Statesman. I will only say on this occasion, that very early in the
commencement of my congressional life, Mr. Webster was arraigned for an
offence which affected him most deeply. He was no accountant; all knew
that there was but little of mercantile exactness in his habits. He was
arraigned on a pecuniary charge—the misapplication of what is known as
the secret service fund; and I was one of the committee that had to
investigate the charge. I endeavored to do justice, to examine the
evidence with a view to ascertain the truth. As an American I hoped he
would come out without stain or smoke upon his garments. But however
the fame of so distinguished an American Statesman might claim such
hopes, the duty was rigidly to inquire, and rigorously to do justice.
The result was that he was acquitted of every charge that was made
against him, and it was equally my pride and my pleasure to vindicate
him in every form which lay within my power. [Applause.] No man who
knew Daniel Webster, would have expected less of him. Had our position
been reversed, none such could have believed that he would with a view
to a judgment ask whether a charge was made against a Massachusetts man
or a Mississippian. No! it belonged to a lower, a later, and I trust a
shorter lived race of statesmen [“hear,” “hear,”] to measure all facts
by considerations of latitude and longitude. [Warm applause.]
I honor that sentiment which makes us oftentimes too confident, and to
despise too much the danger of that agitation which disturbs the peace
of the country. I honor that feeling which believes the Constitutional
Union too strong to be shaken. But at the same time I say, in sober
judgment, it will not do to treat too lightly the danger which has
beset and which still impends over us. Who has not heard our
Constitutional Union compared to the granite cliffs which line the sea
and dash back the foam of the waves, unmoved by their fury. Recently I
have stood upon New England’s shore, and have seen the waves of a
troubled sea dash upon the granite which frowns over the ocean, have
seen the spray thrown back from the cliff, and the receding wave fret
like the impotent rage of baffled malice. But when the tide had ebbed,
I saw that the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating of the
sea, and fragments riven from the rock were lying on the beach.
Thus the waves of sectional agitation are dashing themselves against
the granite patriotism of the land. If long continued, that too must
show the seams and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility must
sooner or later produce political fragments. The danger lies at your
door, it is time to arrest it. It is time that men should go back to
the origin of our institutions. They should drink the waters of the
fountain, ascend to the source, of our colonial history.
You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in
1770. There learn how your fathers unfaltering stood for community
right. And near the same spot mark how proudly the delegation of the
democracy came to demand the removal of the troops from Boston, and how
the venerable Samuel Adams stood asserting the rights of the people,
dauntless as Hampden, clear and eloquent as Sidney.
All over our country these monuments, instructive to the present
generation, of what our fathers felt and said and did, are to be found.
In the library of your association for the collection of your early
history, I found a letter descriptive of the reading of the address to
his army by Gen. Washington during one of those winters when he sought
shelter for the ill clad, unshod, but victorious army with which he
achieved the independence we enjoy; he had built a log cabin for a
meeting house, and there reading his address, his sight failed him, he
put on his glasses and with emotion which manifested the reality of his
feelings, said, “I have grown gray in the service of my country, and
now I am growing blind.” Who can measure the value of such incidents in
a people’s history? It is a privilege to have access to documents,
which cause us to realize the trials, the patient endurance, the hardy
virtue and moral grandeur of the men from whom we inherit our political
institutions, and to whose teachings it were well that the present
generations should constantly refer.
If you choose still further to stretch your vision to South Carolina,
you will find a parallel to that devotion to their country’s cause
which illustrates the early history of the Democrats of Boston. The
prisoners at Charleston, when confined upon the hulks where they were
exposed to the small pox, and, wasted by the progress of the infection,
were brought upon the shore and assured that if they would enlist in
his majesty’s service they should be relieved from their present and
prospective suffering, but if they refused the rations would be taken
from their families, and themselves sent to the hulks and exposed to
the infection. Emaciated as they were, distressed with the prospect of
their families being turned into the street to starve, the spirit of
independence, the devotion to liberty, was so warm within their breasts
that they gave one loud hurrah for General Washington, and chose death
rather than dishonor. [Loud applause.] And if from these glorious
recollections, from the emotions they excite, your eye is directed to
your present condition, and you mark the prosperity, the growth and
honorable career of your country, I envy not the heart of that man
whose pulse does not beat quicker, who does not feel within him the
exultation of pride at the past glory and the future prospects of his
country. These prospects are to be realized if we are only wise and
true to the obligations of the compact of our fathers. For all which
can sow dissension can stop the progress of the American people, can
endanger the achievement of the high prospects we have before us is
that miserable spirit, which, disregarding duty and honor, makes war
upon the Constitution. Madness must rule the hour when American
citizens, trampling as well upon the great principles at the foundation
of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States, as upon the honorable obligations which their fathers imposed
upon them, shall turn with internicine hand to sacrifice themselves as
well as their brethren, upon the altar of sectional fanaticism.
With these views, it will not be surprising to those who differ from
me, that I feel an ardent desire for the success of the State Rights
Democracy, that convinced of the destructive consequences of the
heresies of their opponents, and of the evils upon which they would
precipitate the country, I do not forbear to advocate, here and
elsewhere, the success of that party which alone is national, on which
alone I rely for the preservation of the Constitution, to perpetuate
the Union, and to fulfil the purposes which it was ordained to
establish and secure. [Loud cheers.]
My friends, my brethren, my countrymen—[applause]—I thank you for the
patient attention you have given me. It is the first time it has been
my fortune to address an audience here. It will probably be the last.
Residing in a remote section of the country, with private as well as
public duties to occupy the whole of my time, it would only be under
some such necessity for a restoration of health as has brought me here
this season, that I could ever expect to make more than a very hurried
visit to any other portion of the Union than that of which I am a
citizen.
I will say, then, on this occasion, that I am glad, truly glad, that it
has been my fortune to stay long enough among the New Englanders to
obtain a better acquaintance than one can who passes in the ordinary
way through the country, at the speed of the railroad tourist. I have
stayed long enough to feel that generous hospitality which evinces
itself to-night, which has showed itself in every town and village of
New England where I have gone—long enough to learn that though not
represented in Congress, there is within the limits of New England a
large mass of as true Democrats as are to be found in any portion of
the Union. Their purposes, their construction of the Constitution,
their hopes for the future, their respect for the past, is the same as
that which exists among my beloved brethren in Mississippi. [Applause.]
It is not a great while since one who was endeavoring to pursue me with
unfriendly criticism opened an article with my name and “gone to
Boston!”—He seemed to think it a damaging reflection to say of me that
I had gone to Boston—I wish he could have been here to look upon these
Democratic faces to-night, and to listen to your resolutions and the
words of your Massachusetts speakers, he might have been taught that a
man might go and stay at Boston and learn better Democracy than many
have acquired in other places.
I shall gratefully carry with me the recollections of this and of other
meetings witnessed since I have been among you. In the hour of
apprehension I will hopefully turn back to my observations here—here in
this consecrated hall, where men so early devoted themselves to liberty
and community independence; and will endeavor to impress upon others
who know you only as you are misrepresented in the two Houses of
Congress, [applause,] how true and how many are the hearts that beat
for constitutional liberty, and with high resolve to respect every
clause and guaranty which the Constitution contains, are pledged to
faithfully uphold the rights of any and every portion of the States,
and of the people. [Tremendous cheering.]
Speech in the City of New York,
_Palace Garden Meeting, Oct. 19, 1858._
Countrymen, Democrats:—When I accepted this evening the invitation to
meet you here, it was to see and to hear, not to speak. I have listened
with pleasure to the language addressed to you by your candidate for
the highest office in the State. It is the language of patriotism; it
is an appeal to the common sense of the people in favor of that
fraternity on which our Union was founded, and on which alone it can
long continue to exist. I have rejoiced to hear the applause with which
such sentiments, when he uttered them, have been received by those here
convened, and trust it is but an indication of that onward progress of
reaction which I believe has already commenced, and which is to sink to
the lowest depths of forgetfulness the struggle which has so long
agitated the country, and prompted an internecine war against your
countrymen. [Applause.]
Truly has the distinguished gentleman pointed out to you the extreme
absurdity of attempting to excite you upon the ground of southern
aggression upon the north. We have nothing to aggress upon. We have not
now, as he has told you, the power, though once we had, to interfere
with your domestic institutions. We never had the will to do so. And if
we had the power now, true to the instincts and history of our fathers,
we would abstain from intermeddling in your domestic affairs.
[Applause.] I have no purpose on this or any other occasion to mingle
in the consideration of those questions which are local to you. I am
not sufficiently learned in conchology to do it if I would, [laughter,]
and I have too great a respect for community independence to do it if I
could. My purpose then is, simply in answer to your call, to offer you
a few reflections, such as may occur to me, as I progress, upon those
questions which are common to us all, and which belong to the memories
of our fathers, and are linked with the hopes of our children.
[Applause.] If; then, without preparation, I do it in unvarnished
phrase, if I cannot carry you along with me because of the want of that
flowing diction which might catch the ear, still I ask you to hear me
for my cause, for it is the cause of our country, it is the cause of
democracy, it is the cause of human liberty. [Applause.]
Who now stand arrayed against the democratic party? The relations of
parties and the issues upon which we have been divided have changed.
What now is the basis of opposition to the democratic party? It is
twofold—interference with the negroes of other people, and interference
with the rights now secured to foreigners who expatriate themselves and
come to our land. [“Hear, hear,” and applause.] To each community
belongs the right to decide for itself what institutions it will have.
To each people sovereign within their own sphere, belongs, and to them
only belongs, the right to decide what shall be property. You have
decided it for yourselves. Who shall gainsay your decision? Mississippi
has decided it for herself; who has the right to gainsay her decision?
The power of each people to rule over their domestic affairs lies at
the foundation of that Declaration of Independence to which you owe
your existence among the nations of the earth; that declaration which
led your fathers into and through the war of the revolution. _It is
that which constitutes to-day the doctrine of State-rights, upon which
it is my pride and pleasure to stand._ [Applause.] Congress has no
power to determine what shall be property anywhere. Congress has only
such grants as are contained in the Constitution. And the Constitution
confers upon it no power to rule with despotic hand over the
inhabitants of the Territories. Within the limits of those Territories,
the common property of the Union, you and I are equal; we are joint
owners. Each of us has the right to go into those Territories, with
whatever property is recognized by the Constitution of the United
States. [Applause.] Congress has no power to limit or abridge that
right. But the inhabitants of a Territory when as a people they come to
form a State government, _when they possess the power and jurisdiction
which belongs to the people of New York, or any other State, have the
right to decide that question, and no power upon earth has the right to
decide it before that time._ [Applause.]
[At this point the Young Men’s Democratic National Club, with banners
and transparencies, entered the garden, and were received with
enthusiastic cheers.]
The dull remarks, my friends, which I was in the course of making to
you, have been interrupted by a beautiful episode, which I am sure will
more than exceed the whole value of the poem, if I may thus
characterize my dull speech. And I am glad that foremost among all the
transparencies and banners, comes this flag which speaks of the “Young
Men’s Democratic National Club.”—[Three cheers for Davis.] It is on the
young men we must rely. I have found that in every severe political
struggle, where the contest on the one side was for principle, and on
the other for spoils, it has been the gray-haired father and the boy
with the peach bloom upon his cheek upon whom principles had to rely
for support. My own generation—and I regret to say it—seems too deeply
steeped in the trickery of politics to be able to rise above the
influence of personal and political gain into the pure field of
patriotism. And I am therefore glad to see the “Young Men’s Democratic
National Club” leading this procession.
But to return to the argument I was making. I said that Congress had no
power to legislate upon what should be property anywhere; that Congress
had no power to discriminate between the citizens of the different
States who should go into the Territories, the common property of all
the States, but that those Territories of right remained open to every
citizen, and every species of property recognized in the Constitution,
until the inhabitants should become a people, form a fundamental law
for themselves, and, as authorized by the Constitution, assume the
powers, duties, and obligations of a State. And now, my friends, I
would ask you, further, of what value would a congressional decision
upon that subject be? If it be a constitutional right, as I contend it
is, then it is a matter for judicial decision. If Congress should
assert that such is not the right of each of our citizens, and the
courts appointed as an arbiter in such cases should decide that it is
their right, the enactment would, therefore, be void. It, on the other
hand, it is not a right, but Congress should assert it to be one, and
the courts should declare that no such right exists under the
Constitution, then, Congress has no power to create it; and it is in
this sense that Congress has not the power to establish or prohibit
slavery anywhere. [Applause.]
What, then, has been the foundation of all this controversy? Your
candidate has justly pointed out to you that unpatriotic struggle for
sectional aggrandizement which has brought about this contest—a
contest, as it were, between two contending powers for national
predominance—a contest upon the one side to enlarge the majority it now
possesses, and a contest upon the other side to recover the power it
has lost, and become the majority. This is the attitude of hostile
nations, and not of States bound together in fraternal unity. This is
the feeling that one by one is cutting the strands which originally
held the States together. You have seen your churches divided; you have
seen trade turned aside from its accustomed channel; you have seen
jealousy and uncharitableness and bickering springing up and growing
stronger day by day, until at last, if it continue, the cord of union
between the States reduced simply to the political strand, may not
suffice to hold them together. Once united by every tie of fraternal
feeling, shoulder to shoulder, step by step, our fathers went through
the revolution, prompted by a common desire for the common good, and
animated by devotion to the principle of popular liberty. They
struggled against the mother country, because that country endeavored
to legislate for the colonies, and the colonies claimed as a right that
they must not be taxed except by their own representatives, and refused
to submit to unconstitutional legislation. If now, in this struggle for
the ascendency in power, one action should gain such predominance as
would enable it, by modifying the Constitution and usurping new power,
to legislate for the other, _the exercise of that power would throw us
back into the condition of the colonies._ And if in the veins of the
sons flows the blood of their sires, _they would not fail to redeem
themselves from tyranny even should they be driven to resort to
revolution._ [Applause.]
And what is the other question of difference now? It is the agitation,
as a national question, of the right of foreigners to suffrage within
these States. Now, I ask, what power has Congress over the question?
Yet members to Congress are elected upon that question. How would
Congress legislate upon it?—They say, by modifying the naturalization
laws. What do those laws confer? The right to hold real estate and the
right to devise it by will; the right to sue and be sued in the courts
of the United States; and the rights to receive passports and
protection from the government of the United States. Who wishes to
withhold those privileges from foreigners? Nobody alleges it. But they
say that the ballot-box must be protected from foreign votes. Has
Congress the right to say that foreigners shall not vote within the
limits of your State? Are you willing to leave that to Congress? [Cries
of “ No, no, no,” and applause.] In some of the States, by State
legislation, foreigners are permitted to vote before they can become
citizens under the naturalization laws. The naturalization laws are
not, therefore, controlling over the question of suffrage. The power of
Congress is limited to the establishment of a uniform rule of
naturalization throughout the States. But what further do they couple
with these demands which they make for congressional legislation? They
proclaim their purpose to be to exclude paupers and criminals from
abroad.—Do paupers and criminals come for the right of suffrage? They
come here for bread, or to fly from the laws which they have violated.
Whether they shall be entitled to vote or not, would neither increase
nor diminish the number of that class by a single individual. But, my
friends, who is a pauper, or who is a criminal? Is a man a pauper
merely because he comes here without property, without money in his
purse? Go, look along your lines of internal improvements, where every
mile has mingled with it the bones of some foreigner who labored to
create it. Go to your battle fields, where your flag has been borne
triumphantly, and where fresh laurels have been added to the brow of
your country, and there you will find the sod dyed as deep by the blood
of the foreign born as by that of the native citizen. [Applause.] Is
the able-bodied man, who comes here to contribute to your national
interests by building up your public works, or aiding in the erection
of your architectural constructions, or who bears your flag in the hour
of danger, and who bleeds and dies for your country, is he the pauper
you desire to exclude? And who is the criminal? Is it he who, flying
from the persecution of despotic governments, seeks our land as the
Huguenot did, as did Soule, the stern American orator, as many others
within your limits have done under more recent struggles for liberty in
Europe? [Applause.] Then, who are the paupers and criminals? Is that to
be decided by the ruling of other countries, by the laws of France, or
of England? Or is it to be decided by your own laws, by your own rules
of judicature? If by the latter, then there is no good ground for
controversy. We do not advocate that any country shall empty its poor
houses, get rid of the duty of supporting its paupers, and throw that
charge upon us. We could not permit any country to empty its prisons
and penitentiaries to mingle that portion of its population with ours.
But we do war against the use of terms that delude the people, and are
intended to exclude the high-spirited and hard-working men who
contribute to the bone, the sinew, and the wealth of our country.
[Applause.]
Such, then, my friends, is the opposition to the democracy, the only
national party. The opposition, I say, claims two things from the
federal government, neither of which it has the constitutional power to
perform. It agitates this section of the Union in relation to property
which it has not, and of which, I say, it knows literally nothing. For
had the orator (Mr. Giddings) who was quoted to-night, known anything
of the relations between the master and the slave, he would not have
talked of the slave armed with the British bayonet. Our doors are
unlocked at night; we live among them with no more fear of them than of
our cows and oxen. We lie down to sleep trusting to them for our
defence, and the bond between the master and the slave is as near as
that which exists between capital and labor anywhere. Now, about the
idea of British bayonets in the hands of slaves: The delusion which has
always excited my surprise the most has been that which has led so many
of the northern men to strike hands with the British abolitionists to
make war on their southern brethren. If they could effect their ends,
and Great Britain could insert the wedge which should separate the
States, what further use would she have for the northern section? You
are the competitors of Great Britain in the vast field of manufacture,
whom she most fears, and though she may be with you in the scheme which
would effect a separation of these States, yet the moment that
separation should be effected she would be under the promptings of
interest your worst enemy. [Applause.] Our fathers fought and bled to
secure the common interests of the country. They reclaimed us from
colonial bondage to national independence. They stamped upon it free
trade in order that the interests of all might be promoted, that each
section might be interwoven with the other—in order that there might be
the strongest bond of mutual dependence. And step by step, from that
day to this, that common and mutual dependence has been growing.