Showing posts with label James Madison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Madison. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

John J. Crittenden’s Address on the Life and Death of Henry Clay, Delivered at Louisville, September 29, 1852

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am very sensible of the difficulty and magnitude of the task which I have undertaken.

I am to address you in commemoration of the public services of HENRY CLAY, and in celebration of his obsequies. His death filled his whole country with mourning, and the loss of no citizen, save the Father of his Country, has ever produced such manifestations of the grief and homage of the public heart. His history has indeed been read "in a nation's eyes." A nation's tears proclaim, with their silent eloquence, its sense of the national loss. Kentucky has more than a common share in this national bereavement. To her it is a domestic grief,—to her belongs the sad privilege of being the chief mourner. He was her favorite son, her pride, and her glory. She mourns for him as a mother. But let her not mourn as those who have no hope or consolation. She can find the richest and the noblest solace in the memory of her son, and of his great and good actions; and his fame will come back, like a comforter, from his grave, to wipe away her tears. Even while she weeps for him, her tears shall be mingled with the proud feelings of triumph which his name will inspire; and Old Kentucky, from the depths of her affectionate and heroic heart, shall exclaim, like the Duke of Ormond, when informed that his brave son had fallen in battle, "I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom." From these same abundant sources we may hope that the widowed partner of his life, who now sits in sadness at Ashland, will derive some pleasing consolations. I presume not to offer any words of comfort of my own. Her grief is too sacred to permit me to use that privilege. You, sons and daughters of Kentucky, have assembled here to commemorate his life and death. How can I address you suitably on such a theme? I feel the oppressive consciousness that I cannot do it in terms adequate to the subject, or to your excited feelings. I am no orator, nor have I come here to attempt any idle or vainglorious display of words; I come as a plain Kentuckian, who, sympathizing in all your feelings, presents you with this address, as his poor offering, to be laid upon that altar which you are here erecting to the memory of Henry Clay. Let it not be judged according to its own value, but according to the spirit in which it is offered. It would be no difficult task to address you on this occasion in the extravagant and rhetorical language that is usual in funeral orations; but my subject deserves a different treatment—the monumental name of Henry Clay rises above all mere personal favor and flattery; it rejects them, and challenges the scrutiny and the judgment of the world. The noble uses to which his name should be applied, are to teach his country, by his example, lessons of public virtue and political wisdom; to teach patriots and statesmen how to act, how to live, and how to die. I can but glance at a subject that spreads out in such bright and boundless expanse before me.

Henry Clay lived in a most eventful period, and the history of his life for forty years has been literally that of his country. He was so identified with the government for more than two-thirds of its existence, that, during that time, hardly any act which has redounded to its honor, its prosperity, its present rank among the nations of the earth, can be spoken of without calling to mind involuntarily the lineaments of his noble person. It would be difficult to determine whether in peace or in war, in the field of legislation or of diplomacy, in the springtide of his life, or in its golden ebb, he won the highest honor. It can be no disparagement to any one of his contemporaries to say that, in all the points of practical statesmanship, he encountered no superior in any of the employments which his constituents or his country conferred upon him.

For the reason that he had been so much and so constantly in the public eye, an elaborate review of his life will not be expected of me. All that I shall attempt will be to sketch a few leading traits, which may serve to give those who have had fewer opportunities of observation than I have had something like a just idea of his public character and services. If, in doing this, I speak more at large of the earlier than of the later periods of his life, it is because, in regard to the former, though of vast consequence, intervening years have thrown them somewhat in the background.

Passing by, therefore, the prior service of Mr. Clay in the Senate for brief periods in 1806 and 1810-11, I come at once to his Speakership in the House of Representatives, and his consequent agency in the war of 1812.

To that war our country is indebted for much of the security, freedom, prosperity, and reputation which it now enjoys. It has been truly said by one of the living actors in that perilous era, that the very act of our going to war was heroic.1 By the supremacy of the naval power of England the fleets of all Europe had been swept from the seas; the banner of the United States alone floated in solitary fearlessness. She seemed to encircle the earth with her navies, and to be the undisputed mistress of the ocean. We went out upon the deep with a sling in our hands. When, in all time, were such fearful odds seen as we had against us?

The events of the war with England, so memorable, and even wonderful, are too familiar to all to require any particular recital on this occasion. Of that war,—of its causes and consequences,—of its disasters, its bloody battles, and its glorious victories by land and sea, history and our own official records have given a faithful narrative. A just national pride has engraven that narrative upon our hearts. But even in the fiercest conflicts of that war, there was nothing more truly heroic than the declaration of it by Congress.

Of that declaration, of the incidents, personal influences, and anxious deliberations which preceded and led to it, the history is not so well or generally known. The more it is known the more it will appear how important was the part that Mr. Clay acted, and how much we are indebted to him for all the glorious and beneficial issues of the declaration of that war, which has not inappropriately been called the Second War of Independence.

The public grounds of the war were the injustice, injury, and insults inflicted on the United States by the government of Great Britain, then engaged in a war of maritime edicts with France, of which the commerce of the United States was the victim, our merchant ships being captured by British cruisers on every sea, and confiscated by her courts, in utter contempt of the rights of this nation as an independent power. Added to this, and more offensive than even those outrages, was the arrogation, by the same power, of a right to search American vessels for the purpose of impressing seamen from vessels sailing under the American flag. These aggressions upon our national rights constituted, undoubtedly, justifiable cause of war. With equal justice on our part, and on the same grounds (impressment of seamen excepted), we should have been warranted in declaring war against France also; but common sense (not to speak of policy) forbade our engaging with two nations at once, and dictated the selection, as an adversary, of the one that had power, which the other had not, to carry its arbitrary edicts into full effect. The war was really, on our part, a war for national existence.

When Congress assembled, in November, 1811, the crisis was upon us. But, as may be readily imagined, it could be no easy matter to nerve the heart of Congress, all unprepared for the dread encounter, to take the step, which there could be no retracing, of a declaration of war.

Nor could that task, in all probability, ever have been accomplished, but for the concurrence, purely accidental, of two circumstances: the one, the presence of Henry Clay in the chair of the popular branch of the national legislature; and the other, that of James Monroe, as Secretary of State, in the executive administration of the government.

Mr. Monroe had returned but a year or two before from a course of public service abroad, in which, as minister plenipotentiary, he had represented the United States at the several courts, in succession, of France, Spain, and Great Britain. From the last of these missions he had come home, thoroughly disgusted with the contemptuous manner in which the rights of the United States were treated by the belligerent powers, and especially by England. This treatment, which even extended to the personal intercourse between their ministers and the representatives of this country, he considered as indicative of a settled determination on their part, presuming upon the supposed incapacity of this government for war, to reduce to system a course of conduct calculated to debase and prostrate us in the eyes of the world. Reasoning thus, he had brought his mind to a serious and firm conviction that the rights of the United States, as a nation, would never be respected by the powers of the Old World until this government summoned up resolution to resent such usage, not by arguments and protests merely, but by an appeal to arms. Full of this sentiment, Mr. Monroe was called, upon a casual vacancy, when it was least expected by himself or the country, to the head of the Department of State. That sentiment, and the feelings which we have thus accounted for, Mr. Monroe soon communicated to his associates in the cabinet, and, in some degree it might well be supposed, to the great statesman then at the head of the government.

The tone of President Madison's first message to Congress (November 5, 1811), a few months only after Mr. Monroe's accession to the cabinet, can leave hardly a doubt in any mind of such having been the case. That message was throughout of the gravest cast, reciting the aggressions and aggravations of Great Britain, as demanding resistance, and urging upon Congress the duty of putting the country "into an armor and attitude demanded by the crisis and corresponding with the national spirit and expectations."

It was precisely at this point of time that Mr. Clay, having resigned his seat in the Senate, appeared on the floor of the House of Representatives, and was chosen, almost by acclamation, Speaker of that body. From that moment he exercised an influence, in a great degree personal, which materially affected, if it did not control, the judgment of the House. Among the very first acts which devolved upon him by virtue of his office was the appointment of the committees raised upon the President's message. Upon the select committee of nine members to which was referred "so much of the message as relates to our foreign relations," he appointed a large proportion from among the fast friends of the administration, nearly all of them being new members and younger than himself, though he was not then more than thirty-five years of age. It is impossible, at this day, to call to mind the names of which this committee was composed (Porter, Calhoun, and Grundy being the first named among them), without coming to the conclusion that the committee was constituted with a view to the event predetermined in the mind of the Speaker. There can be no question that when, quitting the Senate, he entered the representative body, he had become satisfied that, by the continued encroachments of Great Britain on our national rights, the choice of the country was narrowed down to war or submission. Between these there could be no hesitation in such a mind as that of Mr. Clay which to choose. In this emergency he acted for his country as he would in a like case for himself. Desiring and cultivating the good will of all, he never shrank from any personal responsibility, nor cowered before any danger. More than a year before his accession to the House of Representatives he had, in a debate in the Senate, taken occasion to say that "he most sincerely desired peace and amity with England; that he even preferred an adjustment of all differences with her to one with any other nation; but, if she persisted in a denial of justice to us, he trusted and hoped that all hearts would unite in a bold and vigorous vindication of our rights." It was in this brave spirit, animated to increased fervency by intervening aggressions from the same quarter, that Mr. Clay entered into the House of Representatives.

Early in the second month of the session, availing himself of the right then freely used by the Speaker to engage in discussion while the House was in committee of the whole, he dashed into the debates upon the measures of military and naval preparation recommended by the President and reported upon favorably by the committee. He avowed, without reserve, that the object of this preparation was war, and war with Great Britain.

In these debates he showed his familiarity with all the weapons of popular oratory. In a tempest of eloquence, in which he wielded alternately argument, persuasion, remonstrance, invective, ridicule, and reproach, he swept before him all opposition to the high resolve to which he exhorted Congress. To the argument (for example) against preparing for a war with England, founded upon the idea of her being engaged, in her conflict with France, in fighting the battles of the world, he replied, that such a purpose would be best achieved by a scrupulous observance of the rights of others, and by respecting that public law which she professed to vindicate. "Then," said he, "she would command the sympathies of the world. But what are we required to do by those who would engage our feelings and wishes in her behalf? To bear the actual cuffs of her arrogance, that we may escape a chimerical French subjugation. We are called upon to submit to debasement, dishonor, and disgrace; to bow the neck to royal insolence, as a course of preparation for manly resistance to Gallic invasion! What nation, what individual, was ever taught, in the schools of ignominious submission, these patriotic lessons of freedom and independence?" And to the argument that this government was unfit for any war but a war against invasion,-so signally since disproved by actual events,-he exclaimed, with characteristic vehemence, "What! is it not equivalent to invasion, if the mouths of our outlets and harbors are blocked up, and we are denied egress from our own waters? Or, when the burglar is at our door, shall we bravely sally forth and repel his felonious entrance, or meanly skulk within the cells of the castle? What! shall it be said that our amor patriæ is located at these desks? that we pusillanimously cling to our seats here, rather than vindicate the most inestimable rights of our country?" Whilst in debate upon another occasion, at nearly the same time, he showed how well he could reason upon a question which demanded argument rather than declamation. To his able support of the proposition of Mr. Cheves to add to our then small but gallant navy ten frigates, may be ascribed the success, though by a lean majority, of that proposition. Replying to the objection, urged with great zeal by certain members, that navies were dangerous to liberty, he argued that the source of this alarm was in themselves. “Gentlemen fear," said he, "that if we provide a marine it will produce collision with foreign nations, plunge us into war, and ultimately overturn the Constitution of the country. Sir, if you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean, surrender all your commerce, give up all your prosperity. It is the thing protected, not the instrument of protection, that involves you in war. Commerce engenders collision, collision war, and war, the argument supposes, leads to despotism. Would the counsels of that statesman be deemed wise who would recommend that the nation should be unarmed; that the art of war, the martial spirit, and martial exercises, should be prohibited; who should declare, in a word, that the great body of the people should be taught that national happiness was to be found in perpetual peace alone?"

While Mr. Clay, in the capitol, was, with his trumpet-tongue, rousing Congress to prepare for war, Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, gave his powerful co-operation, and lent the Nestor-like sanction of his age and experience to the bold measures of his young and more ardent compatriot. It was chiefly through their fearless influence that Congress was gradually warmed up to a war spirit, and to the adoption of some preparatory measures. But no actual declaration of war had yet been proposed. There was a strong opposition in Congress, and the President, Mr. Madison, hesitated to recommend it, only because he doubted whether Congress was yet sufficiently determined and resolved to maintain such a declaration, and to maintain it to all the extremities of war.

The influence and counsel of Mr. Clay again prevailed. He waited upon the President, at the head of a deputation of members of Congress, and assured him of the readiness of a majority of Congress to vote the war if recommended by him. Upon this the President immediately recommended it by his message to Congress of the first Monday of June, 1812. A bill declaring war with Great Britain soon followed in Congress, and, after a discussion in secret session for a few days, became a law. Then began the war.

When the doors of the House of Representatives were opened, the debates which had taken place in secret session were spoken of and repeated, and it appeared, as must have been expected by all, that Mr. Clay had been the great defender and champion of the declaration of war.

Mr. Clay continued in the House of Representatives for some time after the commencement of the war, and having assisted in doing all that could be done for it in the way of legislation, was withdrawn from his position in Congress to share in the deliberations of the great conference of American and British Commissioners held at Ghent. His part in that convention was such as might have been expected from his course in Congress—high-toned and high-spirited, despairing of nothing.

I need not add, but for form, that acting in this spirit, Mr. Clay, and his patriotic and able associates, succeeded beyond all the hopes at that time entertained at home, in making a treaty, which, in putting a stop to the war, if it did not accomplish everything contended for, saved and secured, at all points, the honor of the United States.

Thus began and ended the war of 1812. On our part it was just and necessary, and, in its results, eminently beneficial and honorable.

The benefits have extended to all the world, for, in vindicating our own maritime rights, we established the freedom of the seas to all nations, and since then no one of them has arrogated any supremacy upon that ocean given by the Almighty as the common and equal inheritance of all.

To Henry Clay, as its chief mover and author, belongs the statesman's portion of the glory of that war; and to the same Henry Clay, as one of the makers and signers of the treaty by which it was terminated, belong the blessings of the peacemaker. His crown is made up of the jewels of peace and of war.

Prompt to take up arms to resent our wrongs and vindicate our national rights, the return of peace was yet gladly hailed by the whole country. And well it might be. Our military character, at the lowest point of degradation when we dared the fight, had been retrieved. The national honor, insulted at all the courts of Europe, had been redeemed; the freedom of the seas secured to our flag and all who sail under it; and what was most influential in inspiring confidence at home, and assuring respect abroad, was the demonstration, by the result of the late conflict, of the competency of this government for effective war, as it had before proved itself for all the duties of a season of peace.

The Congress which succeeded the war, to a seat in which Mr. Clay was elected while yet abroad, exhibited a feature of a national jubilee, in place of the gravity and almost gloom which had settled on the countenance of the same body during the latter part of the war and of the conference at Ghent. Joy shone on every face. Justly has that period been termed "the era of good feeling." Again placed in the chair of the House of Representatives, and all important questions being then considered as in committee of the whole, in which the Speaker descends to the floor of the House, Mr. Clay distinguished himself in the debates upon every question of interest that came up, and was the author, during that and following Congresses, of more important measures than it has been the fortune of any other member, either then or since, to have his name identified with.

It would exceed the proper limits of this discourse to particularize all those measures. I can do no more than refer to a very few of them, which have become landmarks in the history of our country.

First in order of these was his origination of the first proposition for the recognition of the independence of the states of South America, then struggling for liberty. This was on the 24th of March, 1818. It was on that day that he first formally presented the proposition to the House of Representatives. But neither the President nor Congress was then prepared for a measure so bold and decisive, and it was rejected by a large majority of the House, though advocated and urged by him with all the vehemence and power of his unsurpassed ability and eloquence. Undaunted by this defeat, he continued to pursue the subject with all the inflexible energy of his character. On the 3d of April, 1820, he renewed his proposition for the recognition of South American independence, and finally succeeded, against strong opposition, not only in passing it through the House of Representatives, but in inducing that body to adopt the emphatic and extraordinary course of sending it to the President by a committee especially appointed for the purpose. Of that committee Mr. Clay was the chairman, and, at its head, performed the duty assigned them. In the year 1822 Mr. Clay's noble exertions on this great subject were crowned with complete success by the President's formal recognition of South American independence, with the sanction of Congress.

It requires some little exertion, at this day, to turn our minds back and contemplate the vast importance of the revolutions then in progress in South America, as the subject was then presented, with all the uncertainties and perils that surrounded it. Those revolutions constituted a great movement in the moral and political world. By their results great interests and great principles throughout the civilized world, and especially in our own country, might, and probably would, be materially affected.

Mr. Clay comprehended the crisis. Its magnitude and its character were suited to his temper and to his great intellect.

He saw before him, throughout the vast continent of South America, the people of its various states or provinces struggling to cast off that Spanish oppression and tyranny which for three hundred years had weighed them down and seeking to reclaim and re-establish their long-lost liberty and independence.

He saw them not only struggling but succeeding, and with their naked hands breaking their chains and driving their oppressors before them. But the conflict was not yet over; Spain still continued to wage formidable and desperate hostilities against her colonies to reduce them to submission. They were still struggling and bleeding, and the result yet depended on the uncertain issues of war.

What a spectacle was there presented to the contemplation of the world! The prime object of attention and interest there to be seen was man bravely struggling for liberty. That was enough for Henry Clay. His generous soul overflowed with sympathy. But this was not all; there were graver and higher considerations that belonged to the subject, and these were all felt and appreciated by Mr. Clay.

If South America was resubjugated by Spain, she would in effect become European and relapse into the system of European policy, the system of legitimacy, monarchy, and absolutism. On the other hand, if she succeeded in establishing her independence, the principle of free institutions would be established with it, and republics, kindred to our own, would rise up to protect, extend, and defend the rights and liberties of mankind.

It was not, then, a mere struggle between Spain and her colonies. In its consequences, at least, it went much further, and, in effect, was a contest between the great antagonist principles and systems of arbitrary European governments and of free American governments. Whether the millions of people who inhabited, or were to inhabit, South America, were to become the victims and the instruments of the arbitrary principle, or the supporters of the free principle, was a question of momentous consequence now and in all time to come.

With these views, Mr. Clay, from sympathy and policy, embraced the cause of South American independence. He proposed no actual intervention in her behalf, but he wished to aid her with all the moral power and encouragement that could be given by a welcome recognition of her by the government of the United States.

To him belongs the distinguished honor of being the first among the statesmen of the world to espouse and plead the cause of South America, and to propose and urge the recognition of her independence. And his own country is indebted to him for the honor of being the first nation to offer that recognition.

When the magnitude of the subject, and the weighty interest and consequences attached to it, are considered, it seems to me that there is no more palmy day in the life of Mr. Clay than that in which, at the head of his committee, he presented to the President the resolution of the House of Representatives in favor of the recognition of South American independence.

On that occasion he appears in all the sublimity of his nature, and the statesman, invested with all the sympathies and feelings of humanity, is enlarged and elevated into the character of the friend and guardian of universal liberty.

How far South America may have been aided or influenced in her struggles by the recognition of our government, or by the noble appeals which Mr. Clay had previously addressed, in her behalf, to Congress and to the world, we cannot say; but it is known that those speeches were read at the head of her armies, and that grateful thanks were returned. It is not too much to suppose that he exercised great and, perhaps, decisive influence in her affairs and destinies.

Years after the first of Mr. Clay's noble exertions in the cause of South America, and some time after those exertions had led the government of the United States to recognize the new States of South America, they were also recognized by the government of Great Britain, and Mr. Canning, her minister, thereupon took occasion to say, in the House of Commons, "there (alluding to South America) I have called a new world into existence!" That was a vain boast. If it can be said of any man, it must be said of Henry Clay, that he called that “new world into existence.”2

Mr. Clay was the father of the policy of internal improvement by the general government. The expediency of such legislation had, indeed, been suggested, in one of his later annual messages to Congress, by President Jefferson, and that suggestion was revived by President Madison in the last of his annual messages. The late Bank of the United States having been then just established, a bill passed, in supposed conformity to Mr. Madison's recommendation, for setting aside the annual bonus, to be paid by the bank, as a fund for the purposes of internal improvement. This bill Mr. Madison very unexpectedly, on the last day of the term of his office, returned to the House of Representatives without his signature, assigning the reasons for his withholding it,―reasons which related rather to the form than the substance,—and recommending an amendment to the Constitution to confer upon Congress the necessary power to carry out that policy. The bill of course fell through for that session. Whilst this bill was on its passage, Mr. Clay had spoken in favor of it, declaring his own decided opinion in favor of the constitutionality and expediency of the measure. Mr. Monroe, immediately succeeding Mr. Madison in the Presidency, introduced into his first annual message a declaration, in advance of any proposition on the subject, of a settled conviction on his mind that Congress did not possess the right to enter upon a system of internal improvement. But for this declaration, it may be doubted that the subject would have been again agitated so soon after Mr. Madison's veto. The threat of a recurrence to that resort by the new President roused up a spirit of defiance in the popular branch of Congress, and especially in the lion heart of Mr. Clay; and by his advice and counsel a resolution was introduced declaring that Congress has power, under the Constitution, to make appropriations for the construction of military roads, post-roads, and canals. Upon this proposition, in committee of the whole House, Mr. Clay attacked, with all his powers of argument, wit, and raillery, the interdiction in the message.

He considered that the question was now one between the executive on the one hand, and the representatives of the people on the other, and that it was so understood by the country; that if, by the communication of his opinion to Congress, the President intended to prevent discussion, he had “most wofully failed;" that in having (Mr. Clay had no doubt the best motives) volunteered his opinion upon the subject, he had "inverted the order of legislation by beginning where it should end;" and, after an able and unanswerable argument on the question of the power, concluded by saying, “If we do nothing this session but pass an abstract resolution on the subject, I shall, under all circumstances, consider it a triumph for the best interest of the country, of which posterity will, if we do not, reap the benefit." And the abstract resolution did pass by a vote of 90 to 75; and a triumph it was which Mr. Clay had every right to consider as his own, and all the more grateful to his feelings because he had hardly hoped for it.

Referring on the final success, at a distance of thirty-five years, of the principle thus established, in the recent passage by Congress of the act for the improvement of certain of the ports and harbors and navigable rivers of the country, let "posterity" not forget, on this occasion, to what honored name is undoubtedly due the credit of the first legislative assertion of the power.

Mr. Clay was, perhaps, the only man since Washington, who could have said, with entire truth, as he did, "I had rather be right than be President." Honor and patriotism were his great and distinguishing traits. The first had its spring and support in his fearless spirit; the second in his peculiar Americanism of sentiment. It was those two principles which ever threw his whole soul into every contest where the public interest was deeply involved, and above all, into every question which in the least menaced the integrity of the Union. This last was, with him, the Ark of the Covenant; and he was ever as ready to peril his own life in its defense as he was to pronounce the doom of a traitor on any one who would dare to touch it with hostile hands. It was the ardor of this devotion to his country, and to the sheet-anchor of its liberty and safety, the union of the States, that rendered him so conspicuous in every conflict that threatened either the one or the other with harm. All are familiar with his more recent, indeed, his last, great struggle for his country, when the foundations of the Union trembled under the fierce sectional agitation, so happily adjusted and pacified by the wise measures of compromise which he proposed in the Senate, and which were, in the end, in substance adopted. That brilliant epoch in his history is fresh in the memory of all who hear me, and never will be forgotten by them. An equally glorious success, achieved by his patriotism, his resoluteness, and the great power of his oratory, was one which few of this assembly are old enough vividly to remember; but which, in the memory of those who witnessed the effort, and the success of that greatest triumph of his master-spirit, will ever live the most interesting in the life of the great statesman. I mean the Missouri controversy. Then, indeed, did common courage quail, and hope seemed to sink before the storm that burst upon and threatened to overwhelm the Union.

Into the history of what is familiarly known as the "Missouri Question," it is not necessary, if time would allow, that I should enter at any length. The subject of the controversy, as all my hearers know, was the disposition of the House of Representatives, manifested on more than one occasion, and by repeated votes, to require-as a condition of the admission of the Territory of Missouri into the Union as a State-the perpetual prohibition of the introduction of slavery into the Territories of the United States west of the Mississippi. During the conflict to which this proposition gave rise in 1820, the debates were from the beginning earnest, prolonged, and excited. In the early stages of them Mr. Clay exerted to the utmost his powers of argument, conciliation, and persuasion, speaking, on one occasion, it is stated, for four and a half hours without intermission. A bill finally passed both houses, authorizing the people of the Territory of Missouri to form a constitution of State government, with the prohibition of slavery restricted to the territory lying north of 36 deg. 30 min. of north latitude. This was in the first session of the Sixteenth Congress, Mr. Clay still being Speaker of the House. On the approach of the second session of this Congress, Mr. Clay, being compelled by his private affairs to remain at home, forwarded his resignation as Speaker, but retained his seat as a member, in view of the pendency of this question. Mr. Taylor, of New York, the zealous advocate of the prohibition of slavery in Missouri and elsewhere in the West, was chosen Speaker to succeed Mr. Clay. This fact, of itself, under all the circumstances, was ominous of what was to follow. Alarmed, apparently, at this aspect of things, Mr. Clay resumed his seat in the House on the 16th of January, 1821. The constitution formed by Missouri and transmitted to Congress, under the authority of the act passed in the preceding session, contained a provision (superfluous even for its own object) making it the duty of the General Assembly, as soon as might be, to pass an act to prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to or settling in the State of Missouri "upon any pretext whatever." The reception of the constitution with this offensive provision in it was the signal of discord apparently irreconcilable, when, just as it had risen to its height, Mr. Clay, on the 16th of January, 1821, resumed his seat in the House of Representatives. Less than six weeks of the term of Congress then remained. The great hold which he had upon the affections, as well as the respect, of all parties induced upon his arrival a momentary lull in the tempest. He at once engaged earnestly and solicitously in counsel with all parties in this alarming controversy, and on the 2d of February moved the appointment of a committee of thirteen members to consider the subject. The report of that committee, after four days of conference, in which the feelings of all parties had clearly been consulted, notwithstanding it was most earnestly supported by Mr. Clay in a speech of such power and pathos as to draw tears from many hearers, was rejected by a vote of 83 nays to 80 yeas. No one, not a witness, can conceive the intense excitement which existed at this moment within and without the walls of Congress, aggravated as it was by the arrival of the day for counting the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, among which was tendered the vote of Missouri as a State, though not yet admitted as such. Her vote was disposed of by being counted hypothetically, that is to say, that with the vote of Missouri, the then state of the general vote would be so and so; without it, so and so. If her vote, admitted, would have changed the result, no one can pretend to say how disastrous the consequences might not have been.

On Mr. Clay alone now rested the hopes of all rational and dispassionate men for a final adjustment of this question; and one week only, with three days of grace, remained of the existence of that Congress. On the 22d of the month, Mr. Clay made a last effort, by moving the appointment of a joint committee of the two houses, to consider and report whether it was expedient or not to make provision for the admission of Missouri into the Union on the same footing of the original States; and, if not, whether any other provision, adapted to her actual condition, ought to be made by law. The motion was agreed to, and a committee of twenty-three members appointed by ballot under it. The report by that committee (a modification of the previously rejected report) was ratified by the House, but by the close vote of 87 to 81. The Senate concurred, and so this distracting question was at last settled, with an acquiescence in it by all parties, which has never been since disturbed.

I have already spoken of this as the great triumph of Mr. Clay; I might have said, the greatest civil triumph ever achieved by mortal man. It was one towards which the combination of the highest ability and the most commanding eloquence would have labored in vain. There would still have been wanting the ardor, the vehemence, the impetuousness of character of Henry Clay, under the influence of which he sometimes overleaped all barriers, and carried his point literally by storm. One incident of this kind is well remembered in connection with the Missouri question. It was in an evening sitting, whilst this question was yet in suspense. Mr. Clay had made a motion to allow one or two members to vote who had been absent when their names were called. The Speaker (Mr. Taylor), who, to a naturally equable temperament, added a most provoking calmness of manner when all around him was excitement, blandly stated, for the information of the gentleman, that the motion "was not in order." Mr. Clay then moved to suspend the rule forbidding it, so as to allow him to make the motion; but the Speaker, with imperturbable serenity, informed him that, according to the rules and orders, such a motion could not be received without the unanimous consent of the House. "Then," said Mr. Clay, exerting his voice even beyond its highest wont, “I move to suspend ALL the rules of the House! Away with them! Is it to be endured, that we shall be trammeled in our action by mere forms and technicalities at a moment like this, when the peace, and perhaps the existence, of this Union is at stake?"

Besides those to which I have alluded, Mr. Clay performed many other signal public services, which would have illustrated the character of any other American statesman. Among these we cannot refrain from mentioning his measures for the protection of American industry, and his compromise measure of 1833, by which the country was relieved from the dangers and agitations produced by the doctrine and spirit of "nullification." Indeed, his name is identified with all the great measures of government during the long period of his public life. But the occasion does not permit me to proceed further with this review of his public services. History will record them to his honor.

Henry Clay was indebted to no adventitious circumstances for the success and glory of his life. Sprung from an humble stock, “he was fashioned to much honor from his cradle;" and he achieved it by the noble use of the means which God and nature had given him. He was no scholar, and had none of the advantages of collegiate education. But there was a "divinity that stirred within him." He was a man of a genius mighty enough to supply all the defects of education. By its keen, penetrating observation, its quick apprehension, its comprehensive and clear conception, he gathered knowledge without the study of books; he could draw it from the fountain-head,— pure and undefiled; it was unborrowed; the acquisition of his own observation, reflection, and experience; and all his own. It entered into the composition of the man, forming part of his mind, and strengthening and preparing him for all those great scenes of intellectual exertion or controversy in which his life was spent. His armor was always on, and he was ever ready for the battle.

This mighty genius was accompanied, in him, by all the qualities necessary to sustain its action, and to make it most irresistible. His person was tall and commanding, and his demeanor—

"Lofty and sour to them that loved him not;

But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.”

He was direct and honest, ardent and fearless, prompt to form his opinions, always bold in their avowal, and sometimes impetuous or even rash in their vindication. In the performance of his duties he feared no responsibility. He scorned all evasion of untruth. No pale thoughts ever troubled his decisive mind.

Be just and fear not" was the sentiment of his heart and the principle of his action. It regulated his conduct in private and public life; all the ends he aimed at were his country's, his God's, and truth's.

Such was Henry Clay, and such, were his talents, qualities, and objects. Nothing but success and honor could attend such a character. We have adverted briefly to some portions of his public life. For nearly half a century he was an informing spirit, brilliant and heroic figure in our political sphere, marshaling our country in the way she ought to go. The "bright track of his fiery car" may be traced through the whole space over which in his day his country and its government have passed in the way to greatness and renown. It will still point the way to further greatness and renown.

The great objects of his public life were to preserve and strengthen the Union, to maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States, to cherish industry, to protect labor, and to facilitate, by all proper national improvements, the communication between all the parts of our widely-extended country. This was his American system of policy. With inflexible patriotism he pursued and advocated it to his end. He was every inch an American. His heart and all that there was of him were devoted to his country, to its liberty, and its free institutions. He inherited the spirit of the Revolution in the midst of which he was born; and the love of liberty and the pride of freedom were in him principles of action.

A remarkable trait in the character of Mr. Clay was his inflexibility in defending the public interest against all schemes for its detriment. His exertions were, indeed, so steadily employed and so often successful in protecting the public against the injurious designs of visionary politicians or party demagogues, that he may be almost said to have been, during forty years, the guardian angel of the country. He never would compromise the public interest for anybody, or for any personal advantage to himself.

He was the advocate of liberty throughout the world, and his voice of cheering was raised in behalf of every people who struggled for freedom. Greece, awakened from a long sleep of servitude, heard his voice, and was reminded of her own Demosthenes. South America, too, in her struggle for independence, heard his brave words of encouragement, and her fainting heart was animated and her arm made strong.

Henry Clay is the fair representative of the age in which he lived, an age which forms the greatest and brightest era in the history of man,-an age teeming with new discoveries and developments, extending in all directions the limits of human knowledge, exploring the agencies and elements of the physical world and turning and subjugating them to the uses of man, unfolding and establishing practically the great principles of popular rights and free governments, and which, nothing doubting, nothing fearing, still advances in majesty, aspiring to, and demanding further improvement and further amelioration of the condition of mankind.

With the chivalrous and benignant spirit of this great era Henry Clay was thoroughly imbued. He was, indeed, moulded by it and made in its own image. That spirit, be it remembered, was not one of licentiousness, or turbulence, or blind innovation. It was a wise spirit, good and honest as it was resolute and brave; and truth and justice were its companions and guides.

These noble qualities of truth and justice were conspicuous in the whole public life of Henry Clay. On that solid foundation he stood erect and fearless; and when the storms of state beat around and threatened to overwhelm him, his exclamation was still heard, “truth is mighty and public justice certain." What a magnificent and heroic figure does Henry Clay here present to the world! We can but stand before and look upon it in silent reverence. His appeal was not in vain; the passions of party subsided; truth and justice resumed their sway, and his generous countrymen repaid him for all the wrong they had done him with gratitude, affection, and admiration in his life and tears for his death.

It has been objected to Henry Clay that he was ambitious. So he was. But in him ambition was virtue. It sought only the proper, fair objects of honorable ambition, and it sought these by honorable means only,-by so serving the country as to deserve its favors and its honors. If he sought office, it was for the purpose of enabling him by the power it would give, to serve his country more effectually and pre-eminently; and, if he expected and desired thereby to advance his own fame, who will say that was a fault? Who will say that it was a fault to seek and desire office for any of the personal gratifications it may afford, so long as those gratifications are made subordinate to the public good?

That Henry Clay's object in desiring office was to serve his country, and that he would have made all other considerations subservient, I have no doubt. I knew him well; I had full opportunity of observing him in his most unguarded moments and conversations, and I can say that I have never known a more unselfish, a more faithful or intrepid representative of the people, of the people's rights, and the people's interests, than Henry Clay. It was most fortunate for Kentucky to have such a representative, and most fortunate for him to have such a constituent as Kentucky, fortunate for him to have been thrown, in the early and susceptible period of his life, into the primitive society of her bold and free people. As one of her children, I am pleased to think that from that source he derived some of that magnanimity and energy which his after-life so signally displayed. I am pleased to think, that, mingling with all his great qualities, there was a sort of Kentuckyism (I shall not undertake to define it) which, though it may not have polished or refined, gave to them additional point and power, and free scope of action.

Mr. Clay was a man of profound judgment and strong will. He never doubted or faltered; all his qualities were positive and peremptory, and to his convictions of public duty he sacrificed every personal consideration.

With but little knowledge of the rules of logic, or of rhetoric, he was a great debater and orator. There was no art in his eloquence, no studied contrivances of language. It was the natural outpouring of a great and ardent intellect. In his speeches there were none of the trifles of mere fancy and imagination; all was to the subject in hand, and to the purpose; and they may be regarded as great actions of the mind, rather than fine displays of words. I doubt whether the eloquence of Demosthenes or Cicero ever exercised a greater influence over the minds or passions of the people of Athens and of Rome, than did Mr. Clay's over the minds and passions of the people of the United States.

You all knew Mr. Clay; your knowledge and recollection of him will present him more vividly to your minds than any picture I can draw of him. This I will add: He was, in the highest, truest sense of the term, a great man, and we ne'er shall look upon his like again. He has gone to join the mighty dead in another and better world. How little is there of such

a man that can die? His fame, the memory of his benefactions, the lessons of his wisdom, all remain with us; over these death has no power.

How few of the great of this world have been so fortunate as he? How few of them have lived to see their labors so rewarded? He lived to see the country that he loved and served advanced to great prosperity and renown, and still advancing. He lived till every prejudice which, at any period of his life had existed against him, was removed; and until he had become the object of the reverence, love, and gratitude of his whole country. His work seemed then to be completed, and fate could not have selected a happier moment to remove him from the troubles and vicissitudes of this life.

Glorious as his life was, there was nothing that became him like the leaving of it. I saw him frequently during the slow and lingering disease which terminated his life. He was conscious of his approaching end, and prepared to meet it with all the resignation and fortitude of a Christian hero. He was all patience, meekness, and gentleness; these shone round him like a mild, celestial light, breaking upon him from another world,

"And, to add greater honors to his age

Than man could give, he died fearing God."

_______________

1 Hon. Mr. Rush.

2 See Mr. Rush's letter to Mr. Clay, vol. i. Collins's Life of Henry Clay.

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 2, p. 39-57

Sunday, August 4, 2024

Daniel Webster to Mr. Plumer, February 14, 1851

Washington, February 14, 1851.

DEAR SIR,—I wish it were in my power to find time to write or speak of your father, and gather up the recollections which I have of him. But in truth, my time at present is absolutely and altogether devoted to public duties.

I knew your father very well from 1801 to 1817, when I left the State. The first time I saw him was at Mr. Peabody's, in Exeter, where he took the lead in a table conversation, upon the merits and demerits of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I remember also his speaking of the Edinburgh Review, and Mr. Jeffrey, both just then becoming conspicuous. He left the Senate, I think, in 1807. We did not agree upon the embargo policy of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, and the subsequent war with England. But I do not suppose that we ever differed upon any other important practical questions, nor upon any great constitutional question.

I expect to be in Boston about the 1st of April or the latter part of March. If you could conveniently meet me there, I would cheerfully pass an hour or two with you, in stating what I recollect of him, and expressing the opinion which I entertain of his talents and character.

I remain, very truly, yours,
DAN'L WEBSTER.

SOURCE: Fletcher Webster, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster, Vol. 2, p. 419-20

Sunday, July 9, 2023

The Botetourt Resolutions, December 10, 1860

Offered in a large mass meeting of the people of Botetourt county, December 10th, 1860, by the Hon. John J. Allen, President of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and adopted with but two dissenting voices.

The people of Botetourt county, in general meeting assembled, believe it to be the duty of all the citizens of the Commonwealth, in the present alarming condition of our country, to give some expression of their opinion upon the threatening aspect of public affairs. They deem it unnecessary and out of place to avow sentiments of loyalty to the constitution and devotion to the union of these States. A brief reference to the part the State has acted in the past will furnish the best evidence of the feelings of her sons in regard to the union of the States and the constitution, which is the sole bond which binds them together.

In the controversies with the mother country, growing out of the efforts of the latter to tax the colonies without their consent, it was Virginia who, by the resolutions against the stamp act, gave the example of the first authoritative resistance by a legislative body to the British Government, and so imparted the first impulse to the Revolution.

Virginia declared her independence before any of the colonies, and gave the first written constitution to mankind.

By her instructions her representatives in the General Congress introduced a resolution to declare the colonies independent States, and the declaration itself was written by one of her sons.

She furnished to the Confederate States the father of his country, under whose guidance independence was achieved, and the rights and liberties of each State, it was hoped, perpetually established.

She stood undismayed through the long night of the Revolution, breasting the storm of war and pouring out the blood of her sons like water on almost every battle-field, from the ramparts of Quebec to the sands of Georgia.

By her own unaided efforts the northwestern territory was conquered, whereby the Mississippi, instead of the Ohio river, was recognized as the boundary of the United States by the treaty of peace.

To secure harmony, and as an evidence of her estimate of the value of the union of the States, she ceded to all for their common benefit this magnificent region—an empire in itself.

When the articles of confederation were shown to be inadequate to secure peace and tranquility at home and respect abroad, Virginia first moved to bring about a more perfect union.

At her instance the first assemblage of commissioners took place at Annapolis, which ultimately led to the meeting of the convention which formed the present constitution.

This instrument itself was in a great measure the production of one of her sons, who has been justly styled the father of the constitution.

The government created by it was put into operation with her Washington, the father of his country, at its head; her Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, in his cabinet; her Madison, the great advocate of the constitution, in the legislative hall.

Under the leading of Virginia statesmen the Revolution of 1798 was brought about, Louisana was acquired, and the second war of independence was waged.

Throughout the whole progress of the republic she has never infringed on the rights of any State, or asked or received an exclusive benefit.

On the contrary, she has been the first to vindicate the equality of all the States, the smallest as well as the greatest.

But claiming no exclusive benefit for her efforts and sacrifices in the common cause, she had a right to look for feelings of fraternity and kindness for her citizens from the citizens of other States, and equality of rights for her citizens with all others; that those for whom she had done so much would abstain from actual aggressions upon her soil, or if they could not be prevented, would show themselves ready and prompt in punishing the aggressors; and that the common government, to the promotion of which she contributed so largely for the purpose of "establishing justice and insuring domestic tranquility," would not, whilst the forms of the constitution were observed, be so perverted in spirit as to inflict wrong and injustice and produce universal insecurity.

These reasonable expectations have been grievously disappointed. Owing to a spirit of pharasaical fanaticism prevailing in the North in reference to the institution of slavery, incited by foreign emissaries and fostered by corrupt political demagogues in search of power and place, a feeling has been aroused between the people of the two sections, of what was once a common country, which of itself would almost preclude the administration of a united government in harmony.

For the kindly feelings of a kindred people we find substituted distrust, suspicion and mutual aversion.

For a common pride in the name of American, we find one section even in foreign lands pursuing the other with revilings and reproach. For the religion of a Divine Redeemer of all, we find a religion of hate against a part; and in all the private relations of life, instead of fraternal regard, a "consuming hate," which has but seldom characterized warring nations.

This feeling has prompted a hostile incursion upon our own soil, and an apotheosis of the murderers, who were justly condemned and executed.

It has shown itself in the legislative halls by the passage of laws to obstruct a law of Congress passed in pursuance of a plain provision of the constitution.

It has been manifested by the industrious circulation of incendiary publications, sanctioned by leading men, occupying the highest stations in the gift of the people, to produce discord and division in our midst, and incite to midnight murder and every imaginable atrocity against an unoffending community.

It has displayed itself in a persistent denial of the equal rights of the citizens of each State to settle with their property in the common territory acquired by the blood and treasure of all.

It is shown in their openly avowed determination to circumscribe the institution of slavery within the territory of the States now recognizing it, the inevitable effect of which would be to fill the present slaveholding States with an ever increasing negro population, resulting in the banishment of our own non-slaveholding population in the first instance and the eventual surrender of our country, to a barbarous race, or, what seems to be desired, an amalgamation with the African.

And it has at last culminated in the election, by a sectional majority of the free States alone, to the first office in the republic, of the author of the sentiment that there is an "irrepressible conflict" between free and slave labor, and that there must be universal freedom or universal slavery; a sentiment which inculcates, as a necessity of our situation, warfare between the two sections of our country without cessation or intermission until the weaker is reduced to subjection.

In view of this state of things, we are not inclined to rebuke or censure the people of any of our sister States in the South, suffering from injury, goaded by insults, and threatened with such outrages and wrongs, for their bold determination to relieve themselves from such injustice and oppression, by resorting to their ultimate and sovereign right to dissolve the compact which they had formed and to provide new guards for their future security.

Nor have we any doubt of the right of any State, there being no common umpire between coequal sovereign States, to judge for itself on its own responsibility, as to the mode and measure of redress. The States, each for itself, exercised this sovereign power when they dissolved their connection with the British Empire.

They exercised the same power when nine of the States seceded from the confederation and adopted the present constitution, though two States at first rejected it.

The articles of confederation stipulated that those articles should be inviolably observed by every State, and that the Union should be perpetual, and that no alteration should be made unless agreed to by Congress and confirmed by every State.

Notwithstanding this solemn compact, a portion of the States did, without the consent of the others, form a new compact; and there is nothing to show, or by which it can be shown, that this right has been, or can be, diminished so long as the States continue sovereign.

The confederation was assented to by the Legislature for each State; the constitution by the people of each State of such State alone. One is as binding as the other, and no more so.

The constitution, it is true, established a government, and it operates directly on the individual; the confederation was a league operating primarily on the States. But each was adopted by the State for itself; in the one case by the Legislature acting for the State; in the other "by the people not as individuals composing one nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong."

The foundation, therefore, on which it was established was federal, and the State, in the exercise of the same sovereign authority by which she ratified for herself, may for herself abrogate and annul.

The operation of its powers, whilst the State remains in the Confederacy, is national; and consequently a State remaining in the Confederacy and enjoying its benefits cannot, by any mode of procedure, withdraw its citizens from the obligation to obey the constitution and the laws passed in pursuance thereof.

But when a State does secede, the constitution and laws of the United States cease to operate therein. No power is conferred on Congress to enforce them. Such authority was denied to the Congress in the convention which framed the constitution, because it would be an act of war of nation against nation-not the exercise of the legitimate power of a government to enforce its laws on those subject to its jurisdiction.

The assumption of such a power would be the assertion of a prerogative claimed by the British Government to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatever; it would constitute of itself a dangerous attack on the rights of the States, and should be promptly repelled.

These principles, resulting from the nature of our system of confederate States, cannot admit of question in Virginia.

Our people in convention, by their act of ratification, declared and made known that the powers granted under the constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever they shall be perverted to their injury and oppression.

From what people were these powers derived? Confessedly from the people of each State, acting for themselves. By whom were they to be resumed or taken back? By the people of the State who were then granting them away. Who were to determine whether the powers granted had been perverted to their injury or oppression? Not the whole people of the United States, for there could be no oppression of the whole with their own consent; and it could not have entered into the conception of the convention that the powers granted could not be resumed until the oppressor himself united in such resumption.

They asserted the right to resume in order to guard the people of Virginia, for whom alone the convention could act, against the oppression of an irresponsible and sectional majority, the worst form of oppression with which an angry Providence has ever afflicted humanity.

Whilst, therefore, we regret that any State should, in a matter of common grievance, have determined to act for herself without consulting with her sister States equally aggrieved, we are nevertheless constrained to say that the occasion justifies and loudly calls for action of some kind.

The election of a President, by a sectional majority, as the representative of the principles referred to, clothed with the patronage and power incident to the office, including the authority to appoint all the postmasters and other officers charged with the execution of the laws of the United States, is itself a standing menace to the South—a direct assault upon her institutions—an incentive to robbery and insurrection, requiring from our own immediate local government, in its sovereign character, prompt action to obtain additional guarantees for equality and security in the Union, or to take measures for protection and security without it.

In view, therefore, of the present condition of our country, and the causes of it, we declare almost in the words of our fathers, contained in an address of the freeholders of Botetourt, in February, 1775, to the delegates from Virginia to the Continental Congress, "That we desire no change in our government whilst left to the free enjoyment of our equal privileges secured by the constitution; but that should a wicked and tyrannical sectional majority, under the sanction of the forms of the constitution, persist in acts of injustice and violence towards us, they only must be answerable for the consequences."

"That liberty is so strongly impressed upon our hearts that we cannot think of parting with it but with our lives; that our duty to God, our country, ourselves and our posterity forbid it; we stand, therefore, prepared for every contingency."

Resolved therefore, That in view of the facts set out in the foregoing preamble, it is the opinion of this meeting that a convention of the people should be called forthwith; that the State, in its sovereign character, should consult with the other Southern States, and agree upon such guarantees as in their opinion will secure their equality, tranquility and rights within the Union; and in the event of a failure to obtain such guarantees, to adopt in concert with the other Southern States, or alone, such measures as may seem most expedient to protect the rights and insure the safety of the people of Virginia. And in the event of a change in our relations to the other States being rendered necessary, that the convention so elected should recommend to the people, for their adoption, such alterations in our State constitution as may adapt it to the altered condition of the State and country.

SOURCE: Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume I, No. 1, January 1876, p. 13-9

Sunday, January 1, 2023

James Madison to the Marquis de Lafayette, November 25, 1820

MONTPELLIER, Nov 25, 1820.

I have received, my dear friend, your kind letter of July 22, inclosing your printed opinion on the Election project. It was very slow in reaching me.

I am very glad to find, by your letter, that you retain, undiminished, the warm feelings of friendship so long reciprocal between us; and, by your “opinion,” that you are equally constant to the cause of liberty, so dear to us both. I hope your struggles in it will finally prevail, in the full extent required by the wishes and adapted to the exigencies of your Country.

We feel here all the pleasure you express at the progress of reformation on your Continent. Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to reign any where as it has heretofore done almost every where. To the events in Spain and Naples has succeeded already an auspicious epoch in Portugal. Free States seem, indeed, to be propagated in Europe as rapidly as new States are on this side of the Atlantic. Nor will it be easy for their births, or their growths, if safe from dangers within, to be strangled by external foes; who are not now sufficiently united among themselves, are controuled by the aspiring sentiments of their people, are without money of their own, and are no longer able to draw on the foreign fund which has hitherto supplied their belligerent necessities.

Here, we are, on the whole, doing well, and giving an example of a free system, which, I trust, will be more of a pilot to a good port than a beacon-warning from a bad one. We have, it is true, occasional fevers, but they are of the transient kind, flying off through the surface, without preying on the vitals. A Government like ours has so many safety-valves, giving vent to overheated passions, that it carries within itself a relief against the infirmities from which the best of human Institutions cannot be exempt. The subject which ruffles the surface of public affairs most, at present, is furnished by the transmission of the "Territory" of Missouri from a state of nonage to a maturity for self-Government, and for a membership in the Union. Among the questions involved in it, the one most immediately interesting to humanity is the question whether a toleration or prohibition of slavery Westward of the Mississippi would most extend its evils. The humane part of the argument against the prohibition turns on the position, that whilst the importation of slaves from abroad is precluded, a diffusion of those in the Country tends at once to meliorate their actual condition, and to facilitate their eventual emancipation. Unfortunately, the subject, which was settled at the last session of Congress by a mutual concession of the parties, is reproduced on the arena by a clause in the Constitution of Missouri, distinguishing between free persons of colour and white persons, and providing that the Legislature of the new State shall exclude from it the former. What will be the issue of the revived discussion is yet to be seen. The case opens the wider field, as the Constitutions and laws of the different States are much at variance in the civic character given to free persons of colour; those of most of the States, not excepting such as have abolished slavery, imposing various disqualifications, which degrade them from the rank and rights of white persons. All these perplexities develope more and more the dreadful fruitfulness of the original sin of the African trade.

I will not trouble you with a full picture of our economics. The cessation of neutral gains, the fiscal derangements incident to our late war, the inundation of foreign merchandizes since, and the spurious remedies attempted by the local authorities, give to it some disagreeable features. And they are made the more so by a remarkable downfall in the prices of two of our great staples, breadstuffs and tobacco, carrying privations to every man's door, and a severe pressure to such as labour under debts for the discharge of which they relied on crops and prices, which have failed. Time, however, will prove a sure physician for these maladies. Adopting the remark of a British Senator, applied with less justice to his Country, at the commencement of the Revolutionary contest, we may say that, “Although ours may have a sickly countenance, we trust she has a strong Constitution.”

I see that the bickerings between our Governments on the point of tonnage has not yet been terminated. The difficulty, I should flatter myself, cannot but yield to the spirit of amity and the principles of reciprocity entertained by the parties.

You would not, believe me, be more happy to see me at Lagrange than I should be to see you at Montpelier, where you would find as zealous a farmer, though not so well cultivated a farm as Lagrange presents. As an interview can hardly be expected to take place at both, I may infer, from a comparison of our ages, a better chance of your crossing the Atlantic than of mine. You have also a greater inducement in the greater number of friends, whose gratifications would at least equal your own. But if we are not likely to see one another, we can do what is the next best, communicate by letter what we would most wish to express in person; and, particularly, can repeat those sentiments of affection and esteem which, whether expressed or not, will ever be most sincerely felt by your old and steadfast friend.

SOURCE: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume 3: 1816-1828, p. 189-91

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Daniel Webster’s Speech on the Constitution and the Union, March 7, 1850

Mr. PRESIDENT, — I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat with the political elements; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, but not without hope. 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 all; 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 to-day for the preservation of the Union. “Hear me for my cause." I speak to-day, 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. These are the topics that I propose to myself to discuss; these are the motives, and the sole motives, that influence me in the wish to communicate my opinions to the Senate and the country; and if I can do any thing, however little, for the promotion of these ends, I shall have accomplished all that I expect.

Mr. President, it may not be amiss to recur very briefly to the events which, equally sudden and extraordinary, have brought the country into its present political condition. In May, 1846, the United States declared war against Mexico. Our armies, then on the frontiers, entered the provinces of that republic, met and defeated all her troops, penetrated her mountain passes, and occupied her capital. The marine force of the United States took possession of her forts and her towns, on the Atlantic and on the Pacific. In less than two years a treaty was negotiated, by which Mexico ceded to the United States a vast territory, extending seven or eight hundred miles along the shores of the Pacific, and reaching back over the mountains, and across the desert, until it joins the frontier of the State of Texas. It so happened, in the distracted and feeble condition of the Mexican government, that, before the declaration of war by the United States against Mexico had become known in California, the people of California, under the lead of American officers, overthrew the existing Mexican provincial government, and raised an independent flag. When the news arrived at San Francisco that war had been declared by the United States against Mexico, this independent flag was pulled down, and the stars and stripes of this Union hoisted in its stead. So, Sir, before the war was over, the forces of the United States, military and naval, had possession of San Francisco and Upper California, and a great rush of emigrants from various parts of the world took place into California in 1846 and 1847. But now behold another wonder.

In January of 1848, a party of Mormons made a discovery of an extraordinarily rich mine of gold, or rather of a great quantity of gold, hardly proper to be called a mine, for it was spread near the surface, on the lower part of the south, or American, branch of the Sacramento. They attempted to conceal their discovery for some time; but soon another discovery of gold, perhaps of greater importance, was made, on another part of the American branch of the Sacramento, and near Sutter's Fort, as it is called. The fame of these discoveries spread far and wide. They inflamed more and more the spirit of emigration towards California, which had already been excited; and adventurers crowded into the country by hundreds, and flocked towards the Bay of San Francisco. This, as I have said, took place in the winter and spring of 1848. The Digging commenced in the spring of that year, and from that time to this the work of searching for gold has been prosecuted with a success not heretofore known in the history of this globe. You recollect, Sir, how incredulous at first the American public was at the accounts which reached us of these discoveries; but we all know, now, that these accounts received, and continue to receive, daily confirmation, and down to the present moment I suppose the assurance is as strong, after the experience of these several months, of the existence of deposits of gold apparently inexhaustible in the regions near San Francisco, in California, as it was at any period of the earlier dates of the accounts.

It so happened, Sir, that although, after the return of peace, it became a very important subject for legislative consideration and legislative decision to provide a proper territorial government for California, yet differences of opinion between the two houses of Congress prevented the establishment of any such territorial government at the last session. Under this state of things, the inhabitants of California, already amounting to a considerable number, thought it to be their duty, in the summer of last year, to establish a local government. Under the proclamation of General Riley, the people chose delegates to a convention, and that convention met at Monterey. It formed a constitution for the State of California, which, being referred to the people, was adopted by them in their primary assemblages. Desirous of immediate connection with the United States, its Senators were appointed and representatives chosen, who have come hither, bringing with them the authentic constitution of the State of California; and they now present themselves, asking, in behalf of their constituents, that it may be admitted into this Union as one of the United States. This constitution, Sir, contains an express prohibition of slavery, or involuntary servitude, in the State of California. It is said, and I suppose truly, that, of the members who composed that convention, some sixteen were natives of, and had been residents in, the slave-holding States, about twenty-two were from the nonslave-holding States, and the remaining ten members were either native Californians or old settlers in that country. This prohibition of slavery, it is said, was inserted with entire unanimity.

It is this circumstance, Sir, the prohibition of slavery, which has contributed to raise, I do not say it has wholly raised, the dispute as to the propriety of the admission of California into the Union under this constitution. It is not to be denied, Mr. President, nobody thinks of denying, that, whatever reasons were assigned at the commencement of the late war with Mexico, it was prosecuted for the purpose of the acquisition of territory, and under the alleged argument that the cession of territory was the only form in which proper compensation could be obtained by the United States from Mexico, for the various claims and demands which the people of this country had against that government. At any rate, it will be found that President Polk's message, at the commencement of the session of December, 1847, avowed that the war was to be prosecuted until some acquisition of territory should be made. As the acquisition was to be south of the line of the United States, in warm climates and countries, it was naturally, I suppose, expected by the South, that whatever acquisitions were made in that region would be added to the slave-holding portion of the United States. Very little of accurate information was possessed of the real physical character, either of California or New Mexico, and events have not turned out as was expected. Both California and New Mexico are likely to come in as free States; and therefore some degree of disappointment and surprise has resulted. In other words, it is obvious that the question which has so long harassed the country, and at some times very seriously alarmed the minds of wise and good men, has come upon us for a fresh discussion; the question of slavery in these United States.

Now, Sir, I propose, perhaps at the expense of some detail and consequent detention of the Senate, to review historically this question, which, partly in consequence of its own importance, and partly, perhaps mostly, in consequence of the manner in which it has been discussed in different portions of the country, has been a source of so much alienation and unkind feeling between them.

We all know, Sir, that slavery has existed in the world from time immemorial. There was slavery, in the earliest periods of history, among the Oriental nations.

There was slavery among the Jews; the theocratic government of that people issued no injunction against it. There was slavery among the Greeks; and the ingenious philosophy of the Greeks found, or sought to find, a justification for it exactly upon the grounds which have been assumed for such a justification in this country; that is, a natural and original difference among the races of mankind, and the inferiority of the black or colored race to the white. The Greeks justified their system of slavery upon that idea, precisely. They held the African and some of the Asiatic tribes to be inferior to the white race; but they did not show, I think, by any close process of logic, that, if this were true, the more intelligent and the stronger had therefore a right to subjugate the weaker.

The more manly philosophy and jurisprudence of the Romans placed the justification of slavery on entirely different grounds. The Roman jurists, from the first and down to the fall of the empire, admitted that slavery was against the natural law, by which, as they maintained, all men, of whatsoever clime, color, or capacity, were equal; but they justified slavery, first, upon the ground and authority of the law of nations, arguing, and arguing truly, that at that day the conventional law of nations admitted that captives in war, whose lives, according to the notions of the times, were at the absolute disposal of the captors, might, in exchange for exemption from death, be made slaves for life, and that such servitude might descend to their posterity. The jurists of Rome also maintained, that, by the civil law, there might be servitude or slavery, personal and hereditary; first, by the voluntary act of an individual, who might sell himself into slavery; secondly, by his being reduced into a state of slavery by his creditors, in satisfaction of his debts; and, thirdly, by being placed in a state of servitude or slavery for crime. At the introduction of Christianity, the Roman world was full of slaves, and I suppose there is to be found no injunction against that relation between man and man in the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or of any of his Apostles. The object of the instruction imparted to mankind by the founder of Christianity was to touch the heart, purify the soul, and improve the lives of individual men. That object went directly to the first fountain of all the political and social relations of the human race, as well as of all true religious feeling, the individual heart and mind of man.

Now, Sir, upon the general nature and influence of slavery there exists a wide difference of opinion between the northern portion of this country and the southern. It is said on the one side, that, although not the subject of any injunction or direct prohibition in the New Testament, slavery is a wrong; that it is founded merely in the right of the strongest; and that it is an oppression, like unjust wars, like all those conflicts by which a powerful nation subjects a weaker to its will; and that, in its nature, whatever may be said of it in the modifications which have taken place, it is not according to the meek spirit of the Gospel. It is not “kindly affectioned"; it does not “seek another's, and not its own”; it does not “let the oppressed go free.” These are sentiments that are cherished, and of late with greatly augmented force, among the people of the Northern States. They have taken hold of the religious sentiment of that part of the country, as they have, more or less, taken hold of the religious feelings of a considerable portion of mankind. The South, upon the other side, having been accustomed to this relation between the two races all their lives, from their birth, having been taught, in general, to treat the subjects of this bondage with care and kindness, and I believe, in general, feeling great kindness for them, have not taken the view of the subject which I have mentioned. There are thousands of religious men, with consciences as tender as any of their brethren at the North, who do not see the unlawfulness of slavery; and there are more thousands, perhaps, that, whatsoever they may think of it in its origin, and as a matter depending upon natural right, yet take things as they are, and, finding slavery to be an established relation of the society in which they live, can see no way in which, let their opinions on the abstract question be what they may, it is in the power of the present generation to relieve themselves from this relation. And candor obliges me to say, that I believe they are just as conscientious, many of them, and the religious people, all of them, as they are at the North who hold different opinions.

The honorable Senator from South Carolina1 the other day alluded to the separation of that great religious community, the Methodist Episcopal Church. That separation was brought about by differences of opinion upon this particular subject of slavery. I felt great concern, as that dispute went on, about the result. I was in hopes that the difference of opinion might be adjusted, because I looked upon that religious denomination as one of the great props of religion and morals throughout the whole country, from Maine to Georgia, and westward to our utmost western boundary. The result was against my wishes and against my hopes. I have read all their proceedings and all their arguments; but I have never yet been able to come to the conclusion that there was any real ground for that separation; in other words, that any good could be produced by that separation. I must say I think there was some want of candor and charity. Sir, when a question of this kind seizes on the religious sentiments of mankind, and comes to be discussed in religious assemblies of the clergy and laity, there is always to be expected, or always to be feared, a great degree of excitement. It is in the nature of man, manifested by his whole history, that religious disputes are apt to become warm in proportion to the strength of the convictions which men entertain of the magnitude of the questions at issue. In all such disputes, there will sometimes be found men with whom every thing is absolute; absolutely wrong, or absolutely right. They see the right clearly; they think others ought so to see it, and they are disposed to establish a broad line of distinction between what is right and what is wrong. They are not seldom willing to establish that line upon their own convictions of truth and justice; and are ready to mark and guard it by placing along it a series of dogmas, as lines of boundary on the earth's surface are marked by posts and stones. There are men who, with clear perceptions, as they think, of their own duty, do not see how too eager a pursuit of one duty may involve them in the violation of others, or how too warm an embracement of one truth may lead to a disregard of other truths equally important. As I heard it stated strongly, not many days ago, these persons are disposed to mount upon some particular duty, as upon a war-horse, and to drive furiously on and upon and over all other duties that may stand in the way. There are men who, in reference to disputes of that sort, are of opinion that human duties may be ascertained with the exactness of mathematics. They deal with morals as with mathematics; and they think what is right may be distinguished from what is wrong with the precision of an algebraic equation. They have, therefore, none too much charity towards others who differ from them. They are apt, too, to think that nothing is good but what is perfect, and that there are no compromises or modifications to be made in consideration of difference of opinion or in deference to other men's judgment. If their perspicacious vision enables them to detect a spot on the face of the sun, they think that a good reason why the sun should be struck down from heaven. They prefer the chance of running into utter darkness to living in heavenly light, if that heavenly light be not absolutely without any imperfection. There are impatient men; too impatient always to give heed to the admonition of St. Paul, that we are not to “do evil that good may come”; too impatient to wait for the slow progress of moral causes in the improvement of mankind. They do not remember that the doctrines and the miracles of Jesus Christ have, in eighteen hundred years, converted only a small portion of the human race; and among the nations that are converted to Christianity, they forget how many vices and crimes, public and private, still prevail, and that many of them, public crimes especially, which are so clearly offences against the Christian religion, pass without exciting particular indignation. Thus wars are waged, and unjust wars. I do not deny that there may be just wars. There certainly are; but it was the remark of an eminent person, not many years ago, on the other side of the Atlantic, that it is one of the greatest reproaches to human nature that wars are sometimes just. The defence of nations sometimes causes a just war against the injustice of other nations. In this state of sentiment upon the general nature of slavery lies the cause of a great part of those unhappy divisions, exasperations, and reproaches which find vent and support in different parts of the Union.

But we must view things as they are. Slavery does exist in the United States. It did exist in the States before the adoption of this Constitution, and at that time. Let us, therefore, consider for a moment what was the state of sentiment, North and South, in regard to slavery, at the time this Constitution was adopted. A remarkable change has taken place since; but what did the wise and great men of all parts of the country think of slavery thenIn what estimation did they hold it at the time when this Constitution was adopted? It will be found, Sir, if we will carry ourselves by historical research back to that day, and ascertain men's opinions by authentic records still existing among us, that there was then no diversity of opinion between the North and the South upon the subject of slavery. It will be found that both parts of the country held it equally an evil, a moral and political evil. It will not be found that, either at the North or at the South, there was much, though there was some, invective against slavery as inhuman and cruel. The great ground of objection to it was political; that it weakened the social fabric; that, taking the place of free labor, society became less strong and labor less productive; and therefore we find from all the eminent men of the time the clearest expression of their opinion that slavery is an evil. They ascribed its existence here, not without truth, and not without some acerbity of temper and force of language, to the injurious policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, had entailed these evils upon the Colonies. I need hardly refer, Sir, particularly to the publications of the day. They are matters of history on the record. The eminent men, the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the same sentiments; that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, and a curse.

There are no terms of reprobation of slavery so vehement in the North at that day as in the South. The North was not so much excited against it as the South; and the reason is, I suppose, that there was much less of it at the North, and the people did not see, or think they saw, the evils so prominently as they were seen, or thought to be seen, at the South.

Then, Sir, when this Constitution was framed, this was the light in which the Federal Convention viewed it. That body reflected the judgment and sentiments of the great men of the South. A member of the other house, whom I have not the honor to know, has, in a recent speech, collected extracts from these public documents. They prove the truth of what I am saying, and the question then was, how to deal with it, and how to deal with it as an evil. They came to this general result. They thought that slavery could not be continued in the country if the importation of slaves were made to cease, and therefore they provided that, after a certain period, the importation might be prevented by the act of the new government. The period of twenty years was proposed by some gentleman from the North, I think, and many members of the Convention from the South opposed it as being too long. Mr. Madison especially was somewhat warm against it. He said it would bring too much of this mischief into the country to allow the importation of slaves for such a period. Because we must take along with us, in the whole of this discussion, when we are considering the sentiments and opinions in which the constitutional provision originated, that the conviction of all men was, that, if the importation of slaves ceased, the white race would multiply faster than the black race, and that slavery would therefore gradually wear out and expire. It may not be improper here to allude to that, I had almost said, celebrated opinion of Mr. Madison. You observe, Sir, that the term slave, or slavery, is not used in the Constitution. The Constitution does not require that “fugitive slaves” shall be delivered up. It requires that persons held to service in one State, and escaping into another, shall be delivered up. Mr. Madison opposed the introduction of the term slave, or slavery, into the Constitution; for he said that he did not wish to see it recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America that there could be property in men.

Now, Sir, all this took place in the Convention in 1787; but connected with this, concurrent and contemporaneous, is another important transaction, not sufficiently attended to. The Convention for framing this Constitution assembled in Philadelphia in May, and sat until September, 1787. During all that time the Congress of the United States was in session at New York. It was a matter of design, as we know, that the Convention should not assemble in the same city where Congress was holding its sessions. Almost all the public men of the country, therefore, of distinction and eminence, were in one or the other of these two assemblies; and I think it happened, in some instances, that the same gentlemen were members of both bodies. If I mistake not, such was the case with Mr. Rufus King, then a member of Congress from Massachusetts. Now, at the very time when the Convention in Philadelphia was framing this Constitution, the Congress in New York was framing the Ordinance of 1787, for the organization and government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. They passed that Ordinance on the 13th of July, 1787, at New York, the very month, perhaps the very day, on which these questions about the importation of slaves and the character of slavery were debated in the Convention at Philadelphia. So far as we can now learn, there was a perfect concurrence of opinion between these two bodies; and it resulted in this Ordinance of 1787, excluding slavery from all the territory over which the Congress of the United States had jurisdiction, and that was all the territory northwest of the Ohio. Three years before, Virginia and other States had made a cession of that great territory to the United States; and a most munificent act it was. I never reflect upon it without a disposition to do honor and justice, and justice would be the highest honor, to Virginia, for the cession of her northwestern territory. I will say, Sir, it is one of her fairest claims to the respect and gratitude of the country, and that, perhaps, it is only second to that other claim which belongs to her; that from her counsels, and from the intelligence and patriotism of her leading statesmen, proceeded the first idea put into practice of the formation of a general constitution of the United States. The Ordinance of 1787 applied to the whole territory over which the Congress of the United States had jurisdiction. It was adopted two years before the Constitution of the United States went into operation; because the Ordinance took effect immediately on its passage, while the Constitution of the United States, having been framed, was to be sent to the States to be adopted by their Conventions; and then a government was to be organized under it. This Ordinance, then, was in operation and force when the Constitution was adopted, and the government put in motion, in April, 1789.

Mr. President, three things are quite clear as historical truths. One is, that there was an expectation that, on the ceasing of the importation of slaves from Africa, slavery would begin to run out here. That was hoped and expected. Another is, that, as far as there was any power in Congress to prevent the spread of slavery in the United States, that power was executed in the most absolute manner, and to the fullest extent. An honorable member,2 whose health does not allow him to be here to-day—

A SENATOR. He is here.

I am very happy to hear that he is; may he long be here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country! The honorable member said, the other day, that he considered this Ordinance as the first in the series of measures calculated to enfeeble the South, and deprive them of their just participation in the benefits and privileges of this government. He says, very properly, that it was enacted under the old Confederation, and before this Constitution went into effect; but my present purpose is only to say, Mr. President, that it was established with the entire and unanimous concurrence of the whole South. Why, there it stands! The vote of every State in the Union was unanimous in favor of the Ordinance, with the exception of a single individual vote, and that individual vote was given by a Northern man. This Ordinance prohibiting slavery for ever northwest of the Ohio has the hand and seal of every Southern member in Congress. It was therefore no aggression of the North on the South. The other and third clear historical truth is, that the Convention meant to leave slavery in the States as they found it, entirely under the authority and control of the States themselves.

This was the state of things, Sir, and this the state of opinion, under which those very important matters were arranged, and those three important things done; that is, the establishment of the Constitution of the United States with a recognition of slavery as it existed in the States; the establishment of the ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory, prohibiting, to the full extent of all territory owned by the United States, the introduction of slavery into that territory, while leaving to the States all power over slavery in their own limits; and creating a power, in the new government, to put an end to the importation of slaves, after a limited period. There was entire coincidence and concurrence of sentiment between the North and the South, upon all these questions, at the period of the adoption of the Constitution. But opinions, Sir, have changed, greatly changed; changed North and changed South. Slavery is not regarded in the South now as it was then. I see an honorable member of this body paying me the honor of listening to my remarks;3 he brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I have learned of his great ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to be succeeded by so worthy a grandson, and of the sentiments he expressed in the Convention in Philadelphia.4

Here we may pause. There was, if not an entire unanimity, a general concurrence of sentiment running through the whole community, and especially entertained by the eminent men of all parts of the country. But soon a change began, at the North and the South, and a difference of opinion showed itself; the North growing much more warm and strong against slavery, and the South growing much more warm and strong in its support. Sir, there is no generation of mankind whose opinions are not subject to be influenced by what appear to them to be their present emergent and exigent interests. I impute to the South no particularly selfish view in the change which has come over her. I impute to her certainly no dishonest view. All that has happened has been natural. It has followed those causes which always influence the human mind and operate upon it. What, then, have been the causes which have created so new a feeling in favor of slavery in the South, which have changed the whole nomenclature of the South on that subject, so that, from being thought and described in the terms I have mentioned and will not repeat, it has now become an institution, a cherished institution, in that quarter; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and moral blessing, as I think I have heard it latterly spoken of? I suppose this, Sir, is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension of the cotton plantations of the South. So far as any motive consistent with honor, justice, and general judgment could act, it was the cotton interest that gave a new desire to promote slavery, to spread it, and to use its labor. I again say that this change was produced by causes which must always produce like effects. The whole interest of the South became connected, more or less, with the extension of slavery. If we look back to the history of the commerce of this country in the early years of this government, what were our exports? Cotton was hardly, or but to a very limited extent, known. In 1791 the first parcel of cotton of the growth of the United States was exported, and amounted only to 19,200 pounds.5 It has gone on increasing rapidly, until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of great product and high prices, amount to a hundred millions of dollars. In the years I have mentioned, there was more of wax, more of indigo, more of rice, more of almost every article of export from the South, than of cotton. When Mr. Jay negotiated the treaty of 1794 with England, it is evident from the twelfth article of the treaty, which was suspended by the Senate, that he did not know that cotton was exported at all from the United States.

Well, Sir, we know what followed. The age of cotton became the golden age of our Southern brethren. It gratified their desire for improvement and accumulation, at the same time that it excited it. The desire grew by what it fed upon, and there soon came to be an eagerness for other territory, a new area or new areas for the cultivation of the cotton crop; and measures leading to this result were brought about rapidly, one after another, under the lead of Southern men at the head of the government, they having a majority in both branches of Congress to accomplish their ends. The honorable member from South Carolina6 observed that there has been a majority all along in favor of the North. If that be true, Sir, the North has acted either very liberally and kindly, or very weakly; for they never exercised that majority efficiently five times in the history of the government, when a division or trial of strength arose. Never. Whether they were out-generalled, or whether it was owing to other causes, I shall not stop to consider; but no man acquainted with the history of the Union can deny that the general lead in the politics of the country, for three fourths of the period that has elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution, has been a Southern lead.

In 1802, in pursuit of the idea of opening a new cotton region, the United States obtained a cession from Georgia of the whole of her western territory, now embracing the rich and growing States of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1803 Louisiana was purchased from France, out of which the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri have been framed, as slave-holding States. In 1819 the cession of Florida was made, bringing in another region adapted to cultivation by slaves. Sir, the honorable member from South Carolina thought he saw in certain operations of the government, such as the manner of collecting the revenue, and the tendency of measures calculated to promote emigration into the country, what accounts for the more rapid growth of the North than the South. He ascribes that more rapid growth, not to the operation of time, but to the system of government and administration established under this Constitution. That is matter of opinion. To a certain extent it may be true; but it does seem to me that, if any operation of the government can be shown in any degree to have promoted the population, and growth, and wealth of the North, it is much more sure that there are sundry important and distinct operations of the government, about which no man can doubt, tending to promote, and which absolutely have promoted, the increase of the slave interest and the slave territory of the South. It was not time that brought in Louisiana; it was the act of men. It was not time that brought in Florida; it was the act of men. And lastly, Sir, to complete those acts of legislation which have contributed so much to enlarge the area of the institution of slavery, Texas, great and vast and illimitable Texas, was added to the Union as a slave State in 1845; and that, Sir, pretty much closed the whole chapter, and settled the whole account.

That closed the whole chapter and settled the whole account, because the annexation of Texas, upon the conditions and under the guaranties upon which she was admitted, did not leave within the control of this government an acre of land, capable of being cultivated by slave labor, between this Capitol and the Rio Grande or the Nueces, or whatever is the proper boundary of Texas; not an acre. From that moment, the whole country, from this place to the western boundary of Texas, was fixed, pledged, fastened, decided, to be slave territory for ever, by the solemn guaranties of law. And I now say, Sir, as the proposition upon which I stand this day, and upon the truth and firmness of which I intend to act until it is overthrown, that there is not at this moment within the United States, or any territory of the United States, a single foot of land, the character of which, in regard to its being free territory or slave territory, is not fixed by some law, and some irrepealable law, beyond the power of the action of the government. Is it not so with respect to Texas? It is most manifestly so. The honor able member from South Carolina, at the time of the admission of Texas, held an important post in the executive department of the government; he was Secretary of State. Another eminent person of great activity and adroitness in affairs, I mean the late Secretary of the Treasury,7 was a conspicuous member of this body, and took the lead in the business of annexation, in coöperation with the Secretary of State; and I must say that they did their business faithfully and thoroughly; there was no botch left in it. They rounded it off, and made as close joiner-work as ever was exhibited. Resolutions of annexation were brought into Congress, fitly joined together, compact, efficient, conclusive upon the great object which they had in view, and those resolutions passed.

Allow me to read a part of these resolutions. It is the third clause of the second section of the resolution of the 1st of March, 1845, for the admission of Texas, which applies to this part of the case.

That clause is as follows:

“New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution. And such States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.”

Now, what is here stipulated, enacted, and secured? It is, that all Texas south of 36° 30', which is nearly the whole of it, shall be admitted into the Union as a slave State.

It was a slave State, and therefore came in as a slave State; and the guaranty is, that new States shall be made out of it, to the number of four, in addition to the State then in existence and admitted at that time by these resolutions, and that such States as are formed out of that portion of Texas lying south of 36° 30' may come in as slave States. I know no form of legislation which can strengthen this. I know no mode of recognition that can add a tittle of weight to it. I listened respectfully to the resolutions of my honorable friend from Tennessee.8 He proposed to recognize that stipulation with Texas. But any additional recognition would weaken the force of it; because it stands here on the ground of a contract, a thing done for a consideration. It is a law founded on a contract with Texas, and designed to carry that contract into effect. A recognition now, founded not on any consideration or any contract, would not be so strong as it now stands on the face of the resolution. I know no way, I candidly confess, in which this government, acting in good faith, as I trust it always will, can relieve itself from that stipulation and pledge, by any honest course of legislation whatever. And therefore I say again, that, so far as Texas is concerned, in the whole of that State south of 36° 30, which, I suppose, embraces all the territory capable of slave cultivation, there is no land, not an acre, the character of which is not established by law; a law which cannot be repealed without the violation of a contract, and plain disregard of the public faith.

I hope, Sir, it is now apparent that my proposition, so far as it respects Texas, has been maintained, and that the provision in this article is clear and absolute; and it has been well suggested by my friend from Rhode Island,9 that that part of Texas which lies north of 36° 30' of north latitude, and which may be formed into free States, is dependent, in like manner, upon the consent of Texas, herself a slave State.

Now, Sir, how came this? How came it to pass that within these walls, where it is said by the honorable member from South Carolina that the free States have always had a majority, this resolution of annexation, such as I have described it, obtained a majority in both houses of Congress? Sir, it obtained that majority by the great number of Northern votes added to the entire Southern vote, or at least nearly the whole of the Southern vote. The aggregate was made up of Northern and Southern votes. In the House of Representatives there were about eighty Southern votes and about fifty Northern votes for the admission of Texas. In the Senate the vote for the admission of Texas was twenty-seven, and twenty-five against it; and of those twenty-seven votes, constituting the majority, no less than thirteen came from the free States, and four of them were from New England. The whole of these thirteen Senators, constituting within a fraction, you see, one half of all the votes in this body for the admission of this immeasurable extent of slave territory, were sent here by free States.

Sir, there is not so remarkable a chapter in our history of political events, political parties, and political men as is afforded by this admission of a new slave-holding territory, so vast that a bird cannot fly over it in a week. New England, as I have said, with some of her own votes, supported this measure. Three fourths of the votes of liberty-loving Connecticut were given for it in the other house, and one half here. There was one vote for it from Maine, but, I am happy to say, not the vote of the honorable member who addressed the Senate the day before yesterday,10 and who was then a Representative from Maine in the House of Representatives; but there was one vote from Maine, ay, and there was one vote for it from Massachusetts, given by a gentleman then representing, and now living in, the district in which the prevalence of Free Soil sentiment for a couple of years or so has defeated the choice of any member to represent it in Congress. Sir, that body of Northern and Eastern men who gave those votes at that time are now seen taking upon themselves, in the nomenclature of politics, the appellation of the Northern Democracy. They undertook to wield the destinies of this empire, if I may give that name to a republic, and their policy was, and they persisted in it, to bring into this country and under this government all the territory they could. They did it, in the case of Texas, under pledges, absolute pledges, to the slave interest, and they afterwards lent their aid in bringing in these new conquests, to take their chance for slavery or freedom. My honorable friend from Georgia,11 in March, 1847, moved the Senate to declare that the war ought not to be prosecuted for the conquest of territory, or for the dismemberment of Mexico. The whole of the Northern Democracy voted against it. He did not get a vote from them. It suited the patriotic and elevated sentiments of the Northern Democracy to bring in a world from among the mountains and valleys of California and New Mexico, or any other part of Mexico, and then quarrel about it; to bring it in, and then endeavor to put upon it the saving grace of the Wilmot Proviso. There were two eminent and highly respectable gentlemen from the North and East, then leading gentlemen in the Senate, (I refer, and I do so with entire respect, for I entertain for both of those gentlemen, in general, high regard, to Mr. Dix of New York and Mr. Niles of Connecticut,) who both voted for the admission of Texas. They would not have that vote any other way than as it stood; and they would have it as it did stand. I speak of the vote upon the annexation of Texas. Those two gentlemen would have the resolution of annexation just as it is, without amendment; and they voted for it just as it is, and their eyes were all open to its true character. The honorable member from South Carolina who addressed us the other day was then Secretary of State. His correspondence with Mr. Murphy, the Chargé d'Affaires of the United States in Texas, had been published. That correspondence was all before those gentlemen, and the Secretary had the boldness and candor to avow in that correspondence, that the great object sought by the annexation of Texas was to strengthen the slave interest of the South, Why, Sir, he said so in so many words

MR. CALHOUN. Will the honorable Senator permit me to interrupt him for a moment?

[MR. WEBSTER.] Certainly.

MR. CALHOUN. I am very reluctant to interrupt the honorable gentleman; but, upon a point of so much importance, I deem it right to put myself rectus in curia. I did not put it upon the ground assumed by the Senator. I put it upon this ground: that Great Britain had announced to this country, in so many words, that her object was to abolish slavery in Texas, and, through Texas, to accomplish the abolition of slavery in the United States and the world. The ground I put it on was, that it would make an exposed frontier, and, if Great Britain succeeded in her object, it would be impossible that that frontier could be secured against the aggressions of the Abolitionists; and that this government was bound, under the guaranties of the Constitution, to protect us against such a state of things.

[MR. WEBSTER.] That comes, I suppose, Sir, to exactly the same thing. It was, that Texas must be obtained for the security of the slave interest of the South.

MR. CALHOUN. Another view is very distinctly given.

[MR. WEBSTER.] That was the object set forth in the correspondence of a worthy gentleman not now living,12 who preceded the honorable member from South Carolina in the Department of State. There repose on the files of the Department, as I have occasion to know, strong letters from Mr. Upshur to the United States minister in England, and I believe there are some to the same minister from the honorable Senator himself, asserting to this effect the sentiments of this government; namely, that Great Britain was expected not to interfere to take Texas out of the hands of its then existing government and make it a free country. But my argument, my suggestion, is this; that those gentlemen who composed the Northern Democracy when Texas was brought into the Union saw clearly that it was brought in as a slave country, and brought in for the purpose of being maintained as slave territory, to the Greek Kalends. I rather think the honorable gentleman who was then Secre. tary of State might, in some of his correspondence with Mr. Murphy, have suggested that it was not expedient to say too much about this object, lest it should create some alarm. At any rate, Mr. Murphy wrote to him that England was anxious to get rid of the constitution of Texas, because it was a constitution establishing slavery; and that what the United States had to do was to aid the people of Texas in upholding their constitution; but that nothing should be said which should offend the fanatical men of the North. But, Sir, the honorable member did avow this object himself, openly, boldly, and manfully; he did not disguise his conduct or his motives.

MR. CALHOUN. Never, never.

[MR. WEBSTER.] What he means he is very apt to say.

MR. CALHOUN Always, always.

[MR. WEBSTER.] And I honor him for it.

This admission of Texas was in 1845. Then, in 1847, flagrante bello between the United States and Mexico, the proposition I have mentioned was brought forward by my friend from Georgia, and the Northern Democracy voted steadily against it. Their remedy was to apply to the acquisitions, after they should come in, the Wilmot Proviso. What followsThese two gentlemen,13 worthy and honorable and influential men, (and if they had not been they could not have carried the measure,) these two gentlemen, members of this body, brought in Texas, and by their votes they also prevented the passage of the resolution of the honorable member from Georgia, and then they went home and took the lead in the Free Soil party. And there they stand, Sir! They leave us here, bound in honor and conscience by the resolutions of annexation; they leave us here, to take the odium of fulfilling the obligations in favor of slavery which they voted us into, or else the greater odium of violating those obligations, while they are at home making capital and rousing speeches for free soil and no slavery. And therefore I say, Sir, that there is not a chapter in our history, respecting public measures and public men, more full of what would create surprise, more full of what does create, in my mind, extreme mortification, than that of the conduct of the Northern Democracy on this subject.

Mr. President, sometimes, when a man is found in a new relation to things around him and to other men, he says the world has changed, and that he has not changed. I believe, Sir, that our self-respect leads us often to make this declaration in regard to ourselves when it is not exactly true. An individual is more apt to change, perhaps, than all the world around him. But, under the present circumstances, and under the responsibility which I know I incur by what I am now stating here, I feel at liberty to recur to the various expressions and statements, made at various times, of my own opinions and resolutions respecting the admission of Texas, and all that has followed. Sir, as early as 1836, or in the early part of 1837, there was conversation and correspondence between myself and some private friends on this project of annexing Texas to the United States; and an honorable gentleman with whom I have had a long acquaintance, a friend of mine, now perhaps in this chamber, I mean General Hamilton, of South Carolina, was privy to that correspondence. I had voted for the recognition of Texan independence, because I believed it to be an existing fact, surprising and astonishing as it was, and I wished well to the new republic; but I manifested from the first utter opposition to bringing her, with her slave territory, into the Union. I happened, in 1837, to make a public address to political friends in New York, and I then stated my sentiments upon the subject. It was the first time that I had occasion to advert to it; and I will ask a friend near me to have the kindness to read an extract from the speech made by me on that occasion. It was delivered in Niblo's Garden, in 1837.

[Mr. Greene then read the following extract from the speech of Mr. Webster to which he referred:]

“Gentlemen, we all see that, by whomsoever possessed, Texas is likely to be a slave-holding country; and I frankly avow my entire unwillingness to do any thing which shall extend the slavery of the African race on this continent, or add other slave-holding States to the Union. When I say that I regard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use language which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding States. I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension. We have slavery already amongst us. The Constitution found it in the Union; it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties. To the full extent of these guaranties we are all bound, in honor, in justice, and by the Constitution. All the stipulations contained in the Constitution in favor of the slave-holding States which are already in the Union ought to be fulfilled, and, so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter. Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves; they have never submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I shall concur, therefore, in no act, no measure, no menace, no indication of purpose, which shall interfere or threaten to interfere with the exclusive authority of the several States over the subject of slavery as it exists within their respective limits. All this appears to me to be matter of plain and imperative duty.

 

“But when we come to speak of admitting new States, the subject assumes an entirely different aspect. Our rights and our duties are then both different. . . .

 

“I see, therefore, no political necessity for the annexation of Texas to the Union; no advantages to be derived from it; and objections to it of a strong, and, in my judgment, decisive character.”

I have nothing, Sir, to add to, or to take from, those sentiments. That speech, the Senate will perceive, was made in 1837. The purpose of immediately annexing Texas at that time was abandoned or postponed; and it was not revived with any vigor for some years. In the mean time it happened that I had become a member of the executive administration, and was for a short period in the Department of State. The annexation of Texas was a subject of conversation, not confidential, with the President and heads of departments, as well as with other public men. No serious attempt was then made, however, to bring it about. I left the Department of State in May, 1843, and shortly after I learned, though by means which were no way connected with official information, that a design had been taken up of bringing Texas, with her slave territory and population, into this Union. I was in Washington at the time, and persons are now here who will remember that we had an arranged meeting for conversation upon it. I went home to Massachusetts and proclaimed the existence of that purpose, but I could get no audience and but little attention. Some did not believe it, and some were too much engaged in their own pursuits to give it any heed. They had gone to their farms or to their merchandise, and it was impossible to arouse any feeling in New England, or in Massachusetts, that should combine the two great political parties against this annexation; and, indeed, there was no hope of bringing the Northern Democracy into that view, for their leaning was all the other way. But, Sir, even with Whigs, and leading Whigs, I am ashamed to say, there was a great indifference towards the admission of Texas, with slave territory, into this Union.

The project went on. I was then out of Congress. The annexation resolutions passed on the 1st of March, 1845; the legislature of Texas complied with the conditions and accepted the guaranties; for the language of the resolution is, that Texas is to come in “upon the conditions and under the guaranties herein prescribed.” I was returned to the Senate in March, 1845, and was here in December following, when the acceptance by Texas of the conditions proposed by Congress was communicated to us by the President, and an act for the consummation of the union was laid before the two houses. The connection was then not completed. A final law, doing the deed of annexation ultimately, had not been passed; and when it was put upon its final passage here, I expressed my opposition to it, and recorded my vote in the negative; and there that vote stands, with the observations that I made upon that occasion.14 Nor is this the only occasion on which I have expressed myself to the same effect. It has happened that, between 1837 and this time, on various occasions, I have expressed my entire opposition to the admission of slave States, or the acquisition of new slave territories, to be added to the United States. I know, Sir, no change in my own sentiments, or my own purposes, in that respect. I will now ask my friend from Rhode Island to read another extract from a speech of mine made at a Whig Convention in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the month of September, 1847.

[Mr. Greene here read the following extract:]

“We hear much just now of a panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the “Wilmot Proviso.' That certainly is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another.

 

“I feel some little interest in this matter, Sir. Did not I commit my self in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be per mitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit and take out a patent.

 

“I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, Sir, it is not their thunder.

 

“We are to use the first and the last and every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power.

 

“But I speak of it here, as in Congress, as a political question, a question for statesmen to act upon. We must so regard it. I certainly do not mean to say that it is less important in a moral point of view, that it is not more important in many other points of view; but as a legislator, or in any official capacity, I must look at it, consider it, and decide it as a matter of political action.”

On other occasions, in debates here, I have expressed my determination to vote for no acquisition, or cession, or annexation, north or south, east or west. My opinion has been, that we have territory enough, and that we should follow the Spartan maxim, “Improve, adorn what you have,” seek no further. I think that it was in some observations that I made on the three million loan bill that I avowed this sentiment. In short, Sir, it has been avowed quite as often, in as many places, and before as many assemblies, as any humble opinions of mine ought to be avowed.

But now that, under certain conditions, Texas is in the Union, with all her territory, as a slave State, with a solemn pledge, also, that, if she shall be divided into many States, those States may come in as slave States south of 36° 30', how are we to deal with this subject? I know no way of honest legislation, when the proper time comes for the enactment, but to carry into effect all that we have stipulated to do. I do not entirely agree with my honorable friend from Tennessee,15 that, as soon as the time comes when she is entitled to another representative, we should create a new State. On former occasions, in creating new States out of territories, we have generally gone upon the idea that, when the population of the territory amounts to about sixty thousand, we would consent to its admission as a State. But it is quite a different thing when a State is divided, and two or more States made out of it. It does not follow in such a case that the same rule of apportionment should be applied. That, however, is a matter for the consideration of Congress, when the proper time arrives. I may not then be here; I may have no vote to give on the occasion; but I wish it to be distinctly understood, that, according to my view of the matter, this government is solemnly pledged, by law and contract, to create new States out of Texas, with her consent, when her population shall justify and call for such a proceeding, and, so far as such States are formed out of Texan territory lying south of 36° 30', to let them come in as slave States. That is the meaning of the contract which our friends, the Northern Democracy, have left us to fulfil; and I, for one, mean to fulfil it, because I will not violate the faith of the government. What I mean to say is, that the time for the admission of new States formed out of Texas, the number of such States, their boundaries, the requisite amount of population, and all other things connected with the admission, are in the free discretion of Congress, except this; to wit, that, when new States formed out of Texas are to be admitted, they have a right, by legal stipulation and contract, to come in as slave States.

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excluded from those territories by a law even superior to that which admits and sanctions it in Texas. I mean the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth. That law settles for ever, with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico. Understand me, Sir; I mean slavery as we regard it; the slavery of the colored race as it exists in the Southern States. I shall not discuss the point, but leave it to the learned gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no slavery of that description in California now. I understand that peonism, a sort of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt, an arrangement of a peculiar nature known to the law of Mexico. But what I mean to say is, that it is as impossible that African slavery, as we see it among us, should find its way, or be introduced, into California and New Mexico, as any other natural impossibility. California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains, of great height, with broken ridges and deep valleys. The sides of these mountains are entirely barren; their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be in California, now made free by its constitution, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable land. But it is not so in New Mexico. Pray, what is the evidence which every gentleman must have obtained on this subject, from information sought by himself or communicated by othersI have inquired and read all I could find, in order to acquire information on this important subject. What is there in New Mexico that could, by any possibility, induce any body to go there with slaves? There are some narrow strips of tillable land on the borders of the rivers; but the rivers themselves dry up before midsummer is gone. All that the people can do in that region is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation. And who expects to see a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile only by irrigation?

I look upon it, therefore, as a fixed fact, to use the current expression of the day, that both California and New Mexico are destined to be free, so far as they are settled at all, which I believe, in regard to New Mexico, will be but partially for a great length of time; free by the arrangement of things ordained by the Power above us. I have therefore to say, in this respect also, that this country is fixed for freedom, to as many persons as shall ever live in it, by a less repealable law than that which attaches to the right of holding slaves in Texas; and I will say further, that, if a resolution or a bill were now before us, to provide a territorial government for New Mexico, I would not vote to put any prohibition into it whatever. Such a prohibition would be idle, as it respects any effect it would have upon the territory; and I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to reënact the will of God. I would put in no Wilmot Proviso for the mere purpose of a taunt or a reproach. I would put into it no evidence of the votes of superior power, exercised for no purpose but to wound the pride, whether a just and a rational pride, or an irrational pride, of the citizens of the Southern States. I have no such object, no such purpose. They would think it a taunt, an indignity; they would think it to be an act taking away from them what they regard as a proper equality of privilege. Whether they expect to realize any benefit from it or not, they would think it at least a plain theoretic wrong; that something more or less derogatory to their character and their rights had taken place. I propose to inflict no such wound upon any body, unless something essentially important to the country, and efficient to the preservation of liberty and freedom, is to be effected. I repeat, therefore, Sir, and, as I do not propose to address the Senate often on this subject, I repeat it because I wish it to be distinctly understood, that, for the reasons stated, if a proposition were now here to establish a government for New Mexico, and it was moved to insert a provision for a prohibition of slavery, I would not vote for it.

Sir, if we were now making a government for New Mexico, and any body should propose a Wilmot Proviso, I should treat it exactly as Mr. Polk treated that provision for excluding slavery from Oregon. Mr. Polk was known to be in opinion decidedly averse to the Wilmot Proviso; but he felt the necessity of establishing a government for the Territory of Oregon. The proviso was in the bill, but he knew it would be entirely nugatory; and, since it must be entirely nugatory, since it took away no right, no describable, no tangible, no appreciable right of the South, he said he would sign the bill for the sake of en. acting a law to form a government in that Territory, and let that entirely useless, and, in that connection, entirely senseless, proviso remain. Sir, we hear occasionally of the annexation of Canada; and if there be any man, any of the Northern Democracy, or any one of the Free Soil party, who supposes it necessary to insert a Wilmot Proviso in a territorial government for New Mexico, that man would of course be of opinion that it is necessary to protect the everlasting snows of Canada from the foot of slavery by the same overspreading wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a substantive good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to it from the year 1837; I have been pledged to it again and again; and I will perform those pledges; but I will not do a thing unnecessarily that wounds the feelings of others, or that does discredit to my own understanding

Now, Mr. President, I have established, so far as I proposed to do so, the proposition with which I set out, and upon which I intend to stand or fall; and that is, that the whole territory within the former United States, or in the newly acquired Mexican provinces, has a fixed and settled character, now fixed and settled by law which cannot be repealed; in the case of Texas without a violation of public faith, and by no human power in regard to California or New Mexico; that, therefore, under one or other of these laws, every foot of land in the States or in the Territories has already received a fixed and decided character.

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 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, and subdue the sense of fraternal affection, patriotic love, and mutual regard. I shall bestow a little attention, Sir, upon these various grievances existing on the one side and on the other. I begin with 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 prospered at the expense of 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 have no inclination to enter into them. But I will allude to other complaints of the South, and especially to one which has in my opinion just foundation; and that is, that there has been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, 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, the South, in my judgment, 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 the article of the Constitution16 which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfils 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 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 clause 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. 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 Committee17 has a bill on the subject now before the Senate, which, with some amendments to it, I propose to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest extent. And I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the North, of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some fanatical idea or some false impression, 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 their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor to get round this Constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the Constitution to the persons whose slaves escape from themNone at all; none at all. Neither in the forum of conscience, nor before the face of the Constitution, are they, in my opinion, justified in such an attempt. Of course it is a matter for their consideration. They probably, in the excitement 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 they have neglected to investigate fully the real question, and to consider their constitutional obligations; which, I am sure, if they did consider, they would fulfil with alacrity. I repeat, therefore, Sir, that here is a well-founded ground of complaint against the North, 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 their restoration to those who claim them. Wherever I go, and whenever I speak on the subject, and when I speak here I desire to speak to the whole North, 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 her as a duty.

Complaint has been made against certain resolutions that emanate from legislatures at the North, and are sent here to us, not only on the subject of slavery in this District, but sometimes recommending Congress to consider the means of abolishing slavery in the States. I should be sorry to be called upon to present any resolutions here which could not be referable to any committee or any power in Congress; and therefore I should be unwilling to receive from the legislature of Massachusetts any instructions to present resolutions expressive of any opinion whatever on the subject of slavery, as it exists as the present moment in the States, for two reasons: first, because I do not consider that the legislature of Massachusetts has any thing to do with it; and next, because I do not consider that I, as her representative here, have any thing to do with it. It has become, in my opinion, quite too common; and if the legislatures of the States do not like that opinion, they have a great deal more power to put it down than I have to uphold it; it has become, in my opinion, quite too common a practice for the State legislatures to present resolutions here on all subjects and to instruct us on all subjects. There is no public man that requires instruction more than I do, or who requires information more than I do, or desires it more heartily; but I do not like to have it in too imperative a shape. I took notice, with pleasure, of some remarks made upon this subject, the other day, in the Senate of Massachusetts, by a young man of talent and character, of whom the best hopes may be entertained. I mean Mr. Hillard. He told the Senate of Massachusetts that he would vote for no instructions whatever to be forwarded to members of Congress, nor for any resolutions to be offered expressive of the sense of Massachusetts as to what her members of Congress ought to do. He said that he saw no propriety in one set of public servants giving instructions and reading lectures to another set of public servants. To his own master each of them must stand or fall, and that master is his constituents. I wish these sentiments could become more common. I have never entered into the question, and never shall, as to the binding force of instructions. I will, however, simply say this: if there be any matter pending in this body, while I am a member of it, in which Massachusetts has an interest of her own not adverse to the general interests of the country, I shall pursue her instructions with gladness of heart and with all the efficiency which I can bring to the occasion. But if the question be one which affects her interest, and at the same time equally affects the interests of all the other States, I shall no more regard her particular wishes or instructions than I should regard the wishes of a man who might appoint me an arbitrator or referee to decide some question of important private right between him and his neighbor, and then instruct me to decide in his favor. If ever there was a government upon earth it is this government, if ever there was a body upon earth it is this body, which should consider itself as composed by agreement of all, each member appointed by some, but organized by the general consent of all, sitting here, under the solemn obligations of oath and conscience, to do that which they think to be best for the good of the whole.

Then, Sir, there are the Abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable. At the same time, I believe thousands of their members to be honest and good men, perfectly well meaning men. They have excited feelings; they think they must do something for the cause of liberty; and, in their sphere of action, they do not see what else they can do than to contribute to an Abolition press, or an Abolition society, or to pay an Abolition lecturer. I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of these societies, but I am not blind to the consequences of their proceedings. I cannot but see what mischiefs their interference with the South has produced. And is it not plain to every man? Let any gentleman who entertains doubts on this point recur to the debates in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832, and he will see with what freedom a proposition made by Mr. Jefferson Randolph for the gradual abolition of slavery was discussed in that body. Every one spoke of slavery as he thought; very ignominious and disparaging names and epithets were applied to it. The debates in the House of Delegates on that occasion, I believe, were all published. They were read by every colored man who could read, and to those who could not read, those debates were read by others. At that time Virginia was not unwilling or afraid to discuss this question, and to let that part of her population know as much of the discussion as they could learn. That was in 1832. As has been said by the honorable member from South Carolina, these Abolition societies commenced their course of action in 1835. It is said, I do not know how true it may be, that they sent incendiary publications into the slave States; at any rate, they attempted to arouse, and did arouse, a very strong feeling; in other words, they created great agitation the North against Southern slavery. Well, what was the result? The bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself up in its castle. I wish to know whether any body in Virginia can now talk openly as Mr. Randolph, Governor McDowell, and others talked in 1832, and sent their remarks to the press? We all know the fact, and we all know the cause; and every thing that these agitating people have done has been, not to enlarge, but to restrain, not to set free, but to bind faster, the slave population of the South.18

Again, Sir, the violence of the Northern press is complained of. The press violent! Why, Sir, the press is violent everywhere. There are outrageous reproaches in the North against the South, and there are reproaches as vehement in the South against the North. Sir, the extremists of both parts of this country are violent; they mistake loud and violent talk for eloquence and for reason. They think that he who talks loudest reasons best. And this we must expect, when the press is free, as it is here, and I trust always will be; for, with all its licentiousness and all its evil, the entire and absolute freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of government on the basis of a free constitution. Wherever it exists there will be foolish and violent paragraphs in the newspapers, as there are, I am sorry to say, foolish and violent speeches in both houses of Congress. In truth, Sir, I must say that, in my opinion, the vernacular tongue of the country has become greatly vitiated, depraved, and corrupted by the style of our Congressional debates. And if it were possible for those debates to vitiate the principles of the people as much as they have depraved their tastes, I should cry out, “God save the Republic!”

Well, in all this I see no solid grievance, no grievance presented by the South, within the redress of the government, but the single one to which I have referred; and that is, the want of a proper regard to the injunction of the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves.

There are also complaints of the North against the South. I need not go over them particularly. The first and gravest is, that the North adopted the Constitution, recognizing the existence of slavery in the States, and recognizing the right, to a certain extent, of the representation of slaves in Congress, under a state of sentiment and expectation which does not now exist; and that, by events, by circumstances, by the eagerness of the South to acquire territory and extend her slave population, the North finds itself, in regard to the relative influence of the South and the North, of the free States and the slave States, where it never did expect to find itself when they agreed to the compact of the Constitution. They complain, therefore, that, instead of slavery being regarded as an evil, as it was then, an evil which all hoped would be extinguished gradually, it is now regarded by the South as an institution to be cherished, and preserved, and extended ; an institution which the South has already extended to the utmost of her power by the acquisition of new territory.

Well, then, passing from that, every body in the North reads; and every body reads whatsoever the newspapers contain; and the newspapers, some of them, especially those presses to which I have alluded, are careful to spread about among the people every reproachful sentiment uttered by any Southern man bearing at all against the North; every thing that is calculated to exasperate and to alienate; and there are many such things, as every body will admit, from the South, or some portion of it, which are disseminated among the reading people; and they do exasperate, and alienate, and produce a most mischievous effect upon the public mind at the North. Sir, I would not notice things of this sort appearing in obscure quarters; but one thing has occurred in this debate which struck me very forcibly. An honorable member from Louisiana addressed us the other day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who would be more slow to give offence to any body, and he did not mean in his remarks to give offence. But what did he sayWhy, Sir, he took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring people of the North, giving the preference, in all points of condition, and comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South. The honorable member, doubtless, did not suppose that he gave any offence, or did any injustice. He was merely expressing his opinion. But does he know how remarks of that sort will be received by the laboring people of the North? Why, who are the laboring people of the North? They are the whole North. They are the people who till their own farms with their own hands; freeholders, educated men, independent men. Let me say, Sir, that five sixths of the whole property of the North is in the hands of the laborers of the North; they cultivate their farms, they educate their children, they provide the means of independence. If they are not freeholders, they earn wages; these wages accumulate, are turned into capital, into new freeholds, and small capitalists are created. Such is the case, and such the course of things, among the industrious and frugal. And what can these people think when so respectable and worthy a gentleman as the member from Louisiana undertakes to prove that the absolute ignorance and the abject slavery of the South are more in conformity with the high purposes and destiny of immortal, rational human beings, than the educated, the independent free labor of the North?

There is a more tangible and irritating cause of grievance at the North. Free blacks are constantly employed in the vessels of the North, generally as cooks or stewards. When the vessel arrives at a Southern port, these free colored men are taken on shore, by the police or municipal authority, imprisoned, and kept in prison till the vessel is again ready to sail. This is not only irritating, but exceedingly unjustifiable and oppressive. Mr. Hoar's mission, some time ago, to South Carolina, was a well-intended effort to remove this cause of complaint. The North thinks such imprisonments illegal and unconstitutional; and as the cases occur constantly and frequently, they regard it as a great grievance.

Now, Sir, so far as any of these grievances have their foundation in matters of law, they can be redressed, and ought to be redressed; and so far as they have their foundation in matters of opinion, in sentiment, in mutual crimination and recrimination, all that we can do is to endeavor to allay the agitation, and cultivate a better feeling and more fraternal sentiments between the South and the North.

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member on this floor declarations of opinion that this Union could never be dissolved, than the declaration of opinion by any body, that, in any case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with distress and anguish the word “secession,” especially when it falls from the lips of those who are 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 every body's pardon, as to expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a common centre, 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 causing the wreck 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, 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 run off? No, Sir!

No, Sir! No, Sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, Sir, I see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character.

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 secedeWhat is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longerAm I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of CongressHeaven forbid! 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 amongst 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 generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the armyWhat is to become of the navyWhat 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, or it is supposed possible that there will be, a Southern Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any one 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 the idea has been entertained, that, after the dissolution of this Union, a Southern Confederacy might be formed. 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, so far as it exists, must be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side and the free States to the other. Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities in the natural as well as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of a separation of these States, those that are free to form one government, and those that are slave-holding to form another, as such an impossibility. We could not separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here to-day 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 the strength of America will be in the Valley of the Mississippi. Well, now, Sir, I beg to inquire what the wildest enthusiast has to say on the possibility of cutting that river in two, and leaving free States at its source and on its branches, and slave States down near its mouth, each forming a separate government? Pray, Sir, let ne say to the people of this country, that these things are worthy of their pondering and of their consideration. Here, Sir, are five millions of freemen in the free States north of the river Ohio. Can any body suppose that this population can be severed, by a line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and an alien government, down somewhere, the Lord knows where, upon the lower banks of the Mississippi? What would become of MissouriWill she join the arrondissement of the slave States? Shall the man from the Yellow Stone and the Platte be connected, in the new republic, with the man who lives on the southern extremity of the Cape of Florida? Sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark. I dislike it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up this great government! to dismember this glorious country! to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government or any people! No, Sir! no, Sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession.

Sir, I hear there is to be a convention held at Nashville. I am bound to believe that, if worthy gentlemen meet at Nashville in convention, their object will be to adopt conciliatory counsels; to advise the South to forbearance and moderation, and to advise the North to forbearance and moderation; and to inculcate principles of brotherly love and affection, and attachment to the Constitution of the country as it now is. I believe, if the convention meet at all, it will be for this purpose; for certainly, if they meet for any purpose hostile to the Union, they have been singularly inappropriate in their selection of a place. I remember, Sir, that, when the treaty of Amiens was concluded between France and England, a sturdy Englishman and a distinguished orator, who regarded the conditions of the peace as ignominious to England, said in the House of Commons, that, if King William could know the terms of that treaty, he would turn in his coffin! Let me commend this saying of Mr. Windham, in all its emphasis and in all its force, to any persons who shall meet at Nashville for the purpose of concerting measures for the overthrow of this Union over the bones of Andrew Jackson!

Sir, I wish now to make two remarks, and hasten to a conclusion. I wish to say, in regard to Texas, that if it should be hereafter, at any time, the pleasure of the government of Texas to cede to the United States a portion, larger or smaller, of her territory which lies adjacent to New Mexico, and north of 36° 30' of north latitude, to be formed into free States, for a fair equivalent in money or in the payment of her debt, I think it an object well worthy the consideration of Congress, and I shall be happy to concur in it myself, if I should have a connection with the government at that time.

I have one other remark to make. In my observations upon slavery as it has existed in this country, and as it now exists, I have expressed no opinion of the mode of its extinguishment or melioration. I will say, however, though I have nothing to propose, because I do not deem myself so competent as other gentlemen to take any lead on this subject, that if any gentleman from the South shall propose a scheme, to be carried on by this government upon a large scale, for the transportation of free colored people to any colony or any place in the world, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object. Nay, Sir, following an example set more than twenty years ago by a great man,19 then a Senator from New York, I would return to Virginia, and through her to the whole South, the money received from the lands and territories ceded by her to this government, for any such purpose as to remove, in whole or in part, or in any way to diminish or deal beneficially with, the free colored population of the Southern States. I have said that I honor Virginia for her cession of this territory. There have been received into the treasury of the United States eighty millions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions of dollars. If Virginia and the South see fit to adopt any proposition to relieve themselves from the free people of color among them, or such as may be made free, they have my full consent that the government shall pay them any sum of money out of the proceeds of that cession which may be adequate to the purpose.

And now, Mr. President, I draw these observations to a close. I have spoken freely, and I meant to do so. I have sought to make no display. I have sought to enliven the occasion by no animated discussion, nor have I attempted any train of elaborate argument. I have wished only to speak my sentiments, fully and at length, being desirous, once and for all, to let the Senate know, and to let the country know, the opinions and sentiments which I entertain on all these subjects. These opinions are not likely to be suddenly changed. If there be any future service that I can render to the country, consistently with these sentiments and opinions, I shall cheerfully render it. If there be not, I shall still be glad to have had an opportunity to disburden myself from the bottom of my heart, and to make known every political sentiment that therein exists.

And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in those 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 pigmies 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 brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages to come. We have a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the affections of the whole people. No monarchical throne presses these States together, no iron chain of military power encircles them; they live and stand under a government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last for ever. In all its history it has been beneficent; it has trodden down no man's liberty; it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and patriotism; its yet youthful veins are full of enterprise, courage, and honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental border of the buckler of Achilles:

“Now, the broad shield complete, the artist crowned

With his last hand, and poured the ocean round;

In living silver seemed the waves to roll,

And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole.”

_______________

1 Mr. [John C.] Calhoun.

2 Mr. Calhoun.

3 Mr. Mason of Virginia.

4 See Madison Papers, Vol. III. pp. 1390, 1428, et seq.

5 Seybert's Statistics, p. 92. A small parcel of cotton found its way to Liverpool from the United States in 1784, and was refused admission, on the ground that it could not be the growth of the United States.

6 Mr. Calhoun.

7 Mr. Walker.

8 Mr. [John] Bell.

9 Mr. Greene.

10 Mr. Hamlin.

11 Mr. Berrien.

12 Mr. Upshur.

13 Messrs. Niles of Connecticut and Dix of New York.

14 See the remarks on the Admission of Texas, p. 55 of this volume.

15  Mr. Bell.

16 Art. IV. Sect. 2, §2.

17 Mr. Mason.

18 See Note at the end of the Speech.

19 Mr. Rufus King.

SOURCE: Daniel Webster, The Works of Daniel Webster, Vol. 5, p. 324-66