1Ie*@Wt filfim zww efmvethv fluuutry. AN ORATION, EDVVARD E VERETT, DE£HUflflfl)IN THE NEmfYoRKCA0ADEMX”oF;MUsHL ON THE FoURIHe~r7ac.g;us it come: he fell by some of them. Every rational citizen must Wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties nor occasion blood- shed ; a land force would do both.’.’ he the following year, and when the Coiifederaw tion was at its last gasp, Mr. .lefi“erson was still of the opinion that it possessed the pmver of coercing the States, and that it was expedient to exercise it. In a letter to Col. Carrington of the 4th of April, 1787, he says: “ It has been so often said as to be generally believed, that Coiigzress have no power by the Confederation to enforce any tiring, for instance, contributions of money. It Was not necessary to give them that power expressly, they have it by the law of nature. W"/2.ea two parties 7'}’ZClIlC'é3 a corzapact, z.‘7z.ere results 250 each the power of compeliirzg the other to execute it‘. Conr- pulsion was never so easy as in our case, when a single frigate would soon levy on the commerce of a single State the deficiency of its contributions.” Such was Mr. .lefl'"erson’s opinion of the powers of Congress, under the “old contract of alliancef,’ ‘Nill any reasonable man maintain that under a constitution of governnient there can be less power to enforce the laws? STATE SOVEREIGNTY DOES NOT AUTHORIZE SECESSION. But the cause of secession gains riotliing»; by magnifying the doctrine of the Sov- ereignty of the States or calling the Constitution a compact between them. Calliiig it a compact does not change a word of its text, and no theory of What is implied in the word “ Sovc1*eig11ty ” is of any Weight, in opposition to the actual provisions of the instrument itself. Sonereigitty is a ‘Word of very various signification. It is one thing in China, another in Turkey, another in Russia, another in France, an- other in England, another in Sxvitzerland, another in San Marino, another in the individual’American States, and it is sometliing; different from all in the United States. To maintain that, because the State of Virginia, for instance,‘was in some sense or other a sovereign State, when her people adopted the Federal Constitu- tion, (which in terms was ordained and established not only for the people of that 16 annsnss 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 What was the theory or form of government existing in Virginia, before the Constitution, but what are the provisions of the Constitution which her people adopted and made their own 2 Does the Constitution of the United States permit or forbid the States to enter into a confederation? Is it a mere loose partnership, S which any of the parties can break up at 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 WO1"Cl 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 onCongress 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 '2 In fact, to deduce from the sovereignty of the States the right of seceding from the Union is the most stupendous non seguizur that was ever advanced in grave 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 affairs 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 ? 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 3 the right to prostrate a govern- ment on the fact that it was constitutionally framed? PARALLEL CASES: IRELAND, SCOTLAND. But let us look at parallel cases, and they are by no means wanting. In the year 1800, a union Was formed 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 parliaments.“"" The union was * Annual Register, xiii, p. 190 VIRGINIA VAINLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH A RESERVED RIGHT. 17 opposed at the time by a powerful minority in Ireland, and Mr. O’Connell suc- ceeded, thirty years later, by ardent appeals to the sensibilities of the people, in producing an almost unanimous desire for its dissolution. He professed, however, although he had wrought his countrymen to the verge of rebellion, to aim at noth- 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 \\';:;s competent for her at her discretion to secede from it. What 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 Witl1iEngland ? Again, in 1708, 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, Wl1O claimed to be the lawful, as he certainly was the lineal, heir to the throne. The rebellion was crushed, but the clisaffection in which it had its origin was not wholly appeased. In thirty years more a second Scottish insurrection tool; place, and, 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.” VIRGIN IA. VAINLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH A RESERVED RIGIIT. In fact, it is so plain, in the nature of things, that there can be no constitutional right to break up a government unless it is expressly 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 of getting by ivizplicaziorz a reserved right to violate every express provision of a constitution. In this strait, Virginia, proverbially skilled in logical subtilties, has attempted to fund 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 tire P601926 of V2'.rgz'm'a, do, by these presents, assent and ratify the Constitution recommended on the 17th day of September, 1787, by the Federal Convention, for 25/ze govermnenzf of the Unized States, hereby announcing * Rapirfs History of England, vol. iv., p. 741-6. 18 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. to all those whom it may concern, that the said Constitution is binding upon the said People, according to an authentic 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 Virginia. An attempt, however, 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 ratifi- 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 ‘words by (Item, 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 Way 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 17 88 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 Mr. 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.i"-‘ 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. VVhen the secrets of their assembly are laid open, no doubt it will appear that there were some fttltllful Abdiels to proclaim the fact. _, Oh, that the venerable sage, second to none of his patriot compecrs 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 vvork of Vvashington, and Madison, and Randolph, and Pendleton, and Marshall is repudiated, and nullifiers, 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 RESOLUTIONS OF 1798. Having had occasion to allude to the Virginia resolutions of 1798, I may ob- serve that of these famous resolves, the subject of so much political romance, it is “" Maguii-e’s Collection, p. 213. ITHE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF 1798. 19 time that a little plain truth should be promulgated. 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 l3‘ra11ce. 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 be 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 liostilities on the ocean had taken place on both sides, and the army of the 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 false 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 oflicially or privately; adjudged to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States 3 distinctly approved by Wasliiiigton, Patrick: Henry, 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. A 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 affirmed by the Judiciary of the United States. “ Nothing,” said Vhisliiiigton, 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 VVa.shington, was the object for which the Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky passed their famous resolutions of 1798, the former drafted by Mr. Madison, and the latter by Mr. Jefferson, and sent to a friend in Kentucky to be brought forward. These resolutions were t:ransmitted 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 Virginia, an elaborate report was made by Mr. ,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. J eflF'erson,as stated by General McDufi‘ie. Our respect for the dis- 20 ADDRESS BY EDVVARD 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 iazzerpose for preventing the progress of the evil. , Such, in brief, was the main purport of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. The sort of interposition intended was left in studied obscurity. N ot a word was dropped of secession from the Union. Mr. Nicholas’s resolution in 1799 hinted at “ nullifieation” 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 etiect,” 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 Mr. 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 petition 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 concunnnn. But the resolutions did their 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 V;-'ith strange inadvertence asserts ; '3"-‘ and Mr. Jefferson proceeded to ad- minister the Government upon constitutional principles quite as lax, to say the least, as those of his predecessors. lf there was any marked departure in his general policy from the course hitherto pursued, it was that, liaving some theoret- ical prejudices against a navy, he allowed that branch of the service to languish. By no Adniinistration have the powers of the General Government been more liberally construcd—not to say further strained—somctimes 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 Wllicll habitually await the plausible exa.ggerations 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 by name, borrows 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 forth. 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 ‘F Mr. Ca1houn’s Discourse on the Constitution, p. 359. THE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF 1798. 21 perfume—-a gilded harmless moth, Whose food is a dewdrop, whose life is a mid- summer’s day———these resolutions, misconceivecl 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 gnavvs and bores to the heart of the apple, and renders it, though smooth and fair 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 efibrts 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 femx ,'-—-- 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 tlieseheresies failed to spread far beyond the latitude Where it was engendered. In the Senate of the United States, the great acutcness of its inventor, (Mr. Calhoun,) then the Vice-President, and the accomplished rhetoric of its champion, (Mr. l'~layne,) 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 W"as stilllliving in a green old ago. 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. N o eflbrt 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 carnestl y 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 unfolded the true theory of the Constitution and the meaning and design of the resolutions, and exposed the false gloss attempted to be placed upon them by the Nullifiers, with a clcarness 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 Mr. Madison’s letter of August, 1880.1 Mr. Calhoun certainly made no such attempt in the elaborate treatise composed by him, mainly for the purpose of ex- pounding the doctrine of nullification. He claims the support of these resolutions, , Without adverting to the fact that this interpretation of them had been ‘repudiated * A very considerable portion of the important volume containing a selection from the Madison papers, and ‘printed. “exclusively for private distribution ” by J. C. McGuire, JJsq., in 1853, is taken up with these letters and essays. T North American Review, vol. xxxi., p. 587. 22 ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. U 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 left 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 RIGHT OF SECESSION. In this respect the disciples have 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 301.) 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 izs orig/i72a.Z 9-iglzz of sove9*e€{/vzty, 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 lmowledgc, that Mr. Calhoun did not maintain the peaceful right of secession.* SECESSION AS A REVOLUTION. 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 G~OVERNl\II'3NT OF THE UNITED STATES OPPRESSIVE AND TYRANNICAL? 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 5 viz.: to find a form of polity, by whicli 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 affairs 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 B. IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TYRANNICAL‘? 1,3 so on popular choice. This Government was not imposed upon the People by a foreign eoncp.1e11or; it is not an inheritance descending from barbarous ages, laden with traditionary abuses, which create a painful ever-recurring necessity of reform ; d 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 topavoid the defects of former systems of government. The greatest possible liberty of the citizen is the basis; just representation the ruling principle, reconciling Wltll rare ingenuity the federal equality of the States, with the proportionate influence of numbers. Its legislative and executive magistrates are freely chosen at short periods - its judiciary alone holding ofliee by a more permanent, but still sufiiciently responsible, tenure. N 0 money flows into or out of the Treasury but under the direct sanction of the representatives of the People, on whom also all the great functions of Government for peace and var, vvithin 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 perf'ect developmentof 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. lts 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 impressincnt, 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 conimunity. Such, no one can deny, is the general character of this oppressive and tyrannical government. But perhaps this Government, however wisely pla-nncd,l1o'\vever beneficial even in its operation, may have been rendered distasteful, or may have become oppres- sive in one part of the country and to one portion of the people, in consequence of the control of afi'airs 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 is‘? EDWARD EVERETT. Presidents; and when that Was not the case, by Presidents possessing tl1e confidence of the South. For a still longer period, the controllinginfluences of the Legislative and Judicial departments of the Government have centred in the same quarter. Of all the oflices 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 vrhicli she has herself from the first, almost monopolized the administration. CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION ALLEGED BY SOUTH CAROLIETA. 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 pleaded as the motive and justifieation of the revolt? Of course there are, but with such variation and uncertainty of statement as to render their examination diflicnlt. 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 presently 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 subj cct 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 Fecleral Government, which the South has siiffered at the hands of the North, and which Were urged by the 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-sufi°ering 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. “VVe 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 firsz was the fislzing Bounties paid mostly to the sailors of New E'7zgZa7td.” 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 has, by all maritime. States, been ever regarded with special favor as the 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. lRe- viving after the War, they attracted the notice of the First Congress, and were recoinmended to their favor by Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State. This favor was at first extended to them in the shape of a drawback 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; afterwarcls 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 ofiice,--«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 3 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~ try, and -not shared by the other; one of the hundred Ways, in a Word, in which the rapacious l\lorth 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, an_d 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 I 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 fathers 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 vras because it was laid by a parliament in which the Colonies were not represented, 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, u 26 A,i_)l).lll:L‘3S BY ED\VAl{I) EVERETT. should under constitutional limitations be done where. it is required, ofisettiiig the local benefit which niiay 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 reinoving the Indians from Georgia, eight or ten times as much was expended for the same object in Florida, as has been paid for Fisliiiig Bounties in seventy years. For the last year, to pay for the expense of‘ the post-ofiice 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 cornrnon Treasury. The post—oH’1ce bounty paid to the seceding States exceeded seventeen fold the annual av.e1~age amount of the :FiSl’1l11g Bounty paid to the North. In four years that excess would eqiial the sum total of the amount paid since 1”7’$)iZ in bounties to the deep»-sea fishery! This circumstance probably explains the fact, that the pride of the Southern Confederacy was not alarmed at liaving 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. it NAVIGi\'I‘IO2§a' Laws. The second of the grievances under which the South is labo1“i1ig, and which, ac» cording to 'Mr. Stephens, was on the occasion alluded to pleaded by the Secretary ofState of the new Confederacy as a {ground for dissolving the U ion, the Naviga- tion Laws, ‘which give to Ainerican ‘\"CSS€l.S the cxclusiire enjoynient of our own coasting trade. This also is a policy eoeyal with the G~<:>re1'1i:rncnt of the United States, and universally adopted by 11"1a.riti1ne powers, 'l3l‘1C)Ugl'1 relaxed by England within the last few years. Like the iisliing bounty, it a policy adopted for the purpose of fostering the'co1nn;1ercial and with that the naval marine of the United States. All adininistrations of all parties have favored it; under its influence our coinrncrcial tonnage has grown up to be second to no other in the world, and our navy has proved itself adcquat-e to all the exigencies of peace and ‘War. And are these no objects in a national point of yiewi? Are the seccding politicians really inscnsible to interests of such paramount national importance "é Can they, for the sake of an imaginary infliiitesiinal re,<:luction of coastwise fi'eigl‘its, be Willing to run even the risk of i1npairin,i:_; our naval prosperity? Are they insensible to the fact that nolthing but the growtli of the American cornrnercial niarine protects the entire i"re‘ighti1ig interest of the country, in which the South is more deeply interested than. the North, from European inonopoly ’? The South did not always titl-IO so narrow a View of the subject. "When the C‘onstitutio11 was i'ra1ned, 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 1‘ega1°cl the shippin,<_:; 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 wa.te1"~s.”"*"‘ But “ powerful I1‘.11iott’s Debates, ‘vol. iv., p. 299. THE TARIFF. 27 on the waters ” the South can never be. She has live oak, naval stores, and gallant ofl'"1c-ers ; 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- acter 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 strength centres at the North, she would hold the ingress and egress of every. port on her coast at the mercy, l will not say of the great maritiine States of Europe, but of llolland, and Deninark, and Austria, and Spain---of any second or third-rate power, which can keep a few steam frigates at sea. . It must he confessed, however, that there is a sad congruity between the conduct of our scceding fellow-citizens and the motives Wlilcll they assign for it. They attempt a suicidal separation of theniselves from a great naval power, of which they are now an integral part, and they put forward, as the reason for this self~destruc- tive course, the legislative measures which have contributed to the growth of the navy. A judicious policy designed to promote that end has built up the commer- cial and military marine of the Union to its present commanding stature and power; the South, though unable to contribute any thing to its prosperity but the service of her naval officers, enjoys her full share of the honor which it reflects on the country, and the protection which it ezsrtends to our flag, our coastp, and our coininerce, but under the influence of a narrow-minded sectional jealousy, she is willing to ahdicate the noble position which she now fills among the nations of the earth; to depend for her very existence on the exigencies of the cotton market, to live upon the tolerance of the navies of Europe, and she assigns as leading causes for this amazing fatnity, that the Northern fisheries have been encouraged by a trifling bounty, and that the Northern commercial marine has the monopoly of the coastwise trade. Arid the politicians, who, for reasons like these, almost too frivo- lous to merit the time we have devoted to their examination, are sapping a noble fisainexvork. of government, and drenching a fair and but for them prosperous coun- try in blood, appeal to the public opinion of mankind for the justice of their cause, and the purity of their motives, and lift their eyes to lileaven for a blessing on their arms‘! THE TARIFF. But the tariff is, with one exception, the alleged monster wrong—-—for wliich South Carolina in 188:? drove the Union to the verge of a civil war, and which, next to the slavery question, the South has been taught to regard as the most grievous of the oppressions which she sufi'ers at the hands of the North, and that by which she seeks to win the sympathy of the manufacturing States of Europe. It was so treated in the debate referred to. I am certainly not going so far to abuse your patience, as to enter into a discussion of the constitutionality or expediency of the protective policy, on which l am aware that opinions at, the North differ, nor do I deem. it necessary to expose the utter fallacy of the monstrous paradox, that duties, enhancing the price of imported articles, are paid, not by the consumer of the 1:ner~ chandise imported, but by the producer of the last article of export given in ex- change. It is suflicient to say that for this maniin, (the forty-bale theory so called,) Wlllcll has grown into an article of faith at the South, not the slightest authority ever has been, to my knowledge, adduced from any political economist of any school. Indeed, it can be shown to be a shallow sophism, inasmuch as the coastline-r 28, ADDRESS BY EDWARD EVERETT. must be, directly or indirectly, the producer of the equivalents given in exchange for the article he consumes. But Without entering into this discussion, I shall make a few remarks to show the great injustice of representing the protective system as being in its origin an oppression, of which the South has to complain on the part of the North. Every such suggestion is a complete inversion of the truth of history. Seine attempts at manufactures by machinery were made at the North before the Revo- lution, but to an inconsiderable. extent. The manufacturing system as a great Northern interest is the child of the restrictive policy of 1807--—-1812, and of the war. That policy was pursued against the earnest opposition of the North, and to the temporary prostration of their commerce, navigation, and fisheries. Their capital was driven in this Way into manufactures, and on the return of peace, the foundations of the protective system were laid in the square yard duty on cotton fabrics, in the support of which Mr. Calhoun, advised that the growth of the manu- facture would open a new inarket for the staple of the South, took the lead. As late as 1821 the Legislature of South Carolina unanimously affirmed the constitu- tionality ef protective duties, though denying their expediency,-—---and of all the States of the Union Louisiana has derived the greatest benefit from this policy -, in fact, she owes the sugar culture to it, and has for that reason given it her steady support. In all the tariff battles while I was a member of Congress, few votes were surer for the policy than that of Louisiana. If the duty on an article imported is considered as added to its price in our market, (which, however, is far from being invariably the case,) the sugar duty, of late, has amounted to a tax of five inillions of dollars ainiually paid by the consumer, for the benefit of the Louisiana planter. As to its being an unconstitutional policy, it is perfectly well known that the protection of manufactures was a leading and avowed object for the formation of the Constitution. The second law, passed by Congress after its formation, was a rev- enue laiv. Its preamble is as follows: “ VVhereas it is necessary for the support T of Government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encour- agement and protection of maiiufaetures, that duties be laid on goods, Wares, and merchandise imported.” That act was reported to the House of Representatives by Mr. Madison, who is entitled as much as any one to be called the father of the Constitution. W'hile it was pending before the House, and in the first week. of the first session of the first Congress, two memorials were presented praying for pro- tective duties; and it is a matter of some curiosity to inquire, from what part of the country this first call came for that policy, now put forward as one of the acts of Northern oppression, which justify the South in flying to arms. The first of these petitions was from Baltimore. It implored the new Government to lay a protecting duty on all articles imported from abroad, which can be manufactured at hoine. The second was from the shipwrights, not of N evv York, not of Boston, not of Portland, but of Charleston, South Carolina, praying for “ such a general regula- tion of trade and the establishment of such A N _A_VIG—ATION Aer, as will relieve the particular distresses of the petitioners, in common with those of their fellowship- wrights throughout the Union ” i and if South Carolina had always been Willing to make common cause with their fellow-citizens throughout the Union, it would not new be rent by civil war. a TI-IE COTTON CULTURE INTRODUCED UNDER PROTECTION. 29 THE COTTON CULTURE INTRODUCED UNDER PROTECTION. But thehistory of the great Southern staple is most curious and instructive. His Majesty “King Cotton,” on his throne, does not seem to be aware of the in- fluences which surrounded his cradle. The culture of cotton, on any considerable scale, is well known to be of recent date i11 America. The household manufacture of cotton was coeval with the settlement of the country. A century before the piano-forte or the harp was seen on this continent, the music of the spinning- wheel was heard at every fire-side in town and country. The raw materials were wool, flax, and cotton, the last imported from the West Indies. The colonial sys- tem of Great Britain before the Revolution forbade the establishment of any other than household manufactures. Soon after the Revolution, cotton mills were erected in Rhode lsland and Massachusetts, and the infant manufacture was encouraged by State duties on the imported fabric. The raw material was still derived exclusively from the VVest Indies. lts culture in this country was so extremely limited and so little known, that a small parcel sent from the United States to Liverpool in 1784 was seized at the custom-house there, as an illicit importation of British colonial produce. Even as late as 1794, and by persons so intelligent as the negotiators of Jay’s treaty, it was not known that cottonwas an article of growth and export from the United States. In the twelfth article of that treaty, as laid before the Senate, Cotton was included with Molasses, Sugar, Coffee, and Cocoa, as articles which American vessels should not be permitted to carry from the islands or from the Um'zfed States to any foreign country. In the Revenue law of 1789, as it passed through the House of Representatives, cotton, with other raw materials, was placed on the free list. XVhen the bill reached the Senate a duty of 8 cents per pound was laid upon cotton, not to encourage, not to protect, but to c7*eaz.‘e the domestic culture. On the discussion of this amendment in the House, a member from South Carolina declared that “ Cotton was in con- templation ” in South Carolina and Georgia, “ and if good seed could be _procm'ed he hoped it mnlgluf succeec .” On this hope the amendment of the Senate was concurred in, and the duty of three cents per pound was laid on cotton. In 1791, Hamilton, in his report on the manufactures, recommended the repeal of this duty, on the ground that it was “ a very serious impediment to the manufacture of cotton,” but his recommendation was disregarded. Thus, in the infancy of the cotton manufacture of the North, at the moment when they were deprived of the protection extended to them before the Constitution by State laws, and while they were struggling against English competition under the rapidly improving machinery of Arkwright, which it was highly penal to T export to foreign countries, a heavy burden was laid upon them by this protecting duty, to enable the planters of South Carolina and Georgia to explore the tropics for a variety of cotton seed adapted to their climate. For seven years at least, and probably more, this duty was in every sense of the word a protecting duty. There was not a pound" of cotton spun, no not for candle-wicks to light the humble industry of the cottages of the North, which did not pay this tribute to the South- ern planter. The growth of the native article, as we have seen, had not in 1794: reached a point to ‘be known to Chief Justice Jay as one of actual or probable export. As late as 1796, the manufacturers of Brandywine in Delaware petitioned 30 ADDRESS BY EDVVARD EVERETT. Congress for the repeal of this duty on imported cotton, and the petition was re. jected on the Report of a Committee, consisting of a majority from the Southern States, on the ground, that “ to ‘repeal the duty on raw cotton. imported would be to damp the growth of cotton in our own country.” Radiele and plurnule, root and stalk, blossom and boll, the culture of the cotton plant in the United States was in its infancy the foster-child of the Protective System. V‘/hen therefore the pedigree of King Cotton is traced, he is found to be the lineal child of the tariff’; called into being by a specific duty 3 reared by a tax laid upon the mamifacturiiig industry of the North, to create the culture of the raw material in the South. The Northern manufiicturcrs of America were slightly pro- tected in 1789 because they were too feeble to stand alone. tearecl into magni- tude under the restrictive system and the war of 1812, they were upheld in 1816 because they were too important to be sacrificed, and because the great staple of the South had a joint interest in their prosperity. King Cotton alone, not in his manhood, not in his adolescence, not in his infancy, but in his ‘very embryo state, was pensioued upon the Treasury,-—~before the seed from which he sprung was cast “in the lowest parts of the earth.” In the book of the tariff" “his members were written, which in continuance. were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them.” But it was not enough to create the culture of cotton at the South, by taxii1'1g the malnufimtures of the North with a duty on the raw material ; the extension of that culture and the prosperity which it has conferred upon the South are due to the mechanical genius of the North. “That says Mr. Justice Johnson of’ the Supreme Court of the United States, and a citizen of South Carolina? “ With regard to the utility of this discovery ” (the cotton gin of VVhitney) “ the court would deem it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who hears us that has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of the Southern States was lau-' guishing, and its inhabitants eniifyatiiig, for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From child hood to age it has presented us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed in poverty and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability.- Our debts have been paid off‘, our capitals increased, and our lands trebled in value. Vi/‘e cannot express the weight of obligation which the country owes to this invention; the extent of it cannot now be seen.”--—-Yes, and when hap-‘ pier days shall return, and the South, awakening from her suicidal delusion, shall remember who it was that sowed her sunny fields with the seeds of those golden crops with which she thinks to rule the world, she will cast a veil of oblivion over the memory of the ambitious men who have goaded her to her present madness, and will rear a monument of her gratitude in the beautiful City of Elms, over the ashes of her greatest benefitctor—-—-ELI Wn1rN;ar. INTERFERENCE WITII SLAVEIIY TIIE GREAT .A.LLEGrED GILIE'V'ANCE. But the great complaint of the South, and that which is admitted to be the im- mediate occasion of the present revolt, is the alleged interference of the North in the Southern institution of slavery ; a subject on which the sensibilities of the two sections have been so deeply and fearfully stirred, that it is nearly impossible to INTERFERENCE VVITH SLAVERY THE GREAT ALLIEJGED GRIEVANOE. 31 speak words of impartial truth. As I have already stated, the declaration of South Carolina, of the causes which prompted her to secede from the Union, alleged no other reason for this inovenient than the enactment of laws to obstruct the surrcn-— der of fugitive slaves. The declaration does not state that South Carolina ever lost a slave by the operationof these laws, and it is doubtful whether a dozen from all the States have been lost from this cause. A gross error on this subject pervades the popular mind at the South. Some hundred of slaves in the aggregate escape annually; some to the recesses of the Dismal Swamp ; some to the everglades of Florida ; some to the trackless mountain region, which traverses the South ; some to the Mexican States and the Indian tribes 3 some across the free States to Canada. The popular feeling of the South ascribes the entire loss to the laws of the free States, While it is doubtful vvhether these laws cause any portion of it. The public sentiment of the North is not such, of course, as to dispose the community to obstruct the escape or aid in the surrender of slaves. Neither is it at the South. N 0 one, I am told, at the South, not called upon by official duty, joins in the hue and cry after a fugitive; and vvhenever he escapes from any States south of the borx;ler tier, it is evident that his flight must have been aided in a community of slave-liolders. If the North Carolina fugitive escapes through Virginia, or the Ten- nessee fugitive escapes through Kentucky, why are Pennsylvania and Ohio alone blamed? On this whole subject the grossest injustice is done to the North. She is expected to be more tolerant of slavery than the South herself; for while the South demands of the North entire acquiescence in the extreniest doctrines of slave property, it is a Well-l~:no\v11 fact, and as such alluded to by Mr. Clay in his speech on the compromises of 1850, that any man who habitually trafiics in this property is held in the same infainy at Riclimond and New Orleans that he would be at l’hiladelphia or Cin'cinnati."" V-Vliile South Carolina, assigning the cause of secession, confines lierself to the State laws for obstructing the surrender of fugitives, in other quarters, by the press, in the rnanifestoes and debates on the subject of secession, and in the oflicial papers of the new Confederacy, the rre.11era'l 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 trite for discussion, with the hope of saying any thing new on the general question. "I will but submit a few considerations to show the great injustice which is done to the North, by repre- senting her as the aggressor in this sectional Warfare. , The Southern theory assumes that, at the time of the adoption of the Constitu- tion, the same antagonism prevailed as new between the North and South, on the general subject of Slavery; that, although it existed to some extent in all the States but one of the Union, it was a eeble 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 interested motives, abolished Slavery, sold their slaves to the South, and that then, although the exist» ence of Slavery was recognized, and its protection guaranteed by the Constitution, as soon as the Northern States had acquired a controlling voice in Congress, a per- sistent and organized system of hostile measures, against the rights of the owners * See Appendix, C. 32 ADDRESS BY EDVVARD EVERETT. of slaves in the Southern States, was inaugurated and gradually extended, in viola- tion of the cornproniises 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. i . . Such, in substance, is the statement of Mr. Davis in his late message ; and he then proceeds, seemingly as if rehearsing the acts of this Northern majority in ’ Cong-1-ess, 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 FORMERLY OPPOSED TO SLAVERY. Now, this entire-View of the subject, with Whatever boldness it is afhrmed, and with Whatever persistency it is repeated, is destitute of foundation. It is dernon-. s-«trably at war with the truth of history, and is contradicted by facts known to those new 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 spealtiiig. no sectional difference of opinion. between North and South, on the subject of Sla- very. lt was in both parts of the country regarded, in the established formula of the day, as “ a social, political, and Inc all evil.” The general feeling‘ in favor of universal liberty and the 1'igl1ts of’ man, wrou,gl1t into fervor in the pi*o,_g;ress of the Revolution, naturally strengthened the anti-slavery sentiment l3l“11‘OUgl10i.il3 the Union. It is zfize Soaz‘/"L to/zziciz, has sauce ckangccl, 9202.‘ size _Zi7'o;r-zf/2.. The theory of a change in the Northern mind, growiiig 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 difihrent from what they had always becn,) 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 attempted even to prove it. But lioweyer 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 e:~;istence was supposed to depend on keeping up the African slave trade; and South as well as North, Vir- ginia as Well as litlassacliusetts, passed laws to prohibit that trafiic; they were, however, before the revolution, vetoed by the Royal G yernors. One of the acts of the Continental CO11g1‘(3SS, unanimously subscribed by its rnenibers, was an ag1‘eeme11t neither to irnport, nor purchase any slave imported, afteir the first of December, 1774. In the Declaration of Independence, as o1'igi11ally drafted by Mr. Jefferson, both Slavery and the slave trade were denounced in the most un- compromising language. In 1'77’? the tra1’iic was forbidden in Virginia, by State law, no longer subject to the veto of Royal Governors. In 1784, an ordinance was reported by Mr. Jefihrsoii to the old Congress, providing that after 1800 there should be no Slavery in any Territory, ceded or to be coded to the United States. The ordinance failed at that time to be enacted, but the same prohilaitioii formed a part by general consent of the ordinance of 1787, for the organization of the north- western Territory. In his Notes on Virginia, published in that year, Mfr. Jcilhrsoii depicted the evils of Slavery in terms of fearful import. In the same year the Constitution was frained- It recognized the existence of Slavery, but the WO1“Cl was carefully excluded from the instrument, and Congress was authori:.:.ed to abol- THE SOUTH FORMERLY OPPOSED TO SLAVERY. 33 ish the traffic in twenty years. In 1796, Mr. St. George Tucker, law professor in VVillia1n 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.” ln the preface to the essay, he speaks of the “ abolition of’ Slavery in this State as an object of the first importance, not only to our moral character and domestic peace, but even to our political salvation.” In 1797 Mr. Pinkney, in 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 of 1787, was “ a measure wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the Northwestern 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. VVhen the Missouri restriction was enacted, all the members of’ Mr. Monroe’s Cab- inet----l\/.lr. Crawford of Georgia, Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina, and Mr. VVirt of Virgi11ia——concurred with Mr. Monroe in aflirming 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 Zweazzfy 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 Marshall, 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, mzc:mimou.sZy adopted a Constitution, by which slavery was prohibited in that State. In fact, 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, ”Wl1iCl1 he declares to have been inc ugurated, and gradually extended, as soon as the Northern States had reached a suflicient 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 avrare, my friends, that I have always disapproved the agitation of the subject of Slavery for party purposes, or with a view to iiifringe 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 3 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 against the North, Congress and the States have affo:r<:lecl or tendered all reason- able, all possible satisfaction. She asked for a more stringent fugitive slave law in 1850, and it was enacted. She complained of the Missouri 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 Supreme Court of the United States, in contravention. of the Whole current of our legislation, so decided it. She insisted on carrying this decision into effect, 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 therepeal 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 Were resolved not to be satisfied. In one in- stance alone the South has suffered 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 unnajtural 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 fall. 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. REPRESENTATION OF THREE-FIFTHS OF THE SLAVES. I trust lhave shown the flagrant injustice of this Whole attempt to fasten upon the North the charge of Wielding the powers of the Federal Governrnent 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, the Congress consisted of but one House, and each State, large and small, had but a single vote, and consequently an equal share in the Govermnent, if Government it could be called, of the Union. This manifest injustice was barely 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 the pressure of the war, and discordant interests more and more disclosed themselves, the equality of the States became a positive element of discontent, and contributed its full share to the downfall of that short—lived and illcompacted frame of Government. I Accorclingly, when the Constitution of the United States was formed, the great object and the main diflieulty was to reconcile the equality of the States, (which gave to llhode Island and Delaware equal Weight with Virginia and Massac-husetts,) ‘\’»'li.Il1 a proportionate reprcse’ntation of the people. Each of these principles Was of vital importance ; the first being demanded by the small States, as d.ue to their equal in<:lepen<:lcnce, and the last being demanded by the large States, in virtue of the fact that the Constitution was the vrork and the Government of the people, and in confbrrnity with the great law in ‘Wl1l0l”1 the Revolution had its origin, that repre- sentation and taxation should go hand in hand. . The problem was solved, in the l3‘ederal Convention, by a system of extremely refined arraiigeinents, of which the chief Was that there should be two llouses of Congress, that each State should have an equal representation in the Senate, (‘vot- ing, liowcver, not by States, but per cc¢p2'.m,) and a number of representatives in the House in proportion to its population. But here a formidable diiliciilty pre- sented itself; growing out of the anomalous character of the population of the slave- liolding States, consisting as it did of a dominant and a subject class, the latter cX- cluded by local law from the enjoyrnent of all political rights, and regarded simply as property. In this state of things, was it just ‘or equitable that the slavcholding States, in addition to the number of representatives to Wl'il(‘.'l1 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? ‘s"Vl‘ill('l property of every kind in the non-slaveholding States was unrepresented, 36 ADDRESS BY EDVVARD 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? i This serious difficulty was finally disposed of, in a manner mutually satisfac.:tory, 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 threefifths 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 e5;e'rcisirig this power to the prejudice of the North, by the fact that any inc1'e::a.se of the public burdens would fall in the same increased proportion on herself‘. I*‘or the a