demanded no new constitution. Look to their records at home and here
from the beginning of this national strife until its consummation in
the disruption of the empire, and they have not demanded a single thing
except that you shall abide by the Constitution of the United States;
that constitutional rights shall be respected, and that justice shall be
done. Sirs, they have stood by your Constitution; they have stood by
all its requirements; they have performed all its duties unselfishly,
uncalculatingly, disinterestedly, until a party sprang up in this
country which endangered their social system--a party which they
arraign, and which they charge before the American people and all
mankind, with having made proclamation of outlawry against four thousand
millions of their property in the Territories of the United States; with
having put them under the ban of the empire in all the States in which
their institutions exist, outside the protection of Federal laws; with
having aided and abetted insurrection from within and invasion from
without, with the view of subverting those institutions, and desolating
their homes and their firesides. For these causes they have taken up
arms. I shall proceed to vindicate the justice of their demands, the
patriotism of their conduct. I will show the injustice which they suffer
and the rightfulness of their resistance.
I shall not spend much time on the question that seems to give my
honorable friend (Mr. Crittenden) so much concern--the constitutional
right of a State to secede from this Union. Perhaps he will find out
after a while that it is a fact accomplished. You have got it in
the South pretty much both ways. South Carolina has given it to you
regularly, according to the approved plan. You are getting it just below
there (in Georgia), I believe, irregularly, outside of the law, without
regular action. You can take it either way. You will find armed men to
defend both. I have stated that the discontented States of this
Union have demanded nothing but clear, distinct, unequivocal,
well-acknowledged constitutional rights; rights affirmed by the highest
judicial tribunals of their country; rights older than the Constitution;
rights which are planted upon the immutable principles of natural
justice; rights which have been affirmed by the good and the wise of all
countries, and of all centuries. We demand no power to injure any man.
We demand no right to injure our confederate States. We demand no right
to interfere with their institutions, either by word or deed. We have
no right to disturb their peace, their tranquillity, their security. We
have demanded of them simply, solely--nothing else--to give us equality,
security, and tranquillity. Give us these, and peace restores itself.
Refuse them, and take what you can get.
I will now read my own demands, acting under my own convictions, and the
universal judgment of my countrymen. They are considered the demands of
an extremist. To hold to a constitutional right now makes one considered
as an extremist--I believe that is the appellation these traitors and
villains, North and South, employ. I accept their reproach rather than
their principles. Accepting their designation of treason and rebellion,
there stands before them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel as ever
descended from revolutionary loins.
What do the rebels demand? First, "that the people of the United States
shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or any
future acquired territories, with whatever property they may possess
(including slaves), and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment
until such Territory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with or
without slavery, as she may determine, on an equality with all existing
States." That is our territorial demand. We have fought for this
Territory when blood was its price. We have paid for it when gold
was its price. We have not proposed to exclude you, though you have
contributed very little of blood or money. I refer especially to New
England. We demand only to go into those Territories upon terms of
equality with you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy the
common property of the whole Union, and receive the protection of the
common government, until the Territory is capable of coming into the
Union as a sovereign State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit
itself.
The second proposition is, "that property in slaves shall be entitled to
the same protection from the Government of the United States, in all of
its departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the power
upon it to extend to any other property, provided nothing herein
contained shall be construed to limit or restrain the right now
belonging to every State to prohibit, abolish, or establish and protect
slavery within its limits." We demand of the common government to use
its granted powers to protect our property as well as yours. For this
protection we pay as much as you do. This very property is subject to
taxation. It has been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes. The title
to thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is derived from the United
States. We claim that the Government, while the Constitution recognizes
our property for the purposes of taxation, shall give it the same
protection that it gives yours. Ought it not to be so? You say no. Every
one of you upon the committee said no. Your Senators say no. Your House
of Representatives says no. Throughout the length and breadth of your
conspiracy against the Constitution, there is but one shout of no! This
recognition of this right is the price of my allegiance. Withhold it,
and you do not get my obedience. This is the philosophy of the armed
men who have sprung up in this country. Do you ask me to support a
government that will tax my property; that will plunder me; that
will demand my blood, and will not protect me? I would rather see the
population of my native State laid six feet beneath her sod than they
should support for one hour such a government. Protection is the price
of obedience everywhere, in all countries. It is the only thing that
makes government respectable. Deny it and you cannot have free subjects
or citizens; you may have slaves.
We demand, in the next place, "that persons committing crimes against
slave property in one State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered
up in the same manner as persons committing crimes against other
property, and that the laws of the State from which such persons flee
shall be the test of criminality." That is another one of the demands of
an extremist and rebel. The Constitution of the United States, article
four, section two, says:
"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who
shall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demand
of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered
up to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime." But the
non-slave-holding States, treacherous to their oaths and compacts, have
steadily refused, if the criminal only stole a negro, and that negro was
a slave, to deliver him up. It was refused twice on the requisition of
my own State as long as twenty-two years ago. It was refused by Kent and
by Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, each
of the then Federal parties. We appealed then to fraternity, but we
submitted; and this constitutional right has been practically a dead
letter from that day to this. The next case came up between us and the
State of New York, when the present senior Senator (Mr. Seward) was
the Governor of that State; and he refused it. Why? He said it was not
against the laws of New York to steal a negro, and therefore he would
not comply with the demand. He made a similar refusal to Virginia. Yet
these are our confederates; these are our sister States! There is
the bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to it. Both these
Governors swore to it. The Senator from New York swore to it. The
Governor of Ohio swore to it when he was inaugurated. You cannot bind
them by oaths.
Yet they talk to us of treason; and I suppose they expect to whip
freemen into loving such brethren! They will have a good time in doing
it!
It is natural we should want this provision of the Constitution carried
out. The Constitution says slaves are property; the Supreme Court says
so; the Constitution says so. The theft of slaves is a crime; they are
a subject-matter of felonious asportation. By the text and letter of the
Constitution you agreed to give them up. You have sworn to do it, and
you have broken your oaths. Of course, those who have done so look out
for pretexts. Nobody expected them do otherwise. I do not think I
ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent some
pretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings,
hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirement
of the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of an
extremist and a rebel.
The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves shall be surrendered under
the provisions of the fugitive-slave act of 1850, without being entitled
either to a writ of _habeas corpus_, or trial by jury, or other similar
obstructions of legislation, in the State to which he may flee. Here is
the Constitution:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into an-other, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may
be due."
This language is plain, and everybody understood it the same way for the
first forty years of your government. In 1793, in Washington's time, an
act was passed to carry out this provision. It was adopted unanimously
in the Senate of the United States, and nearly so in the House of
Representatives. Nobody then had invented pretexts to show that the
Constitution did not mean a negro slave. It was clear; it was plain.
Not only the Federal courts, but all the local courts in all the States,
decide that this was a constitutional obligation. How is it now? The
North sought to evade it; following the instincts of their natural
character, they commenced with the fraudulent fiction that fugitives
were entitled to _habeas corpus_, entitled to trial by jury in the State
to which they fled. They pretended to believe that our fugitive slaves
were entitled to more rights than their white citizens; perhaps they
were right, they know one another better than I do. You may charge
a white man with treason, or felony, or other crime, and you do not
require any trial by jury before he is given up; there is nothing to
determine but that he is legally charged with a crime and that he
fled, and then he is to be delivered up upon demand. White people
are delivered up every day in this way; but not slaves. Slaves, black
people, you say, are entitled to trial by jury; and in this way schemes
have been invented to defeat your plain constitutional obligations. * * *
The next demand made on behalf of the South is, "that Congress shall
pass effective laws for the punishment of all persons in any of the
States who shall in any manner aid and abet invasion or insurrection in
any other State, or commit any other act against the laws of nations,
tending to disturb the tranquillity of the people or government of any
other State." That is a very plain principle. The Constitution of the
United States now requires, and gives Congress express power, to
define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas,
and offences against the laws of nations. When the honorable and
distinguished Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) last year introduced
a bill for the purpose of punishing people thus offending under that
clause of the Constitution, Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at New York,
which I have before me, declared that it was a "sedition bill "; his
press and party hooted at it. So far from recognizing the bill as
intended to carry out the Constitution of the United States, it received
their jeers and jibes. The Black Republicans of Massachusetts elected
the admirer and eulogist of John Brown's courage as their governor, and
we may suppose he will throw no impediments in the way of John Brown's
successors. The epithet applied to the bill of the Senator from Illinois
is quoted from a deliberate speech delivered by Lincoln in New York,
for which, it was stated in the journals, according to some resolution
passed by an association of his own party, he was paid a couple of
hundred dollars. The speech should therefore have been deliberate.
Lincoln denounced that bill. He places the stamp of his condemnation
upon a measure intended to promote the peace and security of confederate
States. He is, therefore, an enemy of the human race, and deserves the
execration of all mankind.
We demand these five propositions. Are they not right? Are they not
just? Take them in detail, and show that they are not warranted by the
Constitution, by the safety of our people, by the principles of eternal
justice. We will pause and consider them; but mark me, we will not let
you decide the question for us. * * *
Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations
and the duties of the Federal Government. I am content and have ever
been content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I do
not believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that I
would have voted for it as a proposition _de novo_, yet I am bound to it
by oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by
established forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given
to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance,
but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on the false
idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitution
is the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetter
the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely
excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that "the powers not
granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to
the States, belonged to the States respectively or the people." Now I
will try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The law
of nature, the law of justice, would say--and it is so expounded by the
publicists--that equal rights in the common property shall be enjoyed.
Even in a monarchy the king cannot prevent the subjects from enjoying
equality in the disposition of the public property. Even in a despotic
government this principle is recognized. It was the blood and the
money of the whole people (says the learned Grotius, and say all the
publicists) which acquired the public property, and therefore it is
not the property of the sovereign. This right of equality being, then,
according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to all
States, when did we give it up? You say Congress has a right to pass
rules and regulations concerning the Territory and other property of the
United States. Very well. Does that exclude those whose blood and money
paid for it? Does "dispose of" mean to rob the rightful owners? You must
show a better title than that, or a better sword than we have.
But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. But how? By our judgment?
No, not until the last resort. What then; by yours? No, not until the
same time. How then try it? The South has always said, by the Supreme
Court. But that is in our favor, and Lincoln says he "will not stand that
judgment." Then each must judge for himself of the mode and manner
of redress. But you deny us that privilege, and finally reduce us to
accepting your judgment. The Senator from Kentucky comes to your aid,
and says he can find no constitutional right of secession. Perhaps not;
but the Constitution is not the place to look for State rights. If that
right belongs to independent States, and they did not cede it to the
Federal Government, it is reserved to the States, or to the people. Ask
your new commentator where he gets the right to judge for us. Is it in
the bond?
The Northern doctrine was, many years ago, that the Supreme Court was
the judge. That was their doctrine in 1800. They denounced Madison
for the report of 1799, on the Virginia resolutions; they denounced
Jefferson for framing the Kentucky resolutions, because they were
presumed to impugn the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United
States; and they declared that that court was made, by the Constitution,
the ultimate and supreme arbiter. That was the universal judgment--the
declaration of every free State in this Union, in answer to the Virginia
resolutions of 1798, or of all who did answer, even including the State
of Delaware, then under Federal control.
The Supreme Court have decided that, by the Constitution, we have a
right to go to the Territories and be protected there with our property.
You say, we cannot decide the compact for ourselves. Well, can the
Supreme Court decide it for us? Mr. Lincoln says he does not care what
the Supreme Court decides, he will turn us out anyhow. He says this in
his debate with the honorable member from Illinois [Mr. Douglas]. I have
it before me. He said he would vote against the decision of the Supreme
Court. Then you did not accept that arbiter. You will not take my
construction; you will not take the Supreme Court as an arbiter; you
will not take the practice of the government; you will not take the
treaties under Jefferson and Madison; you will not take the opinion of
Madison upon the very question of prohibition in 1820. What, then, will
you take? You will take nothing but your own judgment; that is, you will
not only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our
construction, discard the practice of the government, but you will drive
us out, simply because you will it. Come and do it! You have sapped the
foundations of society; you have destroyed almost all hope of peace. In
a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally
decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not
the constitutional, arbiter. Your party says that you will not take the
decision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago; you said so in
committee; every man of you in both Houses says so. What are you going
to do? You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it,
if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is
settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but
there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you--that fact
is, freemen with arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will not
disperse them; we have passed that point; they demand equal rights; you
had better heed the demand. * * *
SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX,
OF OHIO. (BORN, 1824-DIED, 1889.)
ON SECESSION; DOUGLAS DEMOCRATIC OPINION;
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 1861.
MR. CHAIRMAN:
I speak from and for the capital of the greatest of the States of the
great West. That potential section is beginning to be appalled at the
colossal strides of revolution. It has immense interests at stake in
this Union, as well from its position as its power and patriotism. We
have had infidelity to the Union before, but never in such a fearful
shape. We had it in the East during the late war with England. Even so
late as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts resolved herself out of
the Union. That resolution has never been repealed, and one would infer,
from much of her conduct, that she did not regard herself as bound by
our covenant. Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity to the
Union, more insidious infractions of the Constitution than by
open rebellion. Now, sir, as a consequence, in part, of these very
infractions, we have rebellion itself, open and daring, in terrific
proportions, with dangers so formidable as to seem almost remediless. *
* *'
I would not exaggerate the fearful consequences of dissolution. It is
the breaking up of a federative Union, but it is not like the breaking
up of society. It is not anarchy. A link may fall from the chain, and
the link may still be perfect, though the chain have lost its length and
its strength. In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in matters
of war and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage,
copyrights, tariff, and other Federal and national affairs, this great
government may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties and
rights which government is the agent to establish and protect, the
seceding State has no revolution, and the remaining States can have
none. This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes the
States the basis of our instituted labor. Greece was broken by the
Persian power, but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary lost
her national crown, but her home institutions remain. South Carolina may
preserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content to
glimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellated
band. She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign
convention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement,
exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoes
the hopes, the boasts, the flag, the music, all the emotions, all the
traits, and all the energies which, when combined in our United States,
have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement.
Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully "looks
back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories
and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to find
language to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from the
contemplation." The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history
are all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian
with the "_idem sententiam de republica_," which makes unity and
nationality. What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in the
contaminated reason of man!
Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to last for a night, or a reality
to be dealt with, with the world's rough passionate handling? It is sad
and bad enough; but let us not over-tax our anxieties about it as yet.
It is not the sanguinary regime of the French revolution; not the rule
of assignats and guillotine; not the cry of "_Vivent les Rouges! A mort
les gendarmes!_" but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attempt
to withdraw from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is
unlike every other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, according
as it is managed, involve consequences more terrific than any revolution
since government began.
If the Federal Government is to be maintained, its strength must not
be frittered away by conceding the theory of secession. To concede
secession as a right, is to make its pathway one of roses and not of
thorns. I would not make its pathway so easy. If the government has any
strength for its own preservation, the people demand it should be put
forth in its civil and moral forces. Dealing, however, with a sensitive
public sentiment, in which this strength reposes, it must not be rudely
exercised. It should be the iron hand in the glove of velvet. Firmness
should be allied with kindness. Power should assert its own prerogative,
but in the name of law and love. If these elements are not thus blended
in our policy, as the Executive proposes, our government will prove
either a garment of shreds or a coat of mail. We want neither. * * *
Before we enter upon a career of force, let us exhaust every effort
at peace. Let us seek to excite love in others by the signs of love in
ourselves. Let there be no needless provocation and strife. Let every
reasonable attempt at compromise be considered. Otherwise we have a
terrible alternative. War, in this age and in this country, sir, should
be the _ultima ratio_. Indeed, it may well be questioned whether there
is any reason in it for war. What a war! Endless in its hate, without
truce and without mercy. If it ended ever, it would only be after a
fearful struggle; and then with a heritage of hate which would forever
forbid harmony. * * *