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

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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you repealed the Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago,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.

Mr. Mason. I know he does not intend to misrepresent me or other
gentlemen. What I said was, that the repeal of those laws would furnish
no cause of satisfaction to the Southern States. Our opinions of those
laws we gave freely. We said the repeal of those laws would give no
satisfaction.

Mr. Wade. Mr. President, I do not intend to misrepresent anything. I
understood those gentlemen to suppose that they had not been injured by
them. I understood the Senator from Virginia to believe that they were
enacted in a spirit of hostility to the institutions of the South, and
to object to them not because the acts themselves had done them any
hurt, but because they were really a stamp of degradation upon Southern
men, or something like that--I do not quote his words. The other
Senators that referred to it probably intended to be understood in the
same way; but they did acquit these laws of having done them injury to
their knowledge or belief.

I do not believe that these laws were, as the Senator supposed, enacted
with a view to exasperate the South, or to put them in a position of
degradation. Why, sir, these laws against kidnapping are as old as the
common law itself, as that Senator well knows. To take a freeman and
forcibly carry him out of the jurisdiction of the State, has ever been,
by all civilized countries, adjudged to be a great crime; and in most of
them, wherever I have understood anything about it, they have penal
laws to punish such an offence. I believe the State of Virginia has one
to-day as stringent in all its provisions as almost any other of which
you complain. I have not looked over the statute-books of the South; but
I do not doubt that there will be found this species of legislation upon
all your statute-books.

Here let me say, because the subject occurs to me right here, the
Senator from Virginia seemed not so much to point out any specific acts
that Northern people had done injurious to your property as, what he
took to be a dishonor and a degradation. I think I feel as sensitive
upon that subject as any other man. If I know myself, I am the last man
that would be the advocate of any law or any act that would humiliate or
dishonor any section of this country, or any individual in it; and, on
the other hand, let me tell these gentlemen I am exceedingly sensitive
upon that same point, whatever they may think about it. I would
rather sustain an injury than an insult or dishonor; and I would be
as unwilling to inflict it upon others as I would be to submit to it
myself. I never will do either the one or the other if I know it.

* * * * *

I know that charges have been made and rung in our ears, and reiterated
over and over again, that we have been unfaithful in the execution of
your fugitive bill. Sir, that law is exceedingly odious to any free
people. It deprives us of all the old guarantees of liberty that the
Anglo-Saxon race everywhere have considered sacred--more sacred than
anything else.

* * * * *

Mr. President, the gentleman says, if I understood him, that these
fugitives might be turned over to the authorities of the State from
whence they came. That would be a very poor remedy for a free man in
humble circumstances who was taken under the provisions of this bill in
a summary way, to be carried--where? Where he came from? There is no law
that requires that he should be carried there. Sir, if he is a free man
he may be carried into the market-place anywhere in a slave State; and
what chance has he, a poor, ignorant individual, and a stranger,
of asserting any rights there, even if there were no prejudices or
partialities against him? That would be mere mockery of justice and
nothing else, and the Senator well knows it. Sir, I know that from the
stringent, summary provisions of this bill, free men have been kidnapped
and carried into captivity and sold into everlasting slavery. Will any
man who has a regard to the sovereign rights of the State rise here and
complain that a State shall not make a law to protect her own people
against kidnapping and violent seizures from abroad? Of all men, I
believe those who have made most of these complaints should be the
last to rise and deny the power of a sovereign State to protect her own
citizens against any Federal legislation whatever. These liberty bills,
in my judgment, have been passed, not with a view of degrading the
South, but with an honest purpose of guarding the rights of their own
citizens from unlawful seizures and abductions. I was exceedingly glad
to hear that the Senators on the other side had arisen in their places
and had said that the repeal of those laws would not relieve the case
from the difficulties under which they now labor.

* * * * *

Gentlemen, it will be very well for us all to take a view of all the
phases of this controversy before we come to such conclusions as seem to
have been arrived at in some quarters. I make the assertion here that I
do not believe, in the history of the world, there ever was a nation or
a people where a law repugnant to the general feeling was ever executed
with the same faithfulness as has been your most savage and atrocious
fugitive bill in the North. You yourselves can scarcely point out any
case that has come before any northern tribunal in which the law has not
been enforced to the very letter. You ought to know these facts, and you
do know them. You all know that when a law is passed anywhere to bind
any people, who feel, in conscience, or for any other reason, opposed
to its execution, it is not in human nature to enforce it with the same
certainty as a law that meets with the approbation of the great mass of
the citizens. Every rational man understands this, and every candid man
will admit it. Therefore it is that I do not violently impeach you for
your unfaithfulness in the execution of many of your laws. You have in
South Carolina a law by which you take free citizens of Massachusetts
or any other maritime State, who visit the city of Charleston, and lock
them up in jail under the penalty, if they cannot pay the jail-fees, of
eternal slavery staring them in the face--a monstrous law, revolting
to the best feelings of humanity and violently in conflict with
the Constitution of the United States. I do not say this by way of
recrimination; for the excitement pervading the country is now so great
that I do not wish to add a single coal to the flame; but nevertheless I
wish the whole truth to appear.

* * * * *

Now, Mr. President, I have shown, I think, that the dominant majority
here have nothing to complain of in the legislation of Congress, or in
the legislation of any of the States, or in the practice of the people
of the North, under the fugitive slave bill, except so far as they say
certain State legislation furnishes some evidence of hostility to their
institutions. And here, sir, I beg to make an observation. I tell the
Senator, and I tell all the Senators, that the Republican party of the
Northern States, so far as I know, and of my own State in particular,
hold the same opinions with regard to this peculiar institution of
yours that are held by all the civilized nations of the world. We do not
differ from the public sentiment of England, of France, of Germany, of
Italy, and every other civilized nation on God's earth; and I tell you
frankly that you never found, and you never will find, a free community
that are in love with your peculiar institution. The Senator from Texas
(Mr. Wigfall) told us the other day that cotton was king, and that by
its influence it would govern all creation. He did not say so in words,
but that was the substance of his remark: that cotton was king, and that
it had its subjects in Europe who dared not rebel against it. Here let
me say to that Senator, in passing, that it turns out that they are
very rebellious subjects, and they are talking very disrespectfully at
present of that king that he spoke of. They defy you to exercise your
power over them. They tell you that they sympathize in this controversy
with what you call the black Republicans. Therefore, I hope that, so
far as Europe is concerned at least, we shall hear no more of this boast
that cotton is king; and that he is going to rule all the civilized
nations of the world, and bring them to his footstool. Sir, it will
never be done.

But, sir, I wish to inquire whether the Southern people are injured by,
or have any just right to complain of that platform of principles that
we put out, and on which we have elected a President and Vice-President.
I have no concealments to make, and I shall talk to you, my Southern
friends, precisely as I would talk upon the stump on the subject. I tell
you that in that platform we did lay it down that we would, if we had
the power, prohibit slavery from another inch of free territory under
this Government. I stand on that position to-day. I have argued
it probably to half a million people. They stand there, and have
commissioned and enjoined me to stand there forever; and, so help me
God, I will. I say to you frankly, gentlemen, that while we hold this
doctrine, there is no Republican, there is no convention of Republicans,
there is no paper that speaks for them, there is no orator that sets
forth their doctrines, who ever pretends that they have any right in
your States to interfere with your peculiar institution; but, on the
other hand, our authoritative platform repudiates the idea that we have
any right or any intention ever to invade your peculiar institution in
your own States.

Now, what do you complain of? You are going to break up this Government;
you are going to involve us in war and blood, from a mere suspicion that
we shall justify that which we stand everywhere pledged not to do.
Would you be justified in the eyes of the civilized world in taking
so monstrous a position, and predicating it on a bare, groundless
suspicion? We do not love slavery. Did you not know that before to-day,
before this session commenced? Have you not a perfect confidence that
the civilized world is against you on this subject of loving slavery
or believing that it is the best institution in the world? Why, sir,
everything remains precisely as it was a year ago. No great catastrophe
has occurred. There is no recent occasion to accuse us of anything.
But all at once, when we meet here, a kind of gloom pervades the whole
community and the Senate Chamber. Gentlemen rise and tell us that they
are on the eve of breaking up this Government, that seven or eight
States are going to break off their connection with the Government,
retire from the Union, and set up a hostile government of their own, and
they look imploringly over to us, and say to us: "You can prevent it; we
can do nothing to prevent it; but it all lies with you." Well, sir, what
can we do to prevent it? You have not even condescended to tell us what
you want; but I think I see through the speeches that I have heard from
gentlemen on the other side. If we would give up the verdict of the
people, and take your platform, I do not know but you would be satisfied
with it. I think the Senator from Texas rather intimated, and I think
the Senator from Georgia more than intimated, that if we would take what
is exactly the Charleston platform on which Mr. Breckenridge was placed,
and give up that on which we won our victory, you would grumblingly and
hesitatingly be satisfied.

Mr. Iverson. I would prefer that the Senator would look over my remarks
before quoting them so confidently. I made no such statement as that. I
did not say that I would be satisfied with any such thing. I would not
be satisfied with it.

Mr. Wade. I did not say that the Senator said so; but by construction I
gathered that from his speech. I do not know that I was right in it.

Mr. Iverson. The Senator is altogether wrong in his construction.

Mr. Wade. Well, sir, I have now found what the Senator said on the other
point to which he called my attention a little while ago. Here it is:

"Nor do we suppose that there will be any overt acts upon the part of
Mr. Lincoln. For one, I do not dread these overt acts. I do not propose
to wait for them. Why, sir, the power of this Federal Government could
be so exercised against the institution of slavery in the Southern
States, as that, without an overt act, the institution would not last
ten years. We know that, sir; and seeing the storm which is approaching,
although it may be seemingly in the distance, we are determined to seek
our own safety and security before it shall burst upon us and overwhelm
us with its fury, when we are not in a situation to defend ourselves."

That is what the Senator said.

Mr. Iverson. Yes; that is what I said.

Mr. Wade. Well, then, you did not expect that Mr. Lincoln would commit
any overt act against the Constitution--that was not it--you were not
going to wait for that, but were going to proceed on your supposition
that probably he might; and that is the sense of what I said before.

Well, Mr. President, I have disavowed all intention on the part of the
Republican party to harm a hair of your heads anywhere. We hold to
no doctrine that can possibly work you an inconvenience. We have
been faithful to the execution of all the laws in which you have any
interest, as stands confessed on this floor by your own party, and as is
known to me without their confessions. It is not, then, that Mr. Lincoln
is expected to do any overt act by which you may be injured; you will
not wait for any; but anticipating that the Government may work an
injury, you say you will put an end to it, which means simply, that
you intend either to rule or ruin this Government. That is what your
complaint comes to; nothing else. We do not like your institution, you
say. Well, we never liked it any better than we do now. You might
as well have dissolved the Union at any other period as now, on that
account, for we stand in relation to it precisely as we have ever
stood; that is, repudiating it among ourselves as a matter of policy
and morals, but nevertheless admitting that where it is out of our
jurisdiction, we have no hold upon it, and no designs upon it.

Then, sir, as there is nothing in the platform on which Mr. Lincoln was
elected of which you complain, I ask, is there anything in the character
of the President-elect of which you ought to complain? Has he not lived
a blameless life? Did he ever transgress any law? Has he ever committed
any violation of duty of which the most scrupulous can complain? Why,
then, your suspicions that he will? I have shown that you have had the
government all the time until, by some misfortune or maladministration,
you brought it to the very verge of destruction, and the wisdom of the
people had discovered that it was high time that the scepter should
depart from you, and be placed in more competent hands; I say that this
being so, you have no constitutional right to complain; especially when
we disavow any intention so to make use of the victory we have won as to
injure you at all.

This brings me, sir, to the question of compromises. On the first day of
this session, a Senator rose in his place and offered a resolution for
the appointment of a committee to inquire into the evils that exist
between the different sections, and to ascertain what can be done to
settle this great difficulty. That is the proposition substantially. I
tell the Senator that I know of no difficulty; and as to compromises, I
had supposed that we were all agreed that the day of compromises was at
an end. The most solemn compromises we have ever made have been
violated without a whereas. Since I have had a seat in this body, one of
considerable antiquity, that had stood for more than thirty years, was
swept away from your statute-books. When I stood here in the minority
arguing against it; when I asked you to withhold your hand; when I told
you it was a sacred compromise between the sections, and that when it
was removed we should be brought face to face with all that sectional
bitterness that has intervened; when I told you that it was a sacred
compromise which no man should touch with his finger, what was your
reply? That it was a mere act of Congress--nothing more, nothing
less--and that it could be swept away by the same majority that passed
it. That was true in point of fact, and true in point of law; but it
showed the weakness of compromises. Now, sir, I only speak for myself;
and I say that, in view of the manner in which other compromises have
been heretofore treated, I should hardly think any two of the Democratic
party would look each other in the face and say "compromise" without a
smile. (Laughter.) A compromise to be brought about by act of Congress,
after the experience we have had, is absolutely ridiculous.

* * * * *

I say, then, that so far as I am concerned, I will yield to no
compromise. I do not come here begging, either. It would be an indignity
to the people that I represent if I were to stand here parleying as to
the rights of the party to which I belong. We have won our right to the
Chief Magistracy of this nation in the way that you have always won your
predominance; and if you are as willing to do justice to others as to
exact it from them, you would never raise an inquiry as to a committee
for compromises. Here I beg, barely for myself, to say one thing more.
Many of you stand in an attitude hostile to this Government; that is to
say, you occupy an attitude where you threaten that, unless we do so and
so, you will go out of this Union and destroy the Government. I say
to you for myself, that, in my private capacity, I never yielded to
anything by way of threat, and in my public capacity I have no right
to yield to any such thing; and therefore I would not entertain a
proposition for any compromise, for, in my judgment, this long, chronic
controversy that has existed between us must be met, and met upon the
principles of the Constitution and laws, and met now. I hope it may be
adjusted to the satisfaction of all; and I know no other way to adjust
it, except that way which is laid down by the Constitution of the United
States. Whenever we go astray from that, we are sure to plunge ourselves
into difficulties. The old Constitution of the United States, although
commonly and frequently in direct opposition to what I could wish,
nevertheless, in my judgment, is the wisest and best constitution
that ever yet organized a free Government; and by its provisions I
am willing, and intend, to stand or fall. Like the Senator from
Mississippi, I ask nothing more. I ask no ingrafting upon it. I ask
nothing to be taken away from it. Under its provisions a nation has
grown faster than any other in the history of the world ever did before
in prosperity, in power, and in all that makes a nation great and
glorious. It has ministered to the advantages of this people; and now
I am unwilling to add or take away anything till I can see much clearer
than I can now that it wants either any addition or lopping off.

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