Chapter 39

My lord, I shall make a pause here, and stop going on further in my discourse, till I see further, if his grace, my lord commissioner, receive any humble proposals for removing misunderstandings among us, and putting an end to our fatal divisions; upon honor, I have no other design, and I am content to beg the favor upon my bended knees. (No answer.) My lord chancellor, I am sorry that I must pursue the thread of my sad and melancholy story. What remains, I am afraid may prove as afflicting as what I have said; I shall therefore consider the motives which have engaged the two nations to enter upon a treaty of union at this time. In general, my lord, I think both of them had in their view to better themselves by the treaty; but before I enter upon the particular motives of each nation, I must inform this honorable house that since I can remember, the two nations have altered their sentiments upon that affair, even almost to downright contradiction--they have changed headbands, as we say; for the English, till of late, never thought it worth their pains of treating with us; the good bargain they made at the beginning they resolve to keep, and that which we call an incorporating union was not so much as in their thoughts. The first notice they seemed to take of us was in our affair of Caledonia, when they had most effectually broken off that design in a manner very well known to the world, and unnecessary to be repeated here; they kept themselves quiet during the time of our complaints upon that head. In which time our sovereign, to satisfy the nation, and allay their heats, did condescend to give us some good laws, and amongst others that of personal liberties; but they having declared their succession, and extended their entail, without ever taking notice of us, our gracious sovereign Queen Anne was graciously pleased to give the royal assent to our act of security, to that of peace and war after the decease of her Majesty, and the heirs of her body, and to give us a hedge to all our sacred and civil interests, by declaring it high treason to endeavor the alteration of them, as they were then established. Thereupon did follow the threatening and minatory laws against us by the Parliament of England, and the unjust and unequal character of what her Majesty had so graciously condescended to in our favors. Now, my lord, whether the desire they had to have us engaged in the same succession with them, or whether they found us like a free and independent people, breathing after more liberty than what formerly was looked after, or whether they were afraid of our act of security, in case of her Majesty's decease; which of all these motives has induced them to a treaty I leave it to themselves. This I must say only, they have made a good bargain this time also.

For the particular motives that induced us, I think they are obvious to be known, we found by sad experience, that every man hath advanced in power and riches, as they have done in trade, and at the same time considering that nowhere through the world slaves are found to be rich, though they should be adorned with chains of gold, we thereupon changed our notion of an incorporating union to that of a federal one; and being resolved to take this opportunity to make demands upon them, before we enter into the succession, we were content to empower her Majesty to authorize and appoint commissioners to treat with the commissioners of England, with as ample powers as the lords commissioners from England had from their constituents, that we might not appear to have less confidence in her Majesty, nor more narrow-heartedness in our act, than our neighbors of England. And thereupon last Parliament, after her Majesty's gracious letter was read, desiring us to declare the succession in the first place, and afterwards to appoint commissioners to treat, we found it necessary to renew our former resolve, which I shall read to this honorable house. The resolve presented by the Duke of Hamilton last session of Parliament:--

"That this Parliament will not proceed to the nomination of a successor till we have had a previous treaty with England, in relation to our commerce, and other concerns with that nation. And further, it is resolved that this Parliament will proceed to make such limitations and conditions of government, for the rectification of our constitution, as may secure the liberty, religion, and independency of this kingdom, before they proceed to the said nomination."

Now, my lord, the last session of Parliament having, before they would enter into any treaty with England, by a vote of the house, passed both an act for limitations and an act for rectification of our constitution, what mortal man has reason to doubt the design of this treaty was only federal?

My lord chancellor, it remains now, that we consider the behavior of the lords commissioners at the opening of this treaty. And before I enter upon that, allow me to make this meditation, that if our posterity, after we are all dead and gone, shall find themselves under an ill-made bargain, and shall have recourse unto our records, and see who have been the managers of that treaty, by which they have suffered so much; when they read the names, they will certainly conclude, and say, Ah! our nation has been reduced to the last extremity, at the time of this treaty; all our great chieftains, all our great peers and considerable men, who used formerly to defend the rights and liberties of the nation, have been all killed and dead in the bed of honor, before ever the nation was necessitated to condescend to such mean and contemptible terms. Where are the names of the chief men, of the noble families of Stuarts, Hamiltons, Grahams, Campbels, Gordons, Johnstons, Humes, Murrays, Kers? Where are the two great officers of the crown, the constables and marshals of Scotland? They have certainly all been extinguished, and now we are slaves forever.

Whereas the English records will make their posterity reverence the memory of the honorable names who have brought under their fierce, warlike, and troublesome neighbors, who had struggled so long for independence, shed the best blood of their nation and reduced a considerable part of their country to become waste and desolate.

I am informed, my lord, that our commissioners did indeed frankly tell the lords commissioners for England that the inclinations of the people of Scotland were much altered of late, in relation to an incorporating union; and that, therefore, since the entail was to end with her Majesty's life (whom God long preserve), it was proper to begin the treaty upon the foot of the treaty of 1604, year of God, the time when we came first under one sovereign; but this the English commissioners would not agree to, and our commissioners, that they might not seem obstinate, were willing to treat and conclude in the terms laid before this honorable house and subjected to their determination. If the lords commissioners for England had been as civil and complaisant, they should certainly have finished a federal treaty likewise, that both nations might have the choice which of them to have gone into as they thought fit; but they would hear of nothing but an entire and complete union, a name which comprehends a union, either by incorporation, surrender, or conquest, whereas our commissioners thought of nothing but a fair, equal, incorporating union. Whether this be so or not I leave it to every man's judgment; but as for myself I must beg liberty to think it no such thing; for I take an incorporating union to be, where there is a change both in the material and formal points of government, as if two pieces of metal were melted down into one mass, it can neither be said to retain its former form or substance as it did before the mixture. But now, when I consider this treaty, as it hath been explained and spoke to before us this three weeks by past, I see the English constitution remaining firm, the same two houses of Parliament, the same taxes, the same customs, the same excises, the same trading companies, the same municipal laws and courts of judicature; and all ours either subject to regulations or annihilations, only we have the honor to pay their old debts and to have some few persons present for witnesses to the validity of the deed when they are pleased to contract more.

Good God! What, is this an entire surrender!

My lord, I find my heart so full of grief and indignation that I must beg pardon not to finish the last part of my discourse, that I may drop a tear as the prelude to so sad a story.

JOHN BELL (1797-1869)

John Bell, of Tennessee, who was a candidate with Edward Everett on the "Constitutional Union" ticket of 1860, when Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee gave him their thirty-nine electoral votes in favor of a hopeless peace, will always seem one of the most respectable figures in the politics of a time when calmness and conservatism, such as characterized him and his coadjutor., Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, had ceased to be desired by men who wished immediate success in public life. He was one of the founders of the Whig party, and by demonstrating himself to be one of the very few men who could win against Andrew Jackson's opposition in Tennessee, he acquired, under Jackson and Van Buren, a great influence with the Whigs of the country at large. He was a member of Congress from Tennessee for fourteen years dating from 1827, when he won by a single vote against Felix Grundy, one of the strongest men in Tennessee and a special favorite with General Jackson. Disagreeing with Jackson on the removal of the deposits, Bell was elected Speaker of the House over Jackson's protege, James K. Polk, in 1834, and in 1841 he entered the Whig cabinet as Secretary of War under Harrison who had defeated another of Jackson's proteges, Van Buren. In 1847 and again in 1853, he was elected United States Senator from Tennessee and he did his best to prevent secession. He had opposed Calhoun's theories of the right of a State to nullify a Federal act if unconstitutional, and in March 1858, in the debate over the Lecompton constitution, he opposed Toombs in a speech which probably made him the candidate of the Constitutional Unionists two years later. Another notable speech, of even more far-reaching importance, he had delivered in 1853 in favor of opening up the West by building the Pacific Railroad, a position in which he was supported by Jefferson Davis.

Mr. Bell was for the Union in 1861, denying the right of secession, but he opposed the coercion of the Southern States, and when the fighting actually began he sided with Tennessee, and took little or no part in public affairs thereafter. He died in 1869.

AGAINST EXTREMISTS NORTH AND SOUTH (From a Speech in the Senate, March 18th, 1858. on the Lecompton Constitution)

The honorable Senator from Georgia, Mr. Toombs, announced some great truths to-day. He said that mankind made a long step, a great stride, when they declared that minorities should not rule; and that a still higher and nobler advance had been made when it was decided that majorities could only rule through regular and legal forms. He asserted this general doctrine with reference to the construction he proposed to give to the Lecompton constitution; and to say that the people of Kansas, unless they spoke through regular forms, cannot speak at all. He will allow me to say, however, that the forms through which a majority speaks must be provided and established by competent authority, and his doctrine can have no application to the Lecompton constitution, unless he can first show that the legislature of Kansas was vested with legal authority to provide for the formation of a State constitution; for, until that can be shown, there could be no regular and legal forms through which the majority could speak. But how does that Senator reconcile his doctrine with that avowed by the President, as to the futility of attempting, by constitutional provisions, to fetter the power of the people in changing their constitution at pleasure? In no States of the Union so much as in some of the slaveholding States would such a doctrine as that be so apt to be abused by incendiary demagogues, disappointed and desperate politicians, in stirring up the people to assemble voluntarily in convention--disregarding all the restrictions in their constitution--and strike at the property of the slaveholder.

The honorable Senator from Kentucky inquired what, under this new doctrine, would prevent the majority of the people of the States of the Union from changing the present Federal Constitution, and abrogating all existing guarantees for the protection of the small States, and any peculiar or particular interest confined to a minority of the States of the Union. The analogy, I admit, is not complete between the Federal Constitution and a constitution of a State; but the promulgation of the general principle, that a majority of the people are fettered by no constitutional restrictions in the exercise of their right to change their form of government, is dangerous. That is quite enough for the purposes of demagogues and incendiary agitators. When I read the special message of the President, I said to some friends that the message, taking it altogether, was replete with more dangerous heresies than any paper I had ever seen emanating, not from a President of the United States, but from any political club in the country, and calculated to do more injury. I consider it in effect, and in its tendencies, as organizing anarchy.

We are told that if we shall admit Kansas with the Lecompton constitution, this whole difficulty will soon be settled by the people of Kansas. How? By disregarding the mode and forms prescribed by the constitution for amending it? No. I am not sure that the President, after all the lofty generalities announced in his message, in regard to the inalienable rights of the people, intended to sanction the idea that all the provisions of the Lecompton constitution in respect to the mode and form of amending it should be set aside. He says the legislature now elected may, at its first meeting, call a convention to amend the constitution; and in another passage of his message he says that this inalienable power of the majority must be exercised in a lawful manner. This is perplexing. Can there be any lawful enactment of the legislature in relation to the call of a convention, unless it be in conformity with the provisions of the constitution? They require that two-thirds of the members of the legislature shall concur in passing an act to take the sense of the people upon the call of a convention, and that the vote shall be taken at the next regular election, which cannot be held until two years afterwards. How can this difficulty be got over? The truth is, that unless all constitutional impediments in respect to forms be set aside, and the people take it in hand to amend the constitution on revolutionary principles, there can be no end of agitation on this subject in less than three years. I long since ventured the prediction that there would be no settlement of the difficulties in Kansas until the next presidential election. To continue the agitation is too important to the interests of both the great parties of the country to dispense with it, as long as any pretext can be found for prolonging it. In the closing debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, I told its supporters that they could do nothing more certain to disturb the composure of the two Senators who sat on the opposite side of the chamber, the one from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] and the other from Ohio [Mr. Chase], than to reject that bill. Its passage was the only thing in the range of possible events by which their political fortunes could be resuscitated, so completely had the Free-Soil movement at the North been paralyzed by the compromise measures of 1850. I say now to the advocates of this measure, if they want to strengthen the Republican party, and give the reins of government into their hands, pass this bill. If they desire to weaken the power of that party, and arrest the progress of slavery agitation, reject it. And if it is their policy to put an end to the agitation connected with Kansas affairs at the earliest day practicable, as they say it is, then let them remit this constitution back to the people of Kansas, for their ratification or rejection. In that way the whole difficulty will be settled before the adjournment of the present session of Congress, without the violation of any sound principle, or the sacrifice of the rights of either section of the Union.

But the President informs us that threatening and ominous clouds impend over the country; and he fears that if Kansas is not admitted under the Lecompton constitution, slavery agitation will be revived in a more dangerous form than it has ever yet assumed. There may be grounds for that opinion, for aught I know; but it seems to me that if any of the States of the South have taken any position on this question which endangers the peace of the country, they could not have been informed of the true condition of affairs in Kansas, and of the strong objections which may be urged on principle against the acceptance by Congress of the Lecompton constitution. And I have such confidence in the intelligence of the people of the whole South, that when the history and character of this instrument shall be known, even those who would be glad to find some plausible pretext for dissolving the Union will see that its rejection by Congress would not furnish them with such a one as they could make available for their purposes.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was under discussion, in 1854, in looking to all the consequences which might follow the adoption of that measure, I could not overlook the fact that a sentiment of hostility to the Union was widely diffused in certain States of the South; and that that sentiment was only prevented from assuming an organized form of resistance to the authority of the Federal government, at least in one of the States, in 1851, by the earnest remonstrance of a sister State, that was supposed to sympathize with her in the project of establishing a southern republic. Nor could I fail to remember that the project--I speak of the convention held in South Carolina, in pursuance of an act of the legislature--was then postponed, not dropped. The argument was successfully urged that an enterprise of such magnitude ought not to be entered upon without the co-operation of a greater number of States than they could then certainly count upon. It was urged that all the cotton-planting States would, before a great while, be prepared to unite in the movement, and that they, by the force of circumstances, would bring in all the slaveholding States. The ground was openly taken, that separation was an inevitable necessity. It was only a question of time. It was said that no new aggression was necessary on the part of the North to justify such a step. It was said that the operation of this government from its foundation had been adverse to southern interests; and that the admission of California as a free State, and the attempt to exclude the citizens of the South, with their property, from all the territory acquired from Mexico, was a sufficient justification for disunion. It was not a mere menace to deter the North from further aggressions. These circumstances made a deep impression on my mind at the time, and from a period long anterior to that I had known that it was a maxim with the most skillful tacticians among those who desire separation, that the slaveholding States must be united--consolidated into one party. That object once effected, disunion, it was supposed, would follow without difficulty.

I had my fears that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was expected to consolidate the South, and to pave the way for the accomplishment of ulterior plans by some of the most active supporters of that measure from the South; and these fears I indicated in the closing debate on that subject. Some of the supporters of that measure, I fear, are reluctant now to abandon the chances of finding some pretext for agitating the subject of separation in the South in the existing complications of the Kansas embroilment.

To what extent the idea of disunion is entertained in some of the Southern States, and what importance is attached to the policy of uniting the whole South in one party as a preliminary step, may be inferred from a speech delivered before the Southern convention lately held in Knoxville, Tenn., by Mr. De Bow, the president of the convention, and the editor of a popular Southern review. I will only refer now to the fate to which the author resigns those who dare to break the ranks of that solid phalanx in which he thinks the South should be combined--that is, to be "held up to public scorn and public punishment as traitors and Tories, more steeped in guilt than those of the Revolution itself."

The honorable Senator from New York further announced to us in exultant tones, that "at last there was a North side of this Chamber, a North side of the Chamber of the House of Representatives, and a North side of the Union, as well as a South side of all these"; and he admonished us that the time was at hand when freedom would assert its influence in the regulation of the domestic and foreign policy of the country.

When was there a time in the history of the government that there was no North side of this Chamber and of the other? When was there a time that there was not a proud array of Northern men in both Chambers, distinguished by their genius and ability, devoted to the interests of the North, and successful in maintaining them?

Though it may be true that Southern men have filled the executive chair for much the larger portion of the time that has elapsed since the organization of the government, yet when, in what instance was it, that a Southerner has been elevated to that high station without the support of a majority of the freemen of the North?