Mr. President and Gentlemen of Virginia:
I have had the honor to present you, sir, and this
Convention my credentials, as Commissioner from the Government of
South Carolina, and, upon your reception of these credentials, I
am instructed by my Government to lay before you the causes which
induced the State of South Carolina to withdraw from the Union,
and the people of South Carolina to resume the powers which they
had delegated to the Government of the United States of America.
In performing this duty, gentlemen, I am not
instructed by my Government, nor is it my intention to endeavor
to make before you an argument in proof of the right of
secession. My State, in its sovereign capacity, assumed that
right, and my ministry here is only to lay before you those
reasons which she deemed sufficient to enforce upon her the
necessity of exercising that right. The very learned and
comprehensive argument of my countrymen from Georgia and
Mississippi, confine me into a very narrow scope of statement. In
laying these causes before you, it will be quite sufficient, as
preliminary to this statement, that I should submit for your
consideration a few historical facts bearing upon the relations
of these States to each other, and to the late Federal Government
of the United States.
It will be recollected by all that the British
Colonies of North America, save by contiguity of territory, held
no nearer political Union with each other than they did with the
Colonies under the same Government at remote parts of the empire.
They had a common Union, and a common sovereignty in the Crown of
Great Britain. But when that Union was dissolved, each colony was
remitted to its own ministry as perfectly as if it was separated
from the other by the oceans of the empire. But being of joint
territory, and having common interests, and having identical
grievances against the mother country, the people of these
colonies met together, consulted with each other at various times
for a long series of years, and in various forms, but, as you may
remember, most generally, in the form of a Congress of
independent powers. They began their conflict with the mother
Government each for itself, and the battles of Lexington, of
Bunker Hill, of Fort Moultrie in the colony of South Carolina,
and the battle of the Great Bridge in the colony of Virginia-all
occurred before their common Declaration of Independence on the
4th of July, '76. The Colonies, then in Congress, made a joint
declaration of their freedom from Great Britain, of their
independence and of their sovereignty.
As. you may remember, gentlemen-for I am now reciting
what is present to your memory, with a view to bring it to your
consideration, trusting as I may recite it you may discover, what
has been certainly running through the minds of my people for
years past-finding, that, individually, they could not carry on
this contest for independence and sovereignty, they united in
certain articles which are known as the Articles of
Confederation. In these articles there is the reiteration of the
original declaration of the sovereignty and independence of the
parts of it. All rights, all powers, all jurisdiction therein
delegated produce no limitation upon the ultimate and
discretionary sovereignty of the parts of it.
Under these considerations, and with these
reservations, they prosecuted the war with the mother country
successfully; and when that country recognized their success and
their independence, she did so not by the positive recognition of
the agency of this Confederation, but in absolute acknowledgment
of the independence and the sovereignty of the parts of that
agency.
Four years later than this, it became apparent that
their alliance was not sufficient for conducting the faculties of
peace as it had been for conducting the faculties of war; and the
remedies for this insufficiency resulted in that instrument known
as the Constitution of the United States of America, and the
amendments thereto proposed by the States individually.
Now, gentlemen of Virginia, we all know that in this
instrument there is no one clause, no one phrase, no one word
which places the slightest limitation, or indicates the slightest
transmission of the sovereignty of the parties to that compact.
On the contrary, the whole spirit and genius of that instrument
goes to recognize itself as a mere agency for the performance of
delegated functions, and to recognize the parts of it as the
original holders of the sovereignty. In proof of this, the States
at various times, under various forms, with a treaty reservation,
consented to this compact. Now since that period, of course there
has been no legitimated change of the relations of the parts
under this compact. On the contrary, all the contemporaneous and
juxta-contemporaneous constructions of the instrument, especially
that made by the voice of Virginia through Mr. Madison, whom your
distinguished President,,[Mr. JANNEY], has characterized as the
chief architect of the Constitution, declare the relations of the
parts in these words:
"The Constitution of the United States was formed
by the sanctions of the States, given by each in its sovereign
capacity."
And again, "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 this
with authority to decide in the last resort whether the compact
made by them be violated, and consequently as parties to it, they
must decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of
sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."
Then, are these questions of sufficient magnitude to
require the interposition of sovereignty? Unquestionably, the
interpreter means those questions which involve the prerogative
of that sovereignty itself, and those were of sufficient
magnitude to require its interposition, and such as are of
themselves dangerous to the great purposes for which the
Constitution was established; and among these great purposes we
know there are expressed those of justice, right, equality,
general welfare and the blessings of liberty to us and our
posterity.
Gentlemen, in these relations of the States to each
other and to the Federal Government, the people of South Carolina
have assumed that their sovereignty has never been divided; that
it has never been alienated; that it is imprescriptibly in its
entire; that it has not been impaired by their voluntarily
refraining from the exercise of certain functions of sovereignty
which they had delegated to another power, and upon this
assumption, they contend that in the exercise of this
unrestricted sovereignty, and upon the great principle of the
right of a sovereign people to govern themselves, even if it
involves the destruction of the compact which by its vitiation
has become in imminent peril, that they have a right to abrogate
their consent to that compact.
I have thus, gentlemen, as rapidly as possible,
grouped before you a few facts and principles involved in the
action of the State which I represent, and I shall now proceed,
with as much rapidity as possible, to exhibit to you the reasons
why, upon these facts and these principles, the people of South
Carolina have deemed proper to abrogate their consent to the
compact of the Constitution of the United States.
As preliminary to this statement, I would say, that as
early as the year 1820, the manifest tendency of the legislation
of the general government was to restrict the territorial
expansion of the slaveholding States. That is very evident in all
the contests of that period; and had they been successful to the
extent that some hoped, even then, the line that cut off the
purchase from France might have been projected eastward to the
bottom of the Chesapeake and sent Virginia and half of Tennessee
and all of Kentucky, Virginia proper, after she had given to
non-slavery her northwestern empire, to the non-slavery section.
That might be the line. The policy, however, has been pushed so
far as to deprive this Southern section of that line of at least
seven-tenths of the valuable acquisitions of the government.
Besides this, I would state. as preliminary, that a large portion
of the revenue of the government of the United States has always
been drawn from duties on imports. Now, the products that have
been necessary to purchase these imports, were at one time almost
exclusively, and have always mainly been the result of slave
labor, and therefore the burden of the revenue duties upon
imports purchased by these exports must fall upon the producer
who happens also to be the consumer of the imports.
In addition to this, it may be stated, that at a very
early period of the existence of this Government, the Northern
people, from a variety of causes, entered upon the industries of
manufacture and of commerce, but of agriculture scarcely to the
extent of self support. This may have arisen from a variety of
causes; among them, perhaps, an uncongenial climate, a barren
soil, but an alluring sea coast adapted to commerce, besides an
inherent tendency upon the part of the people of these latitudes
to the arts of manucraft and traffic; and while, therefore, it
was important that all the sources of the revenue should be kept
up to meet the increasing expenses of the Government, it also
manifestly became of great importance that these articles of
manufacture in which they have been engaged should be subject to
the purchase of their confederates. They, therefore, invented a
system of duties partial and discriminating, by which the whole
burden of the revenue from this extraordinary system fell upon
those who produced the articles of exports which purchased the
articles of imports, and which articles of import were consumed
mainly, or to a great extent, by those who produced the exports.
Now, the State of South Carolina being at the time one
of the largest exporters and consumers of imports, was so
oppressed by the operations of this system upon her, that she was
driven to the necessity of interposing her sovereign reservation
to arrest it, so far as she was concerned. This interposition,
together with the rapid spread of the principle of free trade all
over the world, did arrest the iniquity in the shape in which it
was then presented. It could no longer be the avowed policy of
the Government to tax one section for the purpose of building up
another. But so successful had been the system; to such an extent
had it already, in a few years, been pushed; so vast had been its
accumulations of capital; so vastly had it been diffused
throughout its ramifications as seemingly to inter-weave the very
life of industry itself, in the two sections into each other in
the form of mechanics, of manufactures, ships, merchants, and
bankers. The people of the Northern States have so crawled and
crept into every crevice of our industry which they could
approach, and they have themselves so conformed to it, that we
ourselves began to believe that they were absolutely necessary to
its vitality; and they have so fed and fattened, and grown so
great and large as they feed and fatten upon this sweating giant
of the South, that with the insolence natural to sudden and
bloated wealth and power, they begin to believe that the giant
was created only as their tributary.
Now, strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true,
that while they were thus building up their wealth and their
power from these sources, step by step, we will see latterly
that, with this aggregation of wealth was growing up a determined
purpose to destroy the very sources from which it was drawn. I
pretend not ta explain this; I refer to it merely as history.
This, gentlemen, brings me directly to the causes
which I desire to lay before you. For fully thirty years or more,
the people of the Northern States have assailed the institution
of African slavery. They have assailed African slavery in every
form in which, by our contiguity of territory and our political
alliance with them, they have been permitted to approach it.
During that period of thirty years, large masses of
their people have associated themselves together for the purpose
of abolishing the institution of African slavery, and means, the
most fearful were suggested to the subject race-rising and
murdering their masters being the charities of those means. In
pursuance of this idea, their representatives in the federal
government have endeavored by all the means that they could bring
to bear, so to shape the legislation as almost to limit, to
restrict, to restrain the slaveholding States from any political
interest in the accretion of the government. So that as my
distinguished colleague [judge Benning], stated to you on
yesterday, the decree goes forth that there are to be no more
slave States admitted into the Union.
Secondly, then, in pursuance of the same purpose that
I have indicated, a large majority of the States of the
Confederation have refused to carry out those provisions of the
Constitution which are absolutely necessary to the existence of
the slave States, and many of them have stringent laws to prevent
the execution of those provisions; and eight of these States have
made it criminal, even in their citizens to execute these
provisions of the Constitution of the United States, which, by
the progress of the government, have become now necessary to the
protection of an industry which furnishes to the commerce of the
Republic $250,000,000 per annum, and on which the very existence
of twelve millions of people depends. In not one of these
seventeen States can a citizen of one of the fifteen States claim
his main property, and in many of them the persons of the
citizens of these States have been violated, and in numerous
cases the violence has resulted in murder.
Third. The citizens of not less than five of our
confederates of the North have invaded the territory of their
confederates of the slaveholding States, and proclaimed the
intention of abolishing slavery by the annihilation of the
slaveholders; and two of these States have refused to surrender
the convicted felons to the demand of the invaded States; and one
of these-one of the most influential-one, perhaps, recognized as
the representative of what is called American sentiment and
civilization, has, in its highest solemn form, approved of that
invasion; and numbers of people, scattered throughout the whole
extent of these seventeen States, have made votive offerings to
the memory of the invaders.
Fourth. The most populous, and by far, the most potent
of our late confederates, has for years proclaimed, through the
federal legislature and by her own sovereign act, that the
conflict between slavery and non-slavery is a conflict for life
and death. Now, there is the calm, oft-reiterated decree of a
State containing three millions of people, conducting four-fifths
of the commerce of the Republic, with additional millions
diffused through the whole of these 17 States. And many of these
States themselves have decreed that the institution of slavery is
an offence to God, and, therefore, they are bound by the most
sacred attributes which belong to human nature, to exterminate
it. They have declared, in their most solemn form, that the
institution of slavery, as it exists in the States of their
political confederates, is an offence to their social
institutions, and, therefore, that it should be exterminated.
Finally, acting upon the impulse of their duties of
self-protection and self-preservation, majorities, large
majorities throughout the whole of these 17 States have placed
the executive power of the Federal Government in the hands of
those who are bound by the most sacred obligations, by their
obligations to God, by their obligations to the social
institutions of man, by their obligations of self-protection and
self-preservation, to place the system of slavery as it exists in
the Southern States upon a course of certain and final
extinction. Twenty millions of people, having in their hands one
of the strongest Governments on earth, and impelled by a perfect
recognition of the most powerful obligations which fall upon man,
have declared that the vital interests of eight millions of
people shall be exterminated. In other words, the decree, the
result of this cumulation which I have endeavored to show you,
was inaugurated on the 6th of November last, so far as the
institution of slavery is concerned, in the confederates of the
Northern non-slaveholding States. That decree is annihilation,
and you can make nothing shorter of it.
Now, gentlemen, the people of South Carolina, being a
portion of these eight millions of people, have only to ask
themselves, is existence worth the struggle? Their answer to this
question, I have submitted to you in the form of their Ordinance
of Secession.
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all
the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief
actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in
all their lore of human society they can offer an example like
this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves.
These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of
civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people,
with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth,
decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask,
is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life,
worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to
group before you the causes which have produced the action of the
people of South Carolina. Had I endeavored to go into detail of
it, it would occupy half the history of this Republic. For half
the period of its existence, from the days of the younger Adams
to this hour, the untiring and unflinching purpose of the
Northern representation in our federal legislation, and of the
people of the Northern States, has been first to restrict and
restrain the people of the Southern States within the limitations
which they have prescribed, then to subsidise, then to destroy.
They were baffled, they were checked in one course of this, But
with that untiring energy of nature which belongs to them, they
soon turned to another. Defeated in this, by the lingering and
sturdy fragments of a dying patriotism among themselves, or the
pointed resistance of their victims-they have still held on with
the fierce grip of avarice, with the mad rage of fanaticism,
until it has pleased God to curse them with a triumph which may
plunge this continent into civil war, and destroy, perhaps
forever, the fairest forms of liberty that ever human philosophy
grafted upon the institutions of men.
Now, gentlemen, for one moment look at the other side
of the picture. For thirty years, by labor, by protest, by
prayer, by warning, by every attribute, by every energy which she
could bring to bear, my State has endeavored to avert this
catastrophe. For this long series of years in the federal
legislature what has been her course? What has been the labor
which she has performed? What has been the purpose which she has
avowed? Has she not given to this all her intelligence, all her
patriotism, all her virtue-and that she had intelligence; that
she had patriotism; that she had virtue is in proof, because that
marble sits in the hall where the sovereignty of Virginia is
consulting upon the rights and honor of Virginia. [Applause.] All
this she did in the Federal Government. Failing in this more than
a year ago, seeing the storm impending, seeing the waves rising,
she sends to this great, this strong, this wise, this illustrious
Republic of Virginia, a grave commission, the purport of which,
with your permission, gentlemen, I will venture to relate.
"Whereas the State of South Carolina, by her
ordinance of A. D. 1852, affirmed her right to secede from the
Confederacy whenever the occasion should arise, justifying her,
in her own judgment, in taking that step; and in the resolution
adopted by her Convention, declared that she forbore the
immediate exercise of that right, from considerations of
expediency only:
And, whereas, more than seven years have elapsed since
that Convention adjourned, and in the intervening time, the
assaults upon the institution of slavery, and upon the rights and
equality of the Southern States, have unceasingly continued with
increasing violence, and in new and more alarming forms be it
therefore,
1. Resolved unanimously, That the State of
South Carolina, still deferring to her Southern sisters,
nevertheless respectfully announces to them, that it is
the deliberate judgment of this General Assembly that the
slaveholding States should immediately meet together to
concert measures for united action.
2. Resolved unanimously, That the foregoing preamble
and resolution be communicated by the Governor to all the
slaveholding States, with the earnest request of this State that
they will appoint deputies, and adopt such measures as in their
judgment will promote the said meeting.
3. Resolved unanimously, That a special commissioner
be appointed by his Excellency the Governor to communicate the
foregoing preamble and resolutions to the State of Virginia, and
to express to the authorities of that State the cordial sympathy
of the people of South Carolina with the people of Virginia, and
their earnest desire to unite with them in measures of common
defence."
This, gentlemen, was one year ago and no more. Failing
in that effort, the people of South Carolina, for the first time
in over 20 years, joined with the political organizations of the
day, in the hopes-of deferring the catastrophe. Failing in
effecting that through them, she then calmly, as the last hope,
for she earnestly, honestly, and with the most anxious
solicitude, desired the success of that party which she supposed
would defer this catastrophe-cast her vote with that party in the
Presidential contest; but failing in this, from the causes I have
enumerated, and from the parties I have enumerated as arrayed
against her-she then quietly and unostentatiously, without
clamor, having asked her sister States, especially having asked
Virginia, to unite with her in consultation, passes this act in
these few simple words which I shall take the liberty of reading
to the Convention:
We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in
Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby
declared and ordained,
That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the
twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand
seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the
United States of America was ratified, and also, all Acts and
parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying
amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and
that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other
States, under the name of "The United States of
America," is hereby dissolved.
After this simple act of excision still she has not
been satisfied, and now still she is seeking aid, she is seeking
counsel, she is seeking sympathy, and, therefore, gentlemen, I am
before you here today. Now, gentlemen of Virginia,
notwithstanding these facts which I have so feebly grouped before
you, notwithstanding this patience which I have endeavored to
show you she has practised, my State, throughout this whole land,
throughout all Christendom, my State has been charged with rash
precipitancy. Is it rash precipitancy to step out of the pathway
when you hear the thunder crash of the falling clouds? Is it rash
precipitancy to seek for shelter when you hear the gushing of the
coming tempest, and see the storm cloud coming down upon you? Is
it rash precipitancy to raise your hands to protect your head?
[Loud applause.]
Gentlemen of Virginia, never since liberty came into
the institutions of man have a people borne with more patience,
or forborne with more fortitude than have the people of these
Southern States in their relation with their confederates of the
North. As long as it was a merely silly fanaticism or a prurient
philanthropy that proposed our destruction, we scarcely
complained. Even when a long series of unjust, partial and
oppressive taxation was grinding us into the very dust of
poverty, with one convulsive struggle we bore that happily. Even
when a number of our confederate States refused to carry out the
provisions of the Constitution, vital to our interests, by
municipal and State regulations -even when hordes of their
people, under the sanction of these regulations, robbed us of our
property and murdered our citizens, and bands of wild fanatics,
under the same sanction, invaded slave territory and proclaimed
the destruction of slavery by the annihilation of the
slaveholder-even when some of our confederates proclaimed in the
federal legislature and by their sovereign decrees that we ought
to be driven from the civilization in which we lived-even when
one of our confederates sought to defame and vilify us before the
'civilized world, we bore all these accumulating calamities, and
continued to give them our blood and our treasure to build up the
grandeur and maintain the power of that Republic. And, in
addition to this, when all that malignant fanaticism, that
baffled avarice, that moral turpitude could invent to defame and
vilify us, was proposed by the people and by the States of our
confederates, still we gave them our blood and sweat and offered
them our hands and called them brethren. I draw no fancy picture.
I make no declamatory assertion here. There is not one man here
who cannot cite twenty cases to fill every item of this category.
But when at last this mad fanaticism, this eager haste for
rapine, mingling their foul purposes, engendered this fell spirit
which has seized the Constitution itself in its most sacred forms
and distorted it into an instrument of our instant ruin; why,
then, to hesitate one moment longer seems to us not only base
cowardice, but absolute fatuity. [Applause.] We felt, in the
South, that if we submitted one hour to such a domination as
that, we would have merited that destruction which we had earned
by our folly and baseness. Tn South Carolina at least, we felt,
if there was one son of a South Carolina sire who could give
counsel to such submission as this, that there was not a hill
side or a plain from Eutaw to the Cowpens, from which the spirit
of his venerated sire would not have started forth to shame him
from the land which discarded him. [Applause.]
I pray you, gentlemen of Virginia, to pardon me for
referring with some particularity to the position of my State in
connection with these matters, because she has been much spoken
of and not much praised. I am here, gentlemen, as the
Commissioner of these people, certainly not their eulogist. I am
sent here as I thought mainly because among them I have always,
with some pride, proclaimed that I sprang from this soil, and
because they believe that I would tell an honest, earnest story
of their wrongs and their trials; and if you will permit me, I
will still farther allude to it. Never, gentlemen of Virginia,
since liberty begun her struggles in the world, has a mightier
drama been enacted on the trembling stage of man's affairs or
been opened with a spectacle of purer moral sublimity, than that
which has been manifested in this revolution in which we are now
engaged. Scarcely had this decree of our subjection, to which I
call your attention, been borne to our cars on the Northern
breeze, than, as if from the very caverns of the earth, there
rose up one voice, one voice only, from the people of South
Carolina, who shouted back resistance to the death. Their
Legislature then in session, caught that spirit, and with one
voice, and one voice only, proclaimed resistance to the death.
The people of the State again in their sovereign capacity, as you
are, with one voice, and one voice only, ordained resistance to
the death. And now, gentlemen, there is not, in the borders of
that little State, one man from sixteen to sixty who can walk or
stand, who is not armed, standing ready to resist to the death.
[Applause.] We are very small-very weak-but if war, that
fire-storm with which we are threatened, should fall upon us and
consume us, hereafter the pilgrim of liberty, perhaps from this
State, who may be searching beneath the ruins of Charleston, will
find the skeleton of our sentinel standing at every sea gate.
[Applause.]
Gentlemen of Virginia, do not believe-do not be
persuaded that in taking the steps which we have, we have been
forgetful of those things which are cherished among you. We have
not been forgetful of the great and hallowed past, nor have we
been reckless of our duties to our children. It is our memory of
the great and hallowed past, of our sons, of our sacred
obligations to our children which has nerved our arms to this
act, and no sense of ourselves. For years and years, gentlemen,
we have paused, we have hesitated, as I have shown you. We
paused, and paused, as we raised the curtain with our own hands '
and gazed back at that great and hallowed past, that fairest
temple, as we all thought, in which liberty had ever found a
shrine-that which Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Henry,
Madison, the Lees, Masons, the Rutledges and the Pinckneys-that
conclave of demi-gods -had builded up as a tabernacle for us and
our children to dwell in forever, and which they had consecrated
by the blood of our own fathers-that which the Father of his
Country deemed the palladium of human right-that precious
monument and refuge of human hope all over the world. We paused
with reverence and pity as we gazed back on all these scenes; and
yet, gentlemen, with these hands we have dragged them down to the
earth-with these feet we have trampled them out of life-with this
breath we have scattered them on the winds of Heaven: and yet we
do not tremble. We are not appalled as we gaze on our hands,
because those hands are unstained, pure, clear and unterrified as
we raise them in confident appeal to the God of justice and of
Truth. [Applause.] Armed, then, in this panoply, with calm
hearts, with unfaltering step we are ready to drop the curtain
and move onward through the coming scenes of this solemn drama.
Gentlemen of Virginia, I believe that these Southern
States are no noisy faction clamoring for place and power. They
are no hungry rabble ready to answer back in blood to every
appeal to their brutal passions. We are no shouting mob ready to
take for our government some glittering epigram or some fustian
and infidel theory. We are no festering fanatics. With us liberty
is not a painted strumpet, drazzling through the streets, nor
does our truth need to build itself in pools of blood. We are a
calm, grave, deliberate and religious people, the holders of the
most majestic civilization and the inheritors, by right, of the
fairest estate of liberty. Fighting for that liberty, fighting
for our fathers' graves, standing athwart our hearth-stones and
before our chamber doors, for days and weeks the people of our
little State stood alone-that little State around whose outermost
border the guns fired at her capital might almost be heard; whose
little scope of skv was so small that scarce one star had space
to glitter in it. So small, so few, we begun this fight alone
against millions; and had you piled millions upon millions, under
God, in this fight we should have triumphed. [Applause.] But that
God, gentlemen, cares for his people-cares for liberty, and
right, and justice-and we are no longer alone. Very soon our own
children from Florida and Alabama answer back to the maternal
call, and our great sister, Georgia, marshaled forth her giant
offspring; and from the grave of the gallant Quitman, on the
banks of the Mississippi, there came forth his well-known clarion
tones, [applause]; and Louisiana proved her paternity in the
appeal of liberty; and now young Texas has raised her giant form
and marches to the right of this majestic column of confederated
sovereignties. [Applause.] Ah, gentlemen of Virginia, wherever
outside of the borders of Virginia, the voice of a son of
Virginia has spoken in this fight, it too has been known, because
he spoke in the ancient tongue of his mother. [Applause.] 1, one
of the humblest of her sons, told my countrymen, that before the
spring grass grows long enough to weave one chaplet of victory,
they will hear the sound as of the tramp of a mighty host of men,
and they will see floating before that host the banner whose
whole history is one blaze of glory, and not one blot of shame.
[Applause.] Aye, they will hear coming up from that host one
voice like their own, but it will be the resounding echo of that
voice which has thundered into the hearts of your God-like
sires-"give me liberty, or give me death!" [Applause.]
And on that banner will be written the unsullied name of
Virginia. [Applause.]
Gentlemen of Virginia, have I promised too much for
our mother? To suggest a doubt, would be more than blasphemy. I
believe she will come. I believe she will take her place which
she has held for one hundred years-the foremost of all the world
in the ranks of liberty and of justice. [Applause.] The world
knows her history, and knows no history above it in the niche of
fame-and, knowing that history, none dare doubt where Virginia
will be when her own offspring, and liberty and justice, call her
to the fight. [Applause.]
Mr. President, I fear that I am deluded by the scene
and place to go beyond my intention; but yet, with your
permission, and that of the Convention, I shall ask to steal a
few more minutes of your time. I have endeavored thus far,
although perhaps somewhat erratically, to confine myself
specifically to the question in hand of my own mission. And in
connection with that, gentlemen, if you will permit me, I will
take a few moments of your time, and will assume your permission,
while I endeavor to exhibit to the Convention some of the reasons
which the people of my State deemed as fundamental causes why
there can never again be a re-construction of the late Federal
Union. The truth seems evident, gentlemen, to every mind which
dares to speculate advisedly upon the principles of this
revolution through which we are now passing, that these
principles do involve irreconcilable differences between the
systems on which slave and non-slaveholding communities may be
calculated upon as enduring.
Now, we believe that these diversities pertain to
every attribute pervading the whole of these two systems, and we
therefore believe that this revolution, with this separation,
with this disintegration, is not a mere accident; that it is not
the mere casual result of a temporary cause; that it is not a
mere evanescent bubble of popular error or irritation; that it is
not a mere dream of philosophy, and that it is not the
achievement of personal or individual ambition. We believe,
gentlemen, that it has a far profounder cause than all this. We
believe that it is not only a revolution of material necessity,
but that it is a revolution resulting from the profoundest
convictions, ideas, sentiments, and moral and intellectual
necessities of earnest and intelligent men. We believe that it is
not only the never-dying struggle between the freedom of labor
and the despotism of power, but that it is that still sterner
conflict which shivered Greece, and disintegrated the huge and
solid armies of Rome; that conflict which gathers into its
contending armies not only all the necessities, but all the
customs, all the laws, all the intelligence, all the sentiments,
all the passions, which constitute the civilization of man. We
therefore believe, that although you may centralize a coercing
power at the city of Washington, stronger than the Proetorian
band when the eagles of Rome soared from Leuconia to the
Caucasus, you can no more coalesce the people of Virginia and the
people of Vermont, the people of the St. Lawrence and the people
of the Gulf of Mexico, the people of the Rio Grande and the
people of the Hudson, than could Rome make one coalition of the
Gaul, the Briton and the Tonian. No community of laws, no
community of language, of religion, can amalgamate, according to
-our faith, people whose severance is proclaimed by the most
rigid requisitions of universal necessity. African slavery cannot
exist at the North. The South cannot exist without African
slavery. [Applause.] None but an equal race can labor at the
North; none but a subject race will labor at the South.
Now, for these reasons and for others, perhaps, we
believe that the political socialisms of these two systems, of
these two sections, have assumed shapes so diverse, that their
continuity of action is an absolute impossibility. Only to cite
one or two instances, gentlemen, for I am only making these
suggestions for your consideration: At the North, in the free
States, the pure, the simple, the isolated, the exclusive, the
absolute principle upon which all political and social organism
is constructed, is that of a pure Democracy, saving a scarcely
reconcilable modification in the shape of a vague and indefinite
system of representation. There can be no other principle
introduced into the Northern socialisms, save this, in its utmost
and extremest intensity. It is the vitalizing principle; it is
the breath of life to the Northern institution. The almighty
power of numbers, of simple physical numbers, from one to
countless millions, is the sole basis of political and social
agreement in the Northern States. Now, a fearful manifestation
exists at this moment. Here is the Government of the United
States, as we all I-,now, established for the protection of all
parties equally, and yet, by the accession of this number, that
Government has limited a section of the parties territorially.
That Government has unduly taxed a section of the parties. That
Government has threatened with immenent peril, if not with
instant destruction, parts and sections of the parties to it, and
the people and the States North are at this moment consulting
together whether, by the mere power of numbers, they shall not
subjugate parties to this Government. Now, the modification of
this principle at the South is so essential, that it cannot
co-exist with the same principle in its unrestricted form as I
have exhibited at the North. At the South it is modified, it is
controlled, it is made absolutely subject. The recognition of a
specific property is essential to the vitalization of the
political organism. Now, this indicates that the instant you
engraft one of these rules into the forms of the other section,
that instant the section which you have invaded perishes. If you
institute property as an element of Northern political or social
organism, you destroy the whole system which exists at the North.
If you exclude it from the South, you subvert the whole system on
which the Southern civilization exists.
Now, gentlemen, there is another which we regard as of
more weight, more potential, by far, than either territorial or
geographical segregation-that of political and social diversity;
and that comes of the profound sentiment, the moral and religious
sentiment, exhibiting itself in its religious form-that profound
sentiment which pervades the people of both these sections,
having arrayed itself on the sides of these sections. We know-we
cannot conceal it from ourselves at this moment if we dare
contemplate it-that this cause of diversity is at this moment
arraying itself in forms as bloody as it has ever exhibited since
Christ came upon the earth, and its representative, the Church,
has already, and is daily keeping her arm bare for this conflict.
Already her drawn sword is flashing in the twilight of
fanaticism, and the world knows that where that sword cuts
asunder, no human surgery can re-unite the wound. But, gentlemen,
we cannot conceal it from ourselves one moment longer-there is
not a Christian man, a slaveholder, in this assembly who does not
feel in his inmost heart as a Christian, that the point of this
sword of the church is at this moment dripping with the last
blood of sympathy which bound him to his Christian brethren of
the North. They set the lamb of God between our seed and their
seed.
Now, gentlemen, from this and other repellant
diversities, we believe, and have so acted, that the political
union is an unnatural and monstrous one, and, therefore, that its
offspring must be abortive or fruitless, save of that brood of
evils which always come from such unnatural unions. We believe,
gentlemen, that it is a perfectly natural and reasonable
deduction, that from these diversities there have arisen these
differencies of construction of principles and parties of our
political confederation,- which has so early in the period of its
existence, as we are in the habit of terming it, converted a
government of popular consent into a government of force-which
has driven from it seven sovereign States and five millions of
people; which has enabled that government in the face of the
people of Virginia to keep loaded bomb-shells for sixty days
ready to be fired upon the women and children of Charleston, and
which in less than sixty days will have the refuse of New York
and Boston, re-enacting at Portsmouth and Hampton the scenes of
1813. No, gentlemen, where these conventional and natural
diversities are, the conflict is for life, subjugation-and that
conflict is upon you. Now, you are very strong, gentlemen of
Virginia, and you own an empire. You are advanced in the arts of
civilization; you are strong, powerful and skillful, and you may
conjoin remote oceans. You may, by your force and art drag down
your mountain tops, fill up your valleys; you may encircle the
earth with your canals and your iron bands; you may pull down
civil dynasties and religions, and re-build upon their ruins
forms of liberty and faith; but I tell you, there is no human
force, there is no essay of human art, there is no sanctity of
human touch that can re-unite the people of the North and the
people of the South. [Applause.] No, gentlemen, never, never,
until you unfix by your power, your art and your virtue the
unchangeable economy of the Eternal God. When you have done that,
you may make one people of the people of the North and the people
of the South. A profound instinct of these diversities is at this
moment enforcing upon the people of the Southern States the
necessity of this recognition-and they are building up their
institutions at this time. The same profound instinct is
operating upon the people of the Northern States, and they are at
this moment manifesting this by preparation with the aid of
expiring, crumbling powers and the agents of anti-slavery, known
as the army and navy of the United States. With these aids and
weapons in their hands, they are recognizing the absolute
existence of these diversities.
I believe, gentlemen of Virginia, that the question
which you now have to decide is whether you, the representatives
of the sovereignty, the power, the glory, the hope of Virginia,
will be content like a modern Egyptian to skulk for protection
beneath the crumbling fragments of an ancient greatness, and
under the scourge of a haughty but mean task-master, or whether
you will step forth and hush this storm of war and keep the
ancient glory of your name. [Applause.] Gentlemen, the people and
State of South Carolina, in the language of its various compacts
with its confederates, have declared that they have never parted
with their sovereignty or their independence; that they had a
right to exercise that sovereignty and according to their will;
that they did, in connection with their confederates, establish
an agency for the formation of a government; that that government
has failed of its purpose, and, therefore, that they are
justified in abolishing it, and establishing another. She has
therefore, gentlemen, ordained, as I have read to you, and has
maintained that ordinance for a reasonable time, by arms, that
political connection with the Government of the United States is
dissolved. The admitted rule on which she has made this
declaration, I have copied, for the purpose of reading to you:
"That a violation of a perfect right, either
committed or committing, or with which a people is threatened in
the future, justifies the undertaking of war-amicable means
having been tried in vain. When it is evident that it would be
useless to try such means, justice requires a resort to
arms."
Therefore, the people of South Carolina contend that
justice has required of them a resort to arms, in the protection
of a principle of right. She has maintained this position, as I
have indicated to you, a reasonable time. She has maintained it
against falsehood and prejudice; she has maintained it until six
sovereign States have come to her aid, and have formed a
Government which the six have announced to the world by the
eminent and patriotic citizen who has been put in charge of the
Executive department of that Government. She has maintained this
position '[the State of South Carolina], until this government
has been formed, in which there can be no cause for doubt, that
the courage and patriotism of the people of the confederate
States will be found equal to any measures of defence which our
honor and security may require. Farther obstacles may retard the
progress of that government, but they cannot long prevent the
progress of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by
a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our
fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the
principles which, by his blessing, they were able to vindicate,
establish and transmit to posterity; and with that continuance of
his favor ever gratefully acknowledged, we will hopefully look
forward to success, peace and prosperity
Now, gentlemen of Virginia, believing the interests
involved and the rights violated to be identical with the
interests and the rights of Virginia, and remembering their
ancient motto and their common glory, the people of South
Carolina have ordered me to ask and urge that the people of
Virginia will unite with her and her confederates in the
protection of those rights and those interests.
I have now performed this, my mission, and have only,
in the name of my government, to return to this Convention my
earnest acknowledgement of the honorable courtesy with which it
has accepted my mission. On my own behalf, gentlemen, accept my
sincere and honest thanks, I should say my deprecating thanks,
for the kindness, courtesy and patience with which you have
listened to the delivery of this mission. [Long and continued
applause.]
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