty of its
+scenery were not wholly unknown to me, nor were there wanting
+associations which bust memory connected with your people. You will
+pardon me for alluding to one whose genius shed a lustre upon all it
+touched, and whose qualities gathered about him hosts of friends,
+wherever he was known. Prentiss, a native of Portland, lived from youth
+to middle age in the county of my residence, and the inquiries which
+have been made, show me that the youth excited the interest which the
+greatness of the man justified, and that his memory thus remains a link
+to connect your home with mine.
+
+A cursory view, when passing through your town on former occasions, had
+impressed me with the great advantages of your harbor, its easy
+entrance, its depth, and its extensive accommodation for shipping. But
+its advantages, and if facilities as they have been developed by closer
+inspection, have grown upon me until I realize that it is no boast, but
+the language of sober truth which in the present state of commerce
+pronounces them unequaled in any harbor of our country.
+
+And surely no place could be more inviting to an invalid who sought a
+refuge from the heat of a southern summer. Here waving elms offer him
+shared walks, and magnificent residences surrounded by flowers, fill
+the mind with ideas of comfort and of rest. If weary of constant
+contact with his fellow men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the
+back ground of this grand amphitheatre, lie the eternal mountains,
+frowning with brow of rock and cap of snow upon the smiling fields
+beneath, and there in its recesses may be found as much of wildness,
+and as much of solitude, as the pilgrim weary of the cares of life can
+desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious harbor, studded with
+green islands of ever varying light and shade, and enlivened by all the
+stirring evidences of commercial activity, offer him the mingled charms
+of busy life and nature’s calm repose. A few miles further, and he may
+site upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring wave until the
+troubled spirit sinks to rest, and in the little sail that vanishes on
+the illimitable sea, we may find the type of the voyage which he is so
+soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that
+better state which lies beyond the grave.
+
+Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes to
+pleasure and to usefulness, the stranger cannot pass without paying a
+tribute to the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves.
+Where else will one find a more happy union of magnificence and
+comfort, where better arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where so
+much of industry, with so little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase,
+so much effected in proportion to the means employed? We hear the puff
+of the engine, the roll of the wheel, the ring of the axe, and the saw,
+but the stormy, passionate exclamations so often mingled with the
+sounds, are no where heard. Yet, neither these nor other things which I
+have mentioned; attractive though they be, have been to me the chief
+charm which I have found among you. For above all these I place the
+gentle kindness, the cordial welcome, the hearty grasp, which made me
+feel truly and at once, though wandering far, that I was still at home.
+
+My friends, I thank you for this additional manifestation of your good
+will.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at the Portland Convention.
+
+
+On Thursday, August 24th, 1858, when the Democratic Convention had
+nearly concluded its business, a committee was appointed to wait on Mr.
+Davis, and request him to gratify them by his presence in the
+Convention. He expressed his willingness to comply with the wishes of
+his countrymen, and accordingly repaired to the City Hall. On entering
+he was greeted in the most cordial and enthusiastic manner. After
+business was finished, he proceeded to the rostrum, and, addressing the
+Convention, said:
+
+Friends, fellow-citizens, and brethren in Democracy, he thanked them
+for the honor conferred by their invitation to be present at their
+deliberations, and expressed the pleasure he felt in standing in the
+midst of the Democracy of Maine—amidst so many manifestations of the
+important and gratifying fact that the Democratic is, in truth, a
+national party. He did not fail to remember that the principles of the
+party declaring for the largest amount of personal liberty consistent
+with good government, and to the greatest possible extent of community
+and municipal independence, would render it in their view, as in his
+own, improper for him to speak of those subjects which were local in
+their character, and he would endeavor not so far to trespass upon
+their kindness as to refer to anything which bore such connection,
+direct or indirect—and he hoped that those of their opponents who,
+having the control of type, fancied themselves licensed to manufacture
+facts, would not hold them responsible for what he did not say. He said
+he should carry with him, as one of the pleasant memories of his brief
+sojourn in Maine, the additional assurance, which intercourse with the
+people had given him, that there still lives a National Party,
+struggling and resolved bravely to struggle for the maintenance of the
+Constitution, the abatement of sectional hostility, and the
+preservation of the fraternal compact made by the Fathers of the
+Republic. He said, rocked in the cradle of Democracy, having learned
+its precepts from his father,—who was a Revolutionary Soldier—and in
+later years having been led forward in the same doctrine by the patriot
+statesman—of whom such honorable mention was made in their
+resolutions—Andrew Jackson, he had always felt that he had in his own
+heart a standard by which to measure the sentiments of a Democrat.
+When, therefore, he had seen evidences of a narrow sectionalism, which
+sought not the good of the whole, not even the benefit of a part, but
+aimed at the injury of a particular section, the pulsations of his own
+heart told him such cannot be the purpose, the aim, or the wish of any
+American Democrat—and he saw around him to-day evidence that his
+opinion in this respect had here its verification. As he looked upon
+the weather-beaten faces of the veterans and upon the flushed cheek and
+flashing eye of the youth, which told of the fixed resolve of the one,
+and the ardent, noble hopes of the other, strengthened hope and bright
+anticipations filled his mind, and he feared not to ask the questions
+shall narrow interests, shall local jealousies, shall disregard of the
+high purposes for which our Union was ordained, continue to distract
+our people and impede the progress of our government toward the high
+consummation which prophetic statesmen have so often indicated as her
+destiny?—[Voices, no, no, no! Much applause.]
+
+Thanks for that answer; let every American heart respond no; let every
+American head, let every American hand unite in the great object of
+National development. Let our progress be across the land and over the
+sea, let our flag as stated in your resolutions, continue to wave its
+welcome to the oppressed, who flee from the despotism of other lands,
+until the constellation which marks the number of our States which have
+already increased from thirteen to thirty two, shall go on multiplying
+into a bright galaxy covering the field on which we now display the
+revered stripes, which record the original size of our political
+family, and shall shed its benign light over all mankind, to point them
+to the paths of self-government and constitutional liberty.
+
+He here referred to the history of the Democratic party, and numbered
+among its glories the various acts of territorial acquisition and
+triumphs through its foreign intercourse in the march of civilization
+and National amity, as well as in the glories which from time to time
+had been shed by the success of our arms upon the name and character of
+the American people. He alluded to the recent attempt by some of the
+governments of Europe, to engraft upon National law a prohibition
+against privateering. He said whenever other governments were willing
+to declare that private property should be exempt from the rigors of
+war, on sea as it is on land, our government might meet them more than
+half way, but to a proposition which would leave private property the
+prey of national vessels and thus give the whole privateering to those
+governments which maintained a large naval establishment in time of
+peace, he would unhesitatingly answer no. Our merchant marine
+constituted the militia of the sea—how effective it had been in our
+last struggle with a maritime power, he need not say to the sons of
+those who had figured so conspicuously in that species of warfare. The
+policy of our government was peace. We could not consent to bear the
+useless expense of a naval establishment larger than was necessary for
+its proper uses in a time of peace. Relying as we had and must
+hereafter upon the merchant marine to man whatever additional vessels
+we should require, and upon the bold and hardy Yankee sailor, when he
+could no longer get freight for his craft, to receive a proper
+armament, and go forth like a knight errant of the sea in quest of
+adventure against the enemies of his country’s flag.
+
+He said our country was powerful for all military purposes, and if
+asked to compare her armies and her navy with those of the great powers
+of Europe, he would answer, that is not our standard. History teaches
+that our strength is in the courage and patriotism, the skill and
+intelligence of our people. A part of the American army was before him,
+and a part of the American navy was lying in the harbor of their city.
+That army and that navy had fought the battles of the Revolution, of
+the “war of 1812” and of the war with Mexico, and would never be found
+wanting, whilst the patriotism of the earlier days of the Republic,
+proved a sufficient cement to hold the different parts of our wide
+spread and extending country together. He said that everything around
+him spoke eloquently of the wisdom of the men who founded these
+colonies-their descendants, who sat before him, contrasted strongly, as
+did their history and present power, stand out in bold relief, when
+compared with those of the inhabitants of Central and Southern America.
+Chief among the reasons for this, he believed to be the self-reliant
+hardihood of their forefathers who, when but a handful, found
+themselves confronted by hordes of savages, yet proudly maintained the
+integrity of their race and asserted its supremacy over the descendants
+of Shem, in whose tents they had come to dwell. They preferred to
+encounter toil, privation and carnage, rather than debase their lineage
+and race. Their descendants of that pure and heroic blood have advanced
+to the high standard of civilization attainable by that type of
+mankind. Stability and progress, wealth and comfort, art and science,
+have followed their footsteps.
+
+Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the
+Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms
+of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they
+have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their
+race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some
+petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days’ government ape the
+rulers of the earth. Even now the nearest and strongest of these
+American Republics, which were fashioned after the model of our own,
+seems to be tottering to a fall, and the world is inquiring as to who
+will take possession; or, as protector, raise and lead a people who
+have shown themselves incompetent to govern themselves.
+
+He said our fathers laid the foundation of Empire, and declared its
+purposes; to their sons it remained to complete their superstructure.
+The means by which this end was to be secured were simple and easy. It
+involved no harder task than that each man should attend to his own
+business, that no community should arrogantly assume to interfere with
+the affairs of another—and that all by the honorable obligation of
+fulfiling that compact which their fathers had made.
+
+He then referred to the commercial position of Maine, and spoke of her
+brightly unfolding prospects of prosperity and greatness. Many
+considered her wealth to consist of her forests, and that her
+prosperity would decline when her timber was exhausted—he held to a
+different opinion, and thought they might welcome the day, when the
+sombre shadows of the Pine gave place to verdant pastures and fruitful
+fields. Was he asked, what then was to become of the interest of
+ship-building? He would answer—let it be changed from wood to iron. The
+skill to be aquired be a few years’ experience, would at a fair price
+for iron, enable our ship builders to construct iron ships, which,
+taking into account their greater capacity for freight and greater
+durability, would be cheaper than vessels of wood, even whilst timber
+was as abundant as now;—at least such was the information he had
+derived from persons well informed upon those subjects.
+
+He expressed the gratification he felt for the courtesy of the
+Democracy in Maine, and doubted not that the Democracy of Mississippi
+would receive it, with grateful recognition, as evincing fraternal
+sentiment by kindness done to one of her sons, not the less a
+representative, because a humble member of her Democracy.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at Belfast Encampment.
+
+
+About the o’clock the troops at the encampment being under arms, Col.
+Davis was escorted to the ground and reviewed them. He was then
+introduced to the troops by Gen. Cushman, as follows—
+
+Officers and fellow soldiers, I introduce to you Col. Jefferson Davis,
+an eminent citizen of Mississippi,—a man, and I say a hero, who has, in
+the service of his country, been among and faced hostile guns.
+
+Col. Davis replied as follows—
+
+Citizen Soldiers:—I feel pleased and gratified at the exhibition I have
+witnessed of the military spirit and instruction of the volunteer
+militia of Maine. I acknowledge the compliment which has been paid to
+me, and I welcome it as the indication of the liberality and national
+sentiment which makes the militia of each State the effective, as they
+are the constitutional defenders of our whole country.
+
+To one who loves his country in all its parts, it is natural to rejoice
+in whatever contributes to the prosperity and honor, and marks the
+stability and progress of any portion of its people. I therefore look
+upon the evidence presented to me of the soldierly enthusiasm and
+military acquirements displayed on this occasion, with none the less
+pleasure because I am the citizen of another and distant State. It was
+not the policy of our government to maintain large armies of navies in
+time of peace. The history of our past wars established the fact that
+it was not needful to do so. The militia had bee found equal to all the
+emergencies of war. Their patriotism, their intelligence, their
+knowledge of the use of arms, had given to then all the efficiency of
+veterans, and on many bloody fields they have shown their superiority
+over the disciplined troops of their enemies. A people morally and
+intellectually equal to self-government, must also be equal in
+self-defence. My friends, your worthy General has alluded to my
+connection with the military service of the country. The memory arose
+to myself when the troops this day marched past me, and when I looked
+upon their manly bearing and firm step. I thought could I have seen
+them thus approaching the last field of battle on which I served, where
+the changing tide several times threatened disaster to the American
+flag, with what joy I would have welcomed those striped and starred
+banners, the emblem and the guide of the free and the brave, and with
+what pride would the heart have beaten when welcoming the danger’s
+hour, brethren from so remote an extremity of our expanded territory.
+
+One of the evidences of the fraternal confidence and mutual reliance of
+our fathers was to be found in their compact or mutual protection and
+common defence. So long as their sons preserve the spirit and
+appreciate the purpose of their fathers, the United States will remain
+invincible, their power will grow with the lapse of time, and their
+example show brighter and brighter as revolving ages roll over the
+temple our fathers dedicated to constitutional liberty, and founded
+upon truths announced to their sons, but intended for mankind. I thank
+you, citizen soldiers, for this act of courtesy. It will long and
+gratefully be remembered, as a token of respect to the distant State of
+which I am a citizen, and I trust will be noted by others, as
+indicating that national sentiment which made, and which alone can
+preserve us a nation.
+
+
+
+
+Banquet After Encampment at Belfast.
+
+
+The Mayor then gave:
+
+The heroes who have fought our country’s battles: may their services be
+appreciated by a grateful people.
+
+Loud calls being made for Col. Jefferson Davis, that gentleman arose
+and said:
+
+The sentiment to which he was called to respond excited memories which
+called up proud emotions, though their associations were sad. He could
+not reply to a compliment paid to the gallantry of his comrades in the
+war with Mexico, without remembering how many of them now mingle with
+the dust of a foreign land, and how many of them have sunk after the
+day of toil was done by reason of the exposure endured in the service
+of their country. The land has mourned, and still mourns, the fall of
+its bravest and best, and truly are our laurels mingled with the
+cypress, ’tis well, and ’tis wise, ’tis natural and ’tis proper, that
+in looking on the laurels of our glory we should pause to pay a tribute
+to the cypress which weeps over them, and having paid this tribute to
+the gallant dead, the memory of whose service can never die, we pass to
+the consideration of their acts, and the beneficial results which their
+sacrifices have secured. When that war begun, our history recorded
+evidence only of the power of our people for defence. The Fabian policy
+of Washington, admirably adapted to the condition of the Colonies,
+achieved so much in proportion to the means, that he would be rash
+indeed who should attempt to criticise it. The prudent, though daring
+course of Jackson, fruitful as it was of the end to be attained, did
+not yet serve to illustrate the capacity of our people for the trials
+and the struggles attendant on the operations of an invasive war. Hence
+it was commonly asserted that the American people, though they might
+resist attack, were powerless to redress aggression which was not
+connected with the invasion of their territory. The idea of reliance
+upon undisciplined militia was treated with contempt and derision. To
+borrow a simile from the pit, we were regarded as dung-hill soldiers,
+who would only fight at home. In the war with Mexico our armies carried
+their banners over routes hitherto unknown, through mountain passes
+where nature had almost completed the work of defence, and penetrated
+further into the enemy’s country than any European army has ever
+marched from the source of its supplies. Not to prolong the comparison
+by a reference to events of a remote period, he would only refer to the
+last campaign in European war. The combined armies of France and
+England, after preparation worthy of their great military power,
+advanced through friendly territory to the outer verge of the country,
+against which they directed a war of invasion, and after a prolonged
+siege by sea and by land, finally captured a seaport town which they
+could not hold. Before them lay the country they had come to invade,
+but there, at the outer gate, their march was arrested, and in sight of
+the ships which brought them supplies and reinforcements, they
+terminated a campaign, the scale and proclaimed objects of which had
+caused the world to look on in expectation of achievements the like of
+which man had not seen. Why was it so? was it not that they were unable
+to move from the depot of supplies, though a distance less than half of
+that over which our army passed before reaching a productive region
+would have brought the allied forces to a country filled with all the
+supplies necessary for the support of an army. Is it boastful to say
+that American troops, and an American treasury, would have encountered
+and have overcome such an obstacle? He did not forget the complaints
+which had been made on account of the vast expenditures which had been
+made in the prosecution of the war with Mexico; but he remembered with
+pride the capacity which the country had exhibited to bear such
+expenditure, and believed that our people had no money standard by
+which to measure the duty of their government, and the honor of their
+flag. We bear with us from the wars in which we have been engaged no
+other memory of their cost than the loss of the gallant dead. To the
+printed reports and tabular statements we must go when we desire to
+know how many dollars were expended. The successful soldier when he
+returns from the field is met by a welcome proportionate to the leaves
+which he has added to the wreath of his country’s glory. Each has his
+reward; to one, the admiring listener at the hearthstone; to another,
+the triumphal reception; to all, the respect which patriotism renders
+to patriotic service. To the soldier who, in the early part of the
+Mexican war, set the seal of invincibility upon American arms, and
+subsequently by a signal victory dispersed and disorganized the regular
+army of Mexico, his countrymen voted the highest reward known to our
+government. Twice before have the people in like manner manifested
+their approbation and esteem. Thus has the military spirit of the
+country been nursed; to-day it needs not the monarchial bundles of
+ribbons, orders and titles to sustain it. Thus has the American citizen
+been made to realize that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s
+country; and to feel proudest among his family memories of the names of
+those who successfully fought or bravely died in defence of the
+national flag. Often he had had occasion to feel, and to mark the
+mingled sensation of pride and of sorrow with which friends revert to
+those who gallantly died in the field. Even at this now remote day he
+could not travel in Mississippi without having the recollection of his
+fallen comrades painfully revived by meeting a mother who mourns her
+son with the agony of a mother’s grief; a father, whose stern nature
+vainly struggles to conceal the involuntary pang, or tender children
+who know not the extent of their deprivation, though it is indeed the
+sorest of all. Let none then be surprised that he could not see thee
+laurel save through the solemn shade of the cypress. Time, however,
+softened the shadow long before it withers the leaf. On his way to this
+place he learned that it was possible, and he seized the occasion to
+visit the residence of Gen. Knox, of revolutionary memory. His own
+desire to see something which had been identified with a patriot
+soldier who had so largely contributed to the success of the
+revolution, and the establishment of the institutions we inherited, was
+but an indication of the military sentiment which lives in the American
+heart. It turns the step of the traveller from his direct path, it
+attracts the boy in his first reading, it fires the ambition of the
+youth, and encircles the veteran with the kindness of his neighbors,
+and swells the train which follows his bier when, his duty to his
+country performed, he answers the summons of his God, and is translated
+to a better sphere. It is that same military enthusiasm which calls you
+from the avocations and the pleasures of home to the duties and
+discomforts of the camp, that you may prepare yourselves whenever your
+country needs it to render her efficient service. On the militia of the
+country the rights of its citizens, and the honor of its flag, must
+mainly depend in the event of a war; they only need to be organized and
+instructed to render them a secure reliance. Mingled with the great
+body of the people, identified with their feelings and their interests,
+proud of the prowess of their fathers and jealousy careful of the
+country’s honor, if properly instructed and prepared, the first trumpet
+call should bring from plain and from mountain a citizen soldiery who
+would encircle the land and check the invader with a wall of fire. Your
+plan of encampment seems best suited to the purposes of practical
+instruction. A pilgrim in search of health, his steps had been
+fortunately directed to Maine, the courtesy of the commander of this
+encampment had induced him to visit it and to review the troops. In all
+respects it had been to him most gratifying. The appointments, the
+movements, the stern faces, and stalwart forms of the men, spoke of the
+power to do, and the will to dare whatever it was needful and proper to
+perform. This day to manifest respect to a citizen of a distant State,
+whose only claim upon them is that he has been an American soldier, and
+is an American citizen, they had cheerfully marched through heavy mire.
+So much had they given to so small a demand on their natural sentiment,
+he could not doubt they would with equal alacrity, and with the same
+firm step, march over a field miry with the blood of comrade and of
+foe, where opposing causes make to men a common fate.
+
+Among the objects which were of interest to him and which he had hoped
+to visit, was the fortification at the narrows of the Penobscot. During
+the last session of congress he had endeavored to obtain an
+appropriation for the completion of the work which had advanced to the
+point which made it effective against shipping, but left still liable
+to be carried by land attack. He was not of those who thought it
+necessary to raise walls wherever an enemy might land and march, for he
+would say that henceforward there would remain to an invading army but
+to choose between captivity and a grave. To protect commercial ports
+against naval assault forts are needful and should be completed so as
+to render them defensible by small garrisons, and to save those
+garrisons as far as possible from the sacrifice of life. Our people
+require no wall to separate them from other countries, unless it be
+needful for our own restraint. Our policy is peace, and the fact shines
+brightly on the pages of our history that not one acre of its extensive
+acquisitions have been claimed as the spoil of the sword. Unpeopled
+deserts have been purchased, and on its own application a community has
+been admitted to our family of states. But we have offered to the world
+the singular example of conquered territory returned to the vanquished.
+
+Permit me in this connection, whilst ever mindful of the just relation
+and necessity for concurrent action between the civil and military
+departments of government, to bear testimony to the value of the
+militia for the purposes of peace. The principle of self-government and
+the spirit of independence are so deep rooted in the American mind that
+our people would illy brook the enforcement of law by any extraneous
+power, and it is to be hoped we never will see a case in which the
+people of a State will not be able to maintain the civil authority, and
+vindicate offended law against all opposers whomsoever. To give energy
+and activity to such popular action the organization of the militia
+will be most convenient whenever force shall be needful. It is not a
+little remarkable that though the first Presidents in emphatic language
+from time to time recommended a thorough organization of the militia as
+one of the most important duties of the government, but little more has
+yet been done than to make provisions for supplying them with arms, and
+for calling them out when required for federal purposes. There is a
+moral effect arising from the spectacle of each State possessed of a
+body of instructed militia, ready not only to maintain its government
+at home, but to unite with the militia of other States and to form an
+army upon which all can rely whenever a common danger calls for a
+common defence. It has been thus that from time to time the fraternity
+of our revolutionary fathers has been renewed among their sons, and
+additional assurance has been given that the sentiment of nationality
+on which our Union was founded could never die. That the expansion of
+the circle did not weaken its cohesive power, nor the piling of arch
+upon arch endanger the foundation on which our political temple was
+built. It was not a structure of expediency; master workmen cleared
+away the surface where the errors and prejudices of ages had
+accumulated, dug deep down to the unmutable rock of truth, and with
+unchanging principles constructed the walls to stand till time should
+become eternity. Who is there, then, forgetful of his revolutionary
+descent, insensible to the pride which the name of the United States
+justly inspires, faithless to the duty which the bond of his fathers
+imposes, and reckless of all which the honorable discharge of that duty
+ensures, would unite with impious purpose to destroy that foundation,
+and strive, with sacrilegious hand to tear the flag under which we had
+marched from colonial dependence to our present national greatness.
+Away with speculative theories, and false philanthropy of abstractions,
+which tend to destroy one half, one third, aye, or a single star of
+that bright constellation which lights the pathway of our future
+career, and sends a hopeful ray through the clouds of despotism which
+hang over less favored lands.
+
+Our mission is not that of propagandists—our principles forbid
+interference with the institutions of other countries; but we may hope
+that our example will be imitated, and should so live that this model
+of representative liberty, community independence, and government
+derived from the consent of the governed, and limited by a written
+compact, should commend itself to the adoption of others. We now stand
+isolated among the great nations of the earth; the opposition of
+monarchial governments to the theory on which ours is founded, points
+to the possibility of an alliance against us, by which what is termed
+national law may be modified and warped to our prejudice if not to our
+assailment. It needs the united power, harmonious action and
+concentrated will of the people of all these States to roll the wheel
+of progress to the end which our fathers contemplated, and which their
+sons, if they are wise and true, may behold. May the kindness and
+courtesy which have characterized the present occasion on which
+Mississippi has been greeted by Maine, be a type of the feeling which
+shall ever exist between the extremes of our common country. From
+Florida to California, from Oregon to Maine, from the centre to the
+remotest border, may the possessors of our constitutional heritage
+appreciate its value, and faithfully, fraternally labor for its
+thorough development, looking back to the original compact for the
+purposes for which the Union was established, and forward to the
+blessing which such union was designed and is competent to confer.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at the Portland Meeting.
+
+
+When it became known that Mr. Davis had arrived at the Hall, he was
+loudly called for. Hon. Joseph Howard, chairman of the meeting, then
+introduced Mr. Davis, who, on coming forward, was greeted with cheer
+upon cheer from the vast audience. As soon as the prolonged and
+enthusiastic applause with which he was welcomed had subsided, Mr.
+Davis, addressing the audience as fellow citizens and Democratic
+brethren, said that the invitation with which he had been favored to
+address them, evinced a purpose to confer together for the common
+good—for the maintenance of the constitution, the bond of union. He
+would not be expected to discuss local questions; he would not in this
+imitate the mischievous agitators who inflame the Northern mind against
+the Southern States. He came among them, an invalid, advised by his
+physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of his health; as
+an American citizen, he had not expected that his right to come here
+would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly
+by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rights of the South
+had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither his coming nor his
+going would attract attention. But his anticipations had proved
+erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted above the
+barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had chosen,
+without political distinction, to welcome his coming, and by constant
+acts of generous hospitality to make his sojourn as pleasant as his
+physical condition would permit.
+
+On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capital
+consists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, had
+erroneously judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as a
+political mission; wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that the
+scavengers of that party had been employed in the publication of
+falsehoods, both in relation to himself and his political friends at
+the South.
+
+So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more than
+the barking of a cur, which, by its clamor, indicates the inhospitable
+character of the master who keeps him. If his friends and himself were,
+as had been falsely charged, Disunionists and Nullifiers, they might
+naturally have looked for kinder considerations from a party which
+circulates petitions for a “prompt and peaceful dissolution of the
+Union” on account of the incompatibility of the sections—from a party,
+which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitution in
+relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and
+void the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to
+enact. The fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their
+honorable discharge of its obligations was their rebuke to this party,
+in whose hostility he found the highest commendation in their power to
+bestow.
+
+By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words into
+extracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his
+opinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his
+was the creed on which the people of Maine must vote next Monday.
+
+It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their hands that
+he should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had not
+failed to remember the obligation; when republicans had introduced the
+subject of African slavery he had defended it, and answered pharisaical
+pretensions by citing the Bible, the constitution of the United States
+and the good of society in justification of the institutions of the
+State of which he was a citizen; in this he but exercised the right of
+a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southern citizen. Was it for
+this cause that he had been signalized as a slavery propagandists? He
+admitted in all its length and breadth the right of the people of Maine
+to decide the question for themselves; he held that it would be an
+indecent interference, on the part of a citizen of another State, if he
+should arraign the propriety of the judgment they had rendered, and
+that there was no rightful power in the federal government or in all
+the States combined, to set aside the decision which the community had
+made in relation to their domestic institutions. Should any attempt be
+made thus to disturb their sovereign right, he would pledge himself in
+advance, as a State-rights man, with his head, his heart and his hand,
+if need be, to aid them in the defence of this right of community
+independence, which the Union was formed to protect, and which it was
+the duty of every American citizen to preserve and to guard as the
+peculiar and prominent feature of our government.
+
+Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men to
+converse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or exclude
+them? He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of
+our brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here,
+to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are the
+political abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of the
+character and the purposes of the Democracy of this State.
+
+And now having brushed away the cob-webs which lay in his path, he
+would proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audience
+he had the honor to address.
+
+Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may be
+known, you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and to
+posterity. The time is at hand when for good or for evil, the questions
+which have agitated the public mind are to be solved. Is it true as
+asserted by northern agitators that there is such contrariety between
+the North and the South that they cannot remain united! Or rather, is
+it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity in the character
+of the population, in the products and in the institutions of the
+several States formed a reason for their union and tended to secure to
+their posterity the liberty which was the common object of their love,
+and by cultivating untrammeled intercourse and free trade between the
+States, to duplicate the comforts of all?
+
+There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness to sever
+the bond which bound the colonies to the mother country. Recently our
+people with joyous acclamation have welcomed the connection of the
+United States with Great Britain, by the Atlantic cable. The one is not
+inconsistent with the other. When the home government violated the
+charters of the colonies, and assumed to control the private interests
+of individuals, the love of political liberty, the determination at
+whatever hazard to maintain their rights, led our fathers to enter on
+the trial of revolution. Having achieved the separation, they did what
+was in their power for the development of commerce. They secured free
+trade between the States, without surrendering State independence.
+Their sons, not only free, but beyond the possibility of future
+interference in their domestic affairs, now seek the closest commercial
+connection with the country from which their fathers achieved a
+political separation.
+
+Had the proposition been made to consolidate the States after their
+independence had been achieved, all must know it would have been
+rejected—yet there are those who now instigate you to sectional strife
+for the purpose of sectional dominion and the destruction of the rights
+of the minority. Do they mean treason to the Constitution and the
+destruction of the Union? Or do they vilely practice on credulity and
+passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested by the contradictory
+course they pursue. At the same time they proclaim war upon the slave
+property of the South, they ask for protection to the manufactures of
+the staple which could not be produced if that property did not exist.
+And while they assert themselves to be the peculiar friends of commerce
+and navigation, they vaunt their purpose to destroy the labor which
+gives vitality to both; whilst they proclaim themselves the peculiar
+friends of laboring men at the North, they insist that the negroes are
+their equals; and if they are sincere they would, by emancipation of
+the blacks, bring them together and degrade the white man to the negro
+level. They seek to influence the northern mind by sectional issues and
+sectional organization, yet they profess to be the friends of the
+Union. The Union voluntarily formed by free, equal, independent States.
+
+We of the South, on a sectional division, are in the minority; and if
+legislation is to be directed by geographical tests—if the constitution
+is to be trampled in the dust, and the unbridled will of the majority
+in Congress is to be supreme over the States; we should have the
+problem which was presented to our Fathers when the Colonies declined
+to be content with a mere representation in parliament.
+
+If the constitution is to be sacredly observed, why should there be a
+struggle for sectional ascendency? The instrument is the same in all
+latitudes, and does not vary with the domestic institutions of the
+several States. Hence it is that the Democracy, the party of the
+constitution, have preserved their integrity, and are to-day the only
+national party and the only hope for the preservation and perpetuation
+of the Union of the States.
+
+Mr. Jefferson denominated the Democracy of the North, the natural
+allies of the South. It is in our generation doubly true; they are
+still the party with whom labor is capital, and they are now the party
+which stands by the barriers of the constitution, to protect them from
+the waves of fanatical and sectional aggression. The use of the word
+aggression reminded him that the people here have been daily harangued
+about the aggressions of the slave power, and he had been curious to
+learn what was so described. It is, if he had learned correctly, the
+assertion of the right to migrate with slaves into the territories of
+the United States. Is this aggression? If so, upon what? Not upon those
+who desire close association with the negro; not upon territorial
+rights, unless these self-styled lovers of the Union have already
+dissolved it and have taken the territories to themselves. The
+territory being the common property of States, equals in the Union, and
+bound by the constitution which recognizes property in slaves, it is an
+abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into that territory of
+one of its joint owners, because carrying with him any species of
+property recognized by the constitution of the United States. The
+Federal government has no power to declare what is property anywhere.
+The power of each State cannot extend beyond its own limits. As a
+consequence, therefore, whatever is property in any of the States must
+be so considered in any of the territories of the United States until
+they reach to the dignity of community independence, when the subject
+matter will be entirely under the control of the people and be
+determined by their fundamental law. If the inhabitants of any
+territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as
+would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered
+more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it
+without such protection. In the case of property in the labor of man,
+or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so
+great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though
+the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that
+the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the
+case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of
+the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft
+repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.
+
+If Congress had the power to prohibit the introduction of slave
+property into the territories, what would be the purpose? Would it be
+to promote emancipation? That could not be the effect. In the first
+settlement of a territory the want of population and the consequent
+difficulty of procuring hired labor, would induce emigrants to take
+slaves with them; but if the climate and products of the country were
+unsuited to African labor—as soon as white labor flowed in, the owners
+of slaves would as a matter of interest, desire to get rid of them and
+emancipation would result. The number would usually be so small that
+this would be effected without injury to society or industrial
+pursuits. Thus it was in Wisconsin, notwithstanding the ordinance of
+’87; and other examples might be cited to show that this is not mere
+theory.
+
+Would it be to promote the civilization and progress of the negro race?
+The tendency must be otherwise. By the dispersion of the slaves, their
+labor would be rendered more productive and their comforts increased.
+The number of owners would be multiplied, and by more immediate contact
+and personal relation greater care and kindness would be engendered. In
+every way it would conduce to the advancement and happiness of the
+servile caste.
+
+No—no—it is not these, but the same answer which comes to every inquiry
+as to the cause of fanatical agitation. ’Tis for sectional power, and
+political ascendency; to fan a sectional hostility, which must be, as
+it has been, injurious to all, and beneficial to none. For what
+patriotic purpose can the Northern mind be agitated in relation to
+domestic institutions, for which they have no legal or moral
+responsibility, and from the interference with which they are
+restrained by their obligations as American citizens?
+
+Is it in this mode that the spirit of mutual support and common effort
+for the common good, is to be cultivated? Is it thus that confidence is
+to be developed and the sense of security to grow with the growing
+power of each and every State? Is it thus that we are to exemplify the
+blessings of self-government by the free exercise in each independent
+community of the power to regulate their domestic institutions as soil,
+climate, and population may determine?
+
+Among the questions which have been made the basis of recent agitation,
+and has contributed as much, perhaps, as any other to popular delusion,
+was the act known as the Missouri Compromise. It will be remembered
+that the agitation of 1819 on the subject of slavery, was not masked as
+it has been since, by pretensions of philanthropy—it was an avowed
+opposition to the admission of a slave-holding State. A long and bitter
+controversy was terminated by the admission of the State of Missouri,
+and the prohibition of slavery north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30
+minutes. He, and those with whom he most concurred, had always
+contended that Congress had no constitutional power to make the
+interdiction. But the people having generally acquiesced, the matter
+was considered settled; and when Texas, a slave-holding State, was
+admitted into the Union, Southern men, regarding the Missouri Act as a
+compact, assented to the extension of the line through the territory of
+Texas, with a provision that any State formed out of the territory
+north of 36: 30: should be non-slaveholding. But when, at a subsequent
+period, we made extensive acquisitions from Mexico, and it was proposed
+to divide the territory by the same parallel, the North generally
+opposed it, and after a long discussion, the controversy was settled on
+the principle of non-intervention by Congress in relation to property
+in the territories. The line of the Missouri Compromise was repudiated.
+And a Senator who had been most prominent in denouncing the repeal of
+the Missouri Compromise as a violation of good faith on the part of the
+South, in 1850, described it as a measure which had been the grave of
+every Northern man who supported it, and objected to the boundary of
+36: 30: for the territory of Utah, because of the political implication
+which its adoption would contain.
+
+The act having been thus signally repudiated by the denial in every
+form of the power of Congress to fix geographical limits within which
+slavery might or might not exist; when it became necessary to organize
+the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, it was but the corollary of the
+proposition which had been maintained in 1850 to repeal the act which
+had fixed the parallel of 36: 30: as the future limit of slavery in the
+territory of Louisiana.
+
+Consistency demanded so much; fairness and manhood could not have
+granted less. He was not then a member of Congress; but if he had been,
+he should have voted for that repeal; for although in 1850 he had
+favored the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific
+Ocean, and believed that it would most conduce to the harmony of the
+States, he had yielded to the action of the Government, and considered
+the position then taken as conclusive against the retention of the line
+in Louisiana and Texas, which its beneficiaries had refused to extend
+through the territories acquired from Mexico. As a general principle,
+he thought it was best to leave the territories all open. Equality of
+right demanded it, and the federal government had no power to withhold
+it. Whatever validity the Missouri Compromise act had, it derived from
+the acquiescence of the people. After 1850 then it had none. The South
+had not asked Congress to extend slavery into the territories, and he
+in common with most Southern statesmen, denied the existence of any
+power to do so. He held it to be the creed of the Democracy, both in
+the North and the South, that the General Government had no
+constitutional power either to establish or prohibit slavery anywhere;
+a grant of power to do the one must necessarily have involved the power
+to do the other. Hence it is their policy not to interfere on the one
+side or the other, but protecting each individual in his constitutional
+rights, to leave every independent community to determine and adjust
+all domestic questions as in their wisdom may seem best.
+
+Politicians of the opposite school seemed to forget the relation of the
+General Government to the States; even so far as to argue as though the
+General Government had been the creator instead of the creature of the
+States. He had learned that attempts had been made to impress upon the
+people of Maine the belief that they were in danger of having slavery
+established among them by decree of the Supreme Court of the United
+States. He scarcely knew how to answer so palpable an absurdity. The
+court was established, among other purposes, to protect the people from
+unconstitutional legislation; and if Congress, in the extreme of
+madness, should attempt thus to invade the sovereignty of a State, it
+would be within the power, and would be the duty of the court, to check
+the aggression by declaring such law void. The court have, on more than
+one occasion, asserted the right of transit as a consequence of the
+guarantees of the Constitution, but it would require much ingenuity to
+torture the protection of a traveller or sojourner into an assertion of
+a right to become resident and introduce property in contravention of
+the fundamental law of the State, or of a citizen to hold property
+within a State in violation of its constitution and its policy. The
+error of the proposition was so palpable that, like the truth of an
+axiom, it could not be rendered plainer by demonstration.
+
+It is not within the scope of human foresight to see the embarrassments
+which may arise in the execution of any policy. When it was declared
+that soil, climate, and unrestrained migration should be left to fix
+the _status_ of the territories, and institutions of the States to be
+formed out of them, no one probably anticipated that companies would be
+incorporated to transport colonists into a territory with a view to
+decide its political condition. Congress, as he believed, yielding too
+far to the popular idea, had surrendered its right of revision and thus
+had recently lost its power to restrain improper legislation in the
+territories. From these joint causes had arisen the unhappy strife in
+Kansas, which at one time threatened to terminate in civil war. The
+Government had been denounced for the employment of United States
+troops. Very briefly he would state the case.
+
+The movement of the Emigrant Aid Societies of the North was met by
+counteracting movements in Missouri and other Southern States. Thus
+opposing tides of emigration met on the plains of Kansas. The land was
+a scene of confusion and violence. Fortunately the murders which for a
+time filled the newspapers, existed nowhere else; and the men who were
+reported slain, usually turned up after a short period to enjoy the
+eulogies which their martyrdom had elicited. But arson, theft and
+disgraceful scenes of disorder did really exist, and bands of armed men
+indicated the approach of actual hostilities. What was the Government
+to do? Perhaps you will say, call out the militia. But that would have
+been to feed and arm one of the parties for the destruction of the
+other. To call out the militia of neighboring States would have been
+but little better. The sectional excitement then ran so high, that they
+would probably have met upon the fields of Kansas as combatants, the
+government in the meantime furnishing the supplies for both armies. It
+was necessary to have a force—one which would be free from sectional
+excitement or partisan zeal and under executive control. The army
+fulfiled these conditions. It was therefore employed. It dispersed
+marauding parties, disarmed organized invaders, arrested disturbers of
+the peace, gave comparative quiet and repose to the territory, without
+taking a single life, aye, or shedding one drop of blood. The end
+justified the means, and the result equaled all that could have been
+anticipated.
+
+The anomalous condition of a territory possessing full legislative
+power, but not invested with the sovereignty of a State, justified the
+anxiety exhibited by Congress to be relieved from the embarrassment
+which the case of Kansas presented. The Senate passed a bill to
+authorize a convention for the preparation of a constitution for the
+admission of Kansas as a State. It however failed in the House of
+Representatives, and the legislature of Kansas, availing themselves of
+the plenary power conferred upon them by the organic act, proceeded to
+provide for the assembling of a convention, and the formation of a
+constitution. The law was minute and fair in its provisions, so nearly
+resembling the bill of the Senate that the one was probably copied from
+the other. It seemed to secure to every legal voter every desirable
+opportunity to exercise his right. One of the parties of the territory,
+however, denying the legal existence of the legislature, chose to
+abstain from voting. The other elected the delegates who formed the
+constitution. The validity of the instrument he has been denied,
+because it was not submitted for popular ratification. He held this
+position to be wholly untenable, and could but regard it as a gross
+departure from the principle of popular sovereignty. A people—he used
+the word in its strict political sense—having the right to make for
+themselves their fundamental law, may either assemble in mass
+convention for that purpose, or may select delegates and limit their
+power to the preparation of an instrument to be submitted to a popular
+decision; or they may appoint delegates with full powers to frame the
+fundamental law of the land. Whether they adopt one mode or the other
+is a question with which others have no right to interfere, and he who
+claims for Congress the power to sit in judgment on the manner in which
+a people may form a constitution, is outside of the barrier which would
+restrain him from claiming for Congress the right to dictate the
+instrument itself. If the right existed to form a constitution at all,
+the power of Congress in relation to the instrument was limited to the
+simple inquiry: is it republican? In this view of the case it would not
+matter to him the ninety-ninth part of a hair whether a people should
+chose to admit or exclude slave property. Their right to enter the
+Union would be a thing apart from that consideration.
+
+He had felt great doubt as to the propriety of admitting Kansas, and
+had only yielded those doubts to the peculiar necessities which seemed
+to make the case exceptional. The inhabitants of the territory had
+however decided not to enter the Union upon the terms proposed, and he
+thought their decision was fortunate. They had not the requisite
+population; their resources were too limited to give assurance that
+they would be able to bear the expenses of their government and
+properly to perform the duties of a State. But more than this, their
+legislative history shows that they are wanting in the essential
+characteristics of a community; whichever party has had the control of
+the legislature, has manifested by its acts not a desire to promote the
+public good, and protect individual rights, but a purpose to war upon
+their political opponents as a hostile power. The political party with
+which he most sympathized had marked its legislation by requiring test
+oaths, offensive to all our notions of political freedom; and the other
+party had assumed to take from the territorial executive the control of
+the militia and to place it in irresponsible hands, where, it reports
+speak truly, it has been employed in the most wanton outrages and
+disgraceful persecution of citizens of the opposite political party. He
+held, therefore, that the decision of the inhabitants was fortunate and
+wise. It was well, that before they assume the responsibilities of a
+State, they should gather population, develop the natural resources of
+the country, and above all acquire the homogeneous character which
+would give security to person and property, and fit them to be justly
+denominated a community.
+
+A stranger, and but a passing observer of events in Maine, he had
+nevertheless seen indications of a reaction in popular opinion, which
+promised hopefully for the future of Democracy, _hopefully_, it might
+be permitted for one to say who believed that the success of the
+Democracy was the only hope for the maintenance of the constitution and
+the perpetuation of the Union which sprung from and cannot outlive it.
+If the language of his friend who preceded him should prove prophetic,
+the waving of the banner he described would be the dawning of a day
+which would bring gladness and confidence to many a heart now clouded
+with distrust, and loud would be the cheers which, on distant plain and
+mountain, would welcome Maine again to her position on the top of the
+Democratic pyramid. He saw a brighter sky above him; he felt a firmer
+foundation beneath his feet, and hoped ere long through a triumph
+achieved by the declaration of principles, suited to every latitude and
+longitude of the United Slates, to receive the assurance that we have
+passed the breakers —that our ship may henceforth float freely on—that
+our flag, no longer threatened with mutilation or destruction, shall
+throw its broad stripes to the breeze and gather stars until its
+constellation shines a galaxy, and records a family of States embracing
+the new world and its adjacent islands.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at State Fair at Augusta, ME.
+
+[From the Eastern Argus, Sept 29,1858.]
+
+
+On Thursday evening a large and brilliant audience assembled in the
+Representatives’ Hall, in the Capitol, to listen to the distinguished
+statesman from Mississippi, who, upon brief notice and without a
+moment’s leisure for preparation, had kindly consented to address the
+Agricultural Society. We have already spoken of the gratifying
+character of what he termed his desultory remarks and of the cordially
+enthusiastic manner in which both the orator and his address were
+received. As the occasion, as well as the character of the remarks,
+will make them interesting to the whole people of our State, we are
+gratified in being able to lay before our readers a more extended and
+accurate report of them than has before appeared.
+
+At about half-past eight o’clock, the Society came into the Hall,
+already crowded in every part, and its President, Hon. Samuel F.
+Perley, in brief and complimentary terms, introduced Col. Davis, who
+advanced to the speaker’s stand, and was received with loud and
+prolonged applause. He said:
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, friends and countrymen: To the many acts of
+kindness received from the people of Maine, I have to add the welcome
+reception this evening. The invitation of the Agricultural Society,
+with the attendant circumstances, serve further to impress me with the
+hospitality of ray fellow citizens of this State. Coming here, an
+invalid, seeking the benefits which your clime would afford, and
+preceded by a reputation which was expected to prejudice you
+unfavorably towards me, I have everywhere met courtesy and considerate
+attention, from the hour I landed on your coast to the present time. It
+was natural to ask, whence come these manifestations? Is it because the
+opinion which had been formed has been found to be unjust, and the
+reaction has been in proportion to the previous impulse? Or is it the
+exhibition of your regard for loyalty to one’s friends, and devotion by
+a citizen to the community to which he belongs? Either the one or the
+other is honorable to you; but there is a broader and more beneficent
+motive—the prompting of that sentiment which would cause you to
+recognize in every American citizen a brother. That feeling which
+Daniel Webster indicated when he met me in company with your
+distinguished townsman, ex-Senator Bradbury, and taking us with the
+right hand and with the left, said in the peculiarly impressive manner
+which belonged to him, “My brethren of the North and of the South, how
+are ye?”
+
+It is usual to offer to an Agricultural Society nothing less than a
+prepared address, and had I come with an intention to speak to you, I
+should not have failed to make that preparation which is evidence of
+due regard for the audience. The invitation under which I now speak,
+having been given and accepted this evening, I have no power to do more
+than to offer you desultory remarks on such subjects as my visit to the
+Fair have suggested, and which may occur to me as I progress.
+
+With great pleasure I have witnessed evidences of much attention and
+deep interest in agriculture. It is the basis of all wealth. It is the
+producer—brings all new contributions to the general store. The
+mechanic arts are essential to its success, and they serve by changing
+the form, to multiply the value of agricultural products. And commerce
+too, by exchanging the products of individuals and of countries,
+enhances the value of labor, and increases the comfort of man. They are
+all essential to each other. I have no disposition to magnify or
+depreciate either, but my proposition is, that the soil is the source
+from which human wealth springs. In addition to these pursuits, society
+requires what are termed liberal professions. They are not producers,
+though they may contribute, by diffusing knowledge, to increase
+production. They may be necessary to give security to property and to
+take care of some physical wants. For instance you have lawyers and
+doctors; and the less need you have of them the better; for though
+necessary, like government, it is evil which makes them so. As to
+another class—those who have the cure of souls—their mission is so
+sacred, their function so high as to place them beyond comment; and of
+them I have nothing to say, except that I propose to say nothing.
+
+Among the products of agriculture I of course intended to include the
+farmer’s stock, and I must here bear my tribute of admiration to the
+fine display which has been made of horned cattle; particularly of work
+oxen, remarkable for their size, their adaptation to the purposes for
+which they are kept and the docility and yet the unflagging spirit
+which they manifested in the trials of strength and of deep ploughing.
+I have not before seen such fine specimens of the Devon cattle,—of
+course I speak of them as they present themselves to the eye—not
+pretending to judge of their relative value to other stock exhibited.
+Improvement in the breed of domestic animals goes hand in hand with
+agricultural mechanism, to give the ability to make two blades of grass
+to grow where but one grew before, and thus to render you indeed
+benefactors. Skill in the use, and ingenuity in devising and
+constructing implements, serve to render labor productive, and relieve
+it of its most dreary drudgery. It is this mechanical ingenuity which
+has compensated for the high price of labor among us, and aided in the
+development of resources which makes our country the greatest of the
+earth. Blest by soil, climate and government, if we are, as claimed,
+pre-eminent among nations, it is because we have added to other
+advantages a more general cultivation of the mind. The superiority is
+attributable not so much to physical energy, activity and perseverance,
+as to the improvement of that portion of the man which lies above the
+eyes.
+
+Though you have done much for the improvement of agricultural
+implements, your work is far from being completed. It is not a little
+surprising that we should, to this day, have no reliable rule by which
+to make a plough, and though the model has been improved, certainly it
+is yet not unlike, and so far as exact science is concerned, is on a
+par with that implement as used by the Romans, and as it appeared in
+ancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular relation of the
+parts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied,
+offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useful to the
+cultivator. In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was afforded
+of the fitness of the implements employed to turn deep and wide
+furrows; but should we be content with such result as is obtained by
+trying different models, and then copying one which is found to be
+good?
+
+Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timber
+that it was naturally to be expected, as it has fallen out, that the
+pursuits of navigation would most occupy the attention of her people.
+But let not her sons look to the period when her forests have
+disappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue. There
+are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directed to
+lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley of the
+Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial
+districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep
+vegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be less
+permanent than those. In them the elements which support the farmer’s
+crop may be exhausted by cultivation or carried down into substrata of
+gravel or sand. In the remote West to which so many are pressing, the
+emigrant will encounter an arid climate in which irrigation is
+necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry, and this
+involves an original expenditure which it will usually require large
+capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mighty pump, is daily
+raising the water which the currents of cold air from the mountains, or
+from the sea, precipitate in the form of genial showers during the
+period of your growing crops; and the granite of the mountains slowly,
+but steadily disintegrating, gives up its fertilizing property to be
+scattered by unseen hands over plain and over valley. With care and
+with skill in its use I can see no end to the productiveness of that
+portion of your land which is fit for cultivation.
+
+Your crops, and your mode of tillage are different from that to which I
+am accustomed, and the result is that each supplies a different segment
+in the circle of man’s wants. I am glad that it is so, that it must
+necessarily be so. Glad, because it is an everlasting bond between us;
+one which, whilst it binds, renders both doubly prosperous. Blessed is
+our lot in this, that our fathers linked us together, and established
+free trade between us. In the diversity of climate, and of crops, there
+is an assurance that entire failure cannot occur. If disaster and
+blight should fall upon one section, it need not go to a foreign land
+in search of bread. Famine, gaunt famine, with its skeleton step, can
+never pass our borders whilst the free trade of the Union continues.
+
+But difference in pursuits, in population, and domestic institutions,
+have been made the basis of hostile agitation, and urged as a cause of
+separation. To my mind the reverse would be the rational conclusion.
+Each exchanging, the surplus of that which it can best produce for the
+surplus of another which it most requires, the benefit must be mutual,
+and the advantage common. Here is a commercial, a selfish bond to hold
+us together. But I will stop here, because the current of my thought is
+carrying me beyond the limit of topics proper to the occasion, and I
+must offer as an apology the fact, that though myself a cultivator of
+the soil, my mind has for several years been given so much to political
+subjects, that in speaking without having previously arranged what to
+say, the thought inadvertently runs from the matter I wished to
+present, into collateral questions of governmental concern. Before
+turning back, however, into the original channel, permit me to say that
+the diversity of which I have been speaking, formed no small inducement
+to the union of the States, and that it has been through that union
+that we have attained to our present position, and stand to-day, all
+things considered, the happiest, and among the greatest in the family
+of nations.
+
+In looking around upon the evidences you have brought of mechanical and
+agricultural improvement, I have viewed it not with the curiosity of a
+stranger, but with the interest of one who felt that he had a part in
+it, as an exhibition of the prosperity of his country. The whole
+confederacy is my country, and to the innermost fibres of my heart I
+love it all, and every part. I could not if I would, and would not if I
+could, dwarf myself to mere sectionality. My first allegiance is to the
+State of which I am a citizen, and to which by affection and
+association I am personally bound; but this does not obstruct the
+perception of your greatness, or admiration for much which I have found
+admirable among you.
+
+Yankee is a word once applied to you as a term of reproach, but you
+have made it honorable and renowned. You have borne the flag of your
+country from the time when it was ridiculed as a piece of striped
+bunting, until it has come to be known and respected wherever the ray
+of civilization has reached; and your canvass-winged birds of commerce
+have borne civilization into regions, where it is not boasting to say,
+but for your prowess it would not have gone. You have a right to be
+proud of your achievements as well on the land as the sea. Well may you
+point as you do with satisfaction, to your school houses and your
+work-shops, and to the fruits they have borne on the forum and in the
+council chamber, and in the manufactures which have increased the
+comforts of our own people, and have encircled the globe to find
+exchangeable products required at home. Those are the greatest and most
+beneficent triumphs—the triumph of mind over matter. These are the
+monuments of greatness, which resist both time and circumstance.
+
+I have spoken of diversity among the people of the United States; yet
+there is probably greater similitude than is to be found elsewhere over
+the same extent of country, and in the same number of people. In
+language, especially, our people are one; surely much more so than
+those of any other country. The diversity between the people of the
+different States, even those most remote from each other, is not as
+great as that between inhabitants of adjoining countries of England, or
+departments of France or Spain, where provinces have their separate
+dialects. And chief among the causes for this I would place the primary
+book, in which children of my day learned their letters, and took their
+first lessons in spelling and reading. I refer to the good old spelling
+book of Noah Webster, on which I doubt if there has been any
+improvement, and which had the singular advantage of being used over
+the whole country. To this unity of language and general similitude, is
+to be added a community of sentiment wherever the American is brought
+into contrast or opposition to any other people.
+
+If shadows float over our disc and threaten an eclipse; if there be
+those who would not avert, but desire to precipitate catastrophe to the
+Union, these are not the sentiments of the American heart; they are
+rather the exceptions and should not disturb our confidence in that
+deep-seated sentiment of nationality which aided our fathers when they
+entered into the compact of union, and which has preserved it to us.
+You manifest that sentiment to-day in the courtesy which you have
+extended to me. In what other land could a countryman go so far from
+his home and receive among strangers the attention which could only be
+expected from friends? But it is not your kindness only, which has
+caused me here to feel at home; I have been brought in contact with men
+of my own pursuit, the tillers of the ground and the breeders of stock;
+and in my intercourse with this class of your citizens, I have been
+further confirmed in the high estimate heretofore placed upon that
+portion of our population. Happily for our country and its
+institutions, extensive territory and favorable climate, have attracted
+a large part of our population to agricultural pursuits. It is in the
+individuality, the sobriety, and self reliance of the rural population
+that I look for the highest development of those qualities essential to
+self-government, and the brightest illustration of patriotic devotion.
+They may not be the best informed, but learning and wisdom are by no
+means equivalent terms. Isolation and entire dependence upon himself;
+give independence of character and favor that self-inquiry which best
+enables man to comprehend and measure the motives of his fellow.
+Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind becomes as it were
+acadamized; and though the intercourse is favorable to the acquisition
+of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality,
+independence, and purity, without which republican governments rapidly
+sink into decay. It was probably in this view that Mr. Jefferson said,
+great cities were sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes
+of commerce, required for the exchanges on which agricultural and
+manufacturing industry depend for their prosperity,—they are not evils
+which we could desire to see abated. My desire, however, is, that the
+rural districts shall not lose their relative importance or cease to
+control in public affairs. Misled and deceived they may be, interested
+in a public wrong they cannot be, and theirs is the sober thought upon
+which reliance must be placed for the correction of errors and
+delusions, which may temporarily prevail.
+
+In societies like this the farmers have the opportunity of comparing
+opinions and results, and thus increasing the amount of their
+knowledge. The spirit of emulation which is excited must lead to
+improvement, by better directing energy in their pursuit. The
+publication of the results and the comparisons thus instituted with
+what is done in other States, encourages State pride and developes
+community feeling. Whatever tends to the cultivation of the idea of
+State sovereignty and community independence, strengthens the
+foundation on which rests our federal government—the fruition of that
+principle which led our fathers into the war of the revolution, where
+they purchased with their blood the rich inheritance transmitted to us.
+
+Man once received the title of Domitor Equi, he being proud of the
+achievement of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn,
+gentler woman sat like Penelope handling the distaff. Subsequently
+there arose a race of Amazons, who, aspiring to the feats of man, lost
+the gentleness of woman; but in our happy land and day, rising above
+the one without running to the excess of the other, lovely woman, with
+all the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, musters her energy when
+occasion requires, and displays her prowess in commanding the horse.
+Among the interesting features of the exhibition I shall remember the
+equestrianism of the ladies. Though it was beautiful in every sense of
+the word, it was not regarded as mere sport, but the rather looked upon
+as part of that mental and physical training which makes a woman more
+than the mere ornament of the drawing-room—fits her usefully to act her
+appropriate part in the trying scenes to which the most favored may be
+subjected—to become the mother of heroes, and live in the admiration of
+posterity.
+
+Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly made
+to an extension of the area of the United States. A wiser policy,
+however, prevailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasing the
+variety of our productions, have magnified the advantages of free trade
+between the States, and made us almost independent of other countries
+for the supply of every object whether of necessity or of luxury. I
+would be glad to extend our boundary and make the circle of our
+products complete, so that, whilst we would encourage commerce with
+christendom we should be, commercially as we are politically,
+absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary to
+terminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman of
+former days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of fire, that it might
+be a barrier to shut out European contamination. Whatever fear was once
+justifiable, no apprehension now need to exist, that our people will
+imitate or seek to adopt the political theories of Europe. We have
+recently rejoiced in the success of the attempt to establish
+telegraphic communication with England; because in closer commercial
+ties we saw no danger of political influence. I was happy this evening
+to receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at last
+complete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger than
+their hopes—thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from the beginning
+anticipated success, and have heretofore said that if the present
+attempt riled I was sure that Yankee enterprise and skill could make a
+cable and lay it across the Atlantic. And we look forward to the result
+with hope, not doubting, that the closest commercial connexion with
+other countries can only bring to us benefits. We are not, and have not
+been, political propagandists, yet believing our form of government the
+best, we properly desire its extension and invite the world to
+scrutinize our example of representative liberty.
+
+The stars on our flag, recording the number of the States united, have
+already been more than doubled; and I hopefully look forward to the day
+when the constellation shall become a galaxy covering the stripes,
+which record the original number of our political family, and shall
+shed over the nations of the earth the light of regeneration to
+mankind. It has sometimes been said to he our manifest destiny that we
+should possess the whole of this continent. Whether it shall ever all
+be part of the United States is doubtful, and may never be desirable;
+but that in some form or other, it should come under the protectorate
+or control of the United States, is a result which seems to me, in the
+remote future, certain. It waits as the consequence upon intellectual
+vigor, upon physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can only
+be defeated by a suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to the
+occasion to treat.
+
+I would not be understood to advocate what is called fillibustering.
+Our country has never obtained territory except fairly, honorably and
+peaceably. We have conquered territory, but have asserted no title as
+the right of conquest, returning to Mexico all except the part she
+agreed to sell and for which we paid a liberal price. England having
+fillibustered around the world, has reproached us for aggrandizement,
+and we point to history and invite a comparison. There is no stain upon
+our escutcheon, no smoke upon our garments, and thus may they remain
+pure forever! The acquisitions of which I spoke, the protectorate which
+was contemplated, were such as the necessities of the future should
+demand, and the good of others as much as our own require, and this
+step by step, faster or slower, will, I believe, finally embrace the
+continent of America and its adjacent islands.
+
+I am not among those who desire to incorporate into our Union,
+countries densely populated with a different race. Deserts, ’tis the
+province of our people to subdue. A mere handful of inhabitants, such
+as existed in Louisiana, are soon enveloped in the tide of immigration;
+of this character of acquisition I have no fear; but the mingling of
+races is a different thing. I have looked with interest and pleasure
+upon the crosses of your cattle and horses, and saw in it the evidence
+of improvement. Let your Messengers, your Morgans, your Drews, and your
+Eatons be mingled with each other and with new inportations; so with
+your Durhams, Devons, Ayreshires and your Jerseys. The limit to these
+experiments will be where experience shows deterioration. There is one
+cross which it is to be hoped you will avoid: ’tis that which your
+Puritan fathers would not adopt or even entertain. They kept pure the
+Caucasian blood which flowed in their veins, and therein is the cause
+of your present high civilization, your progress, your dignity and your
+strength. We are one, let us remain unmixed. In our neighbors of
+Southern and Central America we have a sufficient warning; and may it
+never be our ill-fortune to learn by experience the lessons taught by
+their example.
+
+It is due to the hospitality and kind consideration with which I have
+been treated since I first came among you that I should not leave you
+under any doubt in relation to the accusations which have been busily
+circulated against me. And this, it is to be hoped, will not be
+mistaken for egotism, since the greatest interest I have in doing so is
+to justify you to yourselves. I know of no selfish purpose, unless a
+proper desire for esteem he such, which would lead me to attempt to
+undeceive you, so far as any of you may have been imposed upon. I
+certainly do not expect to change my residence from the State in which
+I was reared; and I long since avowed the intention never again to
+receive official trust from any other authority than that of the people
+of the State of which I am a citizen. It has been represented to you
+that you were showering attentions upon one who was hostile to your
+interests, and regardless of your rights. I am grateful to you for the
+constant evidence you have given that you discredited the statement,
+and I am therefore the more anxious that you should not remain in
+doubt. The public record contains all I have said and done, and in it
+nothing can be found to sustain the statement. Of this I am quite sure,
+because it has always been with me a principle to exercise public
+functions in the spirit of the Constitution and the purposes of the
+Union. If I know myself, I have never given a vote from a feeling of
+hostility to any portion of our common country; but have always kept in
+view the common obligation for the common welfare, and desired by
+maintaining the constitution in each and every particular, to
+perpetuate the blessings it was designed to secure, and to transmit the
+inheritance received from our fathers unmutilated and uncontaminated to
+remotest posterity. In some positions it has devolved upon me to study
+interests in Maine, with a view to secure for them proper provision,
+and I feel that I am justified in saying they were considered as became
+one who had sworn to protect the Constitution, and who had a function
+to perform in relation to a sovereign State of the Union. Heretofore I
+have been prompted merely by what I believed to be duty to you from me
+as an officer under the Constitution. Hereafter, though the principles
+on which I will act cannot vary, I should be less than a man if I did
+not feel deeper interest in whatever concerns you. I shall always bear
+with me most pleasurable recollections of my sojourn among you, and
+hope it may be my good fortune some day to meet some of you in
+Mississippi, and thus have it in my power to reciprocate, imperfectly
+it may be, the kindness which you bestowed upon me. I thank you for
+your polite attention, and cordially wish for you, one and all, present
+and future prosperity.
+
+
+
+
+Speech at the Grand Ratification Meeting, Faneuil Hall,
+
+_Monday evening, Oct. 11th, 1858._
+
+
+Countrymen, Brethren, Democrats—Most happy am I to meet you, and to
+have received here renewed assurance—of that which I have so long
+believed—that the pulsation of the democratic heart is the same in
+every parallel of latitude, on every meridian of longitude throughout
+the United States. But it required not this to confirm me in a belief
+so long and so happily enjoyed.—Your own great statesman who has
+introduced me to this assembly has been too long associated with me,
+too nearly connected, we have labored too many hours, sometimes even
+until one day ran into another, in the cause of our country, for me to
+than to understand that a Massachusetts democrat has a heart
+comprehending the whole of our wide Union, and that its pulsations
+always beat for the liberty and happiness of its country. Neither could
+I be unaware such was the sentiment of the democracy of New England.
+For it was lay fortune lately to serve under a President drawn from the
+neighboring, State of New Hampshire, [applause,] and I know that he
+spoke the language of his heart, for I learned it in tour years of
+intimate connection with him, when he said he knew “no north, no south,
+no east, no west, but sacred maintenance of the common bond and true
+devotion to the common brotherhood.” Never, sir, in the past history of
+our country, never, I add, in its future destiny, however bright it may
+be, did or will a man of higher and purer patriotism, a man more
+devoted to the common weal of his country, hold the helm of our great
+ship of State, than that same New Englander, Franklin Pierce.
+[Applause.]
+
+I have heard the resolutions read and approved by this meeting; heard
+the address of your candidate for Governor; and these added to the
+address of my old and intimate friend, Gen. Cushing, bear to me fresh
+testimony, which I shall be happy to carry away with me, that the
+democracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, “still lives,”
+lives not as his great spirit did, when it hung ’twixt life and death,
+like a star upon the horizon’s verge, but lives like the germ that is
+shooting upward, like the sapling that is growing to a mighty tree, the
+branches of which will spread over the commonwealth, and may redeem and
+restore Massachusetts to her once glorious place in the Union.
+
+As I look around me and see this venerable hall thus thronged, it
+reminds me of another meeting, when it was found too small to contain
+the assembly—that great meeting which assembled here, when the people
+were called upon to decide what should be done in relation to the
+tea-tax. Faneuil Hall, on that occasion, was found too small, and the
+people went to the Old South Church, which still stands—a monument of
+your early history. And I hope the day will soon come when many
+Democratic meetings in Boston will be too large for Faneuil Hall!
+[Applause.] I am welcomed to this hall, so venerable for its
+associations with our early history; to this hall of which you are so
+justly proud, and the memories of which are part of the inheritance of
+every American citizen; and feel, as I remember how many voices of
+patriotic fervor have here been heard; that in it originated the first
+movements from which the Revolution sprung; that here began that system
+of town meetings and free discussion which is the glory and safety of
+our country; that I had enough to warn me, that though my theme was
+more humble than theirs, (as befitted my poorer ability,) that it was a
+hazardous thing for me to attempt to speak in this sacred temple. But
+when I heard your statesman (Gen. Cushing) say, that a word once here
+spoken never dies, that it becomes a part of the circumambient air, I
+felt a reluctance to speak which increases upon me as I recall his
+expression. But if those voices which breathed the first instincts into
+the Colony of Massachusetts, and into those colonies which formed the
+United States, to proclaim community independence, and asserts it
+against the powerful mother country, —if those voices live here still,
+how must they feel who come here to preach treason to the Constitution,
+and assail the Union it ordained and established? [Applause.] It would
+seem that their criminal hearts should fear that those voices, so long
+slumbering, would break their silence, that the forms which look down
+from these walls behind and around me, would walk forth. and that their
+sabres would once more be drawn from their scabbards, to drive from
+this sacred temple fanatical men, who desecrate it more than did the
+changers of money and those who sold doves, the temple of the living
+God. [Loud cheers.]
+
+And here, too, you have, to remind you, and to remind all who enter
+this hall, the portraits of those men who are dear to every lover of
+liberty, and part and parcel of the memory of every American citizen.
+Highest among them all I see you have placed Samuel Adams and John
+Hancock. [Applause.] You have placed them the highest and properly; for
+they were the two, the only two, excepted from the proclamation of
+mercy, when Governor Gage issued his anathema against them and their
+fellow patriots. These men, thus excepted from the saving grace of the
+crown, now occupy the highest place in Faneuil Hall, and thus are
+consecrated highest in the reverence of the people of Boston.
+[Applause.] This is one of the instances in which we find tradition
+more reliable than history; for tradition has borne the name of Samuel
+Adams to the remotest corner of our territory, placed it among the
+household words taught to the rising generation, and there in the new
+States intertwined with our love of representative liberty, it is a
+name as sacred among us as it is among you of New England. [Applause.]
+
+We remember how early he saw the necessity of _community independence_.
+How, through the dim mists of the future, and in advance of his day, he
+looked forward to the proclamation of that independence by
+Massachusetts; how he steadily strove, through good report and evil
+report, with the same unwavering purpose, whether in the midst of his
+fellow citizens, cheered by their voices, or whether isolated, a
+refugee, hunted as a criminal, and communing with his own heart, now
+under all circumstances his eve was still fixed upon his first, last
+hope, the community independence of Massachusetts! And when we see him,
+at a later period, the leader in that correspondence which waked the
+feelings of the other colonies and brought into fraternal association
+the people of Massachusetts with the people of other colonies—when we
+see his letters acknowledging the receipt of the rice of South
+Carolina, the flour, the pork, the money of Virginia, Maryland, New
+York, Pennsylvania, and others, contributions of affection to relieve
+Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon her when her port was closed by
+the despotism of the British crown—we there see the beginning of that
+sentiment which insured the co-operation of the colonies throughout the
+desperate struggle of the Revolution, and which, if the present
+generation be true to the compact of their sires, to the memory and to
+the principles of the noble men from whom they descended, will
+perpetuate for them that spirit of fraternity in which the Union began.
+[Applause.]
+
+But it is not here alone, nor in reminiscences connected with the
+objects which present themselves within this hall, that the people of
+Boston have much to excite their patriotism and carry them back to the
+great principles of the revolutionary struggle. Where in this vicinity
+will you go and not meet some monument to inspire such sentiments? On
+one side are Lexington and Concord, where sixty brave countrymen came
+with their fowling pieces to oppose six hundred veterans,—where
+peaceful citizens animated by the love of independence and covered by
+the triple shield of a righteous cause, finally forced those veterans
+back, and pursued them on the road, fighting from every barn and bush,
+and stock, and stone, till they drove them to the shelters from which
+they had gone forth! [Applause.] And there on another side of your city
+stand those monuments of your early patriotism, Breed’s and Bunker’s
+Hill whose soil drank the sacred blood of men who lived for their
+country and died for mankind! Can it be that any of you tread that soil
+and forget the great purposes for which those men bravely fought, or
+nobly died?” [Applause.] While in yet another direction rise the
+Heights of Dorchester, once the encampment of the great Virginian, the
+man who came here in the cause of American independence, who did not
+ask “Is this a town of Virginia?” but, “Is this a town of my brethren?”
+who pitched his camp and commenced his operations with the steady
+courage and cautious wisdom characteristic of Washington, hopefully,
+resolutely waiting and watching for the day when he could drive the
+British troops out of your city. [Cheers.]
+
+Here, too, you find where once the Old Liberty Tree, connected with so
+many of your memories, grew. You ask your legend, and learn that it was
+cut down for firewood by the British soldiers, as some of your meeting
+houses were pulled down. They burned the old tree, and it warmed the
+soldiers enough to enable them to evacuate the city. [Laughter.] Had
+they been more slowly warmed into motion, had it burned a little
+longer, it might have lighted Washington and his followers to their
+enemies.
+
+But they were gone, and never again may a hostile foe tread your shore.
+Woe to the enemy who shall set his footprint upon your soil; he comes
+to a prison or he comes to a grave! [Applause.] American fortifications
+are not intended to protect our country from invasion. They are
+constructed elsewhere as in your harbor to guard points where marine
+attacks can he made; and for the rest, the breasts of Americans are our
+parapets. [Applause.]
+
+But, my friends, it is not merely in these military associations, so
+honorably connected with the pride of Massachusetts, that one who
+visits Boston finds much for gratification. If I were selecting a place
+where the advocate of strict construction of the Constitution, the
+extreme asserter of democratic state rights doctrine should go for his
+text, I would send him into the collections of your historical
+association. Instead of finding Boston a place where the records would
+teach only federalism, he would find here, in bounteous store, that
+sacred doctrine of state rights, which has been called the extreme and
+ultra opinion of the South. He would find among your early records that
+at the time when Massachusetts was under a colonial government,
+administered by a man appointed by the British crown, guarded by
+British soldiers; the use of this old Faneuil Hall was refused by the
+town authorities to a British Governor, to hold a British festival,
+because he was going to bring with him the agents for collecting, and
+naval officers sent here to enforce, an unconstitutional tax upon your
+commonwealth. Such was the proud spirit of independence manifested even
+in your colonial history. Such the great stone your fathers hewed with
+sturdy hand, and left the fit foundation for a monument to state
+rights! [Applause.] And so throughout the early period of our country
+you find Massachusetts leading, most prominent of all the States, in
+the assertion of that doctrine which has been recently so much decried.
+
+Having achieved your independence, having passed through the
+confederation, you assented to the formation of our present
+constitutional Union. You did not surrender your state sovereignty.
+Your fathers had sacrificed too much to claim as the reward of their
+trials that they should merely have a change of masters. And a change
+of masters it would have been had Massachusetts surrendered her State
+sovereignty to the central government, and consented that that central
+government should have the power to coerce a State. But if this power
+does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, I
+say, who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your
+candidate this evening, when he has plead to you the cause of State
+independence, and the right of every community to he the judge of its
+own domestic affairs? [Applause.] This is all we have ever asked—we of
+the South, I mean,—for I stand before you one of those who have been
+called the ultra men of the South, and I speak, therefore, for that
+class; and tell you that your candidate for Governor has asserted
+to-night everything which we have claimed as a right, and demanded as a
+duty resulting from the guarantees of the Constitution, made for our
+mutual protection. [Applause.] Nor is here alone in that such doctrine
+is asserted, the like it has been my happiness to hear in your
+daughter, the neighboring State of Maine. I have found that the
+democrats there asserted the same broad, constitutional principle for
+which we have been contending, by which we are willing to live, for
+which we are willing to die! [Loud cheers and cries of “good!”]
+
+In this state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated?
+What is there practical or rational in the present excitement? Why,
+since the old controversies, with all their lights and shadows, have
+passed away, is the political firmament covered by one dark pall, the
+funeral shade of which increases with every passing year?
+
+Why is it, I say, that you are thus agitated in relation to the
+domestic affairs of other communities? Why is it that the peace of the
+country is disturbed in order that one people may assume to judge of
+what another people should do? Is there any political power to
+authorize such interference? If so, where is it? You did not surrender
+your sovereignty. You gave to the federal government certain functions.
+It was your agent, created for specified purposes. It can do nothing
+save that which you have given it power to perform. Where is the grant
+of the Constitution which confers on the federal government a right to
+determine what shall be property? Surely none such exists; that
+question it belongs to every community to settle for itself: you judge
+in your case; every other State must judge in its case. The federal
+government has no power to create or establish; more palpably still, it
+has no power to destroy property. Do you pay taxes to an agent that he
+may destroy your property? Do you support him for that purpose? It is
+an absurdity on the face of it. To ask the question is to answer it.
+The government is instituted to protect, not to destroy property. In
+abundance of caution, your fathers provided that the federal government
+should not take private property, even for its own use, unless by
+making due compensation therefore. One of its great purposes was to
+increase the security of property, and by a more perfect union of
+forces, to render more effective protection to the States. When that
+power for protection becomes a source of danger, the purpose for which
+the government was formed will have been defeated, and the government
+can no longer answer the ends for which it was established.
+
+Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African
+slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical
+pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate,
+and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for
+other men’s sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it
+is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the Constitution;
+the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, and imposes
+obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the Bible; that
+justifies it. Not the good of society; for if they go where it exists,
+they find that society recognizes it as good. What, then, is their
+standard? The good of mankind? Is that seen in the diminished resources
+of the country? Is that seen in the diminished comfort of the world? Or
+is not the reverse exhibited? Is it in the cause of Christianity? It
+cannot be, for servitude is the only agency through which Christianity
+has reached that degraded race, the only means by which they have been
+civilized and elevated. Or is their charity manifested in denunciation
+of their brethren who are restrained from answering by the contempt
+which they feel for a mere brawler, whose weapons are empty words?
+[Applause.]
+
+What, my friends, must be the consequences of this agitation? Good or
+evil? They have been evil, and evil they must be only, to the end. Not
+one particle of good has been done to any man, of any color, by this
+agitation. It has been insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for
+the destruction of that Union on which our hopes of future greatness
+depend.
+
+On the one side, then you see agitation, tending slowly and steadily to
+that separation of the states, which, if you have any hope connected
+with the liberty of mankind, if you have any national pride in making
+your country the greatest of the earth, if you have any sacred regard
+for the obligation which the acts of your fathers entailed upon you,—by
+each and all of these motives you are prompted to united and earnest
+effort to promote the success of that great experiment which your
+fathers left it to you to conclude. [Applause.] On the other hand, if
+each community, in accordance with the principles of our government,
+whilst controlling its own domestic institutions, faithfully struggles
+as a part of the united whole, for the common benefit of all, the
+future points us to fraternity, to unity, to co-operation, to the
+increase of our own happiness, to the extension of our useful example
+over mankind, and the covering of that flag, whose stars have already
+more than doubled their original number, [applause,] with a galaxy to
+light the ample folds which then shall wave either the recognized flag
+of every state, or the recognized protector of every state upon the
+continent of America. [Applause.]
+
+In connection with the idea, which I have presented of the early
+sentiment of community independence, I will add the very striking fact
+that one of the colonies, about the time that they had resolved to
+unite for the purpose of achieving their independence, addressed the
+colonial congress to know in what condition they would be in the
+interval between their separation from the government of Great Britain
+and the establishment of the government for the colonies. The answer of
+the colonial congress was exactly that which might have been
+expected—exactly that which state rights democracy would answer to-day,
+to such an inquiry—that they must take care of their domestic polity,
+that the congress “had nothing to do with it.” [Applause.] If such
+sentiment continued—if it governed in every state—if representatives
+were chosen upon it—then your halls of legislation would not be
+disturbed about the question of the domestic concerns of the different
+states. The peace of the country would not be hazarded by the
+arraignment of the family relations of people over whom the government
+has no control. In harmony working together, in co-intelligence for the
+conservation of the interests of the country, in protection to the
+states and the development of the great ends for which the government
+was established, what effects might not be produced? As our government
+increased in expansion, it would increase in its beneficent influence
+upon the people; we should increase in fraternity; and it would be no
+longer a wonder to see a man coming from a southern state to address a
+Democratic audience in Boston. [Applause, cries of “good, good.”]
+
+But I have referred to the fact that, at an early period, Massachusetts
+stood pre-eminently forward among those who asserted community
+independence. And this reminds me of an incident, in illustration,
+which occurred when President Washington visited Boston, and John
+Hancock was Governor. The latter is reported to have declined to call
+upon the President, because he contended that every man who came within
+the limits of Massachusetts must yield rank and precedence to the
+Governor of the State; and only surrendered the point on account of his
+personal regard and respect for the character of George Washington. I
+honor him for it,—value it as one of the early testimonies in favor of
+State Rights, and wish all our governors had the same high estimate of
+the dignity of the office of Governor of a State as had that great and
+glorious man. [Applause.]
+
+Thus it appears that the founders of this government were the true
+Democratic States Rights men. That Democracy was States rights, and
+States rights was Democracy, and it is to-day. Your resolutions breathe
+it. The Declaration of Independence embodies the sentiment which had
+lived in the hearts of the people for many years before its formal
+assertion. Our fathers asserted that great principle—the right of the
+people to choose the government for themselves—that government rested
+upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expression it
+uttered the same idea, _community independence_, and the dependence of
+the government upon the community over which it existed. It was an
+American principle, the great spirit which animated our country then,
+and it were well if more inspired us now. But I have said that this
+State sovereignty—this community independence—has never been
+surrendered, and that there is no power in the federal government to
+coerce a State. Does any one ask, then, how it is that a State is to be
+held to its obligations? My answer is: by _its honor_, and the
+obligation is the more sacred to observe every feature of the compact,
+because there is no power to force obedience. The great error of the
+confederation was that it attempted to act upon the States. It was
+found impracticable, and our present form of government was adopted,
+which acts upon individuals and does not attempt to act upon States.
+
+The question was considered in the convention which framed the
+constitution, and after discussion the proposition to give power to the
+general government to enforce upon a resistant State obedience to the
+law was rejected. It was upon this ground of exemption from compulsion
+that the compact of the States became a sacred obligation; and it was
+upon this honorable fulfilment principally that our fathers depended
+for the security of the rights which the Constitution was designed to
+secure. [Applause.]
+
+The fugitive slave compact in the Constitution of the United States
+implied that the States should fulfil it voluntarily. They expected the
+States to legislate so as to secure the rendition of fugitives.
+
+And in 1788 it was a matter of complaint that the colony of Florida did
+not restore fugitive negroes from the United States who escaped into
+that colony, and a committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York,
+Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, and Madison, of Virginia, reported
+resolutions in the Congress instructing the committee for foreign
+affairs to address the _charge d’affaires_ at Madrid to apply to his
+majesty of Spain to issue orders to his governor to compel them to
+secure the rendition of fugitive negroes to any one who should go there
+entitled to receive them. This was the sentiment of the committee, and
+they added, by way of example, as the States would return any slaves
+from Florida who might escape into their limits.
+
+When the Constitutional requirement was imposed, who could have doubted
+that every State faithful to its obligations would comply without
+raising questions as to whether the institution should or should not
+exist in another community over which they had no control. Congress was
+at last forced by the failures of the States, to legislate on the
+subject, and this has been one of the causes by which you have been
+disturbed. You have been called upon to make war against a law which
+would never have been enacted, if each State had faithfully discharged
+the obligation imposed by the compact of the Constitution. [Cheers.]
+
+There is another question connected with this negro agitation. It is in
+relation to the right to hold slaves in the Territories. What power has
+Congress to declare what shall be property? None, in the territory or
+elsewhere. Have the States by separate legislation the power to
+prescribe the condition upon which a citizen may enter on and enjoy the
+common property of the United States? Clearly not. Shall those who
+first go into the territory, deprive any citizen of the United States
+subsequently emigrating thither, of those rights which belong to him as
+an equal owner of the soil? Certainly not. Sovereignty jurisdiction can
+only pass to these inhabitants when the States, the owners of that
+territory, shall recognize the inhabitants as an independent community,
+and admit it to become an equal State of the Union. Until then the
+Constitution and laws of the United States must be the rules governing
+within the limits of a territory. The Constitution recognizes all
+property gives equal privileges to every citizen of the States; and it
+would be a violation of its fundamental principles to attempt any
+discrimination. [Applause.] Viewed in any of its phases, political,
+moral, social, general, or local, what is there to sustain this
+agitation in relation to other people’s negroes, unless it be a bridge
+over which to pass into office—a ready capital in politics available to
+missionaries staving at home-reformers of things which they do not go
+to learn—preachers without and audience—overseers without laborers and
+without wages—war-horses who snuff the battle afar off, and cry: “ Aha!
+aha! I am afar off from the battle.” [Great laughter and applause.]
+
+Thus it is that the peace of the Union is destroyed; thus it is that
+brother is arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come to
+consider—not how they can promote each other’s interests, but how they
+may successfully war upon them. And the political agitator like the
+vampire fans the victim to which he clings but to destroy.
+
+Among culprits there is none more odious to my mind than a public
+officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution—the compact
+between the States binding each for the common defence and general
+welfare of the other—yet retains to himself a mental reservation that
+he will war upon the principles he has sworn to maintain, and upon the
+property rights the protection of which are part of the compact of the
+Union. [Applause.]
+
+It is a crime too low to be named before this assembly: It is one which
+no man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that he will
+support the Constitution—to take an office which belongs in many of its
+relations to all the States; and to use it as a means of injuring a
+portion of the States of whom he is thus the representative; is treason
+to every thing honorable in man. It is the base and cowardly attack of
+him who gains the confidence of another, in order that he may wound
+him. [Applause.]
+
+But we have heard it argued—have seen it published—a petition has been
+circulated for signers, announcing that there was an incompatibility
+between the sections; that the Union had been tried long enough, and
+that it had proved to be necessary to separate from those sections of
+the Union in which the curse of slavery existed. Ah! those modern
+saints, so much wiser than our fathers, have discovered an
+incompatibility requiring separation in those relations which existed
+when the Union was formed. They have found the remnants only of a
+diversity which existed when South Carolina sent her rice to Boston,
+and Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York brought in their funds for
+her relief.
+
+They have found the remnants only; for from that day to this the
+difference between the people has been constantly decreasing, and the
+necessity for union which then arose in no small degree from the
+diversity of product, and soil and climate, has gone on increasing,
+both by the extension of our own territory and the introduction of new
+tropical products; so that whilst the difference between the people has
+diminished, the diversity in the products has increased, and that
+motive for union which your fathers found exists in a higher degree
+than it did when they resolved to be united.
+
+Diversity there is of occupation, of habits, of education, of
+character. But it is not of that extreme kind which proves
+incompatibility, or even incongruity; for your Massachusetts man, when
+he comes to Mississippi, adopts our opinions and our institutions, and
+frequently becomes the most extreme southern man among us. [Great
+applause.] As our country has extended—as new products have been
+introduced into it, the free trade which blesses our Union, has been of
+increasing value.
+
+And it is not an unfortunate circumstance that this diversity of
+pursuit and character has survived the condition which produced it.
+Originally it sprang in no small degree from natural causes.
+Massachusetts became a manufacturing and a commercial State because of
+the connection between her fine harbor and water power, resulting from
+the fact that the streams make their last leap into the sea, so that
+the ship of commerce brought the staple to the manufacturing power.
+This made you a commercial and manufacturing people. In the Southern
+States great plains interpose between the last leaps of the streams and
+the sea. Those plains most proximate to navigation, were the first
+cultivated, and the sea bore their products to the most approachable
+water power, there to be manufactured. This was the first cause of the
+difference. Then your longer and more severe winters—your soil not as
+favorable for agriculture, also contributed to make you a manufacturing
+and commercial people.
+
+After the controlling cause had passed away—after railroads had been
+built—after the steam engine had become a motive power for a large part
+of machinery, the characteristics originally stamped by natural causes
+continued the diversity of pursuit. Is it fortunate or otherwise? I say
+it is fortunate. Your interest is to remain a manufacturing and ours to
+remain an agricultural people.
+
+Your prosperity is to receive our staple and to manufacture it, and
+ours to sell it to you and buy the manufactured goods. [Applause.] This
+is an interweaving of interests, which makes us all the richer and all
+the happier.
+
+But this accursed agitation, this offensive, injurious intermeddling
+with the affairs of other people, and this alone it is that will
+promote a desire in the mind of any one to separate these great and
+growing States. [Applause.]
+
+The seeds of dissension may be sown by invidious reflections. Men may
+be goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and to
+traduce community character, and in the resentment which follows it is
+not possible to tell how far the case may be driven. I therefore plead
+to you now to arrest a fanaticism which has been evil in the beginning,
+and must be evil to the end. You may not have the numerical power
+requisite; and those at a distance may not understand how many of you
+there are desirous to put a stop to the course of this agitation. But
+let your language and your acts teach them to appreciate a faithful
+self-denying minority. I have learned since I have been in New England
+the vast mass of true State Rights Democrats to be found within its
+limits—though not represented in the halls of Congress.
+
+And if it comes to the worst; if, availing themselves of a majority in
+the two Houses of Congress, our opponents should attempt to trample
+upon the Constitution; to violate the rights of the States; to infringe
+upon our equality in the Union, I believe that even in Massachusetts,
+though it has not had a representative in Congress for many a day, the
+State Rights Democracy, in whose breasts beats the spirit of the
+revolution, can and will whip the Black Republicans. [Great applause.]
+I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it were, by fire; but that
+the peaceful progressive revolution of the ballot box will answer all
+the glorious purposes of the Constitutional Union. [Applause.]
+
+I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded me in
+addressing you used the words _national_ and _constitutional_ in such
+relations to each other as to show that in his mind the one was a
+synonym of the other. And does he not do so with reason? We became a
+nation by the constitution; whatever is national springs from the
+constitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms.
+[Applause.]
+
+Your candidate for the high office of governor—whom I have been once or
+twice on the point of calling your governor, and whom I hope I may be
+able soon to call so, [applause]—in his remarks to you has presented
+the same idea in another form. And well may Massachusetts orators,
+without even perceiving what they are saying, utter sentiments which
+lie at the foundation of your colonial as well as your revolutionary
+history, which existed in Massachusetts before the revolution, and have
+existed since, whenever the true spirit which comes down from the
+revolutionary sires has been aroused into utterance within her limits.
+[Applause.]
+
+It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutual
+dependence of interest that we have formed new bonds. Those bonds are
+both material and mental. Every improvement in the navigation of a
+river, every construction of a railroad, has added another link to the
+chain which encircles us, another facility for interchange and new
+achievements, whether it has been in arts or in science, in war or in
+manufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled success
+has constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has offered to us
+new sentiments of nationality.
+
+Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, which
+follow in the course of our political day? is it because the sun is
+declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening; or are they,
+as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as
+it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian splendor? Are
+they but evanescent clouds that flit across but cannot obscure the
+great purposes for which the Constitution was established?
+
+I hopefully look forward to the reaction which will establish the fact
+that our sun is yet in the ascendant—that the cloud which has covered
+our political prospect is but a mist of the morning—that we are again
+to be amicably divided in opinion upon measures of expediency, upon
+questions of relative interest, upon discussions as to the rights of
+the States, and the powers of the federal government,—such discussion
+as is commemorated in this historical picture [pointing to the
+painting.] There your own great Statesman, Webster, addresses his
+argument to our brightest luminary, the incorruptible Calhoun, who
+leans over to catch the accents of eloquence that fall from his lips.
+[Loud applause.]
+
+They differed as Statesmen and philosophers; they railed not, warred
+not against each other; they stood to each other in the relation of
+affection and regard. And never did I see Mr. Webster so agitated,
+never did I hear his voice so falter, as when he delivered his eulogy
+on John C. Calhoun. [Applause.]
+
+But allusion was made to my own connection with your favorite departed
+Statesman. I will only say on this occasion, that very early in the
+commencement of my congressional life, Mr. Webster was arraigned for an
+offence which affected him most deeply. He was no accountant; all knew
+that there was but little of mercantile exactness in his habits. He was
+arraigned on a pecuniary charge—the misapplication of what is known as
+the secret service fund; and I was one of the committee that had to
+investigate the charge. I endeavored to do justice, to examine the
+evidence with a view to ascertain the truth. As an American I hoped he
+would come out without stain or smoke upon his garments. But however
+the fame of so distinguished an American Statesman might claim such
+hopes, the duty was rigidly to inquire, and rigorously to do justice.
+The result was that he was acquitted of every charge that was made
+against him, and it was equally my pride and my pleasure to vindicate
+him in every form which lay within my power. [Applause.] No man who
+knew Daniel Webster, would have expected less of him. Had our position
+been reversed, none such could have believed that he would with a view
+to a judgment ask whether a charge was made against a Massachusetts man
+or a Mississippian. No! it belonged to a lower, a later, and I trust a
+shorter lived race of statesmen [“hear,” “hear,”] to measure all facts
+by considerations of latitude and longitude. [Warm applause.]
+
+I honor that sentiment which makes us oftentimes too confident, and to
+despise too much the danger of that agitation which disturbs the peace
+of the country. I honor that feeling which believes the Constitutional
+Union too strong to be shaken. But at the same time I say, in sober
+judgment, it will not do to treat too lightly the danger which has
+beset and which still impends over us. Who has not heard our
+Constitutional Union compared to the granite cliffs which line the sea
+and dash back the foam of the waves, unmoved by their fury. Recently I
+have stood upon New England’s shore, and have seen the waves of a
+troubled sea dash upon the granite which frowns over the ocean, have
+seen the spray thrown back from the cliff, and the receding wave fret
+like the impotent rage of baffled malice. But when the tide had ebbed,
+I saw that the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating of the
+sea, and fragments riven from the rock were lying on the beach.
+
+Thus the waves of sectional agitation are dashing themselves against
+the granite patriotism of the land. If long continued, that too must
+show the seams and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility must
+sooner or later produce political fragments. The danger lies at your
+door, it is time to arrest it. It is time that men should go back to
+the origin of our institutions. They should drink the waters of the
+fountain, ascend to the source, of our colonial history.
+
+You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in
+1770. There learn how your fathers unfaltering stood for community
+right. And near the same spot mark how proudly the delegation of the
+democracy came to demand the removal of the troops from Boston, and how
+the venerable Samuel Adams stood asserting the rights of the people,
+dauntless as Hampden, clear and eloquent as Sidney.
+
+All over our country these monuments, instructive to the present
+generation, of what our fathers felt and said and did, are to be found.
+In the library of your association for the collection of your early
+history, I found a letter descriptive of the reading of the address to
+his army by Gen. Washington during one of those winters when he sought
+shelter for the ill clad, unshod, but victorious army with which he
+achieved the independence we enjoy; he had built a log cabin for a
+meeting house, and there reading his address, his sight failed him, he
+put on his glasses and with emotion which manifested the reality of his
+feelings, said, “I have grown gray in the service of my country, and
+now I am growing blind.” Who can measure the value of such incidents in
+a people’s history? It is a privilege to have access to documents,
+which cause us to realize the trials, the patient endurance, the hardy
+virtue and moral grandeur of the men from whom we inherit our political
+institutions, and to whose teachings it were well that the present
+generations should constantly refer.
+
+If you choose still further to stretch your vision to South Carolina,
+you will find a parallel to that devotion to their country’s cause
+which illustrates the early history of the Democrats of Boston. The
+prisoners at Charleston, when confined upon the hulks where they were
+exposed to the small pox, and, wasted by the progress of the infection,
+were brought upon the shore and assured that if they would enlist in
+his majesty’s service they should be relieved from their present and
+prospective suffering, but if they refused the rations would be taken
+from their families, and themselves sent to the hulks and exposed to
+the infection. Emaciated as they were, distressed with the prospect of
+their families being turned into the street to starve, the spirit of
+independence, the devotion to liberty, was so warm within their breasts
+that they gave one loud hurrah for General Washington, and chose death
+rather than dishonor. [Loud applause.] And if from these glorious
+recollections, from the emotions they excite, your eye is directed to
+your present condition, and you mark the prosperity, the growth and
+honorable career of your country, I envy not the heart of that man
+whose pulse does not beat quicker, who does not feel within him the
+exultation of pride at the past glory and the future prospects of his
+country. These prospects are to be realized if we are only wise and
+true to the obligations of the compact of our fathers. For all which
+can sow dissension can stop the progress of the American people, can
+endanger the achievement of the high prospects we have before us is
+that miserable spirit, which, disregarding duty and honor, makes war
+upon the Constitution. Madness must rule the hour when American
+citizens, trampling as well upon the great principles at the foundation
+of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
+States, as upon the honorable obligations which their fathers imposed
+upon them, shall turn with internicine hand to sacrifice themselves as
+well as their brethren, upon the altar of sectional fanaticism.
+
+With these views, it will not be surprising to those who differ from
+me, that I feel an ardent desire for the success of the State Rights
+Democracy, that convinced of the destructive consequences of the
+heresies of their opponents, and of the evils upon which they would
+precipitate the country, I do not forbear to advocate, here and
+elsewhere, the success of that party which alone is national, on which
+alone I rely for the preservation of the Constitution, to perpetuate
+the Union, and to fulfil the purposes which it was ordained to
+establish and secure. [Loud cheers.]
+
+My friends, my brethren, my countrymen—[applause]—I thank you for the
+patient attention you have given me. It is the first time it has been
+my fortune to address an audience here. It will probably be the last.
+Residing in a remote section of the country, with private as well as
+public duties to occupy the whole of my time, it would only be under
+some such necessity for a restoration of health as has brought me here
+this season, that I could ever expect to make more than a very hurried
+visit to any other portion of the Union than that of which I am a
+citizen.
+
+I will say, then, on this occasion, that I am glad, truly glad, that it
+has been my fortune to stay long enough among the New Englanders to
+obtain a better acquaintance than one can who passes in the ordinary
+way through the country, at the speed of the railroad tourist. I have
+stayed long enough to feel that generous hospitality which evinces
+itself to-night, which has showed itself in every town and village of
+New England where I have gone—long enough to learn that though not
+represented in Congress, there is within the limits of New England a
+large mass of as true Democrats as are to be found in any portion of
+the Union. Their purposes, their construction of the Constitution,
+their hopes for the future, their respect for the past, is the same as
+that which exists among my beloved brethren in Mississippi. [Applause.]
+
+It is not a great while since one who was endeavoring to pursue me with
+unfriendly criticism opened an article with my name and “gone to
+Boston!”—He seemed to think it a damaging reflection to say of me that
+I had gone to Boston—I wish he could have been here to look upon these
+Democratic faces to-night, and to listen to your resolutions and the
+words of your Massachusetts speakers, he might have been taught that a
+man might go and stay at Boston and learn better Democracy than many
+have acquired in other places.
+
+I shall gratefully carry with me the recollections of this and of other
+meetings witnessed since I have been among you. In the hour of
+apprehension I will hopefully turn back to my observations here—here in
+this consecrated hall, where men so early devoted themselves to liberty
+and community independence; and will endeavor to impress upon others
+who know you only as you are misrepresented in the two Houses of
+Congress, [applause,] how true and how many are the hearts that beat
+for constitutional liberty, and with high resolve to respect every
+clause and guaranty which the Constitution contains, are pledged to
+faithfully uphold the rights of any and every portion of the States,
+and of the people. [Tremendous cheering.]
+
+
+
+
+Speech in the City of New York,
+
+_Palace Garden Meeting, Oct. 19, 1858._
+
+
+Countrymen, Democrats:—When I accepted this evening the invitation to
+meet you here, it was to see and to hear, not to speak. I have listened
+with pleasure to the language addressed to you by your candidate for
+the highest office in the State. It is the language of patriotism; it
+is an appeal to the common sense of the people in favor of that
+fraternity on which our Union was founded, and on which alone it can
+long continue to exist. I have rejoiced to hear the applause with which
+such sentiments, when he uttered them, have been received by those here
+convened, and trust it is but an indication of that onward progress of
+reaction which I believe has already commenced, and which is to sink to
+the lowest depths of forgetfulness the struggle which has so long
+agitated the country, and prompted an internecine war against your
+countrymen. [Applause.]
+
+Truly has the distinguished gentleman pointed out to you the extreme
+absurdity of attempting to excite you upon the ground of southern
+aggression upon the north. We have nothing to aggress upon. We have not
+now, as he has told you, the power, though once we had, to interfere
+with your domestic institutions. We never had the will to do so. And if
+we had the power now, true to the instincts and history of our fathers,
+we would abstain from intermeddling in your domestic affairs.
+[Applause.] I have no purpose on this or any other occasion to mingle
+in the consideration of those questions which are local to you. I am
+not sufficiently learned in conchology to do it if I would, [laughter,]
+and I have too great a respect for community independence to do it if I
+could. My purpose then is, simply in answer to your call, to offer you
+a few reflections, such as may occur to me, as I progress, upon those
+questions which are common to us all, and which belong to the memories
+of our fathers, and are linked with the hopes of our children.
+[Applause.] If; then, without preparation, I do it in unvarnished
+phrase, if I cannot carry you along with me because of the want of that
+flowing diction which might catch the ear, still I ask you to hear me
+for my cause, for it is the cause of our country, it is the cause of
+democracy, it is the cause of human liberty. [Applause.]
+
+Who now stand arrayed against the democratic party? The relations of
+parties and the issues upon which we have been divided have changed.
+What now is the basis of opposition to the democratic party? It is
+twofold—interference with the negroes of other people, and interference
+with the rights now secured to foreigners who expatriate themselves and
+come to our land. [“Hear, hear,” and applause.] To each community
+belongs the right to decide for itself what institutions it will have.
+To each people sovereign within their own sphere, belongs, and to them
+only belongs, the right to decide what shall be property. You have
+decided it for yourselves. Who shall gainsay your decision? Mississippi
+has decided it for herself; who has the right to gainsay her decision?
+The power of each people to rule over their domestic affairs lies at
+the foundation of that Declaration of Independence to which you owe
+your existence among the nations of the earth; that declaration which
+led your fathers into and through the war of the revolution. _It is
+that which constitutes to-day the doctrine of State-rights, upon which
+it is my pride and pleasure to stand._ [Applause.] Congress has no
+power to determine what shall be property anywhere. Congress has only
+such grants as are contained in the Constitution. And the Constitution
+confers upon it no power to rule with despotic hand over the
+inhabitants of the Territories. Within the limits of those Territories,
+the common property of the Union, you and I are equal; we are joint
+owners. Each of us has the right to go into those Territories, with
+whatever property is recognized by the Constitution of the United
+States. [Applause.] Congress has no power to limit or abridge that
+right. But the inhabitants of a Territory when as a people they come to
+form a State government, _when they possess the power and jurisdiction
+which belongs to the people of New York, or any other State, have the
+right to decide that question, and no power upon earth has the right to
+decide it before that time._ [Applause.]
+
+[At this point the Young Men’s Democratic National Club, with banners
+and transparencies, entered the garden, and were received with
+enthusiastic cheers.]
+
+The dull remarks, my friends, which I was in the course of making to
+you, have been interrupted by a beautiful episode, which I am sure will
+more than exceed the whole value of the poem, if I may thus
+characterize my dull speech. And I am glad that foremost among all the
+transparencies and banners, comes this flag which speaks of the “Young
+Men’s Democratic National Club.”—[Three cheers for Davis.] It is on the
+young men we must rely. I have found that in every severe political
+struggle, where the contest on the one side was for principle, and on
+the other for spoils, it has been the gray-haired father and the boy
+with the peach bloom upon his cheek upon whom principles had to rely
+for support. My own generation—and I regret to say it—seems too deeply
+steeped in the trickery of politics to be able to rise above the
+influence of personal and political gain into the pure field of
+patriotism. And I am therefore glad to see the “Young Men’s Democratic
+National Club” leading this procession.
+
+But to return to the argument I was making. I said that Congress had no
+power to legislate upon what should be property anywhere; that Congress
+had no power to discriminate between the citizens of the different
+States who should go into the Territories, the common property of all
+the States, but that those Territories of right remained open to every
+citizen, and every species of property recognized in the Constitution,
+until the inhabitants should become a people, form a fundamental law
+for themselves, and, as authorized by the Constitution, assume the
+powers, duties, and obligations of a State. And now, my friends, I
+would ask you, further, of what value would a congressional decision
+upon that subject be? If it be a constitutional right, as I contend it
+is, then it is a matter for judicial decision. If Congress should
+assert that such is not the right of each of our citizens, and the
+courts appointed as an arbiter in such cases should decide that it is
+their right, the enactment would, therefore, be void. It, on the other
+hand, it is not a right, but Congress should assert it to be one, and
+the courts should declare that no such right exists under the
+Constitution, then, Congress has no power to create it; and it is in
+this sense that Congress has not the power to establish or prohibit
+slavery anywhere. [Applause.]
+
+What, then, has been the foundation of all this controversy? Your
+candidate has justly pointed out to you that unpatriotic struggle for
+sectional aggrandizement which has brought about this contest—a
+contest, as it were, between two contending powers for national
+predominance—a contest upon the one side to enlarge the majority it now
+possesses, and a contest upon the other side to recover the power it
+has lost, and become the majority. This is the attitude of hostile
+nations, and not of States bound together in fraternal unity. This is
+the feeling that one by one is cutting the strands which originally
+held the States together. You have seen your churches divided; you have
+seen trade turned aside from its accustomed channel; you have seen
+jealousy and uncharitableness and bickering springing up and growing
+stronger day by day, until at last, if it continue, the cord of union
+between the States reduced simply to the political strand, may not
+suffice to hold them together. Once united by every tie of fraternal
+feeling, shoulder to shoulder, step by step, our fathers went through
+the revolution, prompted by a common desire for the common good, and
+animated by devotion to the principle of popular liberty. They
+struggled against the mother country, because that country endeavored
+to legislate for the colonies, and the colonies claimed as a right that
+they must not be taxed except by their own representatives, and refused
+to submit to unconstitutional legislation. If now, in this struggle for
+the ascendency in power, one action should gain such predominance as
+would enable it, by modifying the Constitution and usurping new power,
+to legislate for the other, _the exercise of that power would throw us
+back into the condition of the colonies._ And if in the veins of the
+sons flows the blood of their sires, _they would not fail to redeem
+themselves from tyranny even should they be driven to resort to
+revolution._ [Applause.]
+
+And what is the other question of difference now? It is the agitation,
+as a national question, of the right of foreigners to suffrage within
+these States. Now, I ask, what power has Congress over the question?
+Yet members to Congress are elected upon that question. How would
+Congress legislate upon it?—They say, by modifying the naturalization
+laws. What do those laws confer? The right to hold real estate and the
+right to devise it by will; the right to sue and be sued in the courts
+of the United States; and the rights to receive passports and
+protection from the government of the United States. Who wishes to
+withhold those privileges from foreigners? Nobody alleges it. But they
+say that the ballot-box must be protected from foreign votes. Has
+Congress the right to say that foreigners shall not vote within the
+limits of your State? Are you willing to leave that to Congress? [Cries
+of “ No, no, no,” and applause.] In some of the States, by State
+legislation, foreigners are permitted to vote before they can become
+citizens under the naturalization laws. The naturalization laws are
+not, therefore, controlling over the question of suffrage. The power of
+Congress is limited to the establishment of a uniform rule of
+naturalization throughout the States. But what further do they couple
+with these demands which they make for congressional legislation? They
+proclaim their purpose to be to exclude paupers and criminals from
+abroad.—Do paupers and criminals come for the right of suffrage? They
+come here for bread, or to fly from the laws which they have violated.
+Whether they shall be entitled to vote or not, would neither increase
+nor diminish the number of that class by a single individual. But, my
+friends, who is a pauper, or who is a criminal? Is a man a pauper
+merely because he comes here without property, without money in his
+purse? Go, look along your lines of internal improvements, where every
+mile has mingled with it the bones of some foreigner who labored to
+create it. Go to your battle fields, where your flag has been borne
+triumphantly, and where fresh laurels have been added to the brow of
+your country, and there you will find the sod dyed as deep by the blood
+of the foreign born as by that of the native citizen. [Applause.] Is
+the able-bodied man, who comes here to contribute to your national
+interests by building up your public works, or aiding in the erection
+of your architectural constructions, or who bears your flag in the hour
+of danger, and who bleeds and dies for your country, is he the pauper
+you desire to exclude? And who is the criminal? Is it he who, flying
+from the persecution of despotic governments, seeks our land as the
+Huguenot did, as did Soule, the stern American orator, as many others
+within your limits have done under more recent struggles for liberty in
+Europe? [Applause.] Then, who are the paupers and criminals? Is that to
+be decided by the ruling of other countries, by the laws of France, or
+of England? Or is it to be decided by your own laws, by your own rules
+of judicature? If by the latter, then there is no good ground for
+controversy. We do not advocate that any country shall empty its poor
+houses, get rid of the duty of supporting its paupers, and throw that
+charge upon us. We could not permit any country to empty its prisons
+and penitentiaries to mingle that portion of its population with ours.
+But we do war against the use of terms that delude the people, and are
+intended to exclude the high-spirited and hard-working men who
+contribute to the bone, the sinew, and the wealth of our country.
+[Applause.]
+
+Such, then, my friends, is the opposition to the democracy, the only
+national party. The opposition, I say, claims two things from the
+federal government, neither of which it has the constitutional power to
+perform. It agitates this section of the Union in relation to property
+which it has not, and of which, I say, it knows literally nothing. For
+had the orator (Mr. Giddings) who was quoted to-night, known anything
+of the relations between the master and the slave, he would not have
+talked of the slave armed with the British bayonet. Our doors are
+unlocked at night; we live among them with no more fear of them than of
+our cows and oxen. We lie down to sleep trusting to them for our
+defence, and the bond between the master and the slave is as near as
+that which exists between capital and labor anywhere. Now, about the
+idea of British bayonets in the hands of slaves: The delusion which has
+always excited my surprise the most has been that which has led so many
+of the northern men to strike hands with the British abolitionists to
+make war on their southern brethren. If they could effect their ends,
+and Great Britain could insert the wedge which should separate the
+States, what further use would she have for the northern section? You
+are the competitors of Great Britain in the vast field of manufacture,
+whom she most fears, and though she may be with you in the scheme which
+would effect a separation of these States, yet the moment that
+separation should be effected she would be under the promptings of
+interest your worst enemy. [Applause.] Our fathers fought and bled to
+secure the common interests of the country. They reclaimed us from
+colonial bondage to national independence. They stamped upon it free
+trade in order that the interests of all might be promoted, that each
+section might be interwoven with the other—in order that there might be
+the strongest bond of mutual dependence. And step by step, from that
+day to this, that common and mutual dependence has been growing.
+
+From the seeds of narrow sectionality and purblind fanaticism, have
+sprung the tares which threaten the principles of that declaration
+which made the Colonies independent States, and of that compact by
+which the States were united by a bond to-day far more valuable than
+when it was signed. You have among you politicians of a philosophic
+turn, who preach a high morality; a system of which they are the
+discoverers, and it is to be hoped will long remain the exclusive
+possessors. They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, the
+Bible inculcates that; but there is a higher law than those, and call
+upon you to obey that higher law, of which they are the inspired
+givers. [Laughter and applause.] Men who are _traitors_ to the compact
+of their fathers—_men who have perjured the oaths they have themselves
+taken_—they who wish to steep their hands in the blood of their
+brothers; these are the moral law-givers who proclaim a higher law than
+the Bible, the Constitution, and the laws of the land. This higher-law
+doctrine, it strikes me, is the most convenient one I ever heard of for
+the _criminal_. You, no doubt, have a law which punishes a man for
+stealing a horse or a bale of goods. But the thief would find more
+convenient a higher law which would justify him in keeping the stolen
+goods. The doctrine is now advanced to you only in its relation to
+property of the Southern States, thus it is the pill gilded, to conceal
+its bitterness; but it will re-act deeply upon yourselves if you accept
+it. What security have you for your own safety if every man of vile
+temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a
+higher law than that which is the rule of society, the Constitution,
+and the Bible? _These higher-law preachers should be tarred and
+feathered, and whipped by those they have thus instigated. This, my
+friends, is what was called in good old revolutionary times. Lynch
+Law._ It is sometimes the very best law, because it deals summary
+justice upon those who would otherwise escape from all other kinds of
+punishment. The man who with sycophantic face and studied phrase, and
+with assumed philosophic morality, preaches treason to the Constitution
+and the dictates of all human society, is a fit object for a Lynch law
+that would be higher than any he could urge. [Applause.]
+
+My democratic friends, I am deeply gratified by the exhibition which is
+before me. I see here a field of faces, assembled in the name of
+Democracy, and over it high, bright and multiplied for the occasion, as
+stars have been added by Democracy to the flag of our country, blaze
+the lights which typify democratic principles, pointing upward, to
+guide our country to that haven of prosperity which our fathers saw in
+the distant future, and which they left it for their sons to attain. It
+we are true to ourselves, true to the obligations which the
+Constitution imposes upon us, and if we are wise and energetic in the
+struggles which lie before us, our path is onward to more of national
+greatness than ever people before possessed. We are held together by
+that two-fold government, which is susceptible of being made perfect in
+the small spheres of State limits, and capable of the greatest imperial
+power, by the combination of these municipal powers into one for
+foreign action. It is a form of government such as the wit of man never
+devised until our fathers, with a wisdom that approached inspiration,
+framed the Constitution, and transmitted it as a legacy to us. It
+devolves upon every one of you, to see that each provision of that
+Constitution is cordially and faithfully observed. If cordially and
+faithfully observed, the powers of hell and of earth combined can never
+shake the happiness and prosperity of the people of the United States.
+[Applause.] With every revolving year there will arise new motives for
+holding tenaciously to each other. With every revolving cycle there
+will come new sources of pride and national sentiment to the people.
+Year after your flag will grow more brilliant, by the addition of fresh
+stars, recording the growth of our political family, and onward, over
+land and over sea, the progress of American principles, of human
+liberty illustrated, and protected by the power of the United States,
+will hold its way to a triumph such as the earth has never witnessed.
+[Applause.] On the other hand, what do we see? A picture so black that
+if I could unveil it, I would not in this cheery moment expose a scene
+so chilling to your enthusiasm, and revolting to your patriotic hearts.
+My friends, feeling that I have already detained you too long, I now
+return to you my cordial thanks for the kindness with which you have
+received me to-night.
+
+
+
+
+Speech Before the Mississippi Legislature.
+
+
+Mississippians: Again it is my privilege and good fortune to be among
+you, to stand before those whom I have loved, for whom I have labored,
+by whom I have been trusted and honored, and here to answer for myself.
+Time and disease have frosted my hair, impaired my physical energies,
+and furrowed my brow, but my heart remains unchanged, and its every
+pulsation is as quick, as strong, and as true to your interests, your
+honor, and fair fame, as in the period of my earlier years.
+
+It is known to many of you, that at the close of the last session of
+Congress, wasted by protracted, violent disease, I went, in accordance
+with medical advice, to the Northeastern coast of the United States.
+Against the opinion of my physician, I had remained at Washington until
+my public duties were closed, and then adopted the only course which it
+was believed gave reasonable hope for a final restoration to
+health—that is, sought a region where I should be exempt from the heat
+of summer, and from political excitement.
+
+In one respect at least, this accorded with my own feelings, for
+physically and mentally depressed, fearful that I should never again be
+able to perform my part in the trials to which Mississippi might be
+subjected, I turned away from my fellows with such feelings as the
+wounded elk leaves his herd, and seeks the covert, to die alone.
+Misrepresentation and calumny followed me even to the brink of the
+grave, and with hyena instinct would have pursued me beyond it.
+
+The political positions which I had always occupied, justified the
+expectation that in New England I should be left in loneliness. In this
+I was disappointed; courtesy and kindness met me on my first landing,
+and attended me to the time of my departure. The manifestations of
+comity and hospitality, given by the generous and the noble, aroused
+the petty hostility of the more extreme of the Black Republicans, and
+their newspapers assailed me with the low abuse which for years I had
+been accustomed to receive at their hands. I had always despised their
+malice and defied their enmity; their assaults did not surprise me, but
+when I found them echoed in Southern papers, it did astonish, I will
+confess, it did pain me, not for any injury apprehended to myself, but
+for its evil effect upon the cause with which I was identified.
+
+Was it expected that to public and private manifestations of kindness
+by the people of Maine, I should return denunciation and repel their
+generous approaches with epithets of abuse? If they had deserved such
+reproach, they could not merit it at my hands. A guest hospitably
+attended, it would have been inconsistent with the character of a
+gentleman, to have done less than acknowledge their kindness, and it
+was not in my nature to feel otherwise than grateful to them for the
+many manifestations of a desire to render pleasant and beneficial the
+sojourn of an invalid among them. But they did not deserve it, and I am
+happy to state as the result of my acquaintance with them, that we have
+a large body of true friends among them, men who maintain our
+constitutional rights as explicitly and as broadly as we assert them,
+and who have performed this service with the foreknowledge that they
+were thereby to sacrifice their political prospects, at least, until
+through years of patient exertion they should correct error, suppress
+fanaticism, and build for themselves a structure on the basis of truth,
+which had long been unwelcome and might not soon be understood.
+
+But there were other evidences of regard more valuable to me than
+exhibitions of personal kindness. Regard for the people of Mississippi,
+founded on a special attention to their history; the gallant services
+of your sons in the field, were publicly claimed as property which
+Mississippi could not appropriate to herself; but which were part of
+the common wealth of the nation, and belonged equally to the people of
+Maine. Could I be insensible to such recognition of the honorable fame
+of Mississippi? No, the memory of the gallant dead, who died at
+Monterey and Buena Vista, forbade it.
+
+At a subsequent period, when in Massachusetts, one of her distinguished
+sons, (Gen. Cushing,) paid a compliment to the feat performed by the
+Mississippi Regiment in checking the enemies cavalry on the field of
+Buena Vista one Black Republican newspaper denied the originality of
+the movement, and claimed it to have been previously performed by an
+English regiment at Quatre Bras. This claim was unfounded; the service
+performed by the British Regiment having been of a totally different
+character and for a different purpose.—A Southern paper, however, has
+gone one step beyond that of the Massachusetts paper, and denies the
+merit claimed for the service rendered by saying that it was the result
+of accident, growing out of the peculiar conformation of the ground on
+which the regiment rallied and that it was necessary for the safety of
+the regiment, being like the act of a man who leaps from a burning ship
+and takes the chance of drowning.
+
+If this only affected myself, I should leave it, like other
+misrepresentations, unnoticed, but it concerns the hard earned
+reputation of the regiment I commanded. It affects the fame of
+Mississippi, and propagates an error which may pollute the current of
+history.
+
+We live in an age of progress, and it requires a progressive age to
+produce a military critic who should discover that a soldier deserved
+no credit for availing himself of the accidents of ground. One half of
+the science of war consists in teaching how to take advantage of the
+irregularities of the ground on which military movements are to be
+made, or defensive works are to be constructed. The highest reputation
+of Generals in every age has resulted in their skill in military
+topography. The most marked compliment ever paid by one General to
+another, was that of Napoleon to Cæsar, when he halted on his
+encampments without a previous reconnoisance. But the regiment did not
+rally as stated, for it had not been dispersed; neither was their
+movement the result of their own necessity, or adopted for their own
+safety. They were marching by the flank, on the side of a ravine, when
+the enemy’s cavalry were seen approaching. They could have halted on
+the side of the ravine, which was so precipitous that they would have
+been there as sate from a charge as if they had been in Mississippi.
+They could have gone down into the ravine, and have been concealed even
+from the sight of the cavalry. The necessity was to prevent the cavalry
+from passing to the rear of our line of battle, where they might have
+attacked, and probably carried our batteries, which were then without
+the protection of our infantry escort. It was our country’s necessity
+and not our own which prompted the service there performed. For this
+the regiment was formed square across the plain, and there stood
+motionless as a rock, silent as death, and eager as a greyhound for the
+approach of the enemy, at least nine times, numerically, their
+superiors. Some Indiana troops were formed on the brink of the ravine
+with the right flank of the Mississippi Regiment, constituting one
+branch of what has been called the “V”. When the enemy had approached
+as near as he dared and seemed to shrink from contact with the
+motionless, resolute living wall which stood before him, the angry
+crack of the Mississippi rifle was heard, and as the smoke rose and the
+dust fell, there remained of the host which so lately stood before us
+but the fallen and the flying. The rear of our line of battle was again
+secured, and a service had been rendered which in no small degree
+contributed to the triumph which finally perched upon the banner of the
+United States.
+
+I am not a disinterested, and may not be a competent judge, but I know
+how I thought, and still believe, that your sons, given by you to the
+public service in the war with Mexico, have not received the full
+measure of the credit which was their due. They, however, received so
+much that we might be content to rest on the history as it has been
+written. But it constitutes a reason why we should not permit any of
+the leaves to be unjustly torn away.
+
+To return to the consideration of the less important subject, the
+misrepresentation of myself; I will again express the surprise I felt
+that when abolition papers were assailing me with a view to destroy any
+power which I might acquire to correct the error which had been
+instilled into the minds of the people of the North in relation to
+Southern sentiments and Southern institutions, that they should have
+received both aid and comfort from Southern newspapers, and been
+bolstered up in the attempt to misrepresent my political position. When
+the charge was made, which was copied in Northern papers, that I had
+abandoned those with whom I co-operated in 1852, to produce a
+separation of the States, my friend, the editor of the Mississippian,
+seeing the misrepresentation of my position, and naturally supposing,
+as we had no discussion in 1852, the reference must have been made to
+the canvass of 1851, quoted from the resolutions of the State-Rights
+Democratic Convention, and from an address published by myself to the
+people, to show that my position was the reverse of that assigned to
+me. Before proceeding, I will advert to a reference which has been made
+to him, as my “organ.” He is no more my “organ” than I am his. We have
+generally concurred, I and have been able to understand and anticipate
+his positions as he has mine. I am indebted to him for many favors. He
+is indebted to me for nothing. As Democrats, as gentlemen, as friends,
+we occupy to each other the relation of exact equality.
+
+Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has been
+reiterated, and, as before, located in the year 1852. It is known to
+you all that our discussions were in 1851. I then favored a convention
+of the Southern States, that we might take counsel together, as to the
+future which was to be anticipated, from the legislation of 1850. The
+decision of the State was to acquiesce in the legislation of that year,
+with a series of resolutions in relation to future encroachments. I
+submitted to the decision of the people, and have in good faith adhered
+to the line of conduct which it imposed. Therefore in 1852 there is no
+record from which to disprove any allegation, but you know the charge
+to be utterly unfounded, and charity alone can suppose its reiteration
+was innocently made. Neither in that year nor in any other, have I ever
+advocated a dissolution of the Union, or the separation of the State of
+Mississippi from the Union, except as the last alternative, and have
+not considered the remedies which lie within that extreme as exhausted,
+or ever been entirely hopeless of their success. I hold now, as
+announced on former occasions, that whilst occupying a seat in the
+Senate, I am bound to maintain the Government of the Constitution, and
+in no manner to work for its destruction; that the obligation of the
+oath of office, Mississippi’s honor and my own, require that, as a
+Senator of the United States, there should be no want of loyalty to the
+Constitutional Union. Whenever Mississippi shall resolve to separate
+from the Confederacy, I will expect her to withdraw her representatives
+from the General Government, to which they are accredited. If I should
+ever, whilst a Senator, deem it my duty to assume an attitude of
+hostility to the Union, I should, immediately thereupon, feel bound to
+resign the office, and return to my constituency to inform them of the
+fact. It was this view of the obligations of my position, which caused
+me, on various occasions, to repel, with such indignation, the
+accusation of being a disunionist, while holding the office of Senator
+of the United States.
+
+I have been represented as having, advocated “Squatter Sovereignty” in
+a speech made at Bangor, in the State of Maine, A paragraph has been
+published purporting to be an extract from that speech, and
+vituperative criticism, and forced construction have exhausted
+themselves upon it, with deductions which are considered authorized,
+because they are not denied in the paragraph published.
+
+In this case, as in that of the charge in relation to my position in
+1852, there is no record with which to answer. I never made a speech at
+Bangor. And a fair mind would have sought for the speech to see how far
+the general context explained the paragraph, before indulging in
+hostile criticism.
+
+Senator Douglas, in a speech at Alton, adopting the paragraph
+published, and evidently drawing his opinion from the unfair
+construction which had been put upon it, claims to quote from a speech
+made by me at Bangor, to sustain the position taken by him at Freeport.
+He says:
+
+“You will find in a recent speech, delivered by that able and eloquent
+statesman, Hon. Jefferson Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took the
+same view of this subject that I did in my Freeport speech. He there
+said:”
+
+“‘If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws
+and police regulations as would give security to their property and
+his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to the
+difficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case of
+property in the labor of a man, or what is usually called slave
+property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not
+ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the
+remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be
+practically debarred, by the circumstances of the case, from taking
+slave property into a Territory where the sense of the inhabitants was
+opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of
+forcing slavery upon any community.’”
+
+It is fair to suppose, if the Senator had known where to find the
+speech from which this extract was taken, that he would have examined
+it before proceeding to make such use of it. And I can but believe, if
+he had taken the paragraph free from the distortion which it had
+undergone from others, that he must have seen it bore no similitude to
+his position at Freeport, and could give no countenance to the doctrine
+he then announced. He there said:
+
+“The next question Mr. Lincoln propounded to me is: ‘Can the people of
+a territory exclude slavery from their limits by any fair means, before
+it comes into the Union as a State?’ I answer emphatically, as Mr.
+Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times, on every stump in
+Illinois, that in my opinion, the people of a territory can, by lawful
+means, exclude slavery before it comes ill as a State. [Cheers.] Mr.
+Lincoln knew that I had given that answer over and over again. He heard
+me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State, in
+1854, and ’55, and ’56, and he has now no excuse to pretend to have any
+doubt upon that subject. Whatever the Supreme Court may hereafter
+decide as on the abstract question of whether slavery may go in under
+the Constitution or not, the people of a territory have the lawful
+means to admit or exclude it as they please for the reason that slavery
+cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless supported by local police
+regulations, furnishing remedies aid means of enforcing the right of
+holding slaves. Those local aid police regulations can only be
+furnished by the local Legislature. If the people of the Territory are
+opposed to slavery they will elect members to the Legislature who will
+adopt unfriendly legislation to it. If they are for it, they will adopt
+the legislative measures friendly to slavery. Hence no matter what may
+be the decision of the Supreme Court, on that abstract questions still
+the right of the people to make it a slave territory or a free
+territory, is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill. I hope Mr.
+Lincoln will deem my answer satisfactory on this point.” This is the
+distinct assertion of the power of territorial legislation to admit or
+exclude slavery; of the first in the race of migration who reach a
+territory, the common property of the people of the United States to
+enact laws for the exclusion of other joint owners of the territory,
+who may in the exercise of their equal right to enter the common
+property, choose to take with them property recognized by the
+Constitution, built not acceptable to the first emigrants to the
+Territory. That Senator had too often and too fully discussed with me
+the question of “squatter sovereignty” to be justified in thus
+mistaking my opinion. The difference between us is as wide as that of
+one who should assert the right to rob from him who admitted the power.
+It is true, as I stated it at that time, all property requires
+protection from the society in the midst of which it is held. This
+necessity does not confer a right to destroy, but rather creates an
+obligation to protect. It is true as I stated it, that slave property
+peculiarly requires the protection of society, and would ordinarily
+become valueless in the midst of a community, which would seek to
+seduce the slave front his master, and conceal him whilst absconding,
+and as jurors protect each other in any suit which the master might
+bring for damages. The laws of the United States, through the courts of
+the United States, might enable the master to recover the slave
+wherever he could find him. But you all know, in such a community as I
+have supposed, that a slave inclined to abscond would become utterly
+useless, and that was the extent of the admission.
+
+The extract on which reliance has been placed was taken from a speech
+made at Portland, and both before and after the extract, the language
+employed conclusively disproves the construction, which unfriendly
+criticism has put upon the detached passage. Immediately preceding it,
+the following language was used:
+
+“The Territory being the common property of States, equals in the
+Union, and bound by the Constitution which recognizes property in
+slaves, it is an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into
+that Territory of one of its joint owners, because carrying with him
+any species of property recognized by the Constitution of the United
+States. The Federal Government has no power to declare what is property
+enywhere.{sic} The power of each State cannot extend beyond its own
+limits. As a consequence, therefore, whatever is property in any of the
+States, must be so considered in any of the territories of the United
+States until they reach to the dignity of community independence, when
+the subject matter will be entirely under the control of the people,
+and be determined by their fundamental law. If the inhabitants of any
+territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as
+would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered
+more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it
+without such protection. In the case of property in the labor of man,
+or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so
+great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though
+the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that
+the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the
+case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of
+the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft
+repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.”
+
+And in a subsequent part of the same speech, the matter was treated of
+in this wise:
+
+“The South had not asked Congress to extend slavery into the
+territories, and he in common with most other Southern statesmen,
+denied the existence of any power to do so. He held it to be the creed
+of the Democracy, both in the North and the South, that the general
+government had no constitutional power either to establish or prohibit
+slavery anywhere; a grant of power to do the one must necessarily have
+involved the power to do the other. Hence it is their policy not to
+interfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individual
+in his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community to
+determine and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom may seem
+best.”
+
+In other speeches made elsewhere, in New England and in New York the
+equality of the South as joint owners was declared and maintained, as I
+had often done before the people of Mississippi and in the Senate of
+the United States when the subject was in controversy. The position
+taken by me in 1850, in the form of an amendment offered to one of the
+compromise measures of that year, was intended to assert the equal
+right of all property to the protection of the United States, and to
+deny to any legislative body the power to abridge that right. The
+decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case has fully
+sustained our position in the following passage:
+
+“If Congress itself cannot do this, (prohibit slavery in a Territory,)
+if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government—it will
+be admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a territorial
+government to exercise them. _It could confer no power on any local
+government established by its authority, to violate the provisions of
+the Constitution._
+
+“And if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the master
+in a slave; and makes no distinction between that description of
+property and other property owned by a citizen, _no tribunal_, acting
+under the authority of the United States, whether legislative,
+executive, or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, or deny
+to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have been
+provided for the protection of private property against the
+encroachments of the government.”
+
+At the time of the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it certainly
+was understood that the constitutional rights to take slaves into any
+territory of the United States should thenceforth be regarded as a
+judicial question; and therefore special provision was made to
+facilitate the bringing of such questions before the Supreme Court of
+the United States. After the decision to which reference has just been
+made, the prominent advocate of the bill at the time of its enactment
+should have been estopped from recurring to his “squatter sovereignty”
+heresies, though the decision should have been different from his
+anticipation or desire. And as much interest has been felt in relation
+to his position, and some inquiry has been made as to my view of it, I
+will here say, that I consider him as having recanted the better
+opinions announced by him in 1854, and that I cannot be compelled to
+choose between men, one of whom asserts the power of Congress to
+deprive us of a constitutional right, and the other only denies the
+power of Congress, in order to transfer it to the territorial
+legislature. Neither the one nor the other has any authority to sit in
+judgment on our rights under the Constitution.
+
+Between such positions, Mississippi cannot have a preference, because
+she cannot recognize anything tolerable in either of them.
+
+Having called your attention to the speech made at Portland, to show
+that other parts of it disprove the construction put upon the
+paragraph, which was taken from it, and reported to be a part of the
+speech delivered at Bangor, it may be as well on this occasion to state
+the circumstances under which the speech was made at Portland.
+Immediately preceding the State election, I was invited, by the
+democracy of that city, to address them, and my attention was
+especially called to a delusion practiced on the people of Maine, by
+which many were led to believe that there was a purpose on the part of
+the South, through the government of the United States, to force
+slavery not only into the territories, but also into the
+non-slaveholding States of the Union. It was represented to me that in
+the last Presidential canvass that one of the Senators of Maine had
+convinced many of the voters that if Mr. Buchanan should be elected,
+slavery would be forced upon Maine, and that the other Senator was
+arguing that the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had given
+authority to introduce and hold slaves in that State. To counteract
+such impressions, injurious to the South and her friends, the remarks
+which have been extracted were made.
+
+On that, as on other occasions, it was deemed a duty to correct
+misrepresentation and seek to vindicate our purposes from the prejudice
+which ignorance and agitation had created against us. If it was in my
+power in any degree to allay sectional excitement, to cultivate sounder
+opinions and a more fraternal feeling, it was a task most acceptable to
+me, and one for the performance of which I could not doubt your
+approval. But it has been my fortune to be the object of a malice which
+I have not striven to appease because I was conscious that it rested
+upon no injury or injustice inflicted by me. The land swarms with
+Presidential candidates, announced by their agents or their friends, or
+by themselves, as the mode most available for preventing too zealous
+and partial friends from putting them in nomination. To these it was
+the source of unfounded apprehension, that I went to the coast of New
+England, instead of returning to Mississippi. If any of them had known
+the necessity which kept me from home, it is fair to suppose the
+aspirant for such distinction could not have been guilty of the
+meanness of suppressing that fact, and allowing misrepresentation to do
+its work in my absence.
+
+For the wretch who is doomed to go through the world bearing a personal
+jealousy or a personal malignity, which renders him incapable of doing
+justice, and studious of misrepresentation, I can only feel pity, and
+were it possible to feel revengeful, could consign him to no worse
+punishment than that of his own tormentors, the vipers nursed in his
+own breast.
+
+But long have I delayed what is my chief purpose, to speak to my
+friends, the men whose good opinion is to me of importance only second
+to the approval of my own conscience. So far as they have misunderstood
+me, it is a pleasure to set forth the true meaning of both my words and
+my deeds. To my traducers I have no explanations to offer and no
+apologies for any one. If State Rights men in the excess of their zeal
+have censured me, I have no reproaches for them, but cheerfully bear
+the burden which may be imposed upon me by zeal in the cause to which
+my political life has been devoted, and in imitation of Job, would
+bless the State Rights Democracy of Mississippi, even if the object of
+its vengeance: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
+
+If I had been asked what interpretation might possibly be put upon the
+published sketch of the remarks made by me at sea on the Fourth of July
+last, speculation would have been exhausted before it would have
+occurred to me that my State Rights friends would consider themselves
+described under the head of “trifling politicians,” who could not
+believe that the country would remain united to repel insult to our
+flag as it had recently been on the occasion of the attempt to exercise
+visit and search in the Gulf of Mexico, under the pretext of checking
+the African slave trade. The publisher of that sketch has already
+announced that it was not a report, and that for its language I could
+not justly be considered responsible. To this it is needless that I
+should add any thing. But I have treated it, and will treat it in the
+view necessarily taken by those who construed it before such denial was
+made.
+
+During the period of greatest adversity, in the hour of gloom and
+defeat, the State Rights Democracy had no cause to complain of my
+fealty. We struggled together, fell together, rose together, and to
+them I am indebted for whatever of consideration or position I possess.
+Endeared to me by our common suffering; grateful to them for the
+steadfast support with which they have honored me, accustomed to refer
+with pride to my identity with them, it would have been strange indeed,
+if when separated from them under circumstances which turned any eyes,
+with more than ordinary anxiety towards my home, I should then have
+sought an occasion to heap reproachful language upon them.
+
+Often it has been my duty to repel the accusations of others who sought
+to attribute to the State Rights Democracy opinions not their own, and
+to impute to them the purpose to agitate for the destruction of the
+government we inherited. As one of the State Rights party, I deny that
+the language published is a picture of me or my class, and I have as
+little disposition now, as at any former time, to separate myself from
+the body of the party, with which I have so long acted, which I rejoice
+to see in power at home, and daily more and more respected in the other
+States.
+
+I have thus defined who were not meant, and will now tell who were
+meant. Firsts they were the noisy agitators who were constantly
+disturbing the public peace and proclaiming that slavery is so great an
+evil, that the preservation of the Union is subordinate to the purpose
+of abolishing it. They who object to any protection, on the high seas
+or elsewhere, being given to slave property by the government of the
+United States; who would rejoice in any insult offered to the national
+flag if borne by a vessel sailing from a Southern port; and who have
+been for some time back circulating petitions for a dissolution of the
+Union on the ground of the incompatibility of the sections. And to
+these may be added the few, the very few of Southern men who fancying
+that they would have advantages out of the Union which they cannot
+possess within it, however fully the compact should be observed and
+State Equality maintained, desire its dissolution, and taking counsel
+of their passions, decry the labors of all who seek to preserve the
+government as our fathers formed it, and to develop the great purposes
+for which it was ordained and established.
+
+The other phrase which has been the subject of comment was, “and this
+great country will remain united.” How “united” is set forth in the
+language to which this clause was a conclusion, “united to protect our
+national flag whenever a foreign power, presuming on our domestic
+dissention, should dare to insult it.” The unanimity with which men of
+all parties in the two houses of Congress rallied to support the
+executive in maintaining the rights of our flag, had been the subject
+of my commendation. Upon that fact the idea expressed rested. At worst
+it could but have evinced too much credulity, and I trust I may die
+believing that whenever the honor of our flag shall demand it, every
+mountain and valley and plain, will pour forth their hardy sons, and
+that shoulder to shoulder they will march against any foreign foe which
+shall invade the rights of any portion of the United States.
+
+And here permit me as a duty to you, and an obligation upon myself, to
+pay the tribute which I believe to be due the Northern Democracy.
+Having formed my opinion of them upon insufficient data, I have had
+occasion, after much intercourse with them, to modify it. I believe
+that a great reaction has commenced; how far it will progress I do not
+pretend to say, but am hopeful that agitation will soon become
+unprofitable to political traders in New England, and this hope rests
+upon the high position taken by the Northern Democracy, and upon the
+increased vote which in some of the States, under the more distinct
+avowal of sound principles, their candidates have received. You may now
+often hear among them not only the unqualified defence of your
+constitutional rights, but the vindication of your institutions in the
+abstract, and in the concrete.
+
+In the town of Portland, just preceding the election, a Democrat of
+large means and extensively engaged in commercial transactions and city
+improvements addressed the Democracy, arguing that their prosperity
+depended upon their connection with countries, the products of which
+were dependent upon slave labor; and the future growth and prosperity
+of their city depended upon the extension of slave labor into all
+countries where it could be profitably employed. He showed by a
+statistical statement the paralysing effect which would be produced
+upon their interest by the abolition of slavery. The Black Republican
+papers of course abused him, and compared him to Davis and Toombs, but
+his sound views were approved by the Democracy, and so far as I could
+judge, he gained consideration by their manly utterance.
+
+A generation had been educated in error, and the South had done nothing
+in defence of the abstract right of slavery. Within a few years essays
+have been written, books have been published, by northern as well as by
+southern men, and with the increase of information, there has been a
+subsidence of prejudice, and a preparation of the mind to receive
+truth. Our friends are still in a minority. It would be vain to
+speculate as to the period when their position will be reversed.
+Whether sooner or later, or never, they are still entitled to our
+regard and respect. A few years ago those who maintained our
+constitutional right, and to secure it voted for the Kansas and
+Nebraska bill, went home to meet reproach and expulsions from public
+employment.
+
+Even their social position was affected by that political act. The few
+years, however, which have elapsed, have produced a great change. They
+have recovered all except their political position. That bill which was
+considered when it was enacted, a Southern measure, for which Northern
+men bravely sacrificed their political prospects, has of late been
+denounced at the South as a cheat and a humbug. A poor return
+certainly, to those who conscientiously maintaining our rights,
+surrendered their popularity to secure what the men for whom they made
+the sacrifice now pronounce to have been a cheat. It is true that bill
+has recently received in some quarters a construction which its friends
+did not place upon it when it was enacted. But it should be judged by
+its terms and by contemporaneous construction.
+
+When I visited the people of Mississippi last year, the question of
+greatest public excitement, was connected with the action of the
+Executive in relation to the admission of Kansas as a State of the
+Union. You had been led to suppose that the President would attempt to
+control the action of the convention, and if the constitution was not
+submitted to a popular vote, would oppose by all the means within his
+power, the admission of the State within the Union. You were also
+excited at a dogma which had been put forth, to the effect that no more
+slave States should be admitted. I agreed with you then, that if the
+President took such position he would violate the obligations of his
+office, and be faithless to the trust which you had reposed in him. I
+agreed with you then, that the exclusion of a State, because it was
+slaveholding, would be such an offence against your equality as would
+demand at your hands the vindication of your rights. What has been the
+result? The convention framed the constitution, submitted only the
+clause relating to slavery to a popular vote, and applied for
+admission. The President in his annual message referred in favorable
+terms to the application, then not formally made, and when the
+Constitution reached him transmitted it to Congress with a special
+message, in which he fully and emphatically maintained the right of
+admission.
+
+After the convention had adjourned, Mr. Stanton, acting Governor of the
+Territory, called and extra session of the Freesoil Legislature, which
+has been elected, and it passed an act to submit the whole constitution
+to a popular vote. The President removed him from office,—a further
+evidence of the sincerity with which he was fulfiling your expectations
+in relation to Kansas. And it gives me pleasure here to say of him,
+what I am assured I can now say with confidence, that he will not
+shrink a hair’s breadth from the position he has taken, but will move
+another step in advance, and fall, if fall he must, manfully upholding
+the rights and defying the insolence of ill-gotten power.
+
+When the bill was presented to the Senate for the admission of the
+State of Kansas, after a long discussion, it was adopted, with a
+provision which required the State after admission to relinquish its
+claim to all the land asked for in its ordinance, except 5,000,000
+acres, that being the largest amount which had been ever granted to a
+State at the period of its admission. There was also a provision
+declaratory of the right of the people to change their constitution at
+any time; though the instrument itself had restricted them for a term
+of years. I considered both those provisions objectionable; the first,
+because it was directory of legislation to be enacted by a State; and
+the second, because it was inviting to a disregard of the fundamental
+law, and had too much the seeming of a concession to the anti-slavery
+feeling which was impatient for a change of the constitution. That bill
+failed in the House, and was succeeded by a bill of the Opposition
+which recognized the right of Kansas to be admitted with a pro-slavery
+constitution, provided it should be adopted by a popular vote. This
+also failed, and in the division between the two Houses, a com- {sic}
+
+As there has been much diversity of opinion in relation to that law,
+and I think much misapprehension as to its character, I will be
+pardoned for speaking of it somewhat minutely.
+
+When it was known that the Conference Committee had prepared a bill, I
+mittee of conference was appointed, which framed the bill that became a
+law. being at the time confined to my house by disease, invited my
+colleague and the Representatives from the State to visit me, that we
+might confer together and decide upon the course which we would pursue.
+Before the evening of our meeting, a distinguished member of the House
+of Representatives, a member of the Committee, called and read to me
+the bill which they had prepared. It contained some features which I
+considered objectionable. He concurred with me, and promised to use his
+efforts to have them stricken out. When the Mississippi delegation
+assembled, our conference was full, and marked by the desire, first to
+protect the rights of our State, and secondly, to secure unanimity of
+action by its delegation. The objections which were urged, referred, as
+my memory serves me, entirely to the features which I had reason to
+hope would be stricken out. One of the delegation announced an
+unwillingness to support the proposed modification of the Senate
+proposition, lest it should be considered as yielding the point on
+which we had insisted that Congress could not require the Constitution
+to be submitted to a popular vote. I refer to the lamented Quitman,
+whose sincere devotion to Southern interests, no one, who knew him,
+could question. I regretted that he deemed it necessary to vote,
+finally, against the measure, but I honor the motive which governed his
+course.
+
+The ordinance which was attached to the Constitution, was not a part of
+it, but a condition annexed to the application for admission. If
+Congress had stricken the ordinance out, the effect, I believe, would
+have been that of admitting the State without any reservation of the
+public land; would have transferred as an attribute of sovereignty the
+useful as well as the eminent domain. The Southern Senators who
+received the soubriquet of Southern ultras, held that position in 1850,
+in relation to the public lands of California, and it constituted one
+of their objections to the admission of that State at the time it was
+effected. To modify the ordinance, that is to change the condition on
+which the inhabitants of Kansas proposed to enter into the Union was
+necessarily to give them the right to withdraw their proposition.
+
+It remained then for Congress if they reduced the amount of land asked
+for in the ordinance, either to provide the mode in which the
+inhabitants should accept or reject the modification or leave them to
+do it in such manner as they might adopt. The convention was defunct,
+the legislature was black republican and thought to be entitled to
+little confidence, and it seemed to be better that Congress should
+itself provide the mode of ascertaining the public will than leave that
+duty to the territorial legislature, such as it was believed and proven
+to be. It was a mere question of expediency, and I think the best
+course was pursued.
+
+To have admitted the State without modification of the ordinance, would
+have been to grant five times as much of the public land as had ever
+been given to a State at the period of admission.
+
+There was nothing to justify such a discrimination, and otherwise the
+State could not be admitted without referring the question or violating
+the principle of State sovereignty.
+
+As a condition precedent, the general government may require the
+recognition of its right to control the primary disposal of the land,
+but can have no right to impose a condition with the mandate that it
+shall be subsequently fulfiled and no power to enforce the mandate if
+the State admitted should refuse to comply. Not for all the land in
+Kansas, not for all the land between the Missouri and the Pacific
+ocean, not for all the land of the continent of North America, would I
+agree that the federal government should have the power to coerce a
+State.
+
+The necessity for having all conditions agreed upon before the
+admission of a State was demonstrated by Mr. Soule, in 1850, in the
+discussion of the bill for the admission of California. Mr. Webster
+replied to him but did not answer his argument, and the course of
+events seems likely to verify all that Senator Soule foretold.
+
+Of the three methods which were supposable, I think Congress adopted
+the best; it was the only one which was attainable and secured all
+which was of value to the South. It was the admission by Congress of a
+State with a pro-slavery Constitution; it was the triumph of the
+principle that forbade Congress to interfere either as to the matter of
+the Constitution or the manner in which it should be formed and
+adopted.
+
+The refusal of the inhabitants to accept the reduced endowment offered
+to them, and their decision to remain in a territorial condition, was,
+in my opinion, wise on their part and fortunate on ours. The late
+Governor, Denver, has forcibly pointed out to them their want of means
+to support a State government, and the propriety of giving their first
+attention to the establishment of order and the development of their
+internal resources. There were many reasons to doubt the fitness of the
+inhabitants of Kansas to be admitted as a State.
+
+The condition of the country and the previous legislation of Congress
+made the case exceptional, and, in my judgment, justified the course
+adopted. I have, therefore, no apology or regret to offer in the case.
+
+The Northern opponents of the measure have, among other denunciatory
+epithets, applied to it those of “bribery” and “coercion.” “Bribery” to
+give less by twenty millions of acres of land than was claimed, and
+“coercion” to leave them to the option of receiving the usual
+endowment, or waiting until they had an amount of population which
+would give some assurance of their ability to maintain a State
+government. Though such is the requirement of the law, and designed to
+secure exemption from the mischievous agitation which has for several
+years disturbed the country and benefitted only the demagogues who make
+a trade of politics, we may scarcely hope to escape from a renewal of
+the agitation which has been found so profitable. The next phase of the
+question will probably be in the form of what is termed an “enabling
+act,”—a favorite measure with the advocates of “squatter sovereignty,”
+who, claiming for the inhabitants of a Territory all the power of the
+people of a State, nevertheless consider it necessary that Congress
+should confer the power to form a Constitution and apply as a State.
+Congress has given authority for admission in some cases, but I think
+it better to avoid than to follow the precedent. Not that I am
+concerned for the doctrine of “squatter sovereignty,” but that I would
+guard against the mischievous error of considering the federal
+government as the parent of States, and would restrict it to the
+function of admitting new States into the Union, barring all pretension
+to the power of creating them.
+
+It seems now to be probable that the Abolitionists and their allies
+will have control of the next House of Representatives, and it may be
+well inferred from their past course that they will attempt legislation
+both injurious and offensive to the South. I have an abiding faith that
+any law which violates our constitutional rights, will be met with a
+veto by the present Executive.—But should the next House of
+Representatives be such as would elect an Abolition President, we may
+expect that the election will be so conducted as probably to defeat a
+choice by the people and devolve the election upon the House.
+
+Whether by the House or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosen
+President of the United States, you will have presented to you the
+question of whether you will permit the government to pass into the
+hands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for your
+answer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would be
+a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would
+be destroyed and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no
+respect.
+
+In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should
+deem it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union with
+those who have already shown the will, and would have acquired the
+power, to deprive you of your birthright and to reduce you to worse
+than the colonial dependence of your fathers.
+
+The master mind of the so-called Republican party, Senator Seward, has
+in a. recent speech at Rochester, announced the purpose of his party to
+dislodge the Democracy from the possession of the federal Government,
+and assigns as a reason the friendship of that party for what he
+denominates the slave system. He declares the Union between the States
+having slave labor and free labor to be incompatible, and announces
+that one or the other must disappear. He even asserts that it was the
+purpose of the framers of the Government to destroy slave property, and
+cites as evidence of it, the provision for an amendment of the
+Constitution. He seeks to alarm his auditors by assuring them of the
+purpose on the part of the South and the Democratic party to force
+slavery upon all the States of the Union. Absurd as all this may seem
+to you, and incredulous as you may be of its acceptance by any
+intelligent portion of the citizens of the United States, I have reason
+to believe that it has been inculcated to no small extent in the
+Northern mind.
+
+It requires but a cursory examination of the Constitution of the United
+States; but a partial knowledge of its history and of the motives of
+the men who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it is to ascribe
+to them the purpose of interfering with the domestic institutions of
+any of the States. But if a disrespect for that instrument, a fanatical
+disregard of its purposes, should ever induce a majority, however
+large, to seek by amending the Constitution, to pervert it from its
+original object, and to deprive you of the equality which your fathers
+bequeathed to you, I say let the star of Mississippi be snatched from
+the constellation to shine by its inherent light, if it must be so,
+through all the storms and clouds of war.
+
+The same dangerously powerful man describes the institution of slavery
+as degrading to labor, as intolerant and inhuman, and says the white
+laborer among us is not enslaved only because he cannot yet be reduced
+to bondage. Where he learned his lesson, I am at a loss to imagine;
+certainly not by observation, for you all know that by interest, if not
+by higher motive, slave labor bears to capital as kind a relation as
+can exist between them anywhere; that it removes from us all that
+controversy between the laborer and the capitalist, which has filled
+Europe with starving millions and made their poor houses an onerous
+charge. You too know, that among us, white men have an equality
+resulting from a presence of the lower caste, which cannot exist where
+white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The
+mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of
+the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies
+where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our
+mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.
+
+I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it
+should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to
+the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a
+feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give
+an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then
+bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to
+the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that
+event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of
+revolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to say that no portion of
+the speech to which I have referred was received with more marked
+approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment which
+has just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the past
+summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from
+the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern
+army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South,
+they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits
+of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that the victory
+will at least be doubtful.
+
+Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of
+Mississippi to be the last remedy—the final alternative. In the
+language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the
+Union as a great though not the greatest calamity. I would cling
+tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the
+fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfilment
+of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for their
+sons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than a
+filial affection. Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her military
+service. For many of the best years of my life I have followed that
+flag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have been
+claimed as my winding sheet. When I have seen it surrounded by the
+flags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beat
+quicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes and
+brilliant constellation. I have looked with veneration on those stripes
+as recording the original size of our political family and with pride
+upon that constellation as marking the family’s growth; I glory in the
+position which Mississippi’s star holds in the group; but sooner than
+see its lustre dimmed—sooner than see it degraded from its present
+equality-would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous
+ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi’s best and bravest
+should gather to the harvest-home of death.
+
+As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago,
+so now do I urge you to the needful preparation to meet whatever
+contingency may befall us. The maintenance of our rights against a
+hostile power is a physical problem and cannot be solved by mere
+resolutions. Not doubtful of what the heart will prompt, it is not the
+less proper that due provision should be made for physical necessities.
+Why should not the State have an armory for the repair of arms, for the
+alteration of old models so as to make them conform to the improved
+weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on a limited scale
+of new arms, including cannon and their carriages; the casting of shot
+and shells, and the preparation of fixed ammunition?
+
+Such preparation will not precipitate us upon the trial of secession,
+for I hold now, as in 1850, that Mississippi’s patriotism will hold her
+to the Union as long as it is constitutional, but it will give to our
+conduct the character of earnestness of which mere paper declarations
+have somewhat deprived us; it will strengthen the hands of our friends
+at the North, and in the event that separation shall be forced upon us,
+we shall be prepared to meet the contingency with whatever remote
+consequences may follow it, and give to manly hearts the happy
+assurance that manly arms will not fail to protect the gentle beauty
+which blesses our land and graces the present occasion.
+
+You are already progressing in the construction of railroads which,
+whilst they facilitate travel, increase the products of the State and
+the reward of the husbandman, are a great element of strength by the
+means they afford for rapid combination at any point where it may be
+desirable to concentrate our forces. To those already in progress I
+hope one will soon be added to connect the interior of the State with
+the best harbor upon our Gulf coast. When this shall be completed a
+trade will be opened to that point which will produce direct
+importation and exportation to the great advantage of the planter as
+well as all consumers of imported goods; and furnishing “exchange,”
+will protect us from such revulsion as was suffered last fall when
+during a period of entire prosperity at home, our market was paralyzed
+by failures in New York.
+
+The contemplated improvement in the levee system, will give to our
+people a mine of untold wealth; and as we progress in the development
+of our resources and the increase of our power, so will we advance in
+State pride and the ability to maintain principles far higher in value
+than mountains of gold or oceans of pearl.
+
+But I find myself running into those visions which have hung before me
+from my boyhood up; which at home and abroad have been the hope
+constantly attending upon me, and which the cold wing of time has been
+unable to wither. I am about to leave you to discharge the duties of
+the high trust with which you have honored me. I go with the same love
+for Mississippi which has always animated me; with the same confidence
+in her people, which has cheered me in the darkest hour. As often as I
+may return to you, I feel secure of myself, and say I shall come back
+unchanged. Or should the Providence which has so often kindly protected
+me, not permit me to return again, my last prayer will be for the
+honor, the glory and the happiness of Mississippi.
+
+
+
+
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