Chapter 55

"I desire merely to tender my thanks to the honorable Senator from Massachusetts. The series of resolutions, as introduced by the honorable Senator from Mississippi, are germane one to the other. They are a declaration of principles by the Democratic party. This amendment, as the Senator has said correctly, has been fastened on the Democratic resolutions by the votes of the Republican Senators. I feel grateful, indeed, to the Senator for making the motion to reconsider. I hope the vote will be reconsidered, and the resolution voted down."

The motion was put, and on the yeas and nays the vote was reconsidered. I voted for the reconsideration, and I voted against the amendment when it was adopted as a substitute for the fourth resolution. Among those who voted in the affirmative for reconsideration were Messrs. BENJAMIN, BROWN, CHESNUT, CLAY, DAVIS, FITZPATRICK, GREEN, GWIN, HAMMOND, HARLAN, HUNTER, IVERSON, JOHNSON of Arkansas, and LANE. Among those who voted against it, I find JOHNSON of Tennessee. I did not vote to continue in the series a resolution that refused protection to all the people in the common Territories. Portions of the Journal have been paraded to show the vote on Mr. BROWN'S amendment to Mr. CLINGMAN'S amendment. I said, in several speeches, that I should vote against all amendments, because the series had been considered not only here, but in a caucus composed of the Democratic Senators of this body, and we had agreed to take them as a whole, and to vote them through altogether if we had the strength to do so. I voted against every proposition to amend. I voted against Mr. BROWN'S, and I voted against Mr. CLINGMAN'S, and I voted against every other amendment that was calculated to weaken or embarrass the passage of the resolutions. Yet I am represented here as having voted against affording protection to slave property in the Territories! I ask again, if any Senator, if any man who can read, can say that the fourth resolution, for which I did vote and for which I struggled and contended, does not declare that slave property shall be protected in the common Territories of our country.

Could any thing be stronger than the fourth resolution? Could any man desire a more direct declaration of principles than that? Upon the yeas and nays I voted for it. I voted against the amendment that was adopted, and afterwards reconsidered. How, then, can a man arraign me before the country as having said upon oath, on the 25th of May last, that slave property should not be protected in the common Territories with other property? I have always held that all property should be protected, slave as well as other property; that it should have the same protection as, and no more protection than any other property. That they do not secure all this, is the objection I have to the amendments to the Constitution proposed by the Peace Conference. They are ambiguous, loose, and deceptive. I do not know that the people can comprehend them. There will be no certainty under them; and they would, if adopted, result in endless trouble and litigation. I trust no amendments will ever be made to the Constitution, unless they are made upon principles of right, justice, and equality, so that there can be no mistake in construing them hereafter. If we amend the Constitution, let us do it with a view to the peace of the country, with a view to the harmony of the country, with a view to the security of every interest, and of every State in the Union. If we could do that, and this day amend the Constitution so as to provide expressly that every State should have equal rights in the Territories and elsewhere within the Union, this Confederacy would last forever, the States that have left us would come back, and we should have then a great and a lasting Union indeed. Without it, we never can have a permanent Union. We must do something that is clearly right, or the States that have left us will never return. They never ought to return, unless they can have the right of equality secured to them by the Constitution. I claim for my State just that which she is entitled to, and not a particle more. I would concede to the Southern States, that to which they are entitled, and not a particle more. That, they must have, or there can be no peace, no union, no harmony, no security, and no perpetuity of this Confederacy. Such amendments to the Constitution, securing these objects and principles, are indispensable to the maintenance of the Government as it was formed.

Then why not do right? Why not every southern man ask just that which he is entitled to, and no more? He ought to be content with nothing short of what he is entitled to; and if he be, he is untrue to his section and his constituents; untrue to the people whose servant he is; and untrue to the institutions of the country; for the country can exist only upon the triumph of such principles. He who is unwilling to deal fairly by the North and the South, is a man who is guilty of shattering and ruining the Confederacy; destroying the peace and harmony and success of this great experiment of ours.

Mr. President, in the State of Connecticut the Democracy assert the correct principle, and they charge the trouble in the country to the right quarter. I stated, on a former occasion, that the Democracy of old Connecticut would never join the Republican party in any attempt to coerce the Southern States; and I am now authorized by their own declaration to say again, what I said before, that they, like the Democracy of Oregon and of every other Northern State, will never join a party that has refused justice; that has refused equality and right; that has refused to protect property in the Territories, or wherever the jurisdiction of the United States extends, in putting down those who contended for their rights and for the equality to which they were entitled. Sir, the loyal Democracy of this country fully understand the question, and they assert the right.

Now, sir, these great principles were not carried out. The platform on which the Democracy presented their candidates for President and Vice-President was not heeded, though based upon the Constitution. I will say to the Senator who has boasted of his efforts in Tennessee in behalf of the BRECKINRIDGE ticket, that I shall notice that hereafter; but I have only to say now, that, for the sake of the country, I would to God the ticket had succeeded. We should then have had those principles endorsed upon which the Government is established, and the country would have been at peace. For that alone I wished it to succeed.

I will say only a word, now, as to the amendments proposed to the Constitution. I had the pleasure of listening, yesterday, to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky. I know his patriotism and his devotion to the Union. I know his willingness to take any thing, however small, however trifling, however little it might be, that would, in his opinion, give peace to the country. Sir, I am actuated by no such feeling. We should never compromise principle nor sacrifice the eternal foundations of justice. Whenever the Democratic party compromised principle it laid the foundation of future troubles for itself and for the country. When we do, then, amend the Constitution, it ought to be in the spirit of right and justice to all men and to all sections. I voted for the Senator's propositions, and I will do so again, if we can get a vote, because there is something in them; something that I could stand by; but there is nothing in the amendments proposed by the Peace Conference. He proposed to establish the line of 36° 30´, and to prohibit slavery north of it and protect it south of it, in all the present territory, or of the territory to be hereafter acquired. In that proposition there was something like justice and right; but there is nothing in the amendments proposed by the Peace Conference that any man, North or South, ought to take. They are a cheat; they are a deception; they are a fraud; they hold out a false idea; and I think, with all due respect to the Senator--for I have the highest regard for him personally--that he is too anxious to heal the trouble that exists in the country. He had better place himself upon the right and stand by it. Let him contend, with me, for the inalienable and constitutional rights of every American citizen. Let him beware of "compromising" away the vital rights, privileges, and immunities of one portion of the country to appease the graceless, unrelenting, and hostile fanaticism of another portion. Let him labor with me, to influence every State to mind its own affairs, and to keep the Territories entirely _free_ to the enterprise of all, with equal security and protection--without invidious distinctions--to the property of every citizen. Thus, and only thus, can we have peace, happiness, and eternal Union.

I could not avoid noticing the anxiety of the Senator from Kentucky to accept any thing, and the readiness of the Senator from Oregon to pledge his people--"my people"--to any thing that he chooses. Now, I know there are many free people in the State of Oregon. They generally do as they please. They have no master. No man owns them; and no man can claim to control them. But this I am warranted in asserting--for I know long, well, and intimately, the gallant men of Oregon--that they will not be found ready or inclined, at the Senator's and his masters beck, to imbrue their hands, in a godless cause, in fraternal gore.

Mr. President, the principles asserted in the resolutions adopted by the Senate, last winter, have not been carried out. We see the consequences. We see a dissevered country and a divided Union. A number of the States have gone off, have formed an independent Government; it is in existence, and the States composing it will never come back to you, unless you say in plain English, in your amendments to the Constitution, that every State in the future Union has an equal right to the Territories and all the protection and blessings of this Government--never! I tell you, sir, although some foolish men and some wicked ones may say I am a disunionist, I am for the Union upon the principles of the Constitution, and not a traitor. None but a coward will even think me a traitor; and if anybody thinks I am, let him test me. This Union could exist upon the principles that I have held and that are set forth in the DAVIS resolutions; but upon no other condition can it exist. Then, sir, disunion is inevitable. It is not going to stop with the seven States that are out. No, sir; my word for it, unless you do something more than is proposed in this proposition, old Virginia will go out too--slothful as she has been, and tardy as she seems in appreciating her own interests and her rights, and kind and generous as she has been in inviting a Peace Congress to agree upon measures of safety for the Union. The time will come, however, when old Virginia will stand trifling and chicanery no longer. Neither will North Carolina suffer it. None of the slave States will endure it; for they cannot separate one from the other, and they will not. They will go out of this Union and into one of their own; forming a great, homogeneous, and glorious Southern Confederacy. It is and it has been, Senators, in your power to prevent this; it is and it has been for you to say (you might to-day, as it is the last day, say so), whether the Union shall be saved or not. I know, that gallant Old Dominion will never put up with less than her rights; and if she would, I should entertain for her contempt. I should feel contempt for her if she were to ask for any thing more than her rights; and so I would if she were to put up with any thing less than her constitutional rights. Then, sir, secession has taken place, and it will go on unless we do right.

Mr. President, in the remarks which I made on the 19th of December last, in reply to the Senator from Tennessee, I took the ground that a State might rightfully secede from the Union when she could no longer remain in it on an equal footing with the other States; in other words, when her continuance as a member of the Confederacy involved the sacrifice of her constitutional rights, safety, and honor. This right I deduced from the theory of equality of the States, upon which rests the whole fabric of our unrivalled system of government--unrivalled, as it came from the hands of its illustrious framers--a model as perfect, perhaps, as human wisdom could devise, securing to all the blessings of civil and religious liberty, when rightly understood and properly administered; but like all other Governments, and even Christianity itself, a most dangerous engine of oppression when, having fallen into the hands of persons strangers to its spirit, and unmindful of the beneficent objects for which it was framed, it is perverted from its high and noble mission to the base uses of a selfish or sectional ambition, or a blind and bigoted fanaticism. I said, on that occasion--referring to this fundamental principle of our Government, the equality of the States--that "as long as this equality be maintained the Union will endure, and no longer." I might here undertake to enforce, by argument and the authority of writers on the nature and purposes of our Government, this, to me, self-evident proposition. But I deem it unnecessary to consume the time of the Senate in discussing that branch of the subject.

I propose, Mr. President, to confine what I have to say in regard to the right of secession to the question, Who must judge whether such right exists, and when it should be exercised? According to the theory of every despotic Government, of ancient or modern times, there is no such right. A province of an empire, how much soever oppressed, is held by the oppressor as an integral part of his dominions. The yoke, once fastened on the neck of the subject, is expected, however galling, to be worn with patience and entire submission to the tyrant's will. This is the theory of despotism. What are its fruits? We have seen, in modern times, some of the bloodiest struggles recorded in history growing out of the assertion by one party, and the denial by the other, of this very right. Hungary undertook to "secede" from the Austrian empire. Her right to do so was denied. She constituted an integral part of the empire--a great "consolidated" nation, as some consider the United States to be. Being an integral part of the empire, according to the theory of the Austrian Government, she must so remain forever. Austria not having the power to enforce an acquiescence in this doctrine, Russian legions were called to her aid; and Hungary, on whose gallant struggle for independence the liberty-loving people of this country looked with so much admiration and sympathy, soon lay prostrate and bleeding at the tyrant's feet. You may call this attempt of Hungary to regain her independence revolution. That is precisely what Austria called it. I call it an effort on her part to peaceably secede--to peaceably dissolve her connection with a Government which, in her judgment, had become intolerably unjust and oppressive. Her oppressors told her it was not her province but theirs, to judge of her alleged grievances; that to acknowledge the right of secession would strike a fatal blow at the integrity of the empire, which could be maintained only by enforcing the perfect obedience of each and every part.

We have, in the recent struggle of the Italian States, an instructive commentary on the now mooted questions of secession and coercion. Indeed, history, through all past ages, is but a record of the efforts of tyrants to prevent the recognition of the doctrine, that a people deeming themselves oppressed might peaceably absolve themselves from allegiance to their oppressors. When our Government was formed, our fathers fondly thought that they had made a great improvement on the despotic systems of modern Europe. They saw the infinite evil resulting from coercing the unwilling obedience of a subject to a Government which he abhorred and detested. They accordingly declared the great truth, never enunciated until then, that "Governments derive all their just power from the consent of the governed." A Government without such consent they held to be a tyranny.

Now, Mr. President, this brings us to the very point in issue. Who is to determine whether this consent is given or withheld? Must it be determined by the ruler? If so, the proposition just stated is an absurdity. Clearly it was the meaning of those who enunciated this great truth, that the subjects of a Government have the right to declare or withhold their consent; otherwise no such right exists. They, and they only, must judge whether their rights are protected or violated. If protected, every consideration of interest and safety impels them to consent to live under a Government which secures the blessings they desire. If, on the other hand, in their judgment, their most sacred rights are violated, interest and honor, and the instinct of self-preservation, all conspire to impel them to withhold their consent; which being withheld, the Government, as far as they are concerned, ceases.

Here I would call the attention of the Senate to the first of the Kentucky resolutions of 1798-'99, written by Mr. JEFFERSON, in which he says distinctly, that the parties to a political compact must judge for themselves of the mode and measure of redress, when they consider the compact violated and their rights invaded:

"_Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this Government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its power; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

Here Mr. JEFFERSON asserts that a State aggrieved shall judge not only of the mode, but the measure of redress. Is this treason? If the measure of redress extends to secession, how can the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. JOHNSON] do less than denounce the great apostle of liberty--as Mr. JEFFERSON has been called--a traitor?

No less clear and explicit on this point, is the language of Mr. MADISON. Being chairman of a committee to whom the subject was referred--the resolutions having been returned by several of the States--he says in his report:

"It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The States, then, being the parties to the Constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated, and consequently that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."

In the remarks which I made on the 19th of December last, I referred to the fact that Virginia, in accepting the Constitution, declared that the powers granted under that instrument "being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." I referred, also, to the fact that New York had adopted the Constitution upon the same condition and with the same reservation. I may here quote the language of Mr. WEBSTER, distinctly recognizing the right of the people to change their Government whenever their interest or safety require it. He says:

"We see, therefore, from the commencement of the Government under which we live, down to this late act of the State of New York"--

To which he had just referred--

"one uniform current of law, of precedent, and of practice, all going to establish the point that changes in Government are to be brought about by the will of the people, assembled under such legislative provisions as may be necessary to ascertain that will truly and authentically."