confederation, you assented to the formation of our present
constitutional Union. You did not surrender your state sovereignty.
Your fathers had sacrificed too much to claim as the reward of their
trials that they should merely have a change of masters. And a change
of masters it would have been had Massachusetts surrendered her State
sovereignty to the central government, and consented that that central
government should have the power to coerce a State. But if this power
does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, I
say, who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your
candidate this evening, when he has plead to you the cause of State
independence, and the right of every community to he the judge of its
own domestic affairs? [Applause.] This is all we have ever asked—we of
the South, I mean,—for I stand before you one of those who have been
called the ultra men of the South, and I speak, therefore, for that
class; and tell you that your candidate for Governor has asserted
to-night everything which we have claimed as a right, and demanded as a
duty resulting from the guarantees of the Constitution, made for our
mutual protection. [Applause.] Nor is here alone in that such doctrine
is asserted, the like it has been my happiness to hear in your
daughter, the neighboring State of Maine. I have found that the
democrats there asserted the same broad, constitutional principle for
which we have been contending, by which we are willing to live, for
which we are willing to die! [Loud cheers and cries of “good!”]
In this state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated?
What is there practical or rational in the present excitement? Why,
since the old controversies, with all their lights and shadows, have
passed away, is the political firmament covered by one dark pall, the
funeral shade of which increases with every passing year?
Why is it, I say, that you are thus agitated in relation to the
domestic affairs of other communities? Why is it that the peace of the
country is disturbed in order that one people may assume to judge of
what another people should do? Is there any political power to
authorize such interference? If so, where is it? You did not surrender
your sovereignty. You gave to the federal government certain functions.
It was your agent, created for specified purposes. It can do nothing
save that which you have given it power to perform. Where is the grant
of the Constitution which confers on the federal government a right to
determine what shall be property? Surely none such exists; that
question it belongs to every community to settle for itself: you judge
in your case; every other State must judge in its case. The federal
government has no power to create or establish; more palpably still, it
has no power to destroy property. Do you pay taxes to an agent that he
may destroy your property? Do you support him for that purpose? It is
an absurdity on the face of it. To ask the question is to answer it.
The government is instituted to protect, not to destroy property. In
abundance of caution, your fathers provided that the federal government
should not take private property, even for its own use, unless by
making due compensation therefore. One of its great purposes was to
increase the security of property, and by a more perfect union of
forces, to render more effective protection to the States. When that
power for protection becomes a source of danger, the purpose for which
the government was formed will have been defeated, and the government
can no longer answer the ends for which it was established.
Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African
slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical
pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate,
and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for
other men’s sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it
is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the Constitution;
the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, and imposes
obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the Bible; that
justifies it. Not the good of society; for if they go where it exists,
they find that society recognizes it as good. What, then, is their
standard? The good of mankind? Is that seen in the diminished resources
of the country? Is that seen in the diminished comfort of the world? Or
is not the reverse exhibited? Is it in the cause of Christianity? It
cannot be, for servitude is the only agency through which Christianity
has reached that degraded race, the only means by which they have been
civilized and elevated. Or is their charity manifested in denunciation
of their brethren who are restrained from answering by the contempt
which they feel for a mere brawler, whose weapons are empty words?
[Applause.]
What, my friends, must be the consequences of this agitation? Good or
evil? They have been evil, and evil they must be only, to the end. Not
one particle of good has been done to any man, of any color, by this
agitation. It has been insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for
the destruction of that Union on which our hopes of future greatness
depend.
On the one side, then you see agitation, tending slowly and steadily to
that separation of the states, which, if you have any hope connected
with the liberty of mankind, if you have any national pride in making
your country the greatest of the earth, if you have any sacred regard
for the obligation which the acts of your fathers entailed upon you,—by
each and all of these motives you are prompted to united and earnest
effort to promote the success of that great experiment which your
fathers left it to you to conclude. [Applause.] On the other hand, if
each community, in accordance with the principles of our government,
whilst controlling its own domestic institutions, faithfully struggles
as a part of the united whole, for the common benefit of all, the
future points us to fraternity, to unity, to co-operation, to the
increase of our own happiness, to the extension of our useful example
over mankind, and the covering of that flag, whose stars have already
more than doubled their original number, [applause,] with a galaxy to
light the ample folds which then shall wave either the recognized flag
of every state, or the recognized protector of every state upon the
continent of America. [Applause.]
In connection with the idea, which I have presented of the early
sentiment of community independence, I will add the very striking fact
that one of the colonies, about the time that they had resolved to
unite for the purpose of achieving their independence, addressed the
colonial congress to know in what condition they would be in the
interval between their separation from the government of Great Britain
and the establishment of the government for the colonies. The answer of
the colonial congress was exactly that which might have been
expected—exactly that which state rights democracy would answer to-day,
to such an inquiry—that they must take care of their domestic polity,
that the congress “had nothing to do with it.” [Applause.] If such
sentiment continued—if it governed in every state—if representatives
were chosen upon it—then your halls of legislation would not be
disturbed about the question of the domestic concerns of the different
states. The peace of the country would not be hazarded by the
arraignment of the family relations of people over whom the government
has no control. In harmony working together, in co-intelligence for the
conservation of the interests of the country, in protection to the
states and the development of the great ends for which the government
was established, what effects might not be produced? As our government
increased in expansion, it would increase in its beneficent influence
upon the people; we should increase in fraternity; and it would be no
longer a wonder to see a man coming from a southern state to address a
Democratic audience in Boston. [Applause, cries of “good, good.”]
But I have referred to the fact that, at an early period, Massachusetts
stood pre-eminently forward among those who asserted community
independence. And this reminds me of an incident, in illustration,
which occurred when President Washington visited Boston, and John
Hancock was Governor. The latter is reported to have declined to call
upon the President, because he contended that every man who came within
the limits of Massachusetts must yield rank and precedence to the
Governor of the State; and only surrendered the point on account of his
personal regard and respect for the character of George Washington. I
honor him for it,—value it as one of the early testimonies in favor of
State Rights, and wish all our governors had the same high estimate of
the dignity of the office of Governor of a State as had that great and
glorious man. [Applause.]
Thus it appears that the founders of this government were the true
Democratic States Rights men. That Democracy was States rights, and
States rights was Democracy, and it is to-day. Your resolutions breathe
it. The Declaration of Independence embodies the sentiment which had
lived in the hearts of the people for many years before its formal
assertion. Our fathers asserted that great principle—the right of the
people to choose the government for themselves—that government rested
upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expression it
uttered the same idea, _community independence_, and the dependence of
the government upon the community over which it existed. It was an
American principle, the great spirit which animated our country then,
and it were well if more inspired us now. But I have said that this
State sovereignty—this community independence—has never been
surrendered, and that there is no power in the federal government to
coerce a State. Does any one ask, then, how it is that a State is to be
held to its obligations? My answer is: by _its honor_, and the
obligation is the more sacred to observe every feature of the compact,
because there is no power to force obedience. The great error of the
confederation was that it attempted to act upon the States. It was
found impracticable, and our present form of government was adopted,
which acts upon individuals and does not attempt to act upon States.
The question was considered in the convention which framed the
constitution, and after discussion the proposition to give power to the
general government to enforce upon a resistant State obedience to the
law was rejected. It was upon this ground of exemption from compulsion
that the compact of the States became a sacred obligation; and it was
upon this honorable fulfilment principally that our fathers depended
for the security of the rights which the Constitution was designed to
secure. [Applause.]
The fugitive slave compact in the Constitution of the United States
implied that the States should fulfil it voluntarily. They expected the
States to legislate so as to secure the rendition of fugitives.
And in 1788 it was a matter of complaint that the colony of Florida did
not restore fugitive negroes from the United States who escaped into
that colony, and a committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York,
Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, and Madison, of Virginia, reported
resolutions in the Congress instructing the committee for foreign
affairs to address the _charge d’affaires_ at Madrid to apply to his
majesty of Spain to issue orders to his governor to compel them to
secure the rendition of fugitive negroes to any one who should go there
entitled to receive them. This was the sentiment of the committee, and
they added, by way of example, as the States would return any slaves
from Florida who might escape into their limits.
When the Constitutional requirement was imposed, who could have doubted
that every State faithful to its obligations would comply without
raising questions as to whether the institution should or should not
exist in another community over which they had no control. Congress was
at last forced by the failures of the States, to legislate on the
subject, and this has been one of the causes by which you have been
disturbed. You have been called upon to make war against a law which
would never have been enacted, if each State had faithfully discharged
the obligation imposed by the compact of the Constitution. [Cheers.]
There is another question connected with this negro agitation. It is in
relation to the right to hold slaves in the Territories. What power has
Congress to declare what shall be property? None, in the territory or
elsewhere. Have the States by separate legislation the power to
prescribe the condition upon which a citizen may enter on and enjoy the
common property of the United States? Clearly not. Shall those who
first go into the territory, deprive any citizen of the United States
subsequently emigrating thither, of those rights which belong to him as
an equal owner of the soil? Certainly not. Sovereignty jurisdiction can
only pass to these inhabitants when the States, the owners of that
territory, shall recognize the inhabitants as an independent community,
and admit it to become an equal State of the Union. Until then the
Constitution and laws of the United States must be the rules governing
within the limits of a territory. The Constitution recognizes all
property gives equal privileges to every citizen of the States; and it
would be a violation of its fundamental principles to attempt any
discrimination. [Applause.] Viewed in any of its phases, political,
moral, social, general, or local, what is there to sustain this
agitation in relation to other people’s negroes, unless it be a bridge
over which to pass into office—a ready capital in politics available to
missionaries staving at home-reformers of things which they do not go
to learn—preachers without and audience—overseers without laborers and
without wages—war-horses who snuff the battle afar off, and cry: “ Aha!
aha! I am afar off from the battle.” [Great laughter and applause.]
Thus it is that the peace of the Union is destroyed; thus it is that
brother is arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come to
consider—not how they can promote each other’s interests, but how they
may successfully war upon them. And the political agitator like the
vampire fans the victim to which he clings but to destroy.
Among culprits there is none more odious to my mind than a public
officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution—the compact
between the States binding each for the common defence and general
welfare of the other—yet retains to himself a mental reservation that
he will war upon the principles he has sworn to maintain, and upon the
property rights the protection of which are part of the compact of the
Union. [Applause.]
It is a crime too low to be named before this assembly: It is one which
no man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that he will
support the Constitution—to take an office which belongs in many of its
relations to all the States; and to use it as a means of injuring a
portion of the States of whom he is thus the representative; is treason
to every thing honorable in man. It is the base and cowardly attack of
him who gains the confidence of another, in order that he may wound
him. [Applause.]
But we have heard it argued—have seen it published—a petition has been
circulated for signers, announcing that there was an incompatibility
between the sections; that the Union had been tried long enough, and
that it had proved to be necessary to separate from those sections of
the Union in which the curse of slavery existed. Ah! those modern
saints, so much wiser than our fathers, have discovered an
incompatibility requiring separation in those relations which existed
when the Union was formed. They have found the remnants only of a
diversity which existed when South Carolina sent her rice to Boston,
and Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York brought in their funds for
her relief.
They have found the remnants only; for from that day to this the
difference between the people has been constantly decreasing, and the
necessity for union which then arose in no small degree from the
diversity of product, and soil and climate, has gone on increasing,
both by the extension of our own territory and the introduction of new
tropical products; so that whilst the difference between the people has
diminished, the diversity in the products has increased, and that
motive for union which your fathers found exists in a higher degree
than it did when they resolved to be united.
Diversity there is of occupation, of habits, of education, of
character. But it is not of that extreme kind which proves
incompatibility, or even incongruity; for your Massachusetts man, when
he comes to Mississippi, adopts our opinions and our institutions, and
frequently becomes the most extreme southern man among us. [Great
applause.] As our country has extended—as new products have been
introduced into it, the free trade which blesses our Union, has been of
increasing value.
And it is not an unfortunate circumstance that this diversity of
pursuit and character has survived the condition which produced it.
Originally it sprang in no small degree from natural causes.
Massachusetts became a manufacturing and a commercial State because of
the connection between her fine harbor and water power, resulting from
the fact that the streams make their last leap into the sea, so that
the ship of commerce brought the staple to the manufacturing power.
This made you a commercial and manufacturing people. In the Southern
States great plains interpose between the last leaps of the streams and
the sea. Those plains most proximate to navigation, were the first
cultivated, and the sea bore their products to the most approachable
water power, there to be manufactured. This was the first cause of the
difference. Then your longer and more severe winters—your soil not as
favorable for agriculture, also contributed to make you a manufacturing
and commercial people.
After the controlling cause had passed away—after railroads had been
built—after the steam engine had become a motive power for a large part
of machinery, the characteristics originally stamped by natural causes
continued the diversity of pursuit. Is it fortunate or otherwise? I say
it is fortunate. Your interest is to remain a manufacturing and ours to
remain an agricultural people.
Your prosperity is to receive our staple and to manufacture it, and
ours to sell it to you and buy the manufactured goods. [Applause.] This
is an interweaving of interests, which makes us all the richer and all
the happier.
But this accursed agitation, this offensive, injurious intermeddling
with the affairs of other people, and this alone it is that will
promote a desire in the mind of any one to separate these great and
growing States. [Applause.]
The seeds of dissension may be sown by invidious reflections. Men may
be goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and to
traduce community character, and in the resentment which follows it is
not possible to tell how far the case may be driven. I therefore plead
to you now to arrest a fanaticism which has been evil in the beginning,
and must be evil to the end. You may not have the numerical power
requisite; and those at a distance may not understand how many of you
there are desirous to put a stop to the course of this agitation. But
let your language and your acts teach them to appreciate a faithful
self-denying minority. I have learned since I have been in New England
the vast mass of true State Rights Democrats to be found within its
limits—though not represented in the halls of Congress.
And if it comes to the worst; if, availing themselves of a majority in
the two Houses of Congress, our opponents should attempt to trample
upon the Constitution; to violate the rights of the States; to infringe
upon our equality in the Union, I believe that even in Massachusetts,
though it has not had a representative in Congress for many a day, the
State Rights Democracy, in whose breasts beats the spirit of the
revolution, can and will whip the Black Republicans. [Great applause.]
I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it were, by fire; but that
the peaceful progressive revolution of the ballot box will answer all
the glorious purposes of the Constitutional Union. [Applause.]
I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded me in
addressing you used the words _national_ and _constitutional_ in such
relations to each other as to show that in his mind the one was a
synonym of the other. And does he not do so with reason? We became a
nation by the constitution; whatever is national springs from the
constitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms.
[Applause.]
Your candidate for the high office of governor—whom I have been once or
twice on the point of calling your governor, and whom I hope I may be
able soon to call so, [applause]—in his remarks to you has presented
the same idea in another form. And well may Massachusetts orators,
without even perceiving what they are saying, utter sentiments which
lie at the foundation of your colonial as well as your revolutionary
history, which existed in Massachusetts before the revolution, and have
existed since, whenever the true spirit which comes down from the
revolutionary sires has been aroused into utterance within her limits.
[Applause.]
It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutual
dependence of interest that we have formed new bonds. Those bonds are
both material and mental. Every improvement in the navigation of a
river, every construction of a railroad, has added another link to the
chain which encircles us, another facility for interchange and new
achievements, whether it has been in arts or in science, in war or in
manufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled success
has constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has offered to us
new sentiments of nationality.
Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, which
follow in the course of our political day? is it because the sun is
declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening; or are they,
as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as
it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian splendor? Are
they but evanescent clouds that flit across but cannot obscure the
great purposes for which the Constitution was established?
I hopefully look forward to the reaction which will establish the fact
that our sun is yet in the ascendant—that the cloud which has covered
our political prospect is but a mist of the morning—that we are again
to be amicably divided in opinion upon measures of expediency, upon
questions of relative interest, upon discussions as to the rights of
the States, and the powers of the federal government,—such discussion
as is commemorated in this historical picture [pointing to the
painting.] There your own great Statesman, Webster, addresses his
argument to our brightest luminary, the incorruptible Calhoun, who
leans over to catch the accents of eloquence that fall from his lips.
[Loud applause.]
They differed as Statesmen and philosophers; they railed not, warred
not against each other; they stood to each other in the relation of
affection and regard. And never did I see Mr. Webster so agitated,
never did I hear his voice so falter, as when he delivered his eulogy
on John C. Calhoun. [Applause.]