address 
 
 \s 
 
 OF 
 
 MONTGOMERY BLAIR, 
 
 I 
 
 before the 
 
 MARYLAND STATE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION, 
 
 AT 
 
 BALTIMORE, APRIL 26, 1860. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 
 
 1860. 
 

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Address of Mr. Blair. 
 
 *5 Ok 
 
 03 
 
 Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 I appreciate highly the honor you have 
 done me in calling me to preside ove£ 
 this first Republican State Convention 
 which has assembled in Maryland. 
 
 I am deeply sensible of the importance 
 of the occasion, and of the great respon¬ 
 sibility we have taken upon ourselves in 
 inaugurating a party here which all who 
 have faith in adherence to truth and 
 justice and constitutional obligation, as 
 the sure means of triumph in our polit¬ 
 ical contests, cannot fail to foresee, will 
 soon sway the councils of this Common¬ 
 wealth and of the nation. 
 
 It is a great and holy cause the Re¬ 
 publicans have undertaken to sustain. 
 The sacred interests in their care de¬ 
 mand of them everywhere prudence, 
 courage, untiring and unselfish effort, 
 but especially in this and other South¬ 
 ern States, where our objects and prin¬ 
 ciples are so grossly misrepresented, 
 and are so imperfectly understood by a 
 large portion of the people, should we, 
 whilst constant to our principles, en¬ 
 deavor to be prudent in our conduct. 
 
 The great difficulty with men of spir¬ 
 it, in our position, is the danger of being 
 drawn into extravagance by the extrav¬ 
 agance with which we are assailed and 
 opposed. We must guard against this, 
 and disabuse the public mind of its 
 prejudice against the movement with 
 which we are identified, by defining our 
 position in a manner which will put an 
 end to controversy. The measures of 
 
 the Republican party are rapidly accom¬ 
 plishing this. Two of its great meas¬ 
 ures will be found especially effective 
 for this purpose: first, the homestead 
 law, to prevent the Africanization of the 
 Territories, by giving them as home¬ 
 steads to the free white race; and sec¬ 
 ond , the plan of procuring, in some 
 neighboring country, a region where the 
 free people among us of the African race 
 may also, in accordance with the wise 
 and humane counsels of Mr. Jefferson, 
 be given homesteads and a country of 
 their own. These are measures looking 
 to the separation of the free people 
 of these dissimilar races, for the good 
 of both, and they meet the general 
 approval of all good men; and the 
 advocacy of them by the Republican 
 party will silence the false clamor 
 against us, that we maintain the equal¬ 
 ity of the negro, and favor amalga¬ 
 mation—a falsehood which has proved 
 the most effective instrument to arouse 
 popular prejudice against us, and which 
 was plausible till the Republican party 
 put itself on the Jeffersonian plan of 
 separating the races by these measures. 
 But whilst these measures proclaim that 
 it fosters the policy of the fathers of the 
 Republic, in making the temperate re¬ 
 gions of America the chosen home of the 
 white man, and make it pre-eminently 
 the white man’s 'party , it must not be 
 allowed to be said that it contemplates 
 any interference w T ith the relation of 
 master and slave. 
 
The time will probably come when 
 emancipation may be effected here and 
 elsewhere, as it has been in Pennsyl¬ 
 vania and others of the older States. 
 But with this the Republican party has 
 nothing to do, and the subject is in fact 
 as much beyond the constitutional juris¬ 
 diction and actual power of the Federal 
 Government, to which this contest re¬ 
 lates, as it is beyond the power and 
 jurisdiction of the British Monarchy. 
 Every one that knows anything knows 
 the truth of this assertion; and yet, it 
 is by confounding the question of power 
 over what are called the Territories of 
 the United States —which, by the very 
 terms used in speaking of them, are con¬ 
 ceded to belong to the United States — 
 with the question of power over the ter¬ 
 ritory of Maryland, (and which the 
 terms used equally demonstrate not to 
 belong to the United States,) that our 
 adversaries endeavor to present us in 
 the attitude of conspiring with external 
 fanaticism to war on the rights of prop¬ 
 erty held by our fellow-citizens. There 
 is nothing in the nature of the contro¬ 
 versy, or in your history or mine, to 
 justify such an imputation. We simply 
 hold to the doctrines our Southern fore¬ 
 fathers taught us. We are, as the}' 
 were, identified with the people here by 
 interest, by social relations, and by 
 blood; and in my own case, I think it 
 not inappropriate to say, by blood run¬ 
 ning back to the foundation of the city 
 and State; for my maternal ancestor, 
 Richard Gist, as you may see in the an¬ 
 nals of the city, was the engineer and 
 surveyor who laid it off. 
 
 We are not the men, therefore, who 
 are likely to be wanting to the true in¬ 
 terests or just rights of the people of 
 Maryland. 
 
 But there is still another mode of de¬ 
 fining our position, which, in my judg¬ 
 ment, we should aim to accomplish, in 
 order effectually to dissipate the preju¬ 
 dice against our party and cause, 
 which exists in the minds of a large 
 number of the true and honest men, not 
 only in this and other slaveholding 
 States, but, to some extent, in the 
 Northern States; that is, by the candi- 
 
 | date to be chosen at Chicago. If we 
 can induce our friends at Chicago 
 to give us a man whose career has 
 been passed among Southern people, 
 and has been such as to assure them 
 that a Republican President, whilst re¬ 
 sisting every effort to Africanize the 
 Territories, and persistently holding 
 them for the homesteads of free white 
 settlers only, will yet sternly rebuke 
 every external effort to interfere with 
 slavery in the States, the selection of 
 such a candidate will define our position 
 too clearly to be misunderstood by any 
 intelligent and honest man, and will do 
 more for that object throughout the 
 country than any amount of speech¬ 
 making. And I think we have a man 
 for the occasion, whose name I need not 
 mention, although he has not made him¬ 
 self prominent in politics of late years. 
 Had he done so, he would not have been 
 the man for the occasion; for it might 
 have been thought that he had sought 
 to make himself a candidate, and this 
 would have impaired that absolute 
 confidence in his fidelity which now 
 exists in the State in which he re¬ 
 sides, and in other Southern States in 
 which he is known, and which is required 
 to give the Republican party an organi¬ 
 zation coextensive with the nationality 
 of its principles. His retirement hav¬ 
 ing been voluntary—for he would have 
 been both a Senator and a Cabinet min¬ 
 ister since 1850 , if he would have con¬ 
 sented to accept those stations—he has 
 proved himself exempt from the lust of 
 office, that prevalent vice which so much 
 impairs the confidence of the people in the 
 integrity of public men. It is true that 
 there is no difference in the principles 
 upon which he and the Northern men 
 who will be urged as candidates at 
 Chicago would administer the Govern¬ 
 ment ; yet it is nevertheless natural that 
 his own people, and those in the contig¬ 
 uous free States who sympathise with 
 them more or less in their apprehensions, 
 should feel more assured of the safety 
 of their rights, which are supposed to 
 be deeply involved in this contest, when 
 committed to a Southern man, and espe¬ 
 cially when in the hands of one whose 
 
integrity and strength of character is 
 universally acknowledged. 
 
 With respect to the State policy of 
 the Republican party of Maryland, its 
 first mission should be to aid in ridding 
 the State of the rotten-borough system, 
 by which it is made a minority Govern¬ 
 ment, and institute popular sovereignty 
 
 eight populous counties of the north 
 and west, which contained, in 1850, 
 a white population of 172,616, which 
 has since greatly increased, have only 
 eight Senators — five less than the 
 thirteen southern counties, which con¬ 
 tained in 1850 but 104,661 white peo¬ 
 ple, a number -which has probably not 
 
 here . I need not remind you of the fact, been since increased; and in the House 
 that the Government of this State is not of Delegates, these eight populous coun¬ 
 now a popular Government, in the proper ties have only the same number of rep- 
 
 sense of the term. The people of this 
 city have recently had a sufficiently con¬ 
 vincing reminder of this fact. It may 
 be instructive, however, to analyze 
 briefly, at this time, the organization 
 under which we live. To illustrate its 
 nature, it may be remarked that the 
 county of Calvert, with a white popula¬ 
 tion of only 3,630 souls in 1850, and 
 which has probably not been increased 
 since, has equal power in the State Sen¬ 
 ate with this great city, which had a 
 white population in 1850 of 140,666, 
 
 resentatives (thirty-two) as the thirteen 
 southern counties. The southern coun¬ 
 ties owned 58,000 slaves, 37,000 more 
 than were owned in the north ; and hav¬ 
 ing the power, they took about one-fourth 
 more of the Senate than they gave the 
 populous counties, and allowed them¬ 
 selves the same representation in the 
 House of Delegates for their excess of 
 37,000, which they allowed for the 
 68,000 white people by which the 
 north exceeded the south in that class 
 of population. By this arrangement, 
 
 and contains now probably -at least they made each of their slaves equiva- 
 200,000 white people. One white man lent nearly to two northern white men 
 
 in Calvert has therefore more power in 
 the Senate of the State than fifty citi¬ 
 zens of Baltimore. 
 
 In the House of Delegates, the pre- 
 
 Calvert has more power than ten citizens 
 of Baltimore. Six other counties, with 
 an average -white population of 6,000, 
 have the same representation as Calvert, 
 giving each of their citizens a greater 
 power than thirty Baltimoreans in the 
 Senate, and six in the House of Dele¬ 
 gates. The other six governing coun¬ 
 ties have a white population averaging 
 a little over 10,000. So that each of 
 their citizens have a power in the Senate 
 equal to twenty, and in the House of 
 Delegates greater than six, Baltimore¬ 
 ans. 
 
 I have, in comparing the power of the 
 southern governing counties with Balti¬ 
 more city, taken the extreme case; but 
 I may add, that the people of the north¬ 
 ern and western counties of the State 
 are also disfranchised, to a degree un¬ 
 known elsewhere in this country. 
 
 Thus, excluding Baltimore city, the 
 
 in the House of Delegates. 
 
 
 * NORTHERN AND WESTERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Sena- 
 
 Rcprc- 
 
 Free White 
 
 Slaves. 
 
 tors. 
 
 sentutives. 
 
 population. 
 
 Alleghany - - 1 
 
 4 
 
 21,633 
 
 724 
 
 Baltimore city 1 
 
 10 
 
 140,666 \ 
 
 6,718 
 
 Balt, county - 1 
 
 6 
 
 34,187 j 
 
 Carroll - - - 1 
 
 3 
 
 18,667 
 
 875 
 
 Cecil - - - - 1 
 
 3 
 
 15,472 
 
 844 
 
 Frederick - - 1 
 
 6 
 
 33,314 
 
 3,913 
 
 Harford - - - 1 
 
 3 
 
 14,413 
 
 2,166 
 
 Howard * - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 8,000 
 
 4,000 
 
 Washington - 1 
 
 5 
 
 26,930 
 
 2,090 
 
 Total - - - 9 
 
 42 
 
 313,282 
 
 21,330 
 
 SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 
 Anne Arundel 1 
 
 3 
 
 8,542 
 
 7,249 
 
 Calvert - - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 3,630 
 
 4,486 
 
 Caroline - - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 6,096 
 
 808 
 
 Charles - - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 5,665 
 
 9,584 
 
 Dorchester - 1 
 
 3 
 
 10,747 
 
 4,282 
 
 Kent - - - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 5,616 
 
 2,627 
 
 Montgomery - 1 
 
 2 
 
 9,435 
 
 5,114 
 
 Prince George 1 
 
 3 
 
 8,901 
 
 11,510 
 
 Queen Anne’s 1 
 
 2 
 
 6,936 
 
 4,270 
 
 St. Mary’s - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 6,223 
 
 5,842 
 
 Somerset - - 1 
 
 4 
 
 13 385 
 
 5,588 
 
 Talbot - - - 1 
 
 2 
 
 7,084 
 
 4,134 
 
 Worcester — 1 
 
 3 
 
 12,401 
 
 3,444 
 
 Total - - 13 
 
 32 
 
 104,661 
 
 58,940 
 
 *New county, taken 
 estimated. 
 
 from Anne 
 
 Arundel. Population 
 
6 
 
 Having reduced the Governor to a 
 cipher, giving him no veto or Legisla¬ 
 tive power or appointments, they then, 
 as if in mockery of popular sovereignty, 
 gave the election of Governor to the 
 people, presenting them, as it were, 
 with a tin sword! 
 
 This discrimination against white pop¬ 
 ulation was sufficiently unjust at the 
 time, hut it has been since greatly ag¬ 
 gravated by the growth of that popula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 The ostensible ground upon which 
 this gross disfranchisement of the white 
 people of the State was imposed was, 
 that it was deemed necessary to protect 
 slave property. It was urged in vain, 
 in the debates in the Constitutional Con¬ 
 vention of 1851, that the purpose did not 
 justify the usurpation, and that it was 
 not necessary for the purpose, for there 
 was no instance in history where the 
 people, having the power of govern¬ 
 ment, had abused it to sacrifice indi¬ 
 vidual rights. 
 
 o 
 
 All remonstrance and argument was 
 unheeded, and secession from the State 
 was formally threatened by the minority, 
 if they were not allowed to maintain 
 their power over it, just as we have 
 seen the General Government menaced 
 with disruption, if the same interest was 
 not permitted to hold possession of it. 
 
 As it is not the purpose of the Re¬ 
 publican party to use the General Gov¬ 
 ernment for the purpose of despoiling 
 slaveholders of their property, so it is 
 not our purpose, as Maryland Republi¬ 
 cans, to use the power of the State for 
 any such purpose. We hold that sla¬ 
 very is an evil, and that the time will 
 come when emancipation will gradually 
 take place. But this can honestly be 
 done only by the consent of the masters, 
 or by making them just compensation. 
 But this is not, at present, the ques- 
 * tion. The public mind in Maryland is 
 not now ripe for emancipation, and no 
 scheme for it has been proposed or dis¬ 
 cussed. The struggle in Maryland, as 
 in the United States, is manifestly not 
 for 1\iq preservation of this property, but 
 for political supremacy; and the proper¬ 
 ty interest in negroes, and the prejudices 
 
 implanted in the minds of others by the 
 existence of slavery in their midst, are 
 adroitly used by a political party, to hold 
 possession of the Government. 
 
 Whether the owners of this species of 
 property—who, for the most part, have 
 little share in the political power ob¬ 
 tained by the party which officiously 
 makes itself the special champion of 
 their rights—will continue passively to 
 suffer their property interests to be 
 staked in the contest, and antagonized 
 against popular government, remains to 
 be seen. They incur dangers from two 
 different quarters by this course. First , 
 from the people, who will in that case 
 certainly come to regard slaveholding as 
 inconsistent with popular government; 
 and second , from their special champions, 
 who will destroy the value of their prop¬ 
 erty by reopening the slave trade. They 
 already perceive that, in order to give 
 the system the expansion requisite to 
 make it a permanent basis of political 
 power, this trade must be reopened; 
 and, accordingly, it has been already 
 practically legalized by the decisions of 
 two of their courts.* Slaveholders have 
 therefore no ground for hostility to the 
 Republican party, and no class of our 
 citizens are in fact more interested in 
 the overthrow of the filibustering De¬ 
 mocracy, which so trifles with their 
 rights of property. 
 
 I have thus endeavored to present, 
 briefly and with candor, the distinguish¬ 
 ing features of the Republican policy. 
 In my judgment, it proposes no war 
 upon any class of our citizens, or upon 
 any section of our country. If it did, 
 no earthly inducement could engage me 
 in it. It seems to me to be but the old, 
 comprehensive, and beneficent philoso¬ 
 phy of the fathers of our institutions, 
 under which we acquired our greatness 
 and good name among the nations of the 
 
 * It is not pretended, indeed, that the expan¬ 
 sion of slavery, for which this contest is made, is 
 required for the safety or value of the 'property 
 interest in slaves. Mr. Hammond, of South Car¬ 
 olina, recently stated in the Senate that the do¬ 
 main within the United States now subject to 
 slavery wmuld sustain 200,000,000 slaves. No 
 slave-owner could want a larger field, on ac¬ 
 count of his property in slaves. 
 
 / 
 
7 
 
 earth, and preserved tranquillity among 
 our sisterhood of States for more than 
 sixty years. Our internal troubles and 
 present ill repute among our neighbors 
 are due altogether to the adoption, 
 •within the last twelve years, of the new 
 and dangerous theories propounded by 
 Mr. Calhoun. When first broached in 
 the Senate, they were denounced as 
 u firebrands ” by the sagacious Benton ; 
 and his denunciation was approved by 
 every wise and conservative member of 
 that body, and almost universally by the 
 people. 
 
 The present condition of the country 
 
 still better attests the iustice with 
 
 *> 
 
 which the old patriot characterized the 
 mischievous inventions of the nullifier. 
 Fortunately, the country is rapidly re¬ 
 turning to the primitive republican faith, 
 by which the Government has been 
 guided smoothly and prosperously under 
 all circumstances. Let all who would 
 restore harmony embrace it. It was the 
 creed of all parties within twelve years ; 
 and the years of trouble which have fol¬ 
 lowed its abandonment by our rulers 
 have vindicated its truth even better than 
 the previous generations of prosperity 
 under it. Even our adversaries feel 
 that some change is demanded by thq 
 evils of the times. Will a man of sense 
 and a patriot suffer himself to be deterred 
 from uniting with us, under such circum¬ 
 stances, to bring about this change, by 
 the slang phrases with which we are 
 assailed I I cannot believe it. The Re¬ 
 publican party alone gives promise of 
 being able to effect this change. It em¬ 
 bodies already the great mass of the op¬ 
 position to the acknowledged misrule 
 which disturbs and endangers the Gov¬ 
 ernment. It is composed, for the most 
 part, of that rural population to which 
 Mr. Jefferson looked with confidence for 
 the safety of our institutions, being the 
 purest and most unselfish portion of the 
 people. It is always safe to co-operate 
 with such peeple. I believe, therefore, 
 that we may confidently expect the co¬ 
 operation of the people of Maryland in 
 restoring the ship of state to the Repub¬ 
 lican tack, if a proper man is selected 
 for the helm. 
 
 The sentiments of the above address were 
 well received by the Convention and by a large 
 audience, and the following resolutions cover¬ 
 ing the grounds taken in it, which Mr. Wash¬ 
 ington Bonifant, from Montgomery, and for¬ 
 merly a Representative from that county in the 
 General Assembly, intended to present, would 
 have been adopted, but that the deliber¬ 
 ations of the Convention were interrupted 
 for some time by a few disorderly persons. 
 When order was restored, the Convention ad¬ 
 journed, to enable the committee appointed to 
 select delegates to consult. On reassembling, 
 little save the formal business could be attended 
 to, as the delegates from the country were anx¬ 
 ious to take the evening trains for their homes. 
 
 We pledge our allegiance to the principles 
 inscribed on the face of the Constitution by the 
 founders of the Republic in relation to slavery, 
 which then as now afflicts the country. We 
 cherish in our hearts the compromises they then 
 made to create the Union, as the means of pre¬ 
 serving it, and leave to the slaveholders and 
 slaveholding States all the legislation necessary 
 for the final disposition of this subject, which 
 was surrendered to their jurisdiction. 
 
 2d. We oppose amalgamation of the white 
 and black races on this continent, which has 
 been suggested as a natural mode of gradual 
 extinction of slavery, by blending the color and 
 the capacities of the two races. Hybrids of all 
 sorts are failures, and a hybrid Government 
 would be the worst of all. 
 
 3d. We are opposed to free negro equality, 
 as having a tendency towards amalgamation. 
 
 4th. We acquiesce in the legislation of Mary¬ 
 land which forbids emancipation without the 
 removal of the freedmen, holding the mingling 
 of the free of the colored race with the slaves 
 as threatening, in the fullness of the growth of 
 such population, fatal consequences to the white 
 race. 
 
 5th. We hold, however, that the owners of 
 slaves have the right to rid themselves of sla¬ 
 very whenever they feel that it may become 
 oppressive to themselves, as well as to the slaves, 
 and their neighbors who are not slave-owners, 
 in accordance with the law providing for that 
 object, or laws which may hereafter be made 
 by the slaveholding States. 
 
 6th. We hold that this manumission brings 
 with it the duty on the part of the States which 
 expel the freedmen, or the States that receive 
 them, or on the United States, as a dernier 
 resort , of providing homes for the exiled race, 
 in some suitable region, under the protection 
 and patronage of the country in which they 
 were born, for their own and its benefit. 
 
 7th. We are in favor of perfect equality of 
 political rights among the white race, founded 
 on the principle of free, equal, and universal 
 
8 
 
 suffmge, and abjure that system of legislation, 
 in any of the States, which, by basing repre¬ 
 sentation upon an enumeration of the negroes, 
 destroys the equality among white men in dif¬ 
 ferent sections of the State, in proportion as the 
 negro population preponderates in one sec¬ 
 tion. 
 
 8th. We are therefore in favor of a revision 
 
 of the Constitution of Maryland, to restore their 
 political rights to the great majority of the 
 white citizens of the State who have been dis¬ 
 franchised ; a small minority in that section of 
 the State where the negro population is most 
 numerous, wielding its political power, in con¬ 
 travention of that plain republican principle, 
 that a majority shall govern. 
 
 N 
 
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