American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) by Various

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Mr. Speaker, what is this liberty of which so much is said? Is it to
walk about this earth, to breathe this air, to partake the common
blessings of God's providence? The beasts of the field and the birds of
the air unite with us in such privileges as these. But man boasts a
purer and more ethereal temperature. His mind grasps in its view the
past and future, as well as the present. We live not for ourselves
alone. That which we call liberty is that principle on which the
essential security of our political condition depends. It results from
the limitations of our political system, prescribed in the Constitution.
These limitations, so long as they are faithfully observed, maintain
order, peace, and safety. When they are violated, in essential
particulars, all the concurrent spheres of authority rush against each
other; and disorder, derangement, and convulsion are, sooner or later,
the necessary consequences.

With respect to this love of our Union, concerning which so much
sensibility is expressed, I have no fears about analyzing its nature.
There is in it nothing of mystery. It depends upon the qualities of that
Union, and it results from its effects upon our and our country's
happiness. It is valued for "that sober certainty of waking bliss" which
it enables us to realize. It grows out of the affections, and has not,
and cannot be made to have, any thing universal in its nature. Sir, I
confess it: the first public love of my heart is the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. There is my fireside; there are the tombs of my ancestors.

"Low lies that land, yet blest with fruitful stores,
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores;
And none, ah! none, so lovely to my sight,
Of all the lands which heaven o'erspreads with light."

The love of this Union grows out of this attachment to my native soil,
and is rooted in it. I cherish it, because it affords the best external
hope of her peace, her prosperity, her independence. I oppose this bill
from no animosity to the people of New Orleans; but from the deep
conviction that it contains a principle incompatible with the liberties
and safety of my country. I have no concealment of my opinion. The bill,
if it passes, is a death-blow to the Constitution. It may, afterward,
linger; but, lingering, its fate will, at no very distant period, be
consummated.

HENRY CLAY

--OF KENTUCKY. (BORN 1777, DIED 1852.)

ON THE WAR OF 1812--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 8, 1813.

SIR, gentlemen appear to me to forget that they stand on American soil;
that they are not in the British House of Commons, but in the chamber of
the House of Representatives of the United States; that we have nothing
to do with the affairs of Europe, the partition of territory and
sovereignty there, except so far as these things affect the interests of
our own country. Gentlemen transform themselves into the Burkes,
Chathams, and Pitts of another country, and, forgetting, from honest
zeal, the interests of America, engage with European sensibility in the
discussion of European interests. If gentlemen ask me whether I do not
view with regret and horror the concentration of such vast power in the
hands of Bonaparte, I reply that I do. I regret to see the Emperor of
China holding such immense sway over the fortunes of millions of our
species. I regret to see Great Britain possessing so uncontrolled a
command over all the waters of the globe. If I had the ability to
distribute among the nations of Europe their several portions of power
and of sovereignty, I would say that Holland should be resuscitated and
given the weight she enjoyed in the days of her De Witts. I would
confine France within her natural boundaries, the Alps, Pyrenees, and
the Rhine, and make her a secondary naval power only. I would abridge
the British maritime power, raise Prussia and Austria to their original
condition, and preserve the integrity of the Empire of Russia. But these
are speculations. I look at the political transactions of Europe, with
the single exception of their possible bearing upon us, as I do at the
history of other countries and other times. I do not survey them with
half the interest that I do the movements in South America. Our
political relation with them is much less important than it is supposed
to be. I have no fears of French or English subjugation. If we are
united we are too powerful for the mightiest nation in Europe or all
Europe combined. If we are separated and torn asunder, we shall become
an easy prey to the weakest of them. In the latter dreadful contingency
our country will not be worth preserving.

Next to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to
bestow upon the French Emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia,
formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed
to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Quincy), of whom I am sorry to say it
becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some
notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his
retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced
age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party
malevolence. No, sir. In 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of
usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, and that is his
crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit,
a precious inheritance for generations to come, and for this he can
never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against
such a man. He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the
summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity
of his mind, and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the
malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved
Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides
than is this illustrious man by the howlings of the whole British pack,
set loose from the Essex kennel. When the gentleman to whom I have been
compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused
ancestors, when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he
lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain
junto, the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory
honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the
people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as
one of the happiest and brightest epochs of American history; an oasis
in the midst of a sandy desert. But I beg the gentleman's pardon; he has
already secured to himself a more imperishable fame than I had supposed;
I think it was about four years that he submitted to the House of
Representatives an initiative proposition for the impeachment of Mr.
Jefferson. The house condescended to consider it. The gentleman debated
it with his usual temper, moderation, and urbanity. The house decided
upon it in the most solemn manner, and, although the gentleman had
somehow obtained a second, the final vote stood one for, and one hundred
and seventeen against, the proposition. * * *

But sir, I must speak of another subject, which I never think of but
with feelings of the deepest awe. The gentleman from Massachusetts, in
imitation of some of his predecessors of 1799, has entertained us with a
picture of cabinet plots, presidential plots, and all sorts of plots,
which have been engendered by the diseased state of the gentleman's
imagination. I wish, sir, that another plot, of a much more serious and
alarming character--a plot that aims at the dismemberment of our
Union--had only the same imaginary existence. But no man, who has paid
any attention to the tone of certain prints and to transactions in a
particular quarter of the Union, for several years past, can doubt the
existence of such a plot. It was far, very far from my intention to
charge the opposition with such a design. No, I believe them generally
incapable of it. But I cannot say as much for some who have been
unworthily associated with them in the quarter of the Union to which I
have referred. The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment,
uttered even on the floor of this house, "peaceably if we can, forcibly
if we must," nearly at the very time Henry's mission was undertaken. The
flagitiousness of that embassy had been attempted to be concealed by
directing the public attention to the price which, the gentleman says,
was given for the disclosure. As if any price could change the
atrociousness of the attempt on the part of Great Britain, or could
extenuate, in the slightest degree, the offence of those citizens, who
entertained and deliberated on a proposition so infamous and unnatural *
* * But, sir, I will quit this unpleasant subject. * * *

The war was declared because Great Britain arrogated to herself the
pretension of regulating our foreign trade, under the delusive name of
retaliatory orders in council--a pretension by which she undertook to
proclaim to American enterprise, "thus far shalt thou go, and no
further"--orders which she refused to revoke after the alleged cause of
their enactment had ceased; because she persisted in the practice of
impressing American seamen; because she had instigated the Indians to
commit hostilities against us; and because she refused indemnity for her
past injuries upon our commerce. I throw out of the question other
wrongs. So undeniable were the causes of the war, so powerfully did they
address themselves to the feelings of the whole American people, that
when the bill was pending before this House, gentlemen in the
opposition, although provoked to debate, would not, or could not, utter
one syllable against it. It is true, they wrapped themselves up in
sullen silence, pretending they did not choose to debate such a question
in secret session. While speaking of the proceedings on that occasion I
beg to be permitted to advert to another fact which transpired--an
important fact, material for the nation to know, and which I have often
regretted had not been spread upon our journals. My honorable colleague
(Mr. McKee) moved, in committee of the whole, to comprehend France in
the war; and when the question was taken upon the proposition, there
appeared but ten votes in support of it, of whom seven belonged to this
side of the house, and three only to the other. * * *

It is not to the British principle (of allegiance), objectionable as it
is, that we are alone to look; it is to her practice, no matter what
guise she puts on. It is in vain to assert the inviolability of the
obligation of allegiance. It is in vain to set up the plea of necessity,
and to allege that she cannot exist without the impressment of HER
seamen. The naked truth is, she comes, by her press-gangs, on board of
our vessels, seizes OUR native as well as naturalized seamen, and drags
them into her service. It is the case, then, of the assertion of an
erroneous principle, and of a practice not conformable to the asserted
principle--a principle which, if it were theoretically right, must be
forever practically wrong--a practice which can obtain countenance from
no principle whatever, and to submit to which, on our part, would betray
the most abject degradation. We are told, by gentlemen in the
opposition, that government has not done all that was incumbent on it to
do, to avoid just cause of complaint on the part of Great Britain; that
in particular the certificates of protection, authorized by the act of
1796, are fraudulently used. Sir, government has done too much in
granting those paper protections. I can never think of them without
being shocked. They resemble the passes which the master grants to his
negro slave: "Let the bearer, Mungo, pass and repass without
molestation." What do they imply? That Great Britain has a right to
seize all who are not provided with them. From their very nature, they
must be liable to abuse on both sides. If Great Britain desires a mark,
by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark.
The colors that float from the mast-head should be the credentials of
our seamen. There is no safety to us, and the gentlemen have shown it,
but in the rule that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies),
are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should
ever abandon the gallant tars who have won for us such splendid
trophies. Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one of
them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his
forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of
gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did
not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; having taken you
by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, by
peaceable means, to release you; but I cannot, my son, fight for you."
If he did not consider this mere mockery, the poor tar would address her
judgment and say: "You owe me, my country, protection; I owe you, in
return, obedience. I am no British subject; I am a native of old
Massachusetts, where lived my aged father, my wife, my children. I have
faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours?" Appealing
to her passions, he would continue: "I lost this eye in fighting under
Truxton, with the Insurgence; I got this scar before Tripoli; I broke
this leg on board the Constitution, when the Guerriere struck." * * * I
will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be driven by
an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not be, it cannot be,
that his country will refuse him protection. * * *

An honorable peace is attainable only by an efficient war. My plan would
be to call out the ample resources of the country, give them a judicious
direction, prosecute the war with the utmost vigor, strike wherever we
can reach the enemy, at sea or on land, and negotiate the terms of a
peace at Quebec or at Halifax. We are told that England is a proud and
lofty nation, which, disdaining to wait for danger, meets it half way.
Haughty as she is we triumphed over her once, and, if we do not listen
to the counsels of timidity and despair, we shall again prevail. In such
a cause, with the aid of Providence, we must come out crowned with
success; but, if we fail, let us fail like men, lash ourselves to our
gallant tars, and expire together in one common struggle, fighting for
FREE TRADE AND SEAMEN'S RIGHTS.

IV. -- THE RISE OF NATIONALITY.

In spite of execrable financial management, of the criminal blunders of
political army officers, and of consequent defeats on land, and quite
apart from brilliant sea-fights and the New Orleans victory, the war of
1812 was of incalculable benefit to the United States. It marks more
particularly the point at which the already established democracy began
to shade off into a real nationality.

The Democratic party began its career as a States-rights party.
Possession of national power had so far modified the practical operation
of its tenets that it had not hesitated to carry out a national policy,
and even wage a desperate war, in flat opposition to the will of one
section of the Union, comprising five of its most influential States;
and, when the Hartford Convention was suspected of a design to put the
New England opposition to the war into a forcible veto, there were many
indications that the dominant party was fully prepared to answer by a
forcible materialization of the national will. In the North and West, at
least, the old States-rights formulas never carried a real vitality
beyond the war of 1812. Men still spoke of "sovereign States," and
prided themselves on the difference between the "voluntary union of
States" and the effete despotisms of Europe; but the ghost of the
Hartford Convention had laid very many more dangerous ghosts in the
section in which it had appeared.

The theatre of the war, now filled with comfortable farms and populous
cities, was then less known than any of our Territories in 1896. There
were no roads, and the transportation of provisions for the troops, of
guns, ammunition, and stores for the lake navies, was one of the most
difficult of the problems which the National Government was called upon
to solve. It cannot be said that the solution was successfully reached,
for the blunders in transportation were among the most costly,
exasperating, and dangerous of the war. But the efforts to reach it
provided the impulse which soon after resulted in the settlement of
Western New York, the appearance of the germs of such flourishing cities
as Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, the opening up of the Southwest
Territory, between Tennessee and New Orleans, and the rapid admission of
the new States of Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri. But the
impulse did not stop here. The inconveniences and dangers arising from
the possession of a vast territory with utterly inadequate means of
communication had been brought so plainly to public view by the war that
the question of communication influenced politics in every direction. In
New York it took shape in the construction of the Erie Canal (finished
in 1825). In States farther west and south, the loaning of the public
credit to enterprises of the nature of the Erie Canal increased until
the panic of 1837 introduced "repudiation" into American politics. In
national politics, the necessity of a general system of canals and
roads, as a means of military defence, was at first admitted by all,
even by Calhoun, was gradually rejected by the stricter constructionists
of the Constitution, and finally became a tenet of the National
Republican party, headed by John Quincy Adams and Clay (1825-29), and of
its greater successor the Whig party, headed by Clay. This idea of
Internal Improvements at national expense, though suggested by Gallatin
and Clay in 1806-08, only became a political question when the war had
forced it upon public attention; and it has not yet entirely
disappeared.

The maintenance of such a system required money, and a high tariff of
duties on imports was a necessary concomitant to Internal Improvements.
The germ of this system was also a product of the war of 1812. Hamilton
had proposed it twenty years before; and the first American tariff act
had declared that its object was the encouragement of American
manufactures. But the system had never been effectively introduced until
the war and the blockade had forced American manufactures into
existence. Peace brought competition with British manufacturers, and the
American manufacturers began to call for protection. The tariff of 1816
contained the principle of Protection, but only carried it into practice
far enough to induce the manufacturers to rely on the dominant party for
more of it. This expectation, rather than the Federalist opposition to
the war, is the explanation of the immediate and rapid decline of the
Federal party in New England. Continued effort brought about the tariff
of 1824, which was more protective; the tariff of 1828, which was still
more protective; and the tariff of 1830, which reduced the protective
element to a system.

The two sections, North and South, had been very much alike until the
war called the principle of growth into activity. The slave system of
labor, which had fallen in the North and had survived and been made
still more profitable in the South by Whitney's invention of the cotton
gin in 1793, shut the South off from almost all share in the new life.
That section had a monopoly of the cotton culture, and the present
profit of slave labor blinded it to the ultimate consequences of it. The
slave was fit for rude agriculture alone; he could not be employed in
manufactures, or in any labor which required intelligence; and the
slave-owner, while he desired manufactures, did not dare to cultivate
the necessary intelligence in his own slaves. The South could therefore
find no profit in protection, and yet it could not with dignity admit
that its slave system precluded it from the advantages of protection, or
base its opposition to protection wholly on economic grounds. Its only
recourse was the constitutional ground of the lack of power of Congress
to pass a protective tariff, and this brought up again the question
which had evolved the Kentucky resolutions of 1798-9. Calhoun, with
pitiless logic, developed them into a scheme of constitutional
Nullification. Under his lead,

South Carolina, in 1832, declared through her State Convention that the
protective tariff acts were no law, nor binding on the State, its
officers or citizens. President Jackson, while he was ready and willing
to suppress any such rebellion by force, was not sorry to see his
adherents in Congress make use of it to overthrow protection; and a
"compromise tariff," to which the protectionists agreed, was passed in
1833. It reduced the duties by an annual percentage for ten years. The
nullifiers claimed this as a triumph, and formally repealed the
ordinance of nullification, as if it had accomplished its object. But,
in its real intent, it had failed wretchedly. It had asserted State
sovereignty through the State's proper voice of a convention. When the
time fixed for the execution of the ordinance arrived, Jackson's
intention of taking the State's sovereignty by the throat had become so
evident that an unofficial meeting of nullifiers suspended the ordinance
until the passage of the compromise tariff had made it unnecessary. For
the first time, the force of a State and the national force had
approached threateningly near collision, and no State ever tried it
again. When the tariff of 1842 reintroduced the principle of protection,
no one thought of taking the broken weapon of nullification from its
resting-place; and secession was finally attempted only as a sectional
movement, not as the expression of the will of a State, but as a
concerted revolution by a number of States. It seems certain that
nationality had attained force enough, even in 1833, to have put State
sovereignty forever under its feet; and that but for the cohesive
sectional force of slavery and its interests, the development of
nationality would have been undisputed for the future.

New conditions were increasing the growth of the North and West, and
their separation from the South in national life, even when
nullification was in its death struggle. The acquisition of Louisiana in
1803 had been followed in 1807 by Fulton's invention of the steamboat,
the most important factor in carrying immigration into the new
territories and opening them up to settlement. But the steamboat could
not quite bridge over the gap between the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi. Internal improvements, canals, and improved roads were not
quite the instrument that was needed. It was found at last in the
introduction of the railway into the United States in 1830-32. This
proved to be an agent which could solve every difficulty except its own.
It could bridge over every gap; it could make profit of its own, and
make profitable that which had before been unprofitable. It placed
immigrants where the steamboat, canal, and road could at last be of the
highest utility to them; it developed the great West with startling
rapidity; it increased the sale of government lands so rapidly that in a
few years the debt of the United States was paid off, and the surplus
became, for the first time, a source of political embarrassment. In a
few years further, aided by revolutionary troubles in Europe,
immigration became a great stream, which poured into and altered the
conditions of every part of the North and West. The stream was
altogether nationalizing in its nature. The immigrant came to the United
States, not to a particular State. To him, the country was greater than
any State; even that of his adoption. Labor conditions excluded the
South from this element of progress also. Not only were the railroads of
the South hampered in every point by the old difficulty of slave labor;
immigration and free labor shunned slave soil as if the plague were
there prevalent. Year after year the North and West became more national
in their prejudices and modes of thought and action; while the South
remained little changed, except by a natural reactionary drift toward a
more extreme colonialism. The natural result, in the next period was the
development of a quasi nationality in the South itself.

The introduction of the railway had brought its own difficulties, though
these were not felt severely until after years. In the continent of
Europe, the governments carefully retained their powers of eminent
domain when the new system was introduced. The necessary land was loaned
to the railways for a term of years, at the expiration of which the
railway was to revert to the State; and railway troubles were
non-existent, or comparatively tractable. In the United States, as in
Great Britain, free right of incorporation was supplemented by what was
really a gift of the power of eminent domain. The necessary land became
the property of the corporations in fee, and it has been found almost
equally difficult to revoke the gift or to introduce a railway control.

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