will have control of the next House of Representatives, and it may be
well inferred from their past course that they will attempt legislation
both injurious and offensive to the South. I have an abiding faith that
any law which violates our constitutional rights, will be met with a
veto by the present Executive.—But should the next House of
Representatives be such as would elect an Abolition President, we may
expect that the election will be so conducted as probably to defeat a
choice by the people and devolve the election upon the House.
Whether by the House or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosen
President of the United States, you will have presented to you the
question of whether you will permit the government to pass into the
hands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for your
answer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would be
a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would
be destroyed and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no
respect.
In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should
deem it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union with
those who have already shown the will, and would have acquired the
power, to deprive you of your birthright and to reduce you to worse
than the colonial dependence of your fathers.
The master mind of the so-called Republican party, Senator Seward, has
in a. recent speech at Rochester, announced the purpose of his party to
dislodge the Democracy from the possession of the federal Government,
and assigns as a reason the friendship of that party for what he
denominates the slave system. He declares the Union between the States
having slave labor and free labor to be incompatible, and announces
that one or the other must disappear. He even asserts that it was the
purpose of the framers of the Government to destroy slave property, and
cites as evidence of it, the provision for an amendment of the
Constitution. He seeks to alarm his auditors by assuring them of the
purpose on the part of the South and the Democratic party to force
slavery upon all the States of the Union. Absurd as all this may seem
to you, and incredulous as you may be of its acceptance by any
intelligent portion of the citizens of the United States, I have reason
to believe that it has been inculcated to no small extent in the
Northern mind.
It requires but a cursory examination of the Constitution of the United
States; but a partial knowledge of its history and of the motives of
the men who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it is to ascribe
to them the purpose of interfering with the domestic institutions of
any of the States. But if a disrespect for that instrument, a fanatical
disregard of its purposes, should ever induce a majority, however
large, to seek by amending the Constitution, to pervert it from its
original object, and to deprive you of the equality which your fathers
bequeathed to you, I say let the star of Mississippi be snatched from
the constellation to shine by its inherent light, if it must be so,
through all the storms and clouds of war.
The same dangerously powerful man describes the institution of slavery
as degrading to labor, as intolerant and inhuman, and says the white
laborer among us is not enslaved only because he cannot yet be reduced
to bondage. Where he learned his lesson, I am at a loss to imagine;
certainly not by observation, for you all know that by interest, if not
by higher motive, slave labor bears to capital as kind a relation as
can exist between them anywhere; that it removes from us all that
controversy between the laborer and the capitalist, which has filled
Europe with starving millions and made their poor houses an onerous
charge. You too know, that among us, white men have an equality
resulting from a presence of the lower caste, which cannot exist where
white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The
mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of
the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies
where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our
mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.
I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it
should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to
the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a
feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give
an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then
bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to
the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that
event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of
revolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to say that no portion of
the speech to which I have referred was received with more marked
approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment which
has just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the past
summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from
the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern
army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South,
they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits
of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that the victory
will at least be doubtful.
Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of
Mississippi to be the last remedy—the final alternative. In the
language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the
Union as a great though not the greatest calamity. I would cling
tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the
fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfilment
of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for their
sons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than a
filial affection. Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her military
service. For many of the best years of my life I have followed that
flag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have been
claimed as my winding sheet. When I have seen it surrounded by the
flags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beat
quicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes and
brilliant constellation. I have looked with veneration on those stripes
as recording the original size of our political family and with pride
upon that constellation as marking the family’s growth; I glory in the
position which Mississippi’s star holds in the group; but sooner than
see its lustre dimmed—sooner than see it degraded from its present
equality-would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous
ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi’s best and bravest
should gather to the harvest-home of death.
As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago,
so now do I urge you to the needful preparation to meet whatever
contingency may befall us. The maintenance of our rights against a
hostile power is a physical problem and cannot be solved by mere
resolutions. Not doubtful of what the heart will prompt, it is not the
less proper that due provision should be made for physical necessities.
Why should not the State have an armory for the repair of arms, for the
alteration of old models so as to make them conform to the improved
weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on a limited scale
of new arms, including cannon and their carriages; the casting of shot
and shells, and the preparation of fixed ammunition?
Such preparation will not precipitate us upon the trial of secession,
for I hold now, as in 1850, that Mississippi’s patriotism will hold her
to the Union as long as it is constitutional, but it will give to our
conduct the character of earnestness of which mere paper declarations
have somewhat deprived us; it will strengthen the hands of our friends
at the North, and in the event that separation shall be forced upon us,
we shall be prepared to meet the contingency with whatever remote
consequences may follow it, and give to manly hearts the happy
assurance that manly arms will not fail to protect the gentle beauty
which blesses our land and graces the present occasion.
You are already progressing in the construction of railroads which,
whilst they facilitate travel, increase the products of the State and
the reward of the husbandman, are a great element of strength by the
means they afford for rapid combination at any point where it may be
desirable to concentrate our forces. To those already in progress I
hope one will soon be added to connect the interior of the State with
the best harbor upon our Gulf coast. When this shall be completed a
trade will be opened to that point which will produce direct
importation and exportation to the great advantage of the planter as
well as all consumers of imported goods; and furnishing “exchange,”
will protect us from such revulsion as was suffered last fall when
during a period of entire prosperity at home, our market was paralyzed
by failures in New York.
The contemplated improvement in the levee system, will give to our
people a mine of untold wealth; and as we progress in the development
of our resources and the increase of our power, so will we advance in
State pride and the ability to maintain principles far higher in value
than mountains of gold or oceans of pearl.
But I find myself running into those visions which have hung before me
from my boyhood up; which at home and abroad have been the hope
constantly attending upon me, and which the cold wing of time has been
unable to wither. I am about to leave you to discharge the duties of
the high trust with which you have honored me. I go with the same love
for Mississippi which has always animated me; with the same confidence
in her people, which has cheered me in the darkest hour. As often as I
may return to you, I feel secure of myself, and say I shall come back
unchanged. Or should the Providence which has so often kindly protected
me, not permit me to return again, my last prayer will be for the
honor, the glory and the happiness of Mississippi.