I cannot remain silent under the sentiment which has just been announced
and so enthusiastically received. That sentiment relates not to myself
but to Kentucky--dearer to me than self. Of Kentucky I have nothing to
say. There she is. In her history, from the period when first penetrated
by the white man as the _dark and bloody ground_, down to the present,
she speaks. The character to which that history entitles her is before
the world. She is proud of it. She is proud of the past; she is proud of
the present. And her pride is patriotic and just. As one of her sons, I
ask to express in her name, the acknowledgments due to the complimentary
notice you have taken of her, a notice not the less complimentary from
its association with the name of Massachusetts.
There is much in the character and history of Massachusetts which should
bind her in the strongest bonds to Kentucky. Your sentiment places them
together: just where they ought to be. Kentucky is willing to occupy the
place you have assigned her. Without respect now to subordinate
differences in past events, both States stand knit together by the
highest and strongest motives by which States can be impelled. I mean
the motive and purpose common to each of maintaining and upholding, in
every extremity and to the very last, the Union of these States and the
Constitution. Massachusetts has proclaimed over and over again her
resolution not to survive them. Nor will Kentucky survive them. She has
embarked her whole destiny--all she has and all she hopes for--in the
Union and the Constitution. Let come what may of public calamity, of
faction, of sectional seduction or intimidation, or evil in any form the
most dreadful to man, Kentucky, like Massachusetts, regards the
overthrow of the Union as more frightful than all. Kentucky acknowledges
no justification for a disruption of the Union that is not a
justification for revolution itself. In that Union, and under that
Constitution, Kentucky means to stand or fall. Kentucky stands by the
Union in her living efforts; she means to hold fast to it in her
expiring groans. With Massachusetts she means to perish, if perish she
must, with hands clenched, in death, upon the Union.
* * * * *
If the occasion allowed it, I should like to say something of old
Massachusetts. I should like to rekindle my own patriotism at her
altars. Here--on this very spot--in this very hall--the sacred flame
of revolutionary liberty first ascended. Here it has ever ascended. It
has never been smothered--never dimmed. Perpetual--clear--holy! Behold
its inspirations here in your midst! Where are the doctrines of the
Union and the Constitution so incessantly inculcated as here? Where
are those doctrines so enthusiastically adopted as here? The
principles of the Union and the Constitution--for us another name for
the principles of liberty which cannot survive their overthrow--will,
in after ages, trace with delight their lineage through you. The blood
of freedom is here pure. To be allied to it is to be ennobled.
_Massachusetts!_ Which of her multitude of virtues shall I commend?
How can I discriminate? I will not attempt it. I take her as she is
and all together--I give--_Old Massachusetts!_ God bless her!