.>^ 5^"^^^ ^^d^ **d« • .1 av^^ L^ \. ^'/^i>- ./*!i^^% ^'.•^;:>- J" *'^ I > - t • o *^ ••^o' V'-rS^'.^ 'i'**^'**?' **.'^^\»*- '^o**'^ .*^"< • "^ 1^* *tH : .^''% ^'V^ *^V*'^^*V 'V^^'\'«'^'^ '*'%'*'^^V'^ 'V'*^ .y .!k-i% V .-aP.-iin.^^/ .V^^.'r.-'.^^.. .4.^^.-i;0n.-.%. •"^^-" \/ .'»% V** •'^"■- "--/ '^' w* •; ..-.^. ^**'"** °"^'' *«^'\. '-^-^ **'"** °B^-' ./%.. - r •• ;o V /^^ // • '^rf. ss^ ^I^ 'bV v-o' ^ ♦T^t^^'A .6 • ^^' tl)C €lucslious of tl)c CDag. 1 AS ADDRKSS, j i 1 DELIVERED 1 1 IN THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC IN NE^^' YORK, ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1861. i i By EDWARD EVERETT. i i 1 i NEW YORK: GEO. ] P. PUTNAM, 532 BROADWAY. 1861. address; BY EDAYARD EYERETT. Whkn the Congress of the United States, on the 4th of July, 1776, issued the evei' memorable Declaration which we commemorate to-day, they deemed that a decent respect for the opinions of mankind required a formal statement of the causes which impelled them to the all-important measure. The eighty-fifth anni- versary of the great Declaration finds the loyal people of the Union engaged in a tremendous conflict, to maintain and defend the grand nationality, which was asserted by our Fathers, and to prevent their fair Creation from crumbling into dishonorable Chaos. A great People, gallantly struggling to keep a noble fi-ame- work of government from falling into wretched fragments, needs no justification at the tribunal of the public opinion of mankind. But while our patriotic fellow- citizens, who have rallied to the defence of the Union, marshalled by the ablest of living chieftains, are risking their lives in the field ; while the blood of your youthful heroes and ours is poured out together in defence of this precious legacy of constitutional freedom, you will not think it a misappropriation of the hour, if I employ it in showing the justice of the cause in which we are engaged, and the fallacy of the arguments employed by the South, in vindication of the war, alike murderous and suicidal, which she is waging against the Constitution and the Union. PEOSPEROUS STATE OP THE COUNTPvT LAST YEAPv. A twelvemonth ago, nay, six or seven months ago, our country was regarded and spoken of by the rest of the civilized world, as among the most prosperous in the fiimily of nations. It was classed with' England, France, and Russia, as one of the four leading powet's of the age.f Remote as we were from the complica- tions of foreign politics, the exteiit of our commerce and the efficiency of our navy won for us the respectful consideration of Europe. The United States were par- ticularly referred to, on all occasions and in all countries, as an illustration of the mighty influence of free governments in promoting the prosperity of States. In England, notwithstanding some diplomatic collisions on boundary questions and occasional hostile reminiscences of the past, there has liardly been a del^ute for thirty years in parliament on any topic, in reference to which this country in the * Delivered, by request, at the Academy of Music, New York, July 4, ISCl. Largo portions of this address ■were, on account of its length, necessarily omitted in the delivery, t The Edinburgh Peview for April, ISCl, p. C55. GIFT E^ATEOF \ • \ WILLI AI9I C:Ti IVES >\ ^ ' , • V\ \, APRIL, 1840 6 ADDRESS ^BY EDWARD EVERETT. nature of things afTorded matter of comparison, in which it was not referred to as furnishl^ig instructive examples of prosperous enterprise and hopeful progress. At home, the country grew as *by* enchantment. Its vast geographical extent, aug- mented by magnificent accessions of conterminous territory peacefully made ; its population far more rapidly increasing than that of any other country, and swelled by an emigration from Europe such as the world has never before seen ; the mu- tually beneficial intercourse between its different sections and climates, each sup- pljing what the other wants; the rapidity with which the arts of civilization have been extended over a before unsettled wilderness, and, together with this material prosperity, the advance of the country in education, literature, science, and refine- ment, formed a spectacle, of which the history of mankind furnished no other ex- ample. That such was the state of the country six months ago was matter of general recognition and acknowledgment at home and abroad. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND ITS RESULTS There was, however, one sad deduction to be made, not from the truth of this description, not from the fidelity of this picture for that is incontestable, but from the content, happiness, and mutual good will which ought to have existed on the part of a People, favored by such an accumulation of Providential blessings. I allude, of course, to the great sectional controversies which have so long agitated the country, and arrayed the people in bitter geographical antagonism of political organization and action. Fierce party contentions had always existed in the United States, as they ever have and unquestionably ever will exist under all free elective governments ; and these contentions had, from the first, tended somewhat to a sectional character. They had not, however, till quite lately, assumed that char- acter so exclusively, that the minority in any one part of the country had not had a respectable electoral representation in every other. Till last November, there has never been a Southern Presidential Candidate, who did not receive electoral votes at the North, nor a Northern Candidate who did not receive electoral votes at the South. At the late election and for the first time, this was not the case ; and conse- quences the most extraordinary and deplorable have resulted. The country, as we have seen, being in profound peace at home and abroad, and in a state of unexam- pled prosperity — Agriculture, Commerce, Navigation, Manufactures, East, West, North, and South recovered or rapidly recovering from the crisis of 1857 — power- ful and respected abroad, and thriving beyond example at home, entered in the usual manner upon the electioneering campaign, for the choice of the nineteenth President of the United States. I say in the usual manner, though it is true that parties were more than usually broken up and subdivided. The normal division was into two great parties, but there had on several former occasions been three ; in 1824 there were four, and there w^ere four last November. The South equally W'ith the West and the North entered into the canvass ; conventions were held, nominations made, mass meetings assembled ; the platform, the press enlisted with unwonted vigor ; the election in all its stages, conducted in legal and constitutional ffinn, without violence and without surprise, and the result obtained by a decided majority. No sooner, however, was this result ascertained, than it appeared on the part SOUTH CAROLINA SECEDES FROM THE UNION. 7 of one of the Southern States, and her example was rapidly followed by others, that it had by no means been the intention of those States to abide by the result of the election, except on the one condition, of the choice of their candidate. The reference of the great sectional controversy to the peaceful arbitrament of the ballot box, the great safety valve of republican institutions, though made with every appearance of good fiiith, on the part of our brethren at the South, meant but this : if we succeed in this election, as we have in fifteen that have preceded it, well and good ; we will consent to govern the country for four years more, as we have already governed it for sixty years ; but we have no intention of acquies- cing in any other result. We do not mean to abide by the election, although we participate in it, unless our candidate is chosen. If he fails we intend to prostrate the Government and break up the Union ; peaceably, if the States composing the majority are willing that it should be broken up peaceably ; otherwise, at the point of the sword. SOUTH CAROLINA SECEDES FEOM THE UNION. The election took place on the 6th of November, and in pursuance of the ex- traordinary programme just described, the State of South Carolina, acting by a Convention chosen for the purpose, assembled on the 17th of December, and on the 20th, passed unanimously what was styled " an ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her, under the compact entitled the Constitution, of the United States of America." It is not my purpose on this occasion to make a documentary speech, but as this so-called " Ordinance " is very short, and affords matter for deep reflection, I beg leave to recite it in full : — " We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in Convention on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the general assembly of this State, ratifying the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is dissolved." This remarkable document is called an " Ordinance," and no doubt some special virtue is supposed to reside in the name. But names are nothing except as they truly represent things. An ordinance, if it is any thing clothed with binding force, is a Law, and nothing but a Law, and as such this ordinance, being in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, is a mere nullity. The Constitu- tion contains the following express provision : " This Constitution and the Laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such being the express provision of the Constitution of the United States, which the people of South Carolina adopted in 1788, just as much as they ever adopted either of their State Constitutions, is it not trifling with serious things to claim that, by the simple expedient of passing a law under the name of an ordinance, this provision and 8 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. every other provision of it may be nullifiecl, and every magistrate and officer in Carolina, wliether of the State or Union, absolved from the oath which they have taken to support it ? But this is not all. This secession ordinance purports to " repeal " the ordi- nance of 23d May, 1788, by which the Constitution of the United States was ratified by the people of South Carolina. It was intended, of course, by calling the act of ratification an ordinance to infer a right of repealing it by another ordinance. It is important, therefore, to observe that the act of ratification is not, and was not at the time called, an ordinance, and contains nothing which by possibility can be repealed. It is in the following terms : — "The Convention [of the people of South Carolina], having maturely considered the Constitution, or form of government, reported to Congress by the convention of delegates from the United States of America, and submitted to them, by a reso- lution of the Legislature of this State passed the 17th and 18th days of February last, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the people of the said United States and their posterity, do, in the name and in behalf of the people of this State, hereby assent to and ratify the same." Here it is evident that there is nothing in the instrument which, in the nature of things, can be repealed ; it is an authorized solemn assertion of the People of South Carolina, that they assent to, and ratify a form of government, wdiich is de- clared in terms to be paramount to all State laws and constitutions. This is a great historical fact, the most important that can ever occur in the history of a people. The fact that the People of South Carolina, on the 23d of May, 1788, assented to and ratified the Constitution of the United States, in order, among other objects, to secure the blessings of li'nerty for themselves and " their posterity," can no more be repealed in 18G1, than any other historical fact that occurred in Charles- ton in that year and on that day. It vrould be just as rational, at the present day, to attempt by ordinance to repeal any other event, as that the sun rose or that the tide ebbed and flowed on that day, as to repeal by ordinance the assent of Carolina to the Constitution. Again : it is well known that various amendments to the Constitution were de- sired and proposed in different States. The first of the amendments proposed by South Carolina was as follows : — " Whereas it is essential to the preservation of the rights reserved to the sev- eral States and the freedom of the People under the operation of the General Government, that the right of prescribing the manner, times, and places of holding the elections of the Federal Legislature should be forever inseparably annexed to the sovereignty of the States ; this Convention doth declare that the same ought to remain to all posterity, a perpetual and fundamental right in the local, exclusive of the interference of the (7c«erc!^ Government, except in cases where the Legislature of the States sliall refuse or neglect to perform or fulfil the same, according to the tenor of the said Constitution." Here you perceive that South Carolina herself in 1788 desired a provision to be made and annexed inseparably to her sovereignty, that she should forever have the power of prescribing the time, place, and manner of holding the elections of IS SECESSION A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT, OR IS IT REVOLUTION? 9 members of Congress ; — but even in making this express reservation, to operate for all posterity, she was willing to provide that, if the State Legislatures refuse or neglect to perform the duty, (which is precisely the case of the Seceding States at the present day.) then the General Government was, by this South Carolina amendment, expressly authorized to do it. South Carolina in 1788, Ity a sort of prophetic foresight, looked forward to the possibility that the States might " refuse or neglect " to cooperate in carrying on the Government, and admitted, in that case, that the General Government must go on, in spite of their delinquency. I have dwelt on these points at some length, to show how futile is the attempt, by giving the name of " ordinance " to the act, by which South Carolina adopted •the Constitution, and entered the Union, to gain a power to leave it by a subse- quent ordinance of repeal/^ IS SECESSION A CONSTITUTIONAL EIGHT, OE IS IT EEVOLUTION ? Whether the present lamatural civil war is waged by the South, in virtue of a supposed constitutional right to leave the Union at pleasure ; or whether it is an exercise of the great and ultimate right of revolution, the existence of which no one denies, seems to be left in uncertainty by the leaders of the movement. Mr. Jef- ferson Davis, the President of the new confederacy, in his inaugural speech delivered on the 18th of February, declares that it is " an abuse of language " to call it " a revolution." Mr. Vice-President Stephens, on the contrary, in a speech at Sa- vannah, on the 21st of March, pronounces it "one of the greatest revolutions in the ainials of the world." The question is of great magnitude as one of constitutional and public law ; as one of morality it is of very little consequence whether the country is drenched in blood, in the exercise of a right claimed under the Consti- tution, or the right inherent in every community to revolt against an oppressive government. Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify revolution, it would not justify the evil of breaking up a government, under an abstract constitutional right to do so. NEITIIEE A GEANTED NOE A EESEEVED EIGHT. This assumed right of Secession rests upon the doctrine that the Union is a compact between Independent States, from which any one of them may withdraw at pleasure in virtue of its sovereignty. This imaginary right has been the subject of discussion for more than thirty years, having been originally suggested, though not at first much dwelt upon, in connection with the kindred claim of a right, on the part of an individual State, to *' nullify " an Act of Congress. It would, of course, be impossible within the limits of the hour to review these elaborate dis- ■cussions. I will only remark, on this occasion, that none of the premises from which this remarkable conclusion is drawn, are recognized in the Constitution, and that the right of Secession, though claimed to be a " reserved " right, is not expresshj reserved in it. That instrument does not purport to be a " compact," but a Con- stitution of Government. It appears, in its first sentence, not to have been entered into by the States, but to have been ordained and established by the People of the United States, for " themselves and their posterity." The States are not named in it ; nearly all the characteristic powers of sovereignty arc expressly granted to the * Sec Appendix A- 10 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. General Government iand expressly prohibited to the States, and so far from re- serving a right of secession to the latter, on any ground or mider any pretence, it ordains and establishes in terms the Constitution of the United States as the Su- preme Law of the land, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. It would seem that this is as clear and positive as language can make it. But it is argued, that, though the right of secession is not reserved in terms, it must be considered as implied in the general reservation to the States and to the People of all the poAvers not granted to Congress nor prohibited to the States. This extraor- dinary assumption, more distinctly stated, is that, in direct defiance of the express grant to Congress and the express prohibition to the States of nearly all the powers of an independent government, there is, bij imjolicationy a right reserved to the States to assume and exercise all these powers thus vested in the Union and pro- hibited to themselves, simply in virtue of going through the ceremony of passing a law called an Ordinance of Secession. A general reservation to the States of powers not prohibited to them, nor granted to Congress is an implied reservation to the States of a right to exercise these very powers thus expressly delegated to Congress and thus expressly prohibited to the States ! The Constitution directs that the Congress of the United States shall have power to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and that the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall make treaties with foreign powers. These express grants of power to the Government of the United States are fol- lowed by prohibitions as express to the several States : — " No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant letters of marque or reprisal : no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." These and numerous other express grants of power to the General Government, and express prohibitions to the States, are further enforced by the comprehensive provision, already recited, that the Constitution and Laws of the United States aro paramount to the laws and Constitution of the separate States. And this Constitution, with these express grants and express prohibitions, and with this express subordination of the States to the General Government, has been adopted by the People of all the States ; and all their judges and other officers, and all their citizens holding office under the government of the United States or the individual States, are solemnly sworn to support it. In the face of all this, in defiance of all this, in violation of all this, in contempt of all this, the seceding States claim the right to exercise every power expressly delegated to Congress and expressly prohibited to the States by that Constitution,, which every one of their prominent men, civil and military, is under oath to sup- port. Tliey have entered into a confederation, raised an army, attempted to pro- vide a navy, issued letters of marque and reprisal, waged war, and that war, — Merciful Heaven forgive them, — not with a foreign enemy, not with tlie wild tribes which still desolate the unprotected frontier ; (they, it is said, are swelling, armed with tomahawk and scalping-knife, the Confederate forces ;) but with their owa BEFORE THE REVOLUTION THE COLONIES WERE A PEOPLE. H countrymen, and the mildest and most beneficent government on the face of the earth ! BEFORE THE EEVOLUTIOX THE COLONIES WERE A PEOPLE. But we are told all this is done in virtue of the Sovereignty of the States ; as if, because a State is Sovereign, its people were incompetent to establish a government for themselves and their posterity. Certainly the States arc clothed with Sover- eignty for local purposes ; but it is doubtful whether they ever possessed it in any other sense; and if they had, it is certain that they ceded it to the General Govern- ment, in adopting the Constitution. Before their independence of England was asserted, they constituted a provincial people, (Burko calls it '-'a glorious Em- pire,") subject to the British crown, organized for certain purposes under separate colonial charters, but, on some great occasions of political interest and public safety, acting as one. Thus they acted when, on the approach of the great Seven Years' War° which exerted such an important influence on the fate of British America, they sent their delegates to Albany to concert a plan of union. In the discussions of that plan which was reported by Franklin, the citizens of the colonies were evi- dently considered as a People. When the passage of the Stamp Act in 17G5 roused the spirit of resistance throughout America, the Unity of her People assumed a still more practical form. " Union," says one of our great American historians,^ "was the hope of Otis. Union that 'should knit and work into the very blood and bones of the original system every region as fast as settled.' " In this hope he ar, " for our claims over America? What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive measures against that loyal, respectable People ? How have this respect- able people behaved under all their grievances? Repeal, therefore, I say. But bare repeal will not satisfy this enlightened and spirited PeopleP Lord Camden iR the same debate, exclaimed, " You have no right to tax America ; tlie iiatural rights of miin, and the immutable laws of Nature, are with that People. Burke, * Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. v., p. 292. t Ibid., p. 335. 12 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. two months later, made his great speech for conciliation with America. '• I do not know," he exclaimed, " the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole People." In a letter written two years after the commencement of the war, he traces the growth of the colonies from their feeble beginnings to the magnitude Avhich they had attained when the revolution broke out, and in which his glowing imagination saw future grandeur and power beyond the reality, " At the first designation of these colonial assemblies," says he, " they were probably not in- tended for any thing more (nor perhaps did they think themselves much higher) than the municipal corporations within this island, to which some at present love to compare them. But nothing in progression can rest on its original plan ; we may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. Therefore, as the Colonies prospered and increased to a numerous and mighty people, spreading over a very great tract of the globe, it was natural that they should attribute to assemblies so resj)ectable in the formed Constitution, some part of the dignity of the great nations which they represented." The meeting of the first Continental Congress of 1774 was the spontaneous impulse of the People. All their resolves and addresses proceed on the assumption that they represented a People. Their first appeal to the Royal authority was their letter to General Gage, remonstrating against the fortifications of Boston. " We entreat your Excellency to consider," they say, " what a tendency this con- duct must have to irritate and force a free People, hitherto well disposed to peace- able measures, into hostilities." Their final act, at the close of the Session, their address to the King, one of the most eloquent and pathetic of State papers, appeals to him " in the name of all your Majesty's faithful People in America." THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE EECOGNIZES A PEOPLE. But this all-important principle in our political system is placed beyond doubt, by an authority which makes all further argument or illustration superfluous. That the citizens of the British Colonies, however divided for local purposes into different governments, when they ceased to be subject to the English crown, became ipso facto one People for all the high concerns of national existence, is a foot em- bodied in the Declaration of Independence itself. That august Manifesto, the Magna Charta, which introduced us into the family of nations, vras issued to the w^orld, so its first sentence sets forth — because " a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires " such solemn announcement of motives and causes to be made, " when in the coui-se of human events it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another." INIr. Jefferson Davis, in liis message of the 29th of April, deems it important to remark, that, by the treaty of peace with Great Britain, " the several States were each by name recognized to be independent." It would be more accurate to say that the United States each by name were so recognized. Such enumeration was necessar}^, in order to fix beyond doubt, which of the Anglo-American colonies, twenty-five or six in number, were included in the recognition.* But it is surely a far more significant circumstance, that the separate States are not named in the Declaration 'Burke's account of "the English settlements in America," begins with Jamaica, and proceeds through tho West India Islands. There were also English settlements on the Continent, Canada— and Nova Scutia,— wbicU it ■was necessary to exclude from the. Treaty, by an enumeration of the included Colonics. THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. 13 of Independence, that they are called only by the collective designation of the United States of America ; that the manifesto is issued " in the name and by the authority of the good people " of the Colonies, and that they are characterized in the first sentence as " One People." Let it not be thought that these are the latitudinarian doctrines of modern times, or of a section of the country predisposed to a loose construction of laws and Constitutions. Listen, I pray you, to the noble words of a Southern revolu- tionary patriot and statesman : — " The sepai'ate independence and individual sovereignty of the several States were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots who framed the Decla- ration of Independence. The sevei'al States are not even mentioned by name in any part of it, as if it was intended to impress this maxim on America, that our Freedom and Independence arose from our Union, and that without it we could neither be free nor independent. Let us then consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each State is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, and may bring on us the most serious distresses." * These are the solemn and prophetic words of Charles Cotos- worth Pinckney ; the patriot, the soldier, the statesman ; the trusted friend of Washington, repeatedly called by him to the highest offices of the Government ; the one name that stands highest and brightest, on the list of the great men of South Carolina.f THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDEKATION. Not only was the Declaration of Independence made in the name of the one People of the United States, but the war by which it was sustained was carried on by their authority. A very grave historical error, in this respect, is often com- mitted by the politicians of the Secession School. Mr. Davis, in his message of the 29th of April, having called the old Confederation " a close alliance," says : " under this contract of alliance the war of the revolution was successfully waged, and resulted in the treaty of peace with Great Britain of 1783, by the terms of which the several States were each by name recognized to be independent." I have already given the reason for this enumeration, but the main fact alleged in the passage is entirely without foundation. The Articles of Confederation were first signed by the delegates from eight of the States, on the 9th of July, 1778, more than three years after the commencement of the war, long after the capitulation of Bui'goyne, the alliance with France, and the reception of a French ^Minister. The ratification of the other States was given at intervals the following years, the last not till 1781, seven months only before the virtual close of the war, by the surrender of Cornwallis. Then, and not till then, was " the Contract of Alliance " consummated. Most true it is, as Mr. Davis bids us remark, that, by these Arti- cles of Confedei-ation the States retained " each its sovereignty, freedom, and inde- pendence." It is not less true, that their selfish struggle to exercise and enforce their assumed rights as separate sovereignties was the source of the greatest difli- culties and dangers of the Revolution, and risked its success ; not less true, that most of the great powers of a sovereign State were nominally conferred even by these * Elliott's Debates, vol. iv., p. 801. t See an admirable sketch of his character in Trescot's Diplomatic Uistorj- of tho Administrations of "VTa'.b- ington and Adams, pp. 1C9— 111. 14 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. articles on the Congress, and that that body -was regarded and spoken of by Wash- ington himself as the "Sovereign of the Union." * But feeble as the old Confederation was, and distinctly as it recognized the sovereignty of the States, it recognized in them no right to withdraw at their pleasure from the Union. On the contrary, it was specially provided that " the Articles of Confederation should be inviolably preserved by every State," and that " the Union should be perpetual" It is true that in a few years, from the inherent weakness of the central power, and from the want of means to enforce its authority on the individual citizen, it fell to pieces. It sickened and died from the poison of what General Pinckney aptly called " the heresy of State Sovereignty," and in its place a Constitution was ordained and established " in order to form a more perfect Union ; " a Union more binding on its members than this " contract of alliance," which yet was to be " inviolably observed by every State ; " more durable than the old Union, v/hich yet was declared to be " perpetual." This great and benefi- cent change was a Revolution — happily a peaceful revolution, the most important change probably ever brought about in a government, without bloodshed. The new government was unanimously adopted by all the members of the old Confed- eration, by some more promptly than by others, but by all within the space of four years. THE STATES MIGHT BE COEECED UNDEK THE CONFEDEExVTION. IMueh has been said against coercion, that is, the employment of force to compel obedience to the laws of the United States, when they are resisted under the as- sumed authority of a State ; but even the old Confederation, with all its weakness, in the opinion of the most eminent contemporary statesmen possessed this power. Great stress is laid by politicians of the Secession School on the fact, that in a project for amending the articles of Confederation brought forward by Judge Pat- erson in the Federal Convention, it was proposed to clothe the Government with this power and the proposal was not adopted. This is a very inaccurate statement of the facts of the case. The proposal formed part of a project which was rejected in toto. The reason why this power of State coercion was not granted eo nomine, in the new Constitution, is that it was wholly superfluous and inconsistent with the fundamental principle of the Government. Within the sphere of its delegated powers, the General Government deals with the individual citizen. If its power is resisted, the person or persons resisting it do so at their peril and are amenable to the law. Tliey can derive no immunity from State Legislatures or State Conven- tions, because the Constitution and laws of the United States are the Supreme Law of the Land. If the resistance assumes an organized form, on the part of numbers too great to be restrained by the ordinary powers of the law, it is then an insurrection, which the General Government is expressly authorized to suppress. Did any one imagine in 1703, when General Washington called out 15,000 men to suppress the insurrection in the Western counties of Pennsylvania, that if the insurgents had happened to have the control of a majority of the Legislature, and had thus been able to clothe their rebellion with a pretended form of law, that he would have been obliged to disband his troops, and return himself baflled and discomfited to Mount Vernon ? If John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, instead of being the ♦ Sparks' Washington, vol. Ix., pp. 12, 23, 29. ST-VTE SOVEREIGNTY DOES XOT AUTHORIZE SECESSION. 1.1 his surrender ? Confederation, M'ith all its ^veakness, was held But, as I have said, even tl e o d to ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^_ bv the ablest contemporary statesmen, auu , o,,,, at,, ipffl.r J I Wury till the Confederacy shows its teeth. Tke Stat,, mt.t « ll.c ro^, "«t;/ f" ,1(6. /«i/ «.-.«"/''-«• Every rational eitizen must w.sh to see aCeffe ive i„strun,ent of eoereion, and should fear to see it on any other element In th vater. A naval foree oan never endanger our liberties nor ocoasmn blood- hod a llnd foreo .-ould do both." In the follo«-ing year and when the Confedera- r, m 4as at its last »asp, Mr. Jefferson «as still of the opinion th.at it possessed the ;: of eo oi : tS 1 ates, and that it .as expedient to exercise it. In a letter to Col an- n ' on of the 4th of April, 1787, he says : " It has been so often sa,d as to be tenerali; believed, that Congress h,ave no power by the Confederafon to enforce a,; h " for instance, contributions of money. It was not necessary to g,ve them hat pwe'r expressly, Ihey h.ave it by the law of nature, men ..o p.r,.e. ,na,ea cZacI aJremlL to each ,ke power of co,n,emnr, the other to e.eente ,t Com- Son'was never so easy as in our ease, when a single frigate would soon levy on the commerce of a single State the deficiency of its contributions. Su h was Mr. Jelferson's opinion of the powers of Congress under the 'old contract of alliance." Will any reasonable man maintain that under a constitution of government there can be less power to enforce the laws . STiTE SOVEEEIGSTT DOES NOT AOTHOEIZE SECESSION. But .he cause of secession gains nothing by magnifying f /"O'""' "J '''''1°^^ crei^ty of the States or calling the Constitution a compact between them. Cil i | it a compact does not change a word of its text, and no theory of what is implied thew'o 1 « Sovereignty ''is of any weight, in opposition to the •-'»»> r-visio„ of he instrument itseff. 'so.eret,nty is a woi^d of ver,- --■""-jS-^f -„J'^ one thin, in China, another in Turkey, another in Russia, auohei in 1 ■••'™^. ^ other in England, .aliother in Switzerland, another in San «-"»• -°* J ,, '» 16 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. day, but for their posterity,) she may therefore at pleasure secede from the Union existing under that Constitution, is simply to beg the question. That question is not Avhat was the theory or form of government existing in V.li-ginia, before the Constitution, but what are the provisions of the Constitution which her people adopted and made their own % Does the Constitution of the United States permit or forbid the States to enter into a confederation ? Is it a mere loose partnership, which any of the parties can break up nt pleasure, or is it a Constitution of govern- ment, delegating to Congress and prohibiting to the States most of the primal func- tions of a sovereign power ;— Peace, War, Commerce, Finance, Navy, Army, Mail, Mint ; Executive, Legislative, and Judicial functions ? The States are not named in it ; the word Sovereignty does not occur in it ; the right of secession is as much ignored in it as the precession of the Equinoxes, and all the great prerogatives which characterize an independent member of the family of nations are by distinct grant conferred on Congress by the People of the United States and prohibited to the individual States of the Union. Is it not the height of absurdity to maintain that all these express grants and distinct prohibitions, and constitutional arrange- ments, may be set at nought by an individual State under the pretence that she was a sovereign State before she assented to or ratified them ; in other words, that an act is of no binding force because it was performed by an authorized and competent agent ? In fact, to deduce from the sovereignty of the States the right of seceding from the Union is the most stupendous noti sequitur that was ever advanced in o-rave affairs. The only legitimate inference to be drawn from that sovereignty is pre- cisely the reverse. If any one right can be predicated of a sovereign State, it is that of forming or adopting a frame of government. She may do it alone, or she may do it as a member of a Union. She may enter into a loose pact for ten years or till a partisan majority of a convention, goaded on by ambitious aspirants to power, shall vote in secret session to dissolve it ; or she may, after grave delibera- tion and mature counsel, led by the wisest and most virtuous of the land, ratify and adopt a constitution of government, ordained and established not only for that gen- eration, but their posterity, subject only to the inalienable right of revolution pos- sessed by every political community. What would be thought in private affiiirs of a man who should seriously claim the right to revoke a grant, in consequence of having an unqualified right to make it ? A right to break a contract, because he had a right to enter into it 1 To what extent is it more rational on the part of a State to found the right to dissolve the Union on the competence of the parties to form it ; the right to prostrate a govern- ment on the fact that it was constitutionally framed ? PARALLEL CASES : IRELAND, SCOTLAXD. But let us look at parallel cases, and they are by no means wanting. In th-e year 1800, a union was f)rmed between England and Ireland. Ireland, before she entered into the union, was subject, indeed, to the English crown, but she had her own parliament, consisting of her own Lords and Commons, and enacting her own laws. In 1800 she entered into a constitutional union with England on the basis of articles of agreement, jointly accepted by the two pari laments.-- The union was * Annuxil Register, xlii., p. 190 VIRGINIA VAINLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH A RESERVED RIGHT. 17 opposed at the time by a powerful minority in Ireland, and ^Ir. CConnell suc- ceeded, thirty years later, by ardent appeals to the sensibilities of the people, in producing an almost unanimous desire for its dissolution. lie professed, however, although he had wrought his countrymen to the verge of rebellion, to aim at notli- ing but a constitutional repeal of the articles of union by the parliament of Great Britain. It never occurred even to his fervid imagination, that, because Ireland was an independent government when she entered into the union, it w. s eompctent for her at her discretion to secede from it. \Vhat would our English friends, who have learned from our Secessionists the '• inherent right " of a disaffected State to secede from our Union, have thought, had Mr. O'Connell, in the paroxysms of his agitation, claimed the right on the part of Ireland, by her own act, to sever her union with England ? Again, in 1706, Scotland and England formed a Constitutional Union. They also, though subject to the same monarch, were in other respects Sovereign and independent Kingdoms. They had each its separate parliament, courts of justice, laws, and established national church. Articles of union were established between them ; but all the laws and statutes of either kingdom not contrary to these articles, remained in force.* A powerful minority in Scotland disapproved of the Union at the time. Nine years afterward an insurrection broke out in Scotland under a prince, who claimed to be the lawful, as he certainly was the lineal, heir to the throne. The rebellion was crushed, but the disaffection in which it had its origin was not wholly appeased. In thirty years more a second Scottish insurrection took place, and, as before, under the lead of the lineal heir to the crown. On neither occasion that I ever heard of, did it enter into the imagination of rebel or loyalist, that Scotland was acting under a reserved right as a sovereign kingdom, to secede from the Union, or that the movement was any thing less than an insurrection ; revolution if it succeeded ; treason and rebellion if it failed. Neither do I recollect that, in less than a month after either insurrection broke out, any one of the friendly and neutral powers made haste, in anticipation even of the arrival of the ministers of the reigning sovereign, to announce that the rebels " would be recognized as bel- ligerents." YIKGIXIA VAINLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH A RESERVED LIGHT. In fact, it is so pLiin, in the nature of things, that there can be no constitutional right to break up a government unless it is e.\'pressly provided for, that the politi- cians of the secession school are driven back, at every turn, to a reserved right. I have already shown that there is no such express reservation, and I have dwelt on the absurdity (;f getting by implicntion a reserved right to violate every express provision of a constitution. In this strait, Virginia, proverlually skilled in logical subtilties, has attempted to find an express reservation, not, of course, in the Con- stitution itself, where it does not exist, but in her original act of adhesion, or rather in the declaration of the " impressions " under which that act was adopted. The ratification itself of Virginia, was positive and unconditional. " We, the said dele- gates, in the name and behalf of the People of Virginia^ do, by these presents, assent and ratify the Constitution recommended on the 17th day of September, 1787, by the Federal Convention, /or the government of the United States, hereby announcing * Eapin's History of England, vol. iv., p. 741-C. 2 18 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. to all those v.hom it may concern, that the said Constitution is binding upon the eaid People, according to an autiientic copy hereunto annexed. Done in Convention this 26th day of June, 1788." This, as you perceive, is an absolute and unconditional ratification of the Con- stitution by the People of Vii-ginia. An attempt, liowevcr, is made, by the late Convention in Virginia, in their ordinance of secession, to extract a reservation of a right to secede, out of the declaration contained in the preamble to the act of ratiii- cation. That preamble declares it to be an " impression " of the people of Vir- ginia, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them, whenever the same shall be per- verted to their injury or oppression. The ordinance of secession passed by the recent convention, purporting to cite this declaration, omits the v*'ords by them, that is, by the People of the United States, not by the people of any single State, thus arrogating to the people of Virginia alone what the Convention of 1788 claimed only, and that by Avay of " impression," for the People of the United States. By this most grave omission of the vital words of the sentence, the Convention, I fear, intended to lead the incautious or the ignorant to the conclusion, that the Convention of 1788 asserted the right of an individual State to resume the powers granted in the Constitution to the General Government ; a claim for which there is not the slightest foundation in Constitutional history. On the contrary, when the ill-omened doctrine of State nullification was sought to be sustained by the same argument in 1830, and the famous Virginia resolutions of 1798 were appealed to by Mr. Calhoun and his friends, as affording countenance to that doctrine, it was repeatedly and emphatically declared by ]\Ir. Madison, the author of the resolutions, that they were intended to claim, not for an individual State, but for the United States, by whom the Constitution was ordained and established, the right of reme- dying its abuses by constitutional ways, such as united protest, repeal, or an amendment of the Constitution.* Incidentally to the discussion of nullification, he denied over and over again the right of peaceable secession ; and this fact was well known to some of the members of the late Convention at Richmond. When the secrets of their assembly are laid open, no doubt it will appear that there were some foithful Abdiels to proclaim the fact. Oh, that the venerable sage, second to none of his patriot compeers in framing the Constitution, the equal associate of Hamilton in recommending it to the People; its great champion in the Virginia Convention of 1788, and its faithful vindicator in 1830, against the deleterious heresy of nullification, could have been spared to protect it, at the present day, from the still deadlier venom of Secession ! But he is gone ; the principles, the traditions, and the illustrious memories which gave to Virginia her name and her praise in the land, are no longer cherished ; the work of Washington, and Madison, and Randolph, and Pendleton, and Marshall is repudiated, and nullificrs, precipita- tors, and seceders gather in secret conclave to destroy the Constitution, in the very building that holds the monumental statue of the Father of his Country ! THE VIRGINIA EESOLUTIONS OF 1798. Having had occasion to allude to the Virginia resolutions of 1708, I may ob- serve that of these famous resolves, the subject of so much political romance, it is • Maguire's Collection, p. 213. TUE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF 179S. 19 time that a little plain truth should be i^romulgated. The country, in 1798, was vehemently agitated by the struggles of the domestic parties, which about equally divided it, and these struggles were urged to unwonted and extreme bitterness, by the preparations made and making for a war with France. By an act of Congress, passed in the summer of that year, the President of the United States was clothed with power to send from the country any alien whom he might judge dangerous to the public peace and safety, or who should be concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the Government of the United States. This act was passed as a war measure ; it was to bo in force two years, and it expired by its own limit- ation on the 25th of June, 1800. War, it is true, had not been formally declared ; but hostilities on the ocean had taken place on both sides, and the army of tlie United States had been placed upon a war footing. The measure was certainly within the war power, and one which no prudent commander, even without the authority of a statute, would hesitate to execute in an urgent case within his own district. Congress thought fit to provide for and regulate its exercise by law. Two or three weeks later (14th July, 1798) another law was enacted, making it penal to combine or conspire with intent to oppose any lawful measure of the Government of the United States, or to write, print, or publish any flilse and scandalous writing against the Government, either House of Congress, or the President of the United States. In prosecutions under this law, it was provided that the Truth might be pleaded in justification, and that the Jury should be judges of the law as well as of the fact. This law was by its own limitation to expire at the close of the then current Presidential term. Such are the famous alien and sedition laws, passed under the Administration of that noble and true-hearted revolutionary patriot, John Adams, though not re- commended by him ofilcially or privately ; adjudged to be cc^nstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States ; distinctly approved by Washington, Patrick Plenry, and Marshall ; and, whatever else may be said of them, certainly preferable to the laws which, throughout the Seceding States, Judge Lynch would not fail to enforce at the lamp-post and tar-bucket against any person guilty of the offences against which these statutes were aimed. It suited, however, the purposes of party at that time, to raise a formidable clamor against these laws. It was in vain that their Constitutionality was aftirmcd by the Judiciary of the United States. " Nothing," said 'Washington, alluding to these laws, " will produce the least change in the conduct of the leaders of the opposition to the measures of the General Government. They have points to carry from which no reasoning, no inconsistency of conduct, no absurdity can divert them." Such, in the opinion of Washington, was the object for which the Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky passed their fmious resdlutions of 1798, the former drafted by Mr. Madison, and the latter by Mr. Jeffl'rson, and sent to a friend in Kentucky to be brought forward. These resolutions were transmitted to the other States for their concurrence. The replies from the States which made any response were referred the following year to committees in Virginia and Ken- tucky. In the Legislature of Vii-ginia, an elaborate report was made by ]\Ir. Madison, explaining and defending the resolutions; in Kentucky another resolve reaffirming those of the preceding year was drafted by Mr. Wilson Cary Nicholas, not by Mr. Jefferson, as stated by General McDuffle. Our respect for the dis- 20 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. tinguished men who took the lead on this occasion, then ardently engaged in the warfare of politics, must not make us fear to tell the truth, that the simple object of the entire movement was to make " political capital " for the approaching elec- tion, by holding up to the excited imaginations of the masses the Alien and Sedi- tion laws, as an infraction of the Constitution, which threatened the overthrow of the liberties of the People. The resolutions maintained that, the States being parties to the Constitutional compact, in a case of deliberate, palpable, and danger- ous exercise of powers not granted by the compact, the States have a right and are in duty bound to inteiyose for preventing the progress of the evil. Such, in brief, was the main purport of the Virginia and Kentuclcy resolutions. The sort of interposition intended was left in studied obscurity. Not a word was dropped of secession from the Union. ]\Ir. Nicholas's resolution in 1799 hinted at '■' nullification " as the appropriate remedy for an unconstitutional law, but what was meant by the ill-sounding word was not explained. The words " null, void, and of no effect," contained in the original draft of the Virginia resolutions, were, on motion of John Taylor of Caroline, stricken from them, on their passage through the assembly ; and ]\Ir. Madison, in his report of 1799, carefully explains that no extra constitutional measures were intended. One of the Kentucky resolutions ends with an invitation to the States to unite in a jDctition to Congress to repeal the laws. These resolutions were communicated, as I have said, to the other States for concurrence. From most of them no response was received ; some adopted dis- senting reports and resolutions; not one concurred. But the resolutions did tlieir work — all that they were intended or expected to do — by shaking the Ad- ministration. At the ensuing election, Mr. Jefferson, at whose instance the entire movement was made, was chosen President by a very small majority ; Mr. Madison was placed at the head of his administration as Secretary of State ; the obnoxious laws expired by their own limitation ; not repealed by the dominant party, as Mr. Calhoun with strange inadvertence asserts ; ^- and Mr. Jefferson j^roceeded to ad- minister the Government upon constitutional principles quite as lax, to say the least, as those of his predecessors. If there was any marked departure in his general policy from the course hitherto pursued, it was that, having some theoret- ieal prejudices against a navy, ho allowed that branch of the service to languish. By no Administration have the powers of the General Government been more liberally construed — not to say further strained— sometimes beneficially, as in the acquisition of Louisiana, sometimes perniciously as in the embargo. The resolu- tions of 1798, and the metaphysics they inculcated, were surrendered to the cob- webs which habitually await the plausible exaggerations of the canvass after an election is decided. These resolutions of 1798 have been sometimes in Virginia waked from their slumbers at closely contested elections as a party cry ; the re- port of the Hartford Convention, without citing them l)y name, boi-rows their language ; but as representing in their modern interpretation any system on which the Government ever was or could be administered, they were buried in the same grave as the Laws which called them fortli. Unhappily during their transient vitality, like the butterfly which deposits its egg in the apple blossoms that have so lately filled our orchards with beauty and * Mr. Calhoun's Discourse on the ConstituUon, p. 85D. THE VIRGIXIA KESOLUTIOXS OF 179S. 21 perfume — a gilded harmless moth, whose food is a dew drop, whose life is a mid- summer's day — these resolutions, misconceived and perverted, proved, in the minds of ambitious and reckless politicians, the germ of a fatal heresy. The butterfly's egg is a microscopic speck, but as the fruit grows, the little speck gives life to a greedy and nauseous worm, that gnaws and bores to the heart of the apple, and renders it, though smooth and foir without, foul and bitter and rotten within. In like manner, the theoretical generalities of these resolutions, intending nothing in the minds of their authors but constitutional efforts to procure the repeal of ob- noxious laws, matured in the minds of a later generation into the deadly para- doxes of 1830 and 1860 — kindred products of the same soil, venenorum ferax ; — the one asserting the monstrous absurdity that a State, though remaining in the Union, could by her single act nullify a law of Congress ; the other teaching the still more preposterous doctrine, that a single State may nullify the Constitution. The first of these heresies failed to spread far beyond the latitude where it was engendered. In the Senate of the United States, the great acuteness of its inventor, (Mr. Calhoun,) then the Vice-President, and the accomplished rhetoric of its champion, (Mr. Hayne,) failed to raise it above the level of a plausible sophism. It sunk forever discredited beneath the sturdy common sense and indomitable will of Jackson, the mature wisdom of Livingston, the keen analysis of Clay, and the crushing logic of Webster. Nor was this all : the venerable author of the Resolutions of 1798 and of the report of 1799 was still living in a green old age. His connection with those State papers and still more his large participation in the formation and adoption of the Constitution, entitled him, beyond all men living, to be consulted on the subject. No effort was spared by the Leaders of the Nullification school to draw from him even a qualified assent to their theories. But in vain. He not only refused to admit their soundness, but he devoted his time and energies for three laborious years to the preparation of essays and- letters, of which the object was to demonstrate that his resolutions and report did not, and could not bear the Carolina interpretation. He earnestly maintained that the separate action of an individual State was not contem- plated by them, and that they had in view nothing but the concerted action of the States to procure the repeal of unconstitutional laws or an amendment of the Con- stitution.* With one such letter written with this intent, I was myself honored. It filled ten pages of the journal in which with his permission it was published. It unfi)lded the true theory of the Constitution and the meaning and design of the rcsolutionsi, and exposed the folse gloss attempted to be placed upon them by the Nullifiers, with a clearness and force of reasoning which defied refutation. None, to my knowledge, was ever attempted. The politicians of the Nullification and Secession school, as far as I am aware, have from that day to this made no attempt to grapple with ^Ir. Madison's letter of August, 1830.f Mr. Calhoun certainly made no such attempt in the elaborate treatise composed by him, mainly fi)r the purpose of ex- pounding the doctrine of nullification. He claims the support of these resolutions, without adverting to the fact that his interpretation of tlicm had been repudiated • A very considerable portion of the important volume containing a selection from the Madison papers, and printed "esclusively for private distribution" by J. C. McGuire, Esq., in 1S63, is taken up with these letters and essays. t North American Eeview, vol. xxxi., p. 53T. 22 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. by their illustrious author. He repeats his exploded parodoxes as confidently, as if Mr. Madison himself had expired with the Alien and Sedition laws, and loft no testimony to the meaning of his resolutions ; while, at the present day, with equal confidence, the same resolutions are appealed to by the disciples of Mr. Calhoun as sustaining the doctrine of secession, in the face of the positive declaration of their author, when that doctrine first began to be broached, that they will bear no such interpretation. MR. CALHOUN DID NOT CLAIM A CONSTITUTIONAL EIGHT OF SECESSION. In this respect the disciples hare gone beyond the master. There is a single sentence in Mr. Calhoun's elaborate volume in which he maintains the right of a State to secede from the Union. (Page 801.) There is reason to suppose, how- ever, that he intended to claim only the inalienable right of revolution. In 1828, a declaration of political principles was drawn up by him for the State of South Carolina, in which it was expressly taught, that the people of that State by adopt- ing the Federal Constitution had " modified its original right of sovereignty, whereby its individual consent was necessary to any change in its political con- dition, and by becoming a member of the Union, had placed that power in the hands of three-fourths of the States, [the number necessary for a Constitutional amendment,] in whom the highest power known to the Constitution actually re- sides." In a recent patriotic speech of Mr. Reverdy Johnson, at Frederick, Md., on the 7th of May, the distinct authority of Mr. Calhoun is quoted as late as 1844 against the right of separate action on the part of an individual State, and I am assured by the same respected gentleman, that it is within his personal knowledge, that Mr. Calhoun did not maintain the peaceful right of secession.* SECESSION AS A EEVOLUTION. But it may be thought a waste of time to argue against a Constitutional right of peaceful Secession, since no one denies the right of Revolution ; and no pains are spared by the disaffected leaders, while they claim indeed the Constitutional right, to represent their movement as the uprising of an indignant People against an oppressive and tyrannical Government. IS THE GOVEENMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OPPEESSIVE AND TTEANNICAL ? An oppressive and tyrannical government ! Let us examine this pretence for a few moments, first in the general, and then in the detail of its alleged tyrannies and abuses. This oppressive and tyrannical Government is the successful solution of a prob- lem, which had tasked the sagacity of mankind from the dawn of civilization ; viz. : to find a form of polity, by which institutions purely popular could be extended over a vast empire, free alike from despotic centralization and undue preponder- ance of the local powers. It was necessarily a complex system ; a Union at once federal and national. It leaves to the separate States the control of all matters of purely local administration, and confides to the central power the management of Foreign aflliirs and of all other concerns in which the United family have a joint interest. All the organized and delegated powers depend directly or very nearly * See Appendix E. IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TYRANNICAL? 23 so on popular choice. Tliis Government was not imposed upon the People by a foreign conqueror ; it is not an inheritance descending from barbarous ages, laden with traditionary abuses, which create a painful ever-recurring necessity of reform ; it is not the conceit of heated enthusiasts in the spasms of a revolution. It is the recent and voluntary frame-work of an enlightened age, compacted by wise and good men, with deliberation and care, working upon materials prepared by long Colonial discipline. In framing it, they sought to combine the merits and to avoid the defects of former systems of government. The greatest possible liberty of the citizen is the basis ; just representation the ruling principle, reconciling with rare ingenuity the federal equality of the States, Avith the proportionate influence of numbers. Its legislative and executive magistrates are freely chosen at short periods ; its judiciary alone holding office by a more permanent, but still sufficiently responsible, tenure. No money flows into or out of the Treasury but under the direct sanction of the representatives of the People, on whom also ail the great functions of Government for peace and war, within the limits already indicated, are devolved. No hereditary titles or privileges, no distinction of ranks, no established church, no courts of high commission, no censorship of the press, are known to the system ; not a drop of blood has ever flowed under its authority for a political offence ; but this tyrannical and oppressive Government has certainly exhibited a more perfect development of equal republican principles, than has ever before existed on any considerable scale. Under its benign influence, the country, every part of the country, has prospered beyond all former example. Its popula- tion has increased ; its commerce, agriculture, and manufactures have flourished ; manners, arts, education, letters, all that dignifies and ennobles man, have in a shorter period attained a higher point of cultivation than has ever before been witnessed in a newly settled region. The consequence has been consideration and influence abroad and marvellous well-being at home. The world has looked with admiration upon the Country's progress ; we have ourselves contemplated it, per- haps, with undue self-complacency. Armies without conscription ; navies without impressment, and neither army nor navy swelled to an oppressive size ; an over- flowing treasury without direct taxation or oppressive taxation of any kind ; churches without number and with no denominational preferences on the part of the State ; schools and colleges accessible to all the people ; a free and a cheap press ; — all the great institutions of social life extending their benefits to the mass of the community. Such, no one can deny, is the general character of this oppressive and tyrannical government. But perhaps this Government, how'ever wisely planned, however beneficial even in its operation, may have been rendered distasteful, or may have become oppres- sive in one part of the coimtry and to one portion of the people, in consequence of the control of affliirs having been monopolized or unequally shared by another portion. In a Confederacy, the people of one section are not well pleased to be even mildly governed by an exclusive domination of the other. In point of fact this is the allegation, the persistent allegation of the South, that from the founda- tion of the Government it has been wielded by the people of the North for their special, often exclusive, benefit, and to the injury and oppression of the South. Let us see. Out of seventy-two years since the organization of the Government, the Executive chair has, for sixty-four years, been filled nearly all the time by Southern 24 ADDRESS JbV EDWARD EVERETT. Presidents ; and when that was not the case, by Presidents possessing the confidence of the South. For a still longer period, the controlling influences of the Legislative and Judicial departments of the Government have centred in the same quarter. Of ail the offices in the gift of the central power in every department, far more than her proportionate share has always been enjoyed by the South. She is at this moment revolting against a Government, not only admitted to be the mildest and most beneficent ever organized this side Utopia, but one of which she has herself from the first, almost monopolized the administration. CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION ALLEGED BY SOUTH CAKOLINA. But are there no wrongs, abuses, and oppressions, alleged to have been suffered by the South, which have rendered her longer submission to the Federal Govern- ment intolerable, and which are jileaded as the motive and justification of the revolt ? Of course there are, but with such variation and uncertainty of statement as to render their examination difficult. The manifesto of South Carolina of the 20th of Dec. last, which led the way in this inauspicious movement, sets forth noth- ing but the passage of State laws to obstruct the surrender of fugitive slaves. The document does not state that South Carolina herself ever lost a slave in consequence of these laws, it is not probable she ever did, and yet she makes the existence of these laws, which are wholly inoperative as far as she is concerned, and which probably never caused to the entire South the loss of a dozen fugitives, the ground for breaking up the Union and plunging the country into a civil war. But I shall 2)resently revert to this topic. Other statements in other quarters enlarge the list of grievances. In the month of November last, after the result of the presidential election was ascertained, a very interesting discussion of the subject of secession took place at Milledgeville, before the members of the Legislature of Georgia and the citizens generally, be- tween two gentlemen of great ability and eminence, since elected, the one Secretary of State, the other Vice-President of the new Confederacy ; the former urging the necessity and duty of immediate secession ; — the latter opposing it. I take the grievances and abuses of the Federal Government, which the South has suffered at the hands of the North, and which were urged by tlie former speaker as the grounds of secession, as I find them stated and to some extent answered by his friend and fellow-citizen (then opposed to secession) according to the report in the !Milledge- ville papers. CAUSES ALLEGED BY GEORGIA: THE FISHING BOUNTIES. And what, think you, was the grievance in the front rank of those oppressions on the part of the North, which have driven the long-suffering and patient South to open rebellion against " the best Government that the history of the world gives any account of" ? It was not that upon which the Convention of South Carolina relied. You will hardly believe it ; posterity will surely not believe it. " We listened," said Mr. Vice-President Stephens, in his reply, " to my honorable friend last night, (Mr. Toombs,) as he recounted the evils of this Government. The first was the fishing bounties 2mid mostly to the sailors of Neio England^ The bounty paid by the Federal Government to encourage the deep-sea fisheries of the United States ! CAUSES ALLEGED BY GEORGIA: THE FISHING BOUNTIES. 25 You are aware that this laborious branch of industry lias, by all maritime States, been ever regarded with special favor as tlie nursery of naval power. The fisheries of the American colonies before the American Revolution drew from Burke one of the most gorgeous bursts of eloquence in our language, — in any language. They were all but annihilated by the Revolution, but they furnished the men who followed Manly, and Tucker, and Biddle, and Paul Jones to the jaws of death. Re- viving after the war, they attracted the notice of the First Congress, and were recommended to their favor by Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State. This favor was at first extended to them in the shape of a draw-back of the duty on the various imported articles employed in the building and outfit of the vessels and on the foreign salt used in preserving the fish. The complexity of this arrangement led to the substitution at first of a certain bounty on the quantity of the fish exported ; afterwards on the tonnage of the vessels employed in the fisheries. All administra- tions have concurred in the measure ; Presidents of all parties, — though there has not been much variety of party in that office, — have approved the appropriations. If the North had a local interest in these bounties, the South got the principal food of her laboring population so much the cheaper ; and she had her common share in the protection which the navy afforded her coasts, and in the glory which it shed on the flag of the country. But since, unfortunately, the deep-sea fisheries do not exist in the Gulf of Mexico, nor, as in the " age of Pyrrha," on the top of the Blue Ridge, it has been discovered of late years that these bounties are a violation of the Con- stitution ; a largess bestowed by the common treasury on one section of the coun- tr}'", and not shared by the other ; one of the hundred ways, in a word, in which the rapacious North is fattening upon the oppressed and pillaged South. You will naturally wish to know the amount of this tyrannical and oppressive bounty. It is stated by a senator from Alabama (!Mr. Clay) who has warred against it with per- severance and zeal, and succeeded in the last Congress in carrying a bill through the Senate for its repeal, to have amounted, on the average, to an annual sum of 200,005 dollars ! Such is the portentous grievance which in Georgia stands at the head of the acts of oppression, for which, although repealed in one branch of Congress, the Union is to be broken up, and the country desolated by war. Switzerland revolted because an Austrian tyrant invaded the sanctity of her firesides, crushed out the eyes of aged patriots, and compelled her fiithers to shoot apples from the heads of her sons ; the Low Countries revolted against the fires of the Inquisition, and the infernal cruelties of Alva ; our fathers revolted because they were taxed by a parliament in which they were not represented ; the Cotton States revolt because a paltry subvention is paid to the hardy fishermen who form the nerve and muscle of the American Navy. But it is not, we shall be told, the amount of the bounty, but the principle, as our fathers revolted against a three-penny tax on tea. But that was because it was laid by a parliament in which the Colonies were not rcpresenteil, and which yet claimed the right to bind them in all cases. The Fishing Bounty is bestowed by a Government which has been from the first controlled by the South. Then how unreasonable to expect or to wish, that, in a country so vast as ours, no public ex- penditure should be made for the immediate benefit of one part or one interest that cannot be identically repeated in every other. A liberal policy, or rather the necessity of the case, demands, that what the public good, upon the whole, requires, 26 A.DDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. should under constitutional limitations be done where it is required, offsettinf the local benefit -which may accrue from the expenditure made in one place and for one object, with the local benefit from the same source, in some other place for some other object. More money was expended by the United States in removing the Indians from Georgia, eight or ten times as much was expended for the same object in Florida, as has been paid for Fishing Bounties in seventy years. For the last year, to pay for the expense of the post-oflice in the seceding States, and enable our fellow-citi- zens there to enjoy the comforts of a newspaper and letter mail to the same extent as they are enjoyed in the other States, three millions of dollars were paid from the common Treasury. The post-office bounty paid to the seceding States exceeded seventeen fold the annual average amount of the Fishing Bounty paid to the North. In four years that excess would equal the sum total of the amount paid since 1792 in bounties to the deep-sea fishery ! This circumstance probably explains the fact, that the pride of the Southern Confederacy was not alarmed at having the mails still conveyed by the United States, three or four months after the forts had been seized, the arsenals emptied, and the mints plun- dered. NAYIGATION LAWS. The second of the grievances under which the South is laboring, and which, ac- cording to J\Ir. Stephens, was on the occasion alluded to pleaded by the Secretary of State of the new Confederacy as a ground for dissolving the Union, is the Naviga- tion Laws, which give to American vessels the exclusive enjoyment of our own coasting trade. This also is a policy coeval with the Government of the United States, and universally adopted by maritime powers, though relaxed by EnglanrJ within the last few years. Like the fishing bounty, it is a policy adopted for the purpose of fostering the commercial and with that the naval marine of the United States. All administrations of all parties have favored it ; under its influence our commercial tonnage has grown up to be second to no other in the world, and our navy has proved itself adequate to all the exigencies of peace and war. And are these no objects in a national point of view ? Are the seceding politicians really insensible to interests of such paramount national importance 1 Can they, for the sake of an imaginary infinitesimal reduction of coastwise freights, be willing to rua even the risk of impairing our naval prosperity 1 Are they insensible to the iact that nothing but the growth of the American commercial marine protects the entire freighting interest of the country, in Vv'hich the South is more deeply interested than the North, from European monopoly 1 The South did not always take so narrow a view of the subject. When the Constitution was framed, and the American Mer- chant Marine was inconsiderable, the discrimination in favor of United States ves- sels, which then extended to the foreign trade, was an object of some apprehension on the part of the planting States. But there were statesmen in the South at that day, who did not regard the shipping interest as a local concern. '• So far " said Mr. Edward Rutledge, in the South Carolina Convention of 1788, " from not pre- ferring the Northern States by a navigation act, it would be politic to increase their strength by every means in our power ; for we had no other resource in our day of danger than in the naval force of our Northern friends, nor could we ever expect to become a great nation till we were powerful on the waters."* But " powerful Elliott's Debates, vol. iv., p. 2M. THE TARIFF. 27 on the waters " the South can never be. She has live oak, naval stores, and gallant officers ; but her climate and its diseases, the bars at the mouth of nearly all her harbors, the Teredo, the want of a merchant marine and of fisheries, and the char- •leter of her laboring population, will forever prevent her becoming a great naval power Without the protection of the Navy of the United States, of which the strenvhether these laws cause any portion of it. The public sentiment of the North is not such, of course, as to dispose the comnumi ty to obstruct the escape or aid in the surrender of slaves. Neither is .t at the South. No one I am told, at the South, not called upon by official duty, joms m the hue and cry after a fugitive; and whenever he escapes Irom any States south of tiic border tier, it is evident that his flight must have been aided in a community of slave-holders. If the North Carolina fugitive escapes through \ irgmia, or the ien- nessee fugitive escapes through Kentucky, why are Pennsylvania and Ohio alone blamed ^ On this whole subject the grossest injustice is done to the North b le is expected to be more tolerant of slavery than the South herself; for while the South demands of the North entire acquiescence in the extrcmest doctrines of slave pi-oportv, it is a well-known fact, and as such alluded to by Mn Clay in his speech on the compromises of 1850, that any man who habitually traffics m this property is held in the same infomy at Richmond and New Orleans that he would be at Philadelphia or Cincinnati.* _ While South Carolina, assigning the cause of secession, confines herself to he State laws for obstructing the surrender of fugitives, in other quart..-s, by the press, in the manifestoes and debates on the subject of secession, and iii the oflicial papers of the new Confederacy, the general conduct of the North, with respect to Slavery, is put forward as the justifying, nay, the compelling cause of the revolu- tion. This subject, still more than that of the tariff, is too tnte or discussion, with the hope of saying any thing new on the general question. I will but submit a fe. considerations to show the great injustice which is done to the North, by repre- senting her as the aggressor in this sectional warfare. , , n r. Tlie Southern theory assumes that, at the time of the adoption of the Constitu- tion, the same antagonism prevailed as now between the North and South, on he .en^ral subject of Slavery; that, although it existed to some extent in al to States but one of the Union, it was a feeble and declining interest at the North and mainly seated at the South ; that the soil and climate of the North were soon found to be unpropitious to slave labor, while the reverse was the case at the South ; that the Northern States, in consequence, having, from -^-^^^'f^^^^ abolished Slavery, sold their slaves to the South, and that then ^^^^^^^^^^ enee of Slavery was recognized, and its protection guaranteed by ^^e ^-t^tutK n, as soon as the Northern States had acquired a control ing ;--/'? Cojies^;^^^^;; sistent and organized system of hostile measures, against the rights of the o^^nelS • Seo Appendix, C. 32 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. of slaves in the Southern States, was inaugui-ated and gradually extended, in viola- tion of the compromises of the Constitution, as well as of the honor and good faith tacitly pledged to the South, by the manner in which the North disposed of her slaves. Such, in substance, is the statement of j\Ir. Davis in his late message ; and ho then proceeds, seemingly as if rehearsing the acts of this Northern majority in Congress, to refer to the anti-slavery measures of the State Legislatures, to the resolutions of abolition societies, to the passionate appeals of the party press, and to the acts of lawless individuals, during the progress of this unhappy agitation. THE SOUTH FOEMEKLT OPPOSED TO SLAVERY. Now, this entire view of the subject, with whatever boldness it is affirmed, and •with whatever persistency it is repeated, is destitute of foundation. It is demon- strably •at war with the truth of history, and is contradicted by facts known to those now on the stage, or which are matters of recent record. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and long afterwards, there was, generally speaking, no sectional difference of opinion between North and South, on the subject of Sla- very. It was in both parts of the country regarded, in the established formula of the day, as " a social, political, and moral evil." The general feeling in favor of universal liberty and the rights of man, wrought into fervor in the progress of the Revolution, naturally strengthened the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the Union. It is the South which has since changed, not the North. The theory of a change in the Northern mind, growing out of a discovery made soon after 1789, that our soil and climate were unpropitious to Slavery, (as if the soil and climate then were different from what they had always been,) and a consequent sale to the South of the slaves of the North, is purely mythical — as groundless in fact as it is absurd in statement. I have often asked for the evidence of this last allegation, and I have never found an individual who attemj^ted even to prove it. But however this may be, the South at that time regarded Slavery as an evil, though a necessary one, and habitually spoke of it in that light. Its continued existence was supposed to depend on keeping up the African slave trade ; and South as well as North, Vir- ginia as well as Massachusetts, passed laws to prohibit that traffic ; they were, however, before the revolution, vetoed by the Royal Governors. One of the first acts of the Continental Congress, vnianimously subscribed by its members, was an agreement neither to import, nor purchase any slave imported, after the first of December, 1774. In the Declaration of Independence, as originally drafted by Mr. Jefferson, both Slavery and the slave trade were denounced in the most un- compromising language. In 1777 the traffic was forbidden in Virginia, by State law, no longer subject to the veto of Royal Governors, In 1784, an ordinance was reported by IMr. Jefferson to the old Congress, providing that after 1800 there should be no Slavery in any Territory, ceded or to be ceded to the United States. The ordinance failed at that time to be enacted, but the same prohibiti<)n formed a part by general consent of the ordinance of 1787, for the organization of the nortli- westem Territory. In his Notes on Virginia, published in that year, ]\Ir. Jefferson depicted the evils of Slavery in terms of fearful import. In the same year the Constitution was framed. It recognized the existence of Slavery, but the word was carefully excluded from the instrument, and Congress was authorized to abol- THE SOUTH FORMERLY OPPOSED TO SLAVERY. 33 ish the traffic iu twenty years. In 179G, Uv. St. George Tucker, law professor in William and Mary College in Virginia, published a treatise entitled, '• a Disser- tation on Slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia." In the preface to the essay, he speaks of the " abolition of Slavery in this State as an object of the first importance, nut only to our moral character and domestic peace, but even to our political salvati(ni." In 1T07 Mr. Pinkney, iu the Legislature of Maryland, maintained that "by the eternal principles of justice, no man in the State has the right to hold his slave a single hour." In 1803, Mr. John Randolph, from a committee on the subject, reported that the prohibition of Slavery by the ordinance uf 1787, was '•' a measure v.'isely calculated to promote tlie happiness and prosperity of the North-western States, and to give strength and security to that extensive frontier." Under Mr. Jefferson, the importation of slaves into the Territories of Mississippi and Louisiana was prohibited in advance of the time limited by the Constitution for the interdiction of the slave trade. When the Missouri restriction was enacted, all the members of Mr. IMonroc's Cab- inet—Mr. Crawford of Georgia, Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina, and ISIr. Wirt of Virginia — concurred with Mr. IMonroo in affirming its constitutionality. In 1832, after the Southampton massacre, the evils of Slavery were exposed in the Legislature of Virginia, and the expediency of its gradual abolition maintained, in terms as decided as were ever employed by the most uncompromising agitator. A bill for that object was introduced into the Assembly by the grandson of :Mr. Jefferson, and warmly supported by distinguished politicians now on the stage. Nay, we have the recent admission of the Vice-President of the seceding Confed- eracy, that what he calls " the errors of the past generation.," meaning the anti- slavery sentiments entertained by Southern statesmen, "still clung to many as late as iiventy years ago." To this hasty review of Southern opinions and measures, showing their ac- cordance till a late date with Northern sentiment on the subject of Slavery, I might add the testimony of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of George Mason, of Wythe, of Pendleton, of ]\Iarshall, of Lowndes, of Poinsett, of Clay, and of nearly every first-class name in the Southern States. Nay, as late as 1849, and after the Union had been shaken by the agitations incident to the acquisition of Mexican territory, the Convention of California, although nearly one-half of its members were from the slaveholding States, nnanimousbj adopted a Constitution, by which slavery was prohibited in that State. In fl^ct, it is now triumphantly proclaimed by the chiefs of the revolt, that the ideas prevailing on this subject when the Constitution was adopted were fundamentally wrong ; that the new Government of the Confederate States " rests upon exactly the opposite ideas ; that its foundations are laid and its corner-stone reposes upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man ; that Slavery— subordination to the superior race- is his natural and normal condition. This our new Government is the first in the history of the world based upon this physical, philosophical, and moral truth." So little foundation is there for the statement, that the North, from the first, has been engaged in a strug- gle with the South on the subject of Slavery, or has departed in any degree from the spirit with which the Union was entered into, by both parties. The fact is precisely the reverse. 34 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. NO ANTI-SLAVERY MEASURES ENACTED BY CONGRESS. Mr. Davis, in his message to the Confederate States, goes over a long list of measures, which he declares to have been inaugurated, and gradually extended, as soon as the Northern States had reached a sufficient number to give their repre- sentatives a controlling voice in Congress. But of all these measures, not one is a matter of Congressional legislation, nor has Congress, with this alleged controlling voice on the part of the North, ever either passed a law hostile to the interests of the South, on the subject of Slavery, nor failed to pass one which the South has claimed as belonging to her rights or needed for her safety. In truth, the North, meaning thereby the anti-slavery North, never has had the control of both Houses of Congress, never of the judiciary, rarely of the Executive, and never exerted there to the prejudice of Southern rights. Every judicial or legislative issue on this question, with the single exception of the final admission of Kansas, that has ever been raised before Congress, has been decided in favor of the South ; and yet she allows herself to allege " a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves," as the justification of her rebellion. The hostile measures alluded to are, as I have said, none of them matters of Congressional legislation. Some of them are purely imaginary as to any injurious effect, others much exaggerated, others unavoidably incident to freedom of speech and the press. You are aware, my friends, that I have always disapproved the agitation of the subject of Slavery for jDarty jjurposes, or with a view to infringe upon the Constitutional rights of the South. But if the North has given cause of complaint, in this respect, the fault has been equally committed by the South. The subject has been fully as much abused there as here for party purposes ; and if the North has ever made it the means of gaining a sectional triumph, she has but done what the South, for the last twenty -five years, has never missed an occasion of doing. With respect to every thing substantial in the complaints of the South a£;ainst the North, Congress and the States have afforded or tendered all reason- able, all possible satisfaction. She asked for a more stringent fugitive slave law in 1850, and it was enacted. She comj)lained of the ]\Iissouri Compromise, although adopted in conformity with all the traditions of the Government, and approved by the most judicious Southern statesmen ; and after thirty-four years' acquiescence on the part of the people, Congress repealed it. She wished for a judicial decision of the territorial question in her favor, and the Supremo Court of the United States, in contravention of the whole current of our legislation, so decided it. She insisted on carrying this decision into eflect, and three new Territories, at the very last session of Congress, were organized in conformity to it, as Utah and New Mexico had been before it was rendered. She demanded a guarantee against amendments of the Constitution adverse to her interests, and it was given by the requisite ma- jority of the two Houses. She required the repeal of the State laws obstructing the surrender of fugitive slaves, and although she had taken the .extreme remedy of revolt into her hands, they were repealed or modified. Nothing satisfied her, because there was an active party in the cotton-growing States, led by ambitious men determined on disunion, who w^ere resolved not to be satisfied. In one in- stance alone the South has suflTered defeat. The North, for the first time since the foundation of the Government, has chosen a President by her unaided electoral REPRESENTATION OF THREE-FIFTHS OF THE SLAVES. 35 vote ; and that is the occasion of the present unnatural war. I cannot appropriate to myself any portion of those cheers, for, as you know, I did not contribute, by my vote, to that result ; but I did enlist under the Banner of " the Union, the Con- stitution, and the enforcement of the laws." Under that Banner I mean to stand, and with it, if it is struck down, I am willing to foil. Even for this result the South has no one to blame but herself. Her disunionists would give their votes for no candidate but the one selected by leaders who avowed the purpose of effect- ing a revolution of the cotton States, and who brought about a schism in the Dem- ocratic party directly caclulated, probably designed, to produce the event which actually took place, with all its dread consequences. EEPKESENTATION OF THREE-FIFTHS OF THE SLAVES. I trust I have shown the flagrant injustice of this whole attempt to flisten upon the North the charge of wielding the j)owers of the Federal Government to the prejudice of the South. But there is one great fact connected with this subject, seldom prominently brought forward, which ought forever to close the lips of the South, in this warfare of sectional reproach. Under the old Confederation, tlie Congress consisted of but one House, and each State, large and small, had but a single vote, and consequently an equal share in the Government, if Government it could be called, of the Union. This manifest injustice was bai*ely tolerable in a state of war, when the imminence of the public danger tended to produce unanimity of feeling and action. When the country was relieved from tlie pressure of tlie war, and discordant interests more and more disclosed themselves, the equality of the States became a j^ositive element of discontent, and contributed its full share to the downfall of that short-lived and ill-compacted frame of Government. Accordingly, when the Constitution of the United States was formed, the great object and the main difficulty was to reconcile the equality of the States, (which gave to Rhode Island and Delaware equal weight with Virginia and ^Massachusetts,) with a proportionate representation of the people. Each of these principles was of vital importance ; the first being demanded by tlie small States, as due to their equal independence, and the last being demanded by the large States, in virtue of the fact that the Constitution was the work and the Government of the people, and in conformity Avith the great law in which the Revolution liad its origin, that repre- sentation and taxation should go hand in hand. The problem was solved, in the Federal Convention, by a system of extremely refined arrangements, of which the chief was that there should be two Houses of Congress, that each State should have an equal representation in the Senate, (vot- ing, however, not by States, but ^^^e?* capita,^ and a number of representatives in the House in proportion to its population. But here a formidable difliculty pre- sented itself, growing out of the anomalous character of the population of the slave- holding States, consisting as it did of a dominant and a subject class, the latter ex- cluded by local law from the enjoyment of all political rights, and regarded simply as property. In this state of things, was it just or equitable that the slaveholding States, in addition to the number of representatives to which their free population entitled them, should have a further share in the government of the country, on account of the slaves held as property by a small portion of the ruling class ? While property of every kind in the non-slaveholding States was unrepresented, 36 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. was it just that this species of property, forming a large proportion of the entire property of the South, should be allowed to swell the representation of the slave- holding States ? This serious difliculty was finally disposed of, in a manner mutually satisfactory, by providing that Representatives and direct Taxes should be apportioned among the States on the same basis of population, ascertained by adding to the whole number of free persons three-fifths of the slaves. It was expected at this time that the Federal Treasury would be mainly supplied by direct taxation. While, there- fore, the rule adopted gave to the South a number of representatives out of propor- tion to the number of her citizens, she would be restrained from exercising this power to the prejudice of the North, by the fact that any increase of the public burdens would fill in the same increased proportion on herself For the additional weight which the South gained in the i:)residential election, by this adjustment, the North received no compensation. But now mark the practical operation of the compromise. Direct taxation, instead of being the chief resource of the Treasury, has been resorted to but four times since tlie foundation of the Government, and then for small amounts ; in 1798 two millions of dollars, in 1813 three millions, in 1815 six millions, in 1816 three millions again, in all fourteen millions, the sum total raised by direct taxation in seventy-two years, less than an average of 200,000 dollars a year. What num- ber of representatives, beyond the proportion of their free population, the South has elected in former Congresses I have not computed. In the last Congress she was represented by twenty members, in behalf of her slaves, being nearly one- eleventh part of the entire House. As the increasing ratio of the two classes of population has not greatly varied, it is probable that the South, in virtue of her slaves, has always enjoyed about the same proportionate representation in the House, in excess of that accruing from her free population. As it has rarely hap- pened in our political divisions that important measures have been carried by large majorities, this excess has been quite sufficient to assure the South a majority on all sectional questions. It enabled her to elect her candidate for the Presidency in 1800, and thus effect the great political revolution of that year, and is sufficient of itself to account for that approach to a monopoly of the Government which she has ever enjoyed. Now, though the consideration for which the North agreed to this arrangement, may be said to have wholly fliiled, it has nevertheless been quietly acquiesced in. I do not mean that in times of high party excitement it has never been alluded to as a hardship. The Hartford Convention spoke of it as a grievance which ought to be remedied ; but even since our political controversies have turned almost wholly on the subject of slavery, I am not aware that this cntii-e failure of the equivalent, for which the North gave up to the South what has secured to her, in fact, the almost exclusive control of the Government of the country, has been a frequent or a prominent subject of comj^laint. So much for the j^ursuit by the North of measures hostile to the interests of the South ; — so much for the grievances urged by the South as her justification for bringing upon the country the crimes and sufferings of civil war, and aiming at the prostration of a Government admitted by herself to be the most perfect the world has seen, and under which all her own interests have been eminently protected and WHY SHOULD WE NOT RECOGNIZE THE SECEDING STATES? 37 favored ; for to complete the demonstration of the unreasonableness of her com- plaints, it is necessary only to add, that, by the admission of her leading public men, there never was a time when her " peculiar institution " was so stable and prosperous as at the present moment.* WHY SHOULD WE NOT EECOGNIZE THE SECEDING STATES? And now let us rise from these disregarded appeals to the truth of history and the wretched subtilties of the Secession School of Argument, and contemplate the great issue before us, in its solemn practical reality, " Why should wc not," it is asked, " admit the claims of the seceding States, acknowledge their independence, and put an end at once to the war 1 " " Why should we not ? " I answer the question by asking another : " Why should we ? " What have we to gain, what to hope from the pursuit of that course ? Peace'? But we were at peace before. Why are we not at peace now ? The North has not waged the war, it has been forced upon us in self defence ; and if, while they had the Constitution and the Laws, the Executive, Congress, and the Courts, all controlled by themselves, the South, dissatisfied with legal protections and Constitutional remedies, has grasped the sword, can North and South hope to live in peace, when the bonds of Union arc broken, and amicable means of adjustment are repudiated? Peace is the very last thing which Secession, if recognized, will give us ; it will give us nothing but a hollow truce, — time to prepare the means of new outrages. It is in its very nature a perpetual cause of hostility ; an eternal never-cancelled letter of marque and reprisal, an everlasting proclamation of border-war. How can peace exist, when all the causes of dissension shall be indefinitely multiplied ; when unequal revenue laws shall have led to a gigantic system of smuggling; when a general stampede of slaves shall take place along the border, with no thought of rendition, and all the thousand causes of mutual irritation shall be called into action, on a frontier of 1,500 miles not marked by natural boundaries and not subject to a common jurisdiction or a mediating power ? We did believe in peace, fondly, credulously, believed that, cemented by the mild umpirage of the Federal Union, it might dwell forever beneath the folds of the Star-Spangled Banner, and the sacred shield of a common Nationality, That was the great arcanum of policy ; that was the State mystery into which men and angels desired to look ; hidden from ages, but revealed to us : — Which Kings and Prophets waited for, And sought, but never found : a family of States independent of each other for local concerns, united under one Government for the management of common interests and the prevention of internal feuds. There was no limit to the possible extension of such a system. It had already comprehended half of North America, and it might, in the course of time, have folded the continent in its peaceful, beneficent embrace. We fondly dreamed that, in the lapse of ages, it would have been extended till half the Western hemi- sphere had realized the vision of universal, perpetual peace. From that dream we have been rudely startled by the array of ten thousand armed men in Charleston Harbor, and the glare of eleven batteries bursting on the torn sky of the Union, like the comet which, at this very moment, burns " In the Arctic sky, and from his * See Appendix, D. 38 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." These batteries rained their storm of iron hail on one poor siege-worn company, because, in obedience to lawful authority, in the performance of sworn duty, the gallant Anderson resolved to keep his oath. That brave and faithful band, by remaining at their post, did not hurt a hair of the head of a Carolinian, bond or free. The United States proposed not to reenforce, but to feed them. But the Confederate leaders would not allow them even the poor boon of being starved into surrender ; and because some laws had been passed somewhere, by which it was alleged that the return of some slaves (not one from Carolina) had been or might be obstructed, South Carolina, disclaiming the protec- tion of courts and of Congress, which had never been withheld from her, has in- augurated a ruthless civil war. If, for the frivolous reasons assigned, the seceding States have chosen to plunge into this gulf, while all the peaceful temperaments and constitutional remedies of the Union were within their reach, and offers of further compromise and additional guarantees were daily tendered them, what hope, what possibility of peace can there be, when the Union is broken up, when, in addition to all other sources of deadly quarrel, a general exodus of the slave population begins, (as, beyond all question, it will,) and nothing but war remains for the set- tlement of controversies 1 The Vice-President of the new Confederacy states that it rests on slavery ; but from its very nature it must rest equally on war ; eternal war, first between North and South, and then between the smaller fragments into which some of the disintegrated parts may crumble. The work of demons has already begun. Besides the hosts mustered for the capture or destruction of Washington, Eastern Virginia has let loose the dogs of war on the loyal citizens of Western Virginia ; they are straining at the leash in Maryland and Kentucky ; Tennessee threatens to set a price on the head of her noble Johnson and his friends ; a civil war rages in Missouri. Why, in the name of Heaven, has not Western Virginia, separated from Eastern Virginia by mountain ridges, by climate, by the course of her rivers, by the character of her population, and the nature of her in- dustry, why has she not as good a right to stay in the Union which she inherited from her Washington, as Eastern Virginia has to abandon it for the mushroom Confederacy forced upon her from Montgomery ? Are no rights sacred but those of rebellion ; no oaths binding but those taken by men already foresworn ; are liberty of thought, and speech, and action nowhere to be tolerated except on the part of those by whom laws are trampled under foot, arsenals and mints plundered, gov- ernments warred against, and where their patriotic defenders arc assailed by fero- cious and murderous mobs ? SECESSION ESTABLISHES A FOREIGN POWER ON THE CONTINENT. Then consider the monstrous nature and reach of the pretensions in which we are expected to acquiesce ; which are nothing less than that the United States should allow a Foreign Poweu, by surprise, treachery, and violence, to possess itself of one-half of their territory and all the public property and public establishments contained in it ; for if the Southern Confederacy is recognized, it becomes a Foreign Power, established along a curiously dove-tailed frontier of 1,500 miles, command- ing some of the most important commercial and military positions and lines of communication for travel and trade ; half the sea-coast of the Union ; the naviga- tion of our Mediterranean Sea, (the Gulf of Mexico, one-third as large as the Medi- IMMENSE COST OF THE TERKITORIES CLAIMED BY SECESSION, 39 terranean of Europe,) and, above all, the great arterial inlet into the heart of the Continent, through which its very life-blood pours its imperial tides. I say we are coolly summoned to surrender all this to a Foreign Power. Would we surrender it to England, to France, to Spain ? Not an inch of it ; why, then, to the Southern Confederacy 1 Would any other Government on earth, unless compelled by the direst necessity, make such a surrender ? Does not France keep an army of 100,000 men in Algeria to prevent a few wandering tribes of Arabs, a recent con- quest, from asserting their independence ? Did not England strain her resources to the utmost tension, to prevent the native Kingdoms of Central India (civilized States two thousand years ago, and while painted chieftains ruled the savage clana of ancient Britain) from reestablishing their sovereignty ; and shall we be expected, without a struggle, to abandon a great integral part of the United States to a For- eign Power 1 Let it be remembered, too, that in granting to the seceding States, jointly and severally, the right to leave the Union, we concede to them the right of resuming, if they please, their former allegiance to England, France, and Spain. It rests with them, with any one of them, if the right of secession is admitted, again to plant a European Government side by side with that of the United States on the soil of America ; and it is by no means the most improbable upshot of this ill-starred rebellion, if allowed to prosper. Is this the Monroe doctrine for which the United States have been contending ? The disunion press in Virginia last year openly encouraged the idea of a French Protectorate, and her Legislature has, I believe, sold out the James River canal, the darling enterprise of Washington, to a com- pany in France supposed to enjoy the countenance of the emperor. The seceding patriots of South Carolina were understood by the correspondent of the London " Times," to admit that they would rather be subject to a British prince, than to the Government of the United States. Whether they desire it or not, the moment the seceders lose the protection of the United States, they hold their independence at the mercy of the powerful governments of Europe. If the navy of the North should withdraw its protection, there is not a Southern State on the Atlantic or the Gulf, which might not be recolonized by Europe, in six months after the outbreak of a foreign war. IMMENSE COST OF THE TEEEITOKIES CLAIMED BY SECESSION. Then look at the case for a moment, in reference to the cost of the acquisitions of territory made on this side of the continent within the present century, — Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and the entire coast of Alabama and Mississippi ; vast regions acquired from France, Spain, and Mexico, within sixty j^oars. Louisiana cost 15,000,000 dollars, when our population was 5,000,000, representing, of course, a burden of 90,000,000 of dollars at the present day. Florida cost 5,000,000 dollars in 1820, when our population was less than 10,000,000, equal to 15,000,000 dollars at the present day, besides the expenses of General Jackson's war in 1818, and the Florida war of 1840, in which some 80,000,000 of dollars were thrown away, for the purpose of driving out a handful of starving Seminoles from the Everglades. Texas cost $200,000,000 expended in the Mexican war, in addition to the lives of thousands of brave men ; besides 110,000,000 paid to her in 1850, for ceding a tract of land which was not hers to New Mexico. A great part of the expense of 40 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. the military establishment of the United States has heen incurred iu defendiiig the South-Western frontier. The troops, meanly surprised and betrayed in Texas, were sent there to protect her defenceless border settlements from the tomahawk and scalping-knife. If to all this expenditure we add that of the forts, the navy yards, the court-houses, the custom-houses, and the other j^ublic buildings in these regions, 500,000,000 dollars of the public funds, of which at least five-sixths have been levied by mdircct taxation from the North and North-Wcst, have been ex- pended in and for the Gulf States in this century. Would England, would France, would any government on the flxce of the earth surrender, without a death-struggle, such a dear-bought territory ? THE UNITED STATES CANNOT GIVE IIP THE CONTEOL OF THE OUTLET OP THE MISSISSIPPI. But of this I make no account; the dollars are spent; let them go. But look at the subject for a moment in its relations to the safety, to the prosperity, and the growth of the country. The Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, with their hundred tributaries, give to the great central basin of our continent its character and destiny. The outlet of this mighty system lies between the States of Tennessee and Missouri, of Mississippi and Arkansas, and through the State of Louisiana. The ancient province so-called, the proudest monument of the mighty monarch whose name it bears, passed from the jurisdiction of France to that of Spain in 1763. Spain coveted it, not that she might fill it with prosperous colonies and rising States, but (^hat it might stretch as a broad waste barrier, infested with warlike tribes, between the Anglo-American power and the silver mines of Mexico. With the independence of the United States, the fear of a still more dangerous neighbor grew upon Spain, and in the insane expectation of checking the progress of the Union westward, she threatened, and at times attempted, to close the mouth of the Mississippi, on the rapidly increasing trade of the West. The bare suggestion of such a policy roused the population upon the banks of the Ohio, then inconsiderable, as one man. Their confidence in V/ashington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real in 1795 stipulated f )r them a precarious right of navigating the noble river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans. This subject was for years the turning point of the politics of the West, and it was perfectly well understood, that, sooner or later, she would be content with nothing less than the sovereign control of the mighty stream from its head spring to its outlet in the Gulf; and that is as true nozo as it tvas then. So stood affairs at the close of the last century, when the colossal power of the first Napoleon burst upon the world. In the vast recesses of his Titanic ambition, he cherished as a leading object of his policy, to acquire for France a colonial em- pire which should balance that of England. In pursuit of this policy, he fixed his eye on the ancient regal colony which Louis XIV. had founded in the heart of North America, and he tempted Spain by the paltry bribe of creating a kingdom of Etruria for a Bourbon prince, to give back to France the then boundless waste of the territory of Louisiana. The cession was made by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso of the 1st of October, 1800, (of which one sentence only has ever been published, but that sentence gave away half a continent,) and the youthful conqueror concentrated all the resources of his mighty genius on the accomplishment of the CONTROL OF THE OUTLET OF THE MISSISSIPPL 41 vast project. If successful, it would have established the French power on the mouth and on the right bank of the Mississippi, and would have opposed the most formidable barrier to the expansion of the United States. The peace of Amiens, at this juncture, relieved Napoleon from the pressure of the war with England, and every thing seemed propitious to the success of the great enterprise. The fate of America trembled for a moment in a doubtful balance, and five hundred thousand citizens in that region felt the danger, and sounded the alarm.'^'" But in another moment the aspect of afiairs was changed, by a stroke of policy, grand, unexpected, and fruitful of consequences, perhaps without a parallel in history. The short-lived truce of Amiens was about to end, the renewal of war was inevi- table. Napoleon saw that before he could take possession of Louisiana it wouk] be wrested from him by England, who commanded the seas, and he determined at once, not merely to deprive her of this magnificent conquest, but to contribute as far as in him lay, to build up a great rival maritime power in the West. The Government of the United States, not less sagacious, seized the golden moment — a moment such as does not happen twice in a thousand years. Mr. Jefferson per- ceived that, unless acquired by the United States, Louisiana would in a short time belong to France or to England, and with equal wisdom and courage he determined that it should belong to neither. True he held the acquisition to be unconstitu- tional, but he threw to the winds the resolutions of 1798, which had just brought him into power ; he broke the CJonstitution and he gained an Empire. Mr. Mon- roe was sent to France to conduct the negotiation, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston, the resident Minister, contemplating, however, at that time only the acquisition of New Orleans and the adjacent territory. But they were dealing with a man that did nothing by halves. Napoleon knew, and we knoiu — that to give up the mouth of the river was to give up its course. On Easter-Sunday of 1803, he amazed his Council with the announcement, that he had determined to cede the whole of Louisiana to the United States. Not less to the astonishment of the American envoys, they were told by the French negotia- tors, at the first interview, that their master was prepared to treat with them not merely for the Isle of New Orleans, but for the whole vast province which bore the name of Louisiana ; whose boundaries, then unsettled, have since been carried on the North to the British line, on the West to the Pacific Ocean ; a territory half as big as Europe, transferred by a stroke of the pen. Fifty-eight years have elapsed since the acquisition was made. The States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis- souri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas, the territories of Nebraska, Dacotah, Jefferson, and part of Colorado, have been established within its limits, on this side of the Rocky Mountains ; the State of Oregon and the territory of Washington on their western slope ; while a tide of population is steadily pouring into the region, des- tined in addition to the natural increase, before the close of the century, to double the number oi the States and Territories. For the entire region west of the Al- leghanies and east of the Rocky ]\Iountains, the ]\Iissouri and the ^lississippi form the natural outlet to the sea. Without counting the population of the seceding States, there arc ten millions of the free citizens of the country, between Pittsburg and Fort Union, who claim the course and the mouth of the ^Mississippi, as belong- ing to the United States. It is theirs by a transfer of truly imperial origin and * Speech of Mr. Eoss, in the Senate of the United States, 11th Febniary, 1S03. 42 ADDRESS BY EDWAliD EVERETT. magnitude ; theirs by a sixty years' undisputed title ; theirs by occupation and settlement ; theirs by the Law of Nature and of God. Louisiana, a fragment of this Colonial empire, detached from its main portion and first organized as a State, undertakes to secede from the Union, and thinks by so doing that she will be allowed by the Government and People of the United States to revoke this im- perial transfer, to disregard this possession and occupation of sixty years, to repeal this law of nature and of God ; and she fondly believes that ten millions of the Free People of the Union will allow her and her seceding brethren to open and shut the portals of this mighty region at their pleasure. They may do so, and the swarming millions which throng the course of these noble streams and their tribu- taries may consent to exchange the charter which they hold from the God of Heaven, for a bit of parchment signed at Montgomery or Richmond ; but if I may repeat the words which I have lately used on another occasion, it will be when the Alleghanies and the Eocky Mountains, which form the eastern and western walls of the imperial valley, shall sink to the level of the sea, and the Mississippi and the Missouri shall flow back to their fountains. Such, Fellow-citizens, as I contemplate them, are the great issues before the country, nothing less, in a word, than whether the work of our noble Fathers of the Revolutionary and Constitutional age shall perish or endure ; whether this great experiment in National polity, which binds a family of free Republics in one United Government — the most hopeful plan for combining the homebred blessings of a small State with the stability and power of great empire — shall be treacher- ously and shamefully stricken down, in the moment of its most successful opera- tion, or whether it shall be bravely, patriotically, triumphantly maintained. We wage no war of conquest and subjugation ; we aim at nothing but to protect our loyal fellow-citizens, who, against fearful odds, are fighting the battles of the Union in the disaffected States, and to reestablish, not for ourselves alone, but for our deluded fellow-citizens, the mild sway of the Constitution and the Laws. The re- sult cannot be doubted. Twenty millions of freemen, forgetting their divisions, are rallying as one man in support of the righteous cause — their willing hearts and their strong hands, their fortunes and their lives, are laid upon the altar of th.e country. We contend for the great inheritance of constitutional freedom trans- mitted from our revolutionary fathers. We engage in the struggle forced upon us, with sorrow, as against our misguided brethren, but with high heart and faith, as we war for that Union which our sainted Washington commended to our dearesi affections. The sympathy of the civilized world is on our side, and will join us in prayers to Heaven for the success of our arms. APPENDIX. APPENDIX A, p. 9. Aftee the remarks in the foregoing address, p. 9, were written, touching the impos- eibility, at the present day, otre2)eallng tlie instrument by which in 1788 South CaroUna gave her consent and ratification to the Constitution of the United States, I souglit the opinion on that point of Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, the learned and accurate historian of the Con- stitution. It aflorded me great pleasure to find, from the foIlov,-ing letter, that my view of the subject is sustained by his high authority: Jamaica Plains, i Saturday Evening, June 8, ISGl. ) My Dear Sir : Since I came home, I have looked carefully at the ratification of the Constitution by South Carolina- The formal instrument, sent to Congress, seems to be much more in the nature of a Deed or Grant, than of an Ordinance. An ordinance would seem to be an instrument adopted by a public body, for the regulation of a subject that in its nature remains under the regulation of that body ; — to operate until otherwise ordered. A Deed, or Grant, on the other hand, operates to pass some things ; and unless there be a reservation of some control over the subject-matter by the Grantor, his cession is neces- sarily irrevocable. I can perceive no reason why these distinctions are not applicable to the cession of political powers by a People, or their duly authorized representatives. The question submitted to the People of South Carolina, by the Congress, Avas, "Whether they would cede the powers of government embraced in an instrument sent to them, and called the Constitution of the United States. In other words, they were asked to make a Grant of those Powers. "When, therefore, the duly authorized Delegates of the People of South Carolina executed an instrument under seal, declaring that they, " in the name and be- half" of that people, " assent to and ratify the said Constitution," I can perceive no pro- priety in calling this Deed an Ordinance. If they had adopted an instrument entitled, " An Act [or Ordinance] for the government of the People of South Carolina," and had gone on, in the body of the instrument, to declare that the Powers embraced in the Con- stitution of the United States should be exercised by the agents therein provided, until otherwise ordered, there would have been something left for a repeal to operate upon. But nothing like this was done, and everybody knows that such a ratification could not have been accepted. There are those, as you are well aware, who pretend that the most absolute and un- restricted terms of cession, which would carry any otlier subject entirely out of the grantor, do not so operate when the subject of the grant is political sovereignty. But a political school which maintains that a deed is to be construed in one way when it ])ur- ports to convey one description of right, such as political sovereignty, and in another 44 APPENDIX. way when it purports to convey a right of another kind, such as property, would hold a very weak brief in any tribunal of jurisprudence, if the question could he brought to that arbitrament. The American people have been very much accustomed to treat i)oliti- cal grants, made by the sovereign power without reservation, as irrevocable conveyances and executed contracts ; and although they hold to the right of revolution, they have not yet found out how a deed, absolute on its face, is to be treated in point of law, as a re- pealable instrument, because it deals with political rights and duties. If any court in South Carolina were now to have the question come before it, whether the laws of the United States are still binding upon their citizens, I think they would have to put their denial upon the naked doctrine oi revolution ; and that they could not hold that, as mat- ter of law and regular political action, their ratification deed of May 23d, 1788, is "re- pealed" by their late ordinance. Most truly and respectfully yours, Me. Everett. Geo. T. Curtis. APPENDIX B, p. 22. Hon. Eeyerdy JonssoiJ to Mr. Everett. Baltimoue, 24th June, ISCl. My Dear Mr. Everett. I have your note of the 18th, and cheerfully authorize you to use my name, as you suggest. The letter I read in the speech which I made in Frederick, should be conclusive evi- dence that, at its date, Mr. Calhoun denied the right of secession, as a constitutional right, either express or implied. But, in addition to this, I had frequent opportunities of knowing that this was his opinion. It was my good fortune to be a member of the Senate of the United States, whilst he was one of its greatest ornaments, for four years, from 1845, until I became a member of Gen, Taylor's administration, and during two sessions (I think 1846 and 1847) I lived in the same house with him. He did me th Sonor to give me much of his confi- dence, and frequently his nullification doctrnie was the subject of conversation. Time and time again have I heard him, and with ever increased surprise at his wonderful acuteness, defend it on Constitutional grounds, and distinguish it, in that respect, from the doctrine of Secession. This last he never, with me, placed on any other ground than that of revolution. This, he said, was to destroy the Government ; and no Constitution, the work of sane men, ever provided for its own destruction. The other was to preserve it, was, practically, but to amend it, and in a constitutional mode. As you know, and he was ever told, I never took that view. I coi;ld see no more constitutional warrant for this than for the other, which, I repeat, he ever in all our interviews repudiated, as wholly indefensible as a constitutional remedy. His mind, with all its wonderful power, was so ingenious that it often led him into error, and at times to such an extent as to be guilty of the most palpable inconsistencies. His views of the tariff and internal improve- ment powers of the Government, are instances. His first opinions upon both Avere decided, and almost ultra. His earliest reputation was won as their advocate, and yet four years before his death he denounced both, with constant zeal and with rare power, and, whilst doing so, boldly asserted his uniform consistency. It is no marvel, therefore, with those who have observed his career and studied his character, to hear it stated now that he was the advocate of constitutional secession. It may be so, and perhaps is so ; but this in no way supports the doctrine, as far as it is rested on his autliority. His first views were well considered and formed, without the influence of extraneous circumstances, of which he seemed to me to bo often the victim. APPENDIX. 45 Pure in private life and in motives, ever, as I believe and liavc always believed, patriotic, he was induced, seemingly without knowing it, in his later life, to surrender to section what w^as intended for the -whole, his great powers of analysis and his extraordinary talent for public service. If such a heresy, therefore, as constitutional secession could ' rest on any individual name, if any mere human autliority could support such an absurd and destructive folly, it cannot be said to rest on that of Mr. Calhoun. With sincere regard, your friend, Eevep.dy Jonxsox. Hon. Edwaed Eyeeett, Boston. APPENDIX C, p. CI. The number of fugitive slaves, from all the States, as I learn from Mr. J. C. G. Ken- nedy, the intelligent superintendent of the census bureau, was, in the year 1850, 1,011, being about one to every 3,165, the entire number of slaves at that time being 3,200,36-1, a ratio of rather more than ^'^ of one per cent. This very small ratio was diminished in 1860. By the last census, the whole number of slaves in the United States was 3,949,- 557, and the number of escaping fugitives was 803, being a trifle over -^^ of one jser cent. Of these it is probable that much the greater part escaped to the places of refuge in the South, alluded to in the text. At all events, it is well known that escaping slaves, re- claimed in the free States, have in almost every instance been restored. There is usually some difficulty in reclaiming fugitives of any description, who have escaped to another jurisdiction. In most of the cases of fugitives from justice, which came under my cognizance as ITnited States Minister in London, every conceivable diffi- culty was thrown in my way, and sometimes with success, by the counsel for the parties whose extradition was demanded under the "Webster- Ashburton treaty. The French Am- bassador told me, that he had made thirteen unsuccessful attempts to procure the surren- der of fugitives from justice, under the extradition treaty between the two governments. The difficulty generally grew out of the difference of the jurisprudence of the two coun- tries, in the definition of crimes, rules of evidence, and mode of procedure. The number of blacks living in Upper Canada and assumed to be all from the United States, is sometimes stated as high as forty thousand, and is constantly referred to, at the South, as showing the great number of fugitives. But it must be remembered that the manumissions far exceed in number the escaping fugitives. I learn from Mr. Kennedy that while in 1860 the number of fugitives was but 808, that of manumissions was 8,010. As the manumitted slaves are compelled to leave the States where they are set free, and a small portion only emigrate to Liberia, at least nine-tenths of tliis number arc scattered through the northern States and Canada. In the decade from 1850 to 1860, it is estimat- ed that 20,000 slaves were manumitted, of whom three-fourths probably joined their brethren in Canada. This supply alone, with the natural increase on the old stock and the new comers, will account for the entire population of the province. A very able and instructive discussion of the statistics of this subject will be found in the Boston Courier of the 9th of July. It is there demonstrated that the assertion that the Northern States got rid of their slaves by selling them to the South, is utterly un- supported by the official returns of the census. 46 APPENDIX. APPENDIX D, p. 37. * In his message to the Confederate Congress of the 29th April last, Mr. Jefferson Davis presents a most glowing account of the prosperity of the peculiar institution of the South. He states, indeed, that it was " imperilled'' by Northern agitation, but he does not affn-m (and the contrary, as far as I have observed, is strenuously maintained at the South) that its progress has been checked or its stability in the slightest degree shaken. I think I have seen statements by Mr. Senator Hunter of Virginia, that the institution of slavery has been benefited and its interests promoted, since the systematic agitation of the subject began ; but I am unable to lay my hand on the speech, in Avhich, if I recollect rightly, this view was taken by the distinguished senator. I find the following extracts from the speeches of two distinguished southern senators, in "The Union," a spirited paper published at St. Cloud, Minnesota: It was often said at the North, and admitted l)y candid statesmen at the South, that anti-slavery agitation strengthened rather than weakened slavery. Here are the admissions of Senator Hammond on this point, in a speech which he delivered in South Carolina, October 24, 1858 : — "And what then (1833) was the state of opinion in the South? "Washington had emancipated his slaves. Jefferson had bitterly denounced the system, and had done all that he could to destroy it. Our C]a3's, Marshalls, Crawfords, and many other prominent Southern men, led off in the coloni- zation scheme. The inevitable effect in the South was that she believed slavery to be an evil — weakness — disgraceful — nay, a sin. She shi'uuk from the discussion of it. She cowered under every threat. She attempted to apologize, to excuse herself under the plea — which was true — that Eng- land had forced it upon her ; and in fear and trembling she awaited a doom that she deemed inevi- table. But a few bold spirits took the question up — they compelled the South to investigate it anew and thoroughly, and what is the result ? Why, it would be difficult to find now a Southern man who feels the system to be the lightest burden on his conscience ; who does not, in fact, regard it as an equal advantage to the master and the slave, elevating both, as wealth, strength, and power, and as one of the main pillars and controlling influences of modern civilization, and who is not now pre- pared to maintain it at every hazard, tiuch have been the happy results of this aholilion discussion. " So far our yain has been inuncnse from this contest, savage and malignant as it has been." And again he says : — " The rock of Gibraltar does not stand so firm on its basis as our slave system. For a quarter of a century it has borne the brunt of a hurricane as fierce and pitiless as ever raged. At the North, and in Europe, they cried ' havoc,' and let loose upon us all the dogs of war. And how stands it HOW ? Why, in this very quarter of a century our slaves have doubled in numbers, and each slave has more than doubled in value. The very negro who, as a prime laborer, would have brought $400 in 1828, would now, with thirty more years upon him, sell for $800." Equally strong admissions were made by A. H. Stephens, now Yice-Presidcnt of the " Confed- eracy," in that carefully prepared speech v.'hich he delivered in Georgia in July, 1859, on the occasion of retiring from pubhc life. He then said : — " Nor am I of the number of those who believe that we have sustained any injury by these agitations. It is true, wo were not responsible for them. We were not the aggressors. We acted on the defensive. We repelled assault, calumny, and aspersion, by argument, by reason, and truth. But so far from the institution of African slavery in our section being weakened or rendered less secure by the discussion, my deliberate judgment is that it has bee7i greatly strengthened and forti- fied — strengthened and fortified not only in the opinions, convictions, and consciences of men, but by the action of the Government." "E PLURIBUS UNUM." Burke remarks that " the march of the human mind is slow " in the discovery and application of great political truths. With respect to the all-important rpies- tion what is the best form of government, two truths only of the highest order have been discovered and applied before the American Revolution. Pope would suppress all further search in this direction, by his magnificent epigram : For forms of government let fools contest, Whate'cr is best administered is best. But this doctrine, absurd in itself, settles nothing. Besides placing the govern- ment of Turkey and that of England on the same footing, it leaves unanswered the only important question, what form of government is most likely to be best ad- ministered ? Alexander the First of Russia understood this: when Madame de Stael flattered him that his character was the Constitution of his empire, he an- swered that if that was the case, their welfore depended on an accident. The two -reat truths referred to were, that small states admitted free govern- ments, and that large empires required strong ones ; understanding by free govern- ments those which proceed directly from the governed, and are directly responsible to them • and by strong governments, those which rest only on the acquiescence of the people ; which are upheld by military power ; and which admitted no remedy for abuses but the moral influence of public opinion and the extreme right of revo- lution, rri r f The ancient world did not get beyond these two principles, ilie hrst was applied for short periods in Greece and Rome ; but all the rest of the world, as far as we know from the beginning, and the two states just named, after brief and unsuccessful experiments of free institutions, settled down upon the assumption that the Nations of the Earth, in the long run, could be ruled by nothing but the strong arm of power. It has sometimes seemed that you might say of all Peoples what one of the ministers of Louis Philippe said, after his downfall, of his own country— that there are two kinds of government which the people of France will not submit to, viz. : a Republic and a Monarchy. The dangerous maladies of * Respecting » e plukibits unum," Mr Everett ^vrite3 to tho publisher: "It ^vas originally intended as a part of my oration r but finding that ^vas running unduly to length, I determined to send it as an art.clo to Mr. Bonner, for the New York Ledger. It is hero re-published by tho special permission of Mr. Bonner. ^g "E PLURIBUS UNUM." States sometimes spring not from this or tliat alleged abuse, but from the am- bitions, the passions, and the corruptions of the leaders and the led, ^vhlch make amj government impossible. The two principles to which I have alluded had each its great attending evil, that rendered some further progress in the Science of Government necessary for the happiness of mankind. The welfare of small states under republican govern- ments, wholly administered by the people or very directly responsible to them, is apt to be constantly disturbed by gusts of popular passion. For the want of that time for reflection— that pause between the different stages of administration, which obtains in a system that spreads over a great space and large populations— the most momentous measures may be decided by the caprice of a popular assembly at a sinale session. All the social institutions and interests tremble for want of stability, and property and life become so precarious as to be almost worthless ^ Then, if the state is very small, the policy will be small, the standard of politi- cal character low, and every thing be planned and executed on a petty municipal scale. If a great character. Heaven inspired, springs up, his first impulse will necessarily be to stretch beyond the limits of the tribe, and by peaceful alliance or the conquering sword, possess himself of a broader and a nobler field of action. Moses leads forth his brethren from an Egyptian province to the conquest of Canaan. Pericles, from the citadel of Athens, struggles for the sovereignty of Greece. The chiefs of Eepublican Rome grasp at the dominion first of the sur- rounding states of Italy, and then of the world. Finally, if a small state stands alone in the vicinity of a powerful neighbor, it holds its existence on sufierance. If a group of small independent states are placed Bide by side in the same region, they are doomed to eternal wars with each other, and fall at last the victims one by one to the intrigues or arms of the nearest ag- e eontinen. '""js*:"^i. "one fc^ed &""-->': rtt—firi:!;; „hieh United America ha. added to P»';'-^^X ^f a t-U fa'te, and thus forn,: ..eeoneiling the strength of a great wth *o J ^^n of a sm ^^^^^ ^ i„g a decentralized repuhhcan empir^ J-^^^ «° ^^ ^„^ „f „,„.s hands, have shown the ''''8''"'^ """"j^^'S'^'^J^t^ nether ancient nor modern times it exhibits the imperfections of lunnamt, ''»' "" '" " ,^^^„^ ,,^,,„ „isis, coming time ! i60 ^ : y^^ .*'\ ^o' %.^^ ./"-^. ^.a^^ ;'^ ♦ « ♦ ^ *^ ^ iV* ♦A^ '^* ^^ *^. '^ • "^rf. A* *v^VA•' % <^ ♦^^ '^^ ^^^*^x. V c4." ^^ ^^ *i! •jJC^S^.*.*- o :♦ "> ^ ■€» '■j' *°^*^. . ■r .Q» '-o ''^- *<^ "##» c ^^^ J"^^ ^ ^ !^^ .V