States to point out definitely and recommend to Congress some rule
of action, and to tell us what he recommended us to do. But, in my
judgment, he has entirely avoided it. He has failed to look the thing
in the face. He has acted like the ostrich, which hides her head and
thereby thinks to escape danger. Sir, the only way to escape danger
is to look it in the face. I think the country did expect from the
President some exposition of a decided policy; and I confess that,
for one, I was rather indifferent as to what that policy was that he
recommended; but I hoped that it would be something; that it would be
decisive. He has utterly failed in that respect.
I think we may as well look this matter right clearly in the face; and
I am not going to be long about doing it. I think that this state of
affairs looks to one of two things: it looks to absolute submission, not
on the part of our Southern friends and the Southern States, but of the
North, to the abandonment of their position,--it looks to a surrender
of that popular sentiment which has been uttered through the constituted
forms of the ballot-box, or it looks to open war. We need not shut our
eyes to the fact. It means war, and it means nothing else; and the State
which has put herself in the attitude of secession, so looks upon it.
She has asked no council, she has considered it as a settled question,
and she has armed herself. As I understand the aspect of affairs,
it looks to that, and it looks to nothing else except unconditional
submission on the part of the majority. I did not read the paper--I do
not read many papers--but I understand that there was a remedy suggested
in a paper printed, I think, in this city, and it was that the President
and the Vice-President should be inaugurated (that would be a great
concession!) and then, being inaugurated, they should quietly resign!
Well, sir, I am not entirely certain that that would settle the
question. I think that after the President and Vice-President-elect had
resigned, there would be as much difficulty in settling who was to take
their places as there was in settling it before.
I do not wish, sir, to say a word that shall increase any irritation;
that shall add any feeling of bitterness to the state of things which
really exists in the country, and I would bear and forbear before I
would say any thing which would add to this bitterness. But I tell you,
sir, the plain, true way is to look this thing in the face--see where we
are. And I avow here--I do not know whether or not I shall be sustained
by those who usually act with me--if the issue which is presented is
that the constitutional will of the public opinion of this country,
expressed through the forms of the Constitution, will not be submitted
to, and war is the alternative, let it come in any form or in any shape.
The Union is dissolved and it cannot be held together as a Union, if
that is the alternative upon which we go into an election. If it is
pre-announced and determined that the voice of the majority, expressed
through the regular and constituted forms of the Constitution, will not
be submitted to, then, sir, this is not a Union of equals; it is a Union
of a dictatorial oligarchy on one side, and a herd of slaves and cowards
on the other. That is it, sir; nothing more, nothing less. * * *
ALFRED IVERSON,
OF GEORGIA. (BORN 1798, DIED 1874.)
ON SECESSION; SECESSIONIST OPINION;
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, 1860
I do not rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of entering,at any length
into this discussion, or to defend the President's message, which
has been attacked by the Senator from New Hampshire.* I am not the
mouth-piece of the President. While I do not agree with some portions
of the message, and some of the positions that have been taken by the
President, I do not perceive all the inconsistencies in that document
which the Senator from New Hampshire has thought proper to present.
It is true, that the President denies the constitutional right of a
State to secede from the Union; while, at the same time, he also states
that this Federal Government has no constitutional right to enforce or
to coerce a State back into the Union which may take upon itself the
responsibility of secession. I do not see any inconsistency in that.
The President may be right when he asserts the fact that no State has a
constitutional right to secede from the Union. I do not myself place the
right of a State to secede from the Union upon constitutional grounds. I
admit that the Constitution has not granted that power to a State. It is
exceedingly doubtful even whether the right has been reserved. Certainly
it has not been reserved in express terms. I therefore do not place
the expected action of any of the Southern States, in the present
contingency, upon the constitutional right of secession; and I am not
prepared to dispute therefore, the, position which the President has
taken upon that point.
I rather agree with the President that the secession of a State is
an act of revolution taken through that particular means or by that
particular measure. It withdraws from the Federal compact, disclaims any
further allegiance to it, and sets itself up as a separate government,
an independent State. The State does it at its peril, of course, because
it may or may not be cause of war by the remaining States composing the
Federal Government. If they think proper to consider it such an act
of disobedience, or if they consider that the policy of the Federal
Government be such that it cannot submit to this dismemberment, why then
they may or may not make war if they choose upon the seceding States. It
will be a question of course for the Federal Government or the remaining
States to decide for themselves, whether they will permit a State to
go out of the Union, and remain as a separate and independent State, or
whether they will attempt to force her back at the point of the bayonet.
That is a question, I presume, of policy and expediency, which will be
considered by the remaining States composing the Federal Government,
through their organ, the Federal Government, whenever the contingency
arises.
But, sir, while a State has no power, under the Constitution, conferred
upon it to secede from the Federal Government or from the Union, each
State has the right of revolution, which all admit. Whenever the burdens
of the government under which it acts become so onerous that it cannot
bear them, or if anticipated evil shall be so great that the
State believes it would be better off--even risking the perils of
secession--out of the Union than in it, then that State, in my
opinion, like all people upon earth has the right to exercise the
great fundamental principle of self-preservation, and go out of the
Union--though, of course, at its own peril--and bear the risk of the
consequences. And while no State may have the constitutional right to
secede from the Union, the President may not be wrong when he says the
Federal Government has no power under the Constitution to compel the
State to come back into the Union. It may be a _casus omissus_ in the
Constitution; but I should like to know where the power exists in the
Constitution of the United States to authorize the Federal Government
to coerce a sovereign State. It does not exist in terms, at any rate, in
the Constitution. I do not think there is any inconsistency, therefore,
between the two positions of the President in the message upon these
particular points.
The only fault I have to find with the message of the President, is the
inconsistency of another portion. He declares that, as the States have
no power to secede, the Federal Government is in fact a consolidated
government; that it is not a voluntary association of States. I deny it.
It was a voluntary association of States. No State was ever forced to
come into the Federal Union. Every State came voluntarily into it.
It was an association, a voluntary association of States; and the
President's position that it is not a voluntary association is, in my
opinion, altogether wrong.
But whether that be so or not, the President declares and assumes that
this government is a consolidated government to this extent: that all
the laws of the Federal Government are to operate directly upon each
individual of the States, if not upon the States themselves, and must
be enforced; and yet, at the same time, he says that the State which
secedes is not to be coerced. He says that the laws of the United States
must be enforced against every individual of a State.
Of course, the State is composed of individuals within its limits,
and if you enforce the laws and obligations of the Federal Government
against each and every individual of the State, you enforce them against
a State. While, therefore, he says that a State is not to be coerced, he
declares, in the same breath, his determination to enforce the laws of
the Union, and therefore to coerce the State if a State goes out. There
is the inconsistency, according to my idea, which I do not see how the
President or anybody else can reconcile. That the Federal Government is
to enforce its laws over the seceding State, and yet not coerce her into
obedience, is to me incomprehensible.
But I did not rise, Mr. President, to discuss these questions in
relation to the message; I rose in behalf of the State that I represent,
as well as other Southern States that are engaged in this movement, to
accept the issue which the Senator from New Hampshire has seen fit to
tender--that is, of war. Sir, the Southern States now moving in this
matter are not doing it without due consideration. We have looked over
the whole field. We believe that the only security for the institution
to which we attach so much importance is secession and a Southern
confederacy. We are satisfied, notwithstanding the disclaimers upon the
part of the Black Republicans to the contrary, that they intend to
use the Federal power, when they get possession of it, to put down and
extinguish the institution of slavery in the Southern States. I do not
intend to enter upon the discussion of that point. That, however, is
my opinion. It is the opinion of a large majority of those with whom I
associate at home, and I believe of the Southern people. Believing that
this is the intention and object, the ultimate aim and design, of the
Republican party, the Abolitionists of the North, we do not intend to
stay in this Union until we shall become so weak that we shall not be
able to resist when the time comes for resistance. Our true policy is
the one which we have made up our minds to follow. Our true policy is to
go out of this Union now, while we have strength to resist any attempt
on the part of the Federal Government to coerce us. * * *
We intend, Mr. President, to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if we
must; but I do not believe, with the Senator from New Hampshire, that
there is going to be any war. If five or eight States go out, they will
necessarily draw all the other Southern States after them. That is a
consequence that nothing can prevent. If five or eight States go out
of this Union, I should like to see the man that would propose a
declaration of war against them, or attempt to force them into obedience
to the Federal Government at the point of the bayonet or the sword.
Sir, there has been a good deal of vaporing on this subject. A great
many threats have been thrown out. I have heard them on this floor, and
upon the floor of the other House of Congress; but I have also perceived
this: they come from those who would be the very last men to attempt
to put their threats into execution. Men talk sometimes about their
eighteen million who are to whip us; and yet we have heard of cases in
which just such men had suffered themselves to be switched in the
face, and trembled like sheep-stealing dogs, expecting to be shot every
minute. These threats generally come from men who would be the last to
execute them. Some of these Northern editors talk about whipping the
Southern States like spaniels. Brave words; but I venture to assert none
of those men would ever volunteer to command an army to be sent down
South to coerce us into obedience to Federal power. * * *
But, sir, I apprehend that when we go out and form our confederacy--as
I think and hope we shall do very shortly--the Northern States, or the
Federal Government, will see its true policy to be to let us go in peace
and make treaties of commerce and amity with us, from which they will
derive more advantages than from any attempt to coerce us. They cannot
succeed in coercing us. If they allow us to form our government without
difficulty, we shall be very willing to look upon them as a favored
nation and give them all the advantages of commercial and amicable
treaties. I have no doubt that both of us--certainly the Southern
States--would live better, more happily, more prosperously, and with
greater friendship, than we live now in this Union.
Sir, disguise the fact as you will, there is an enmity between the
Northern and Southern people that is deep and enduring, and you never
can eradicate it--never! Look at the spectacle exhibited on this floor.
How is it? There are the Republican Northern Senators upon that side.
Here are the Southern Senators on this side. How much social intercourse
is there between us? You sit upon your side, silent and gloomy; we sit
upon ours with knit brows and portentous scowls. Yesterday I observed
that there was not a solitary man on that side of the Chamber came over
here even to extend the civilities and courtesies of life; nor did any
of us go over there. Here are two hostile bodies on this floor; and it
is but a type of the feeling that exists between the two sections. We
are enemies as much as if we were hostile States. I believe that the
Northern people hate the South worse than ever the English people hated
France; and I can tell my brethren over there that there is no love lost
upon the part of the South.
In this state of feeling, divided as we are by interest, by a
geographical feeling, by every thing that makes two people separate and
distinct, I ask why we should remain in the same Union together? We have
not lived in peace; we are not now living in peace. It is not expected
or hoped that we shall ever live in peace. My doctrine is that whenever
even man and wife find that they must quarrel, and cannot live in
peace, they ought to separate; and these two sections--the North and
South--manifesting, as they have done and do now, and probably will ever
manifest, feelings of hostility, separated as they are in interests and
objects, my own opinion is they can never live in peace; and the sooner
they separate the better.
Sir, these sentiments I have thrown out crudely I confess, and upon the
spur of the occasion. I should not have opened my mouth but that the
Senator from New Hampshire seemed to show a spirit of bravado, as if
he intended to alarm and scare the Southern States into a retreat from
their movements. He says that war is to come, and you had better take
care, therefore. That is the purport of his language; of course those
are not his words; but I understand him very well, and everybody else,
I apprehend, understands him that war is threatened, and therefore the
South had better look out. Sir, I do not believe that there will be any
war; but if war is to come, let it come. We will meet the Senator
from New Hampshire and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism and Black
Republicanism everywhere, upon our own soil; and in the language of a
distinguished member from Ohio in relation to the Mexican War, we will
"welcome you with bloody hands to hospitable graves."
BENJAMIN WADE,
OF OHIO, (BORN 1800, DIED 1878.)
ON SECESSION, AND THE STATE OF THE UNION; REPUBLICAN OPINION;
SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 17, 1860.
MR. PRESIDENT:
At a time like this, when there seems to be a wild and unreasoning
excitement in many parts of the country, I certainly have very little
faith in the efficacy of any argument that may be made; but at the
same time, I must say, when I hear it stated by many Senators in this
Chamber, where we all raised our hands to Heaven, and took a solemn oath
to support the Constitution of the United States, that we are on the
eve of a dissolution of this Union, and that the Constitution is to be
trampled under foot--silence under such circumstances seems to me akin
to treason itself.
I have listened to the complaints on the other side patiently, and with
an ardent desire to ascertain what was the particular difficulty under
which they were laboring. Many of those who have supposed themselves
aggrieved have spoken; but I confess that I am now totally unable to
understand precisely what it is of which they complain. Why, sir, the
party which lately elected their President, and are prospectively to
come into power, have never held an executive office under the General
Government, nor has any individual of them. It is most manifest,
therefore, that the party to which I belong have as yet committed no act
of which anybody can complain. If they have fears as to the course that
we may hereafter pursue, they are mere apprehensions--a bare suspicion;
arising, I fear, out of their unwarrantable prejudices, and nothing
else.
I wish to ascertain at the outset whether we are right; for I tell
gentlemen that, if they can convince me that I am holding any political
principle that is not warranted by the Constitution under which we live,
or that trenches upon their rights, they need not ask me to compromise
it. I will be ever ready to grant redress, and to right myself whenever
I am wrong. No man need approach me with a threat that the Government
under which I live is to be destroyed; because I hope I have now, and
ever shall have, such a sense of justice that, when any man shows
me that I am wrong, I shall be ready to right it without price or
compromise.
Now, sir, what is it of which gentlemen complain? When I left my home in
the West to come to this place, all was calm, cheerful, and contented.
I heard of no discontent. I apprehended that there was nothing to
interrupt the harmonious course of our legislation. I did not learn
that, since we adjourned from this place at the end of the last session,
there had been any new fact intervening that should at all disturb the
public mind. I do not know that there has been any encroachment upon
the rights of any section of the country since that time; I came here,
therefore, expecting to have a very harmonious session. It is very true,
sir, that the great Republican party which has been organized ever since
you repealed the Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago,
full warning that their growing strength would probably result as it
has resulted, have carried the late election; but I did not suppose that
would disturb the equanimity of this body. I did suppose that every man
who was observant of the signs of the times might well see that things
would result as they have resulted. Nor do I understand now that
anything growing out of that election is the cause of the present
excitement that pervades the country.
Why, Mr. President, this is a most singular state of things. Who is it
that is complaining? They that have been in a minority? They that have
been the subjects of an oppressive and aggressive Government? No, sir.
Let us suppose that when the leaders of the old glorious Revolution met
at Philadelphia eighty-four years ago to draw up a bill of indictment
against a wicked King and his ministers, they had been at a loss what
they should set forth as the causes of their complaint. They had
no difficulty in setting them forth so that the great article of
impeachment will go down to all posterity as a full justification of all
the acts they did. But let us suppose that, instead of its being these
old patriots who had met there to dissolve their connection with the
British Government, and to trample their flag under foot, it had
been the ministers of the Crown, the leading members of the British
Parliament, of the dominant party that had ruled Great Britain for
thirty years previous: who would not have branded every man of them as a
traitor? It would be said: "You who have had the Government in your own
hands: you who have been the ministers of the Crown, advising everything
that has been done, set up here that you have been oppressed and
aggrieved by the action of that very Government which you have directed
yourselves." Instead of a sublime revolution, the uprising of an
oppressed people, ready to battle against unequal power for their
rights, it would have been an act of treason.
How is it with the leaders of this modern revolution? Are they in a
position to complain of the action of this Government for years past?
Why, sir, they have had more than two-thirds of the Senate for many
years past, and until very recently, and have almost that now. You--who
complain, I ought to say--represent but a little more than one-fourth of
the free people of these United States, and yet your counsels prevail,
and have prevailed all along for at least ten years past. In the
Cabinet, in the Senate of the United States, in the Supreme Court, in
every department of the Government, your officers, or those devoted to
you, have been in the majority, and have dictated all the policies of
this Government. Is it not strange, sir, that they who now occupy these
positions should come here and complain that their rights are stricken
down by the action of the Government?
But what has caused this great excitement that undoubtedly prevails in a
portion of our country? If the newspapers are to be credited, there is
a reign of terror in all the cities and large towns in the southern
portion of this community that looks very much like the reign of terror
in Paris during the French revolution. There are acts of violence that
we read of almost every day, wherein the rights of northern men are
stricken down, where they are sent back with indignities, where they are
scourged, tarred, feathered, and murdered, and no inquiry made as to
the cause. I do not suppose that the regular Government, in times of
excitement like these, is really responsible for such acts. I know that
these outbreaks of passion, these terrible excitements that sometimes
pervade the community, are entirely irrepressible by the law of the
country. I suppose that is the case now; because if these outrages
against northern citizens were really authorized by the State
authorities there, were they a foreign Government, everybody knows, if
it were the strongest Government on earth, we should declare war upon
her in one day.
But what has caused this great excitement? Sir, I will tell you what I
suppose it is. I do not (and I say it frankly) so much blame the people
of the South; because they believe, and they are led to believe by all
the information that ever comes before them, that we, the dominant party
to-day, who have just seized upon the reins of this Government, are
their mortal enemies, and stand ready to trample their institutions
under foot. They have been told so by our enemies at the North. Their
misfortune, or their fault, is that they have lent a too easy ear to the
insinuations of those who are our mortal enemies, while they would not
hear us.
Now I wish to inquire, in the first place, honestly, candidly, and
fairly, whether the Southern gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber
that complain so much, have any reasonable grounds for that complaint--I
mean when they are really informed as to our position.
Northern Democrats have sometimes said that we had personal liberty
bills in some few of the States of the North, which somehow trenched
upon the rights of the South under the fugitive bill to recapture their
runaway slaves; a position that in not more than two or three cases,
so far as I can see, has the slightest foundation in fact; and even if
those where it is most complained of, if the provisions of their law are
really repugnant to that of the United States, they are utterly void,
and the courts would declare them so the moment you brought them up.
Thus it is that I am glad to hear the candor of those gentlemen on the
other side, that they do not complain of these laws. The Senator from
Georgia (Mr. Iverson) himself told us that they had never suffered any
injury, to his knowledge and belief, from those bills, and they cared
nothing about them. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason) said the same
thing; and, I believe, the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Brown).
You all, then, have given up this bone of contention, this matter of
complaint which Northern men have set forth as a grievance more than
anybody else.
Mr. Mason. Will the Senator indulge me one moment.
Mr. Wade. Certainly.