I will endeavor to draw the few remaining remarks I have to make
to a speedy close. I have submitted with entire frankness the
views which I entertain. I believe, conscientiously believe, that
there is in the Northern States of the Union a sincere attachment
to the Constitution, a firm adherence to the compromises of the
Constitution, and a just consideration for the rights and feelings
of their Southern brethren. And I have a strong hope, an abiding
confidence, that these sentiments will, on every proper occasion, be
manifested by the great body of inhabitants in the free States. If I
thought otherwise, I should be without hope, and should be inclined
to consider my birth an event to be deplored, as imposing upon me
the necessity of witnessing the utter destruction of my country.
But, sir, let a proper bill for the recapture of fugitive slaves be
passed, let this Wilmot Proviso be dropped (and, if possible, sink
into insignificancy and oblivion), and I will be willing to deal
with every question before the Senate in the utmost liberality of
compromise. Yes, sir, I have no objections to compromise. The Union
sprung out of compromise. The Union is supported by legislative
compromise, a compromise incorporated in the fundamental law, the
Constitution. Springing out of compromise, this Union can only be
preserved and made to promote the great and good ends designed by
and hoped from it, by our carrying on the government habitually
in the spirit of compromise. In that view, sir, I am willing to
withdraw all objection to the admission of California, with or
without an alteration of her limits as settled by her constitution.
And when I say that, Mr. President, permit me to say that I make
a great sacrifice. Sir, I occupy the same position with regard to
California now as I did at the last session. The honorable Senator
from Mississippi, now in his seat [Mr. Davis], knows that I was
with him upon a committee charged with the subject of admitting
those Territories as States. I announced to him at once that I was
totally and absolutely opposed to their admission in any form,
and with any subdivision of territory. I have heard nothing to
remove the objections I then entertained; but, in the manner of the
organization of the government there, I find additional objections,
strong in themselves, and giving additional force to those which
I had before. And if I could believe that the views expressed by
the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], the other day, upon this
subject, are the views entertained by the people of California, or
by the gentlemen who are sent here to represent them, my objections
would rise almost to an insurmountable repugnance, to a perpetual
opposition; for that Senator has not hesitated to tell us, in
substance, that we have no choice about admitting California; that
she is a State, and a State she will continue, irrespective of any
act of Congress; that she comes here and demands admission into this
Union, and, if not admitted here, our authority will be cast aside,
and she will be an independent republic upon the Pacific. But,
sir, I cannot believe, and do not believe, that such an insolent
dictation to us is designed by the people of California. And I
personally know the two gentlemen whom she has selected as Senators,
and am sure they would be the first to disown and renounce the
position assumed by their patron upon this floor.
The honorable Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], seems to consider
the admission of California as a matter beyond all price and all
value, to be attained at every hazard and every sacrifice, and
therefore, notwithstanding the opinion he has expressed with
regard to slavery, though he considers it a high, hospitable duty
to entertain the fugitive slaves from the South, and to keep them
from their masters, though he has a holy horror of the extension
of slavery into the Territories now free, and considers every
obligation imposed by the Constitution in reference to slavery
overborne and annulled by the supreme law of God--he tells us,
that so all-important is the admission of California, under the
circumstances, that he would have voted for her admission with an
express recognition by her constitution of the right to carry slaves
into her territory. An allusion to this subject seems to have a
strange effect upon the Senator from New York. He is carried back
at once to the last session, when certain measures were pending
here for the purpose of organizing some temporary government for
California and New Mexico; and alluding to the gentleman who is
now the source of power and patronage in this Government, he thus
expresses himself:
"May this republic never have a President commit a more serious
or more dangerous usurpation of power than the act of the present
eminent Chief Magistrate, in endeavoring to induce the legislative
authorities to relieve him from the exercise of military power, by
establishing civil institutions, regulated by law, in a distant
province. Rome would have been standing this day if she had had
such generals and such tribunes."
Yes, sir, if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary Taylor for
commander of her armies; if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary
Taylor for a tribune, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns, Attila,
and all his hordes, would have poured upon the empire in vain--they
would have been repelled, overcome upon the embattled plain, and
driven back to their fastnesses in the North, and Rome would
stand this day proud mistress of the world! Now, sir, whether the
President of the United States can swallow such an adulation as
this, I will not undertake to decide; but such is my estimate of his
intelligence and his merit, of his modesty--a just modesty, which
usually accompanies true merit--that I believe he has no powers of
deglutition sufficient to get it down.
I have said, Mr. President, that I should make a great sacrifice
in my vote for the admission of California; yet I will make the
sacrifice, not grudgingly, but cheerfully; and, as said by the
Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass], the other day, if asked "What
would I do to restore harmony to the country, and make this still a
united and happy people," I would answer like him, "I scarcely know
what I would _not_ do to accomplish such an end."
Mr. President, I feel the importance of this great subject, and my
utter want of power to treat it as it deserves. I wish to excite or
to irritate the angry feelings of no section of this country; I am
conscious, in my own bosom, of no sentiment towards any portion of
my countrymen, except one of respect and cordial attachment. But
I may be permitted to except from this general declaration those
mischievous associations in the Northern part of the United States,
which, to our injury, and to the great and permanent injury of the
unfortunate slaves among us, have been, with an unholy pertinacity,
agitating the subject of this domestic institution of ours for the
last fifteen years. Towards them, even, I trust I have no feeling of
hatred. For every portion of the American people, I care not whether
in the East or West, the North or South, I have the heart and hand
of a brother. There is no gentleman upon this floor, among my
immediate associates around me, no gentleman upon the other side of
the chamber, for whom I have not always manifested a proper personal
consideration and kindness; but I wish to make our Northern friends
aware of the danger to which we are exposed. My own views have never
been extreme, my position has ever been moderate; and I trust some
credit will be given me when I declare my deliberate judgment, that
consequences the most serious, even the most calamitous, may follow
a particular disposition of this subject by the present Congress.
If it should be believed throughout the Southern country that
sentiments which we have heard here uttered, are the sentiments of
the whole body of the North, every desire to remain together would
sink in Southern hearts. We would be together, then, not for love
or affection, not from the hope of happiness or improvement; and if
we would remain united at all, it would be solely from dread of the
greater and darker calamities that might follow our separation. If
this subject is met in a proper spirit, it can be easily settled and
adjusted. So far as I am concerned, I am willing to meet upon any
reasonable ground. I am willing to yield much that I wish, to do
much for which I have a strong and serious repugnance.
I call upon every conservative gentleman in this body, every one
from a free State who desires to perpetuate the institutions of
his country in their true spirit and character, who wishes not to
convert our Union into an association of discordant and discontented
parts, held together by dread or force, but to preserve us one
people, united in heart and affection, I call upon him to meet us
upon the ground of kindness, compromise, and conciliation. I say
to him, drop this odious proviso, a measure powerful for evil and
impotent for good; let it not have an immortality of mischief;
give us security for the restoration of our fugitive slaves; admit
California as you wish, and if you choose to abolish in the District
of Columbia this foreign slave-trade, this conversion of the seat
of government into a general mart for the slavedealers of the
surrounding States, I say abolish it. My colleague [Mr. Mangum] and
myself both stand ready to vote for it. Permit me, sir, to say to
our Northern friends, that if they suppose Southern gentlemen to be
wedded to any of the adventitious evils or abuses of slavery, to be
unwilling to correct excesses, or disposed to support cruelty or to
patronize inhumanity, they do us great injustice. Upon the rights of
property we stand--these we consider sacred--and from our support of
them we cannot be moved. But, saving these, make what regulations
of police the occasion may require, and I will not only submit, but
will give them my hearty concurrence and approbation.
Mr. President, it cannot be--I will not believe it--nothing but
demonstration, nothing but the accomplished fact shall satisfy
me, that we have so degenerated from our sires of the Revolution
as not to be able harmoniously to adjust the questions before us.
It cannot be that the true spirit of concession and compromise
has fled; that idealisms have taken the place of constitutional
obligations and kindly feelings; that fanaticism has dethroned
reason, and the Union, the work of our noble fathers, just as it has
well commenced its onward progress to a future of real glory and
power, is to be broken to pieces by the rude hands of agitation,
by cabals abroad or intrigues at home, contrary to the general
sentiment and earnest wish of the great mass of the people. Sir,
we have had offerings made here for the preservation of this Union
from every quarter of this chamber. Often and nobly have they been
made by the distinguished Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass]; firm,
steady, constant, and true in this cause has my friend from New
York, on the other side of the chamber [Mr. Dickinson], at all times
been. The distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay], in his
late earnest and patriotic efforts, has added another laurel to the
immortal chaplet that binds his brow; and but a few days since,
the great expounder of the Constitution [Mr. Webster], that man
of mighty mental and moral power, closed the list of great names
engaged in this holy cause, in a speech so clear in expression,
so comprehensive in patriotism, so noble in self-devotion, that
could we doubt the success of these united efforts for harmony
and conciliation, we must needs believe that, for some inexpiable
crime, God has visited us with judicial blindness, preparatory to
the outpouring of his indignation upon our country. Sir, I will not
believe this, I do not, I will not despair of a cause so good. On
the contrary I trust that we shall yet come together on a common
basis of harmonious cooperation, and find ourselves able to adopt,
as the expression not only of a patriotic wish, but of an assured
and confident hope, the sentiment made immortal by the great Senator
from Massachusetts, "_Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable_."
[Illustration: DAVID L. SWAIN.]
DAVID L. SWAIN.
BY Z. B. VANCE.
That great range of mountains, extending from the St. Lawrence to
the plains of Alabama, called by De Soto Appalachian, and by the
Indian tribes, Alleghanies, which, in their tongue, signifies the
endless, attains its greatest elevation in the Black Mountain group
in the western part of this State.
This group lies partly within the counties of Yancey, McDowell
and Buncombe; and the tallest peak of the cluster, and of all
the peaks east of the Rocky Mountains, is Mt. Mitchell. From its
dominating summit there is thrown off a ridge which runs west,
south and southwest, in a zigzag shape, alternated with deep gaps,
tall summits and frightful precipices, until it melts away in the
peninsula of the plain which is enclosed by the waters of the
Swannanoa and the French Broad, in the county of Buncombe.
In this range, about seven miles from where these waters meet, there
is a little gorge-like valley scooped out of its western slope,
which spreads its narrow bosom precisely in the face of the setting
sun. The tall dome of Mt. Mitchell literally casts its shadow
over this mountain-cradled vale as the sun first comes up from
the eastern sea. Great ridges hem it in on either side, gradually
melting on the south into the sloping hills on which stands the town
of Asheville. A bold fresh brook from springs high up in the heart
of the mountain ripples through the bottom of this vale, reenforced
by a hundred smaller streams pouring from the ravines on the right
and left, and empties its bright, fresh floods into the French
Broad five miles below the county-seat. Near the very head of this
valley is a charming little homestead, consisting of fertile bits
of meadow on the brook-side, above which are open fields swelling
upwards to the skirts of the mountain forests. In the midst of
these fields, where the ground slopes gently towards the brook,
there stood, about the beginning of this century, an old-fashioned
log-house of the kind familiarly known to our mountain people as
a "double-cabin." An orchard of a growth and fruitful luxuriance
peculiar to that region surrounded the house and curtilage,
imparting that air of rustic beauty and abundance which constitutes
a special charm in simple country homes.
This spot, at the period indicated, was the home of an honest,
upright, and intelligent man, whose name was George Swain; and here,
on the 4th day of January, 1801, was born the child who became the
man to whose memory we desire to do honor this day.
David Lowrie Swain was the second son and child of George and
Caroline Swain. His father was of English descent, and was born
in Roxboro, Massachusetts, in 1763. He came South and settled in
Wilkes, now Oglethorpe county, in Georgia, served in the Legislature
of that State five years, and was a member of the convention that
revised the Constitution of Georgia. His health failing, he removed
to Buncombe county, North Carolina, in 1795, and was one of its
earliest settlers. He was for many years Postmaster at Asheville,
and until within two years of his death; becoming insane a year or
two previous to that event. Soon after his settlement in Buncombe
he was married to Caroline Lowrie, a widow, whose maiden name was
Lane, a sister of Joel Lane, the founder of the city of Raleigh, and
of Jesse Lane, the father of General Joe Lane, late United States
Senator from Oregon, and Democratic candidate for Vice-President
on the ticket with General Breckinridge in 1860. This lady had
three children by her first husband, one of whom, the late Colonel
James Lowrie, of Buncombe county, lived and died a citizen of most
excellent repute. By her last husband she had seven children. All of
these are now dead.
George Swain was by trade a hatter, but like all the thrifty men of
his day, he combined farming with his shop, and was a successful man
in both, as success was then measured. Whilst his hats were famous
all the county over, his little farm on Beaver Dam, the name of the
stream on which it was located, was considered a pattern in that
period of rude agriculture. His apple-trees, under the shade of
which young David was born and reared, were the product of cuttings
brought all the way from Massachusetts--a great and tedious journey
then--and some of the varieties which he thus imported still remain
in that region by the names which he gave them.
He was a man of some learning and much intelligence, mixed with a
considerable degree of eccentricity. Like all New Englanders, he
believed much in education, and struggled constantly to impart it
to his children. He was possessed of a most wonderful memory, and
I have heard it said by a lady who, as a girl, was intimate in his
house, that he often entertained her and other visitors for hours
together with the recitation of poems without book or manuscript.
In this humble but instructive home, secluded from anything that
could be termed fashionable society, but trained to industry, and
instructed in the ways of integrity, young David Swain's early youth
was passed. I cannot subscribe to the phrase so usually employed
in describing such biographical beginnings as this, when it is
said that the subject of the memoir was "without the advantages
of birth." The fact that a child is born amid such surroundings,
and with such blood in his veins as coursed through those of young
Swain, constitutes the very highest advantages which could surround
the birth and bringing up of a young man who is to fight his way in
a country like ours.
The surest elements of success are commonly found in the absence of
indulgences in youth, and the most successful warriors against fate
are those who are taught by stern necessity to fight early.
Governor Swain was fond of recurring to the scenes and influences
of his early life, and always felt that he had been fortunate
in possessing a father to whom he could look with respect and
confidence. He maintained a close and confidential correspondence
with him from the time he left his roof to make his own way, and
often referred to it as having had a most beneficial influence upon
him.
In the summer vacation of 1852 he visited Buncombe, and I
accompanied him out to Beaver Dam to see once more the place of his
birth, then and now in the possession of the Rev. Thomas Stradly.
On a spot not very far from the house he stopped and told me that
near this place was the first time he ever saw a wagon. This
wondrous vehicle, he said, belonged to Zebulon and Bedent Baird,
Scotchmen by birth, who came to North Carolina some time previous to
1790, by way of New Jersey. There being no road for such vehicles,
this wagon had approached the house of Mr. George Swain, he said,
in the washed-out channel of the creek, and the future Governor of
North Carolina stood in the orchard waiting its approach with wonder
and awe, and finally, as its thunder reverberated in his ears, as it
rolled over the rocky channel of the creek, he incontinently took
to his heels, and only rallied when safely entrenched behind his
father's house. He enjoyed the relation of this to me exquisitely.
As a palliation of his childish ignorance, however, he added that
this was the first wagon which had crossed the Blue Ridge.
With healthful labor at home, and healthful instruction by the
fireside, the days of his early childhood passed, till he attained
the age at which his careful father thought he should be placed
under other instructors. At the age of fifteen he was accordingly
sent to the school near Asheville, called the Newton Academy. Its
founder and first teacher was the Rev. George Newton, a Presbyterian
clergyman of good repute, who was succeeded by Rev. Mr. Porter,
another Presbyterian clergyman, and then by the late William Smith,
of Georgia, familiarly known as "_Long Billy_." This academy was
justly famous in that region, and educated, in whole or in part,
many of the prominent citizens of that country beyond the Blue
Ridge, and elsewhere. Governor B. F. Perry and Hon. Waddy Thompson,
of South Carolina, M. Patton, R. B. Vance, James W. Patton, James
Erwin, and many others of North Carolina, were classmates of young
Swain at that school. A lady who is now living, and was also a
schoolmate of his there, tells me he was a most exemplary boy and
diligent student, soon and clearly outstripping all his associates
in the acquisition of knowledge. This superiority was doubtless due
to the aid of an exceedingly strong and tenacious memory which he
inherited from his father, and which characterized him through life.
Mr. M. Patton informs me that young Swain taught Latin in the same
school for several months.
I am not aware that he attended any other school till he came to
the University in 1821; in that year he entered the junior class,
but only remained some four months. Want of means most probably
prevented him from graduating. In 1822 he entered upon the study
of the law in the office of Chief Justice Taylor, in Raleigh. He
obtained license to practise in December, 1822; and referring to
that event in his address at the opening of Tucker Hall, August,
1867, forty-five years afterwards, he gives a most entertaining
picture of the Supreme Court which granted his license, and of the
great North Carolina lawyers who at that time were practicing before
its bar.
Returning to the mountains, with his license in his pocket and
a sweetheart in his eye, he went hopefully to work, and became
almost immediately in possession of a lucrative practice. The good
people of his native county were quick to perceive his talents
and integrity, and in 1824 he was elected a member of the House
of Commons from Buncombe. So great was the satisfaction which
his conduct in that capacity gave to his constituents, that they
continued him as their member by successive elections until 1829.
In his character as legislator he was most distinguished for his
industry and attention to details, especially in the department
of statistics and taxation, in which he soon became the highest
authority in the body of which he was a member. He was prominent
in getting the bill passed for the building of the French Broad
Turnpike, a measure which revolutionized the intercourse between
Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina, bringing an immense stream
of emigration, travel, and trade through western North Carolina, and
adding greatly to his own popularity among the people of that region.
In 1829 he was elected, by the Legislature, Solicitor of the
Edenton Circuit, a circumstance remarkable in our legal annals,
both on account of his extreme youth at the time of his election
to so important an office, and because the Edenton Circuit was in
the most distant part of the State from his residence, and it had
been the custom to select for that office a lawyer residing in the
district for which he was elected. This compliment to his learning
and ability was conferred upon him without solicitation, under the
following circumstances: A bitter contest had sprung up between two
candidates for that position, one of whom was the notorious Robert
Potter, and the friends of neither consenting to give way, by common
consent both sides agreed to take young Swain.
He rode only one circuit, when the next Legislature elected him
a Judge of the Superior Court over Judge Seawell, then an able
and eminent practitioner at the Raleigh bar. Swain was at that
time the youngest man ever elevated to the bench in this State,
except Judge Badger, who was elected at the age of twenty-six. He
had ridden four circuits as judge with great acceptance, when in
1832 he was elected by the Legislature to be Governor of the State
over several competitors, and was inaugurated on the first day of
January, 1832. Under the Constitution of 1776 the term of Governor
was only one year, and Governor Swain was reelected in 1833 and
1834 successively. Just previous to the close of his official term
in 1835 he was elected President of the State University, under the
following circumstances: It is said that he would have continued in
politics if the way had then been clear for him to go to the United
States Senate; or that he would have continued in the law, could he
then have returned to the bench. But the way to neither being at
that time open to him, he had no desire to return to the practice
of law, or to continue further in State politics, in which he had
already attained the highest honors which his State had to bestow.
Under these circumstances, he turned his eyes towards the presidency
of the University, vacant since January, 1835, by the death of the
venerable and lamented Dr. Joseph Caldwell. But great as was his
reputation as lawyer and politician, his character as a scholar was
by no means so established, nor had public attention been directed
to him as a fit person to take charge of an institution of learning.
He one day called his friend, Judge Nash, into the executive
office and told him frankly that he desired to be made President
of the University; and seeing that the Judge did not express much
approbation of the project, he asked him to consult with Judge
Cameron, and if they two did not approve of it, he would abandon the
idea. Nash promised to do so, and on meeting Judge Cameron gave him
his opinion that Swain would not do for the place. Cameron, however,
dissented at once, saying that Swain was the very man; that though
it was true he was not a scholar, yet he had all the other necessary
elements of success; and that the man who had shown he knew so well
how to manage men could not fail to know how to manage boys. So, at
the next meeting of the Board of Trustees, Judge Cameron nominated
him and secured his election to the Presidency. This closed his
political and judicial career.
I have omitted to mention, however, in its chronological order, a
most important part of that career. In 1835, whilst Governor, he was
elected a delegate from the county of Buncombe to the convention
of that year which amended the Constitution. Perhaps no portion
of his political service was of greater importance to the State
than that which he rendered as a member of that convention. His
sagacity, liberality, and profound acquaintance with the statistics
of the State, and with the history of the constitutional principles
of government contributed very largely to the formation of that
admirable instrument, the Constitution of 1835, a more excellent one
than which, our surroundings considered, was never framed by any
English-speaking people. Few men in our annals have risen in life
more rapidly than he, or sooner attained the highest honors in every
branch of the government, legislative, judicial and executive. In
making an estimate of his character and capacity in these offices,
we shall be compelled, beyond doubt, to conclude that it required
very substantial abilities to enable him thus to reach and sustain
himself creditably in them all.