MR. PRESIDENT, I WISH TO SPEAK TODAY, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American and a member of the Senate of the United States. . . . I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole and the preservation of the whole; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear or shall not appear, for many days. I speak today for the preservation of the Union. "Hear me for my cause." I speak today out of a solicitous and anxious heart for the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony which make the blessings of this Union so rich and so dear to us all. . . .
Mr. President, in the excited times in which we live, there is found to exist a state of crimination and recrimination between the North and the South. There are lists of grievances produced by each; and those grievances, real or supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of the country from the other, exasperate the feelings, subdue the sense of fraternal connection and patriotic love and mutual regard. I shall bestow a little attention, sir, upon these various grievances produced on the one side and on the other.
I begin with the complaints of the South. I will not answer, further than I have, the general statements of the honorable senator from South Carolina that the North has grown upon the South in consequence of the manner of administering this government, in the collecting of its revenues, and so forth. These are disputed topics, and I have no inclination to enter into them. But I will state these complaints, especially one complaint of the South, which has in my opinion just foundation; and that is that there has been found at the North, among individuals and among the legislatures of the North, a disinclination to perform, fully, their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free states. In that respect, it is my judgment that the South is right and the North is wrong.
Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Constitution of the United States; and this article of the Constitution which says to these states they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfills his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I have always thought that the Constitution addressed itself to the legislatures of the states themselves, or to the states themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other states shall be delivered up, and I confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the states themselves. When it is said that a person escaping into another state, and coming therefore within the jurisdiction of that state, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the passage is that the state itself, in obedience to the Constitution, shall cause him to be delivered up. That is my judgment. I have always entertained that opinion, and I entertain it now.
But when the subject, some years ago, was before the Supreme Court of the United States, the majority of the judges held that the power to cause fugitives from service to be delivered up was a power to be exercised under the authority of this government. I do not know, on the whole, that it may not have been a fortunate decision. My habit is to respect the result of judicial deliberations and the solemnity of judicial decisions. But, as it now stands, the business of seeing that these fugitives are delivered up resides in the power of Congress and the national judicature, and my friend at the head of the Judiciary Committee has a bill on the subject, now before the Senate, with some amendments to it, which I propose to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest extent. And I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men, of all conscientious men in the North, of all men who are not carried away by any fanatical idea, or by any false idea whatever, to their constitutional obligations.
I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the North as a question of morals and a question of conscience: What right have they, in all their legislative capacity, or any other, to endeavor to get round this Constitution, to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the Constitution, to the persons whose slaves escape from them? None at all-none at all. Neither in the forum of conscience nor before the face of the Constitution are they justified in any opinion. Of course, it is a matter for their consideration. They probably, in the turmoil of the times, have not stopped to consider of this; they have followed what seemed to be the current of thought and of motives as the occasion arose, and neglected to investigate fully the real question, and to consider their constitutional obligations, as I am sure, if they did consider, they would fulfill them with alacrity.
Therefore, I repeat, sir, that here is a ground of complaint against the North, well founded, which ought to be removed; which it is now in the power of the different departments of this government to remove; which calls for the enactment of proper laws authorizing the judicature of this government in the several states to do all that is necessary for the recapture of fugitive slaves and for the restoration of them to those who claim them. Wherever I go and whenever I speak, I say that the South has been injured in this respect and has a right to complain; and the North has been too careless of what I think the Constitution peremptorily and emphatically enjoins upon it as a duty. _
Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard, from every member on this floor, declarations of opinion that this Union should never be dissolved than the declaration of opinion that in any case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible.
I hear with pain, and anguish, and distress, the word "secession," especially w en it falls from the lips of those who are eminently patriotic, and known to the country, and known all over the world for their political services.
Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish-I beg everybody's pardon-as to expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who sees these states, now revolving in harmony around a common center, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres and jostle against each other in the realms of space without producing the crush of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility.
Is the great Constitution under which we live here-covering this whole country—is it to be thawed and melted away by secession as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun-disappear almost unobserved and die off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the states; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in heaven-I see that disruption must produce such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold characters.
Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What states are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? Or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, sir, our ancestors-our fathers, and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living among us with prolonged lives-would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out, Shame upon us! if we of this gen-
Eration should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of the Union, which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the Army? What is to become of the Navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty states to defend itself?
I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly, there is to be a Southern confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that anyone seriously contemplates such a state of things. I do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere that that idea has originated in a design to separate. I am sorry, sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, or dreamed of in the wildest flights of human imagination. But the idea must be of a separation, including the slave states upon one side and the free states on the other. Sir, there is not-I may express myself too strongly perhaps-but some things, some moral things, are almost as impossible as other natural or physical things; and I hold the idea of a separation of these states-those that are free to form one government, and those that are slaveholding to form another-as a moral impossibility.
We could not separate the states by any such line if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here today and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break, if we would, and which we should not, if we could. Sir, nobody can look over the face of this country at the present moment-nobody can see where its population is the most dense and growing-without being ready to admit and compelled to admit that, ere long, America will be in the valley of the Mississippi. . . .
And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of liberty and union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon US; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the preservation of this Constitution and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest, and the brightest link, in that golden chain which is destined, I fully believe, to grapple the people of all the states to this Constitution, for ages to come. It is a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by legislation, by law, by judicature, and defended by the whole affections of the people.
World History
