Читать книгу The Life of Jefferson Davis - Alfriend Frank Heath - Страница 8

RETURN OF MR. DAVIS TO THE SENATE – OPENING EVENTS OF MR. BUCHANAN’S ADMINISTRATION – TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE LEGISLATION OF 1854 – SENATOR DOUGLAS THE INSTRUMENT OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY – HIS ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTER – AN ACCOMPLISHED DEMAGOGUE – DAVIS AND DOUGLAS CONTRASTED – BOTH REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE SECTIONS – DOUGLAS AMBITION – HIS COUP D’ETAT, AND ITS RESULTS – THE KANSAS QUESTION – DOUGLAS’ TRIUMPHS OVER THE SOUTH AND THE UNITY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOST – “SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY” – PROPERLY CHARACTERIZED – DAVIS’ COURSE IN THE KANSAS STRUGGLE – DEBATE WITH SENATOR FESSENDEN – PEN-AND-INK SKETCH OF MR. DAVIS AT THIS PERIOD – TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLITICAL EVENTS TO THE SOUTH – SHE RIGHTLY INTERPRETS THEM – MR. DAVIS’ COURSE SUBSEQUENT TO THE KANSAS IMBROGLIO – HIS DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS – TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING – DAVIS THE LEADER OF THE REGULAR DEMOCRACY IN THE THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS – HIS RESOLUTIONS – HIS CONSISTENCY – COURSE AS TO GENERAL LEGISLATION – VISITS THE NORTH – SPEAKS IN PORTLAND, BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND OTHER PLACES – REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO ATTEND THE WEBSTER BIRTH-DAY FESTIVAL – MR. SEWARD’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT” – MR. DAVIS BEFORE MISSISSIPPI DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION – PROGRESS OF DISUNION – DISSOLUTION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY – SPEECHES OF MR. DAVIS AT PORTLAND AND IN SENATE

Mr. Davis returned to the Senate at a period marked by agitation, no less menacing to the Union than that which had so seriously threatened it in 1850. His health at this time was exceedingly infirm, and for several months he was so much prostrated by his protracted sufferings, that a proper regard for the suggestions of prudence would have justified his entire abstinence from the labors and excitements of this stormy period. Again and again, however, did his heroic devotion carry him from his sick bed to the capitol, to engage in the death-struggle of the South, with her leagued enemies, for safety in the Union, which she was still loath to abandon, even under the pressure of intolerable wrong. Frequently, with attenuated frame and bandaged eyes, he was to be seen in the Senate, at moments critical in the fierce sectional conflict; and at the final struggle upon the Kansas question, not even the earnest admonitions of his physician, that to leave his chamber would probably be followed by the most dangerous results, were availing to induce his absence from the scene.

The opening events of the first session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, (the first incidental to the administration of Mr. Buchanan,) were far from being auspicious of the continued unity of the Democratic party, which, for several years past, the intelligence of the country had correctly appreciated as an essential condition to the preservation of the Union.

Mainly through the undivided support given him by the South, Mr. Buchanan was elected upon the Cincinnati platform of 1856, which was a re-affirmation of the cardinal tenets of the Democratic faith, involving also emphatic approval of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation two years previous. Not until months after his inauguration were there any indications of hostility to his administration within the ranks of his own party. Nor had there been any avowed difference of construction as to the end and effect of the legislation of 1854. The rare unanimity with which the South had been rallied to the support of the Democracy was based upon the unreserved admission, by all parties, that the Kansas-Nebraska act was designedly friendly in its spirit, at all events, to Southern interests. No Southern statesman, for a moment, dreamed that it was capable of an interpretation unfriendly to his section. That the plain purpose of the bill was to remove the subject of slavery outside the bounds of congressional discussion, and to place it in the disposition of the States separately, and in the Territories, when organizing for admission as States, was regarded by the South as the leading vital principle which challenged her enthusiastic support. Such, indeed, was the doctrine asserted by the entire Democratic party of the South, enunciated by the administration, and tacitly approved by the Northern Democracy. Very soon, however, after the meeting of Congress, the action of Senator Douglas revealed him as the instrument of disorganization in his party. To a proper understanding of his motives and conduct at this conjuncture, a brief statement of his antecedents is essential.

Stephen A. Douglas was now in the meridian of life and the full maturity of his unquestionably vigorous intellectual powers. For twenty-five years he had been prominent in the arena of politics, and as a member of Congress his course had been so eminently politic and judicious as to make him a favorite with the Democracy, both North and South. To an unexampled degree his public life illustrated the combination of those characteristics of the demagogue, a fertile ingenuity, facile accommodation to circumstances, and wonderful gifts of the ad captandum species of oratory, so captivating to the populace, which in America peculiarly constitute the attributes of the “rising man.” Douglas was not wanting in noble and attractive qualities of manhood. His courage was undoubted, his generosity was princely in its munificence to his personal friends, and he frequently manifested a lofty magnanimity. In his early youth, deprived of the advantages of fortune and position, the discipline of his career was not propitious to the development of the higher qualities of statesmanship – with which, indeed, he was scantily endowed by nature. It is as the accomplished politician, subtle, ready, fearless, and indefatigable, that he must be remembered. In this latter character he was unrivaled.

Not less than Davis was Douglas a representative man, yet no two men were more essentially dissimilar, and no two lives ever actuated by aspirations and instincts more unlike. Douglas was the representative of expediency – Davis the exponent of principles. In his party associations Douglas would tolerate the largest latitude of individual opinion, while Davis was always for a policy clearly defined and unmistakable; and upon a matter of vital principle, like Percy, would reluctantly surrender even the “ninth part of a hair.” To maintain the united action of the Democratic party on election day, to defeat its opponents, to secure the rewards of success, Douglas would allow a thousand different constructions of the party creed by as many factions. Davis, on the other hand, would, and eventually did, approve the dissolution of the party, when it refused an open, manly enunciation of its faith. For mere party success Douglas cared every thing, and Davis nothing, save as it ensured the triumph of Constitutional principles. Both loved the Union and sought its perpetuity, but by different methods; Douglas by never-ending compromises of a quarrel, which he should have known that the North would never permit to be amicably settled; by staving off and ignoring issues which were to be solved only by being squarely met. Davis, too, was not unwilling to compromise, but he wearied of perpetual concession by the South, in the meanwhile the North continuing its hostility, both open and insidious, and urged a settlement of all differences upon a basis of simple and exact justice to both sections.

Douglas was preëminently the representative politician of his section, and throughout his career was a favorite with that boastful, bloated, and mongrel element, which is violently called the “American people,” and which is the ruling element in elections in the Northern cities. In character and conduct he embodied many of its materialistic and socialistic ideas, its false conception of liberty, its pernicious dogmas of equality, and not a little of its rowdyism.

Davis was the champion of the South, her civilization, lights, honor, and dignity. He was the fitting and adequate exponent of a civilization which rested upon an intellectual and æsthetical development, upon lofty and generous sentiments of manhood, a dignified conservatism, and the proud associations of ancestral distinction in the history of the Union. Always the Senator in the sense of the ideal of dignity and courtesy which is suggested by that title, he was also the gentleman upon all occasions; never condescending to flatter or soothe the mob, or to court popular favor, he lost none of that polished and distinguished manner, in the presence of a “fierce Democracie,” which made him the ornament of the highest school of oratory and statesmanship of his country.

The ambition of Douglas was unbounded. The recognized leader, for several years, of the Northern Democracy, his many fine personal qualities and courageous resistance of the ultra Abolitionists secured for him a considerable number of supporters in the Southern wing of that party. The Presidency was the goal of his ambition, and for twenty years his course had been sedulously adjusted to the attainment of that most coveted of prizes to the American politician. On repeated occasions he had been flattered by a highly complimentary vote in the nominating conventions of the Democracy. Hitherto he had been compelled to yield his pretensions in favor of older members of his party or upon considerations of temporary availability. It was evident, however, that in order to be President, he must secure the nomination in 1860. The continued ascendancy of the Democracy was no longer, as heretofore, a foregone conclusion, and, besides, there were others equally aspiring and available. His Presidential aspirations appeared, indeed, to be without hope or resource, save through the agency of some adroit coup d’etat, by which the truculent and dominant free-soil sentiment of the North, which he had so much affronted by his bid for Southern support in the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, could be conciliated. In Illinois, his own State, the Abolition strength was alarmingly on the increase, and to secure his return to the Senate at the election to be held in 1858, an object of prime importance in the promotion of his more ambitious pretensions, he did not scruple to assume a position, falsifying his previous record, wantonly insulting and defiant to his Southern associates, and in bold antagonism to a Democratic administration. The sequel of this rash and ill-judged course was the overthrow of his own political fortunes, the disintegration of his party, and the attempted dissolution of the Union.

The earliest recommendations of Mr. Buchanan, respecting the Kansas controversy, which, several months since, had developed in that Territory into a species of predatory warfare, marked by deeds of violence and atrocity, between the Abolition and Pro-slavery parties, were signalized by a coalition of the followers of Douglas with the Abolitionists and other opponents of the administration. The speedy pacification of the disorders in Kansas, by the prompt admission of that Territory, was the condition essential to the success of Mr. Buchanan’s entire policy. He accordingly recommended the admission of Kansas into the Union, with the “Lecompton” constitution, which had been adopted in September, 1857, by the decisive vote of six thousand two hundred and twenty-six in favor of that constitution, with slavery, and five hundred and nine for it, without slavery. A rival instrument, adopted by an election notoriously held exclusively under the control of Abolitionists, prohibiting slavery, was likewise presented.

For months the controversy was waged in Congress between the friends of the administration and its enemies, and finally resulted in a practical triumph of the Free-soil principle. The Anti-Lecompton coalition of Douglas and the Abolitionists, aided by the defection of a few Southern members, successfully embarrassed the policy of the administration by defeating its recommendations, and eventually carried a measure acceptable to Northern sentiments and interests.

Mr. Douglas thus triumphed over a Democratic administration, at the same time giving a shock to the unity of the Democratic party, from which it has never recovered, and effectually neutralized its power as a breakwater of the Union against the waves of sectional dispute. The alienation between himself and his former associates was destined never to be adjusted, as indeed it never should have been, in consideration of his inexcusable recreancy to the immemorial faith of his party. Mr. Douglas simply abandoned the South, at the very first moment when his aid was seriously demanded. Nay, more; he carried with him a quiver of Parthian arrows, which he discharged into her bosom at a most critical moment in her unequal contest.

It is not to be denied that Mr. Douglas’ new interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska act was urged by himself and his advocates as having a merit not to be overlooked by the North, in its suggestion of a method of restricting slavery, presenting superior advantages. “Squatter sovereignty,” as advocated by Mr. Douglas, proposing the decision of the slavery question by the people of the Territories, while yet unprepared to ask admission as States, was far more effectual in its plans against slavery, and only less prompt and open, than the designs of the Abolitionists. It would enable the “Emigrant Aid Societies,” and imported janizaries of Abolition to exclude the institutions of the South from the Territories, the joint possessions of the two sections, acquired by an enormously disproportionate sacrifice on the part of the South, with a certainty not to be realized, for years to come, perhaps, from the Abolition policy of congressional prohibition.12 According to Mr. Douglas’ theory, the existence of slavery in all the Territories was to depend upon the verdict of a few hundred settlers or “squatters” upon the public lands. It practically conceded to Northern interests and ideas every State to be hereafter admitted, and under the operation of such a policy it was not difficult to anticipate the fate of slavery, at last even in the States.

From the inception of this controversy until its close Mr. Davis was fully committed to the policy of Mr. Buchanan, and his position was in perfect harmony with that of all the leading statesmen of the South. Less prominent, perhaps, in debate, from his constant ill-health during the first session, than at any other period of his public life, he was still zealous and influential.

An interesting incident of the session was a discussion between Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, a Senator second only to Mr. Seward among Abolition leaders, in point of intellect, and behind none in his truculent animosity to Southern institutions. Reviewing the message of Mr. Buchanan with great severity, Fessenden took occasion to discuss elaborately the slavery question, with all its incidental issues. Mr. Davis replied, not at great length, but with much force and spirit. The discussion terminated with the following colloquy, which is interesting chiefly in its personal allusions:

“Mr. Fessenden. … Sir, I have avowed no disunion sentiments on this floor – neither here nor elsewhere. Can the honorable gentleman from Mississippi say as much?

“Mr. Davis. Yes.

“Mr. Fessenden. I am glad to hear it, then.

“Mr. Davis. Yes. I have long sought for a respectable man who would allege the contrary.

“Mr. Fessenden. I make no allegation. I asked if he could say as much. I am glad to hear him say so, because I must say to him that the newspapers have represented him as making a speech in Mississippi, in which he said he came into General Pierce’s cabinet a disunion man. If he never made it, very well.

“Mr. Davis. I will thank you to produce that newspaper.

“Mr. Fessenden. I can not produce it, but I can produce an extract from it in another paper.

“Mr. Davis. An extract! then that falsifies the text.

“Mr. Fessenden. I am very glad to hear the Senator say so. I made no accusation – I put the question to him. If he denies it, very well. I only say that, with all the force and energy with which he denies it, so do I. The accusation never has been made against me before. On what ground does the Senator now put it?..

“Mr. Davis. Does the Senator ask me for an answer?

“Mr. Fessenden. Certainly, if the Senator feels disposed to give one.

“Mr. Davis. If you ask me for an answer, it is easy. I said your position was fruitful of such a result. I did not say you avowed the object – nothing of the sort, but the reverse…

“Mr. Fessenden. That is a matter of opinion, on which I have a right to entertain my view as well as the Senator his…

“Mr. Davis. Mr. President, I rise principally for the purpose of saying that I do not know whence springs this habit of talking about intimidation. I am not the first person toward whom a reply has been made, that we are not to carry our ends by intimidation. I try to intimidate nobody; I threaten nobody; and I do not believe – let me say it once for all – that any body is afraid of me – and I do not want any body to be afraid of me.

“Mr. Fessenden. I am. [Laughter.]

“Mr. Davis. I am sorry to hear it; and if the Senator is really so, I shall never speak to him in decided terms again.

“Mr. Fessenden. I speak of it only in an intellectual point of view. [Laughter.]

“Mr. Davis. Then, sir, the Senator was in a Pickwickian sense when he began; there were no threats, no intimidations, and he is just where he would have been if he had said nothing.” [Laughter.]…

While the Kansas question was pending in Congress, a sketch of Mr. Davis, in connection with two other prominent Southern Senators, which appeared in the correspondence of a leading journal, was extensively copied in the newspapers of the day. We extract that portion which relates specially to Mr. Davis. The portrait is from the pen of one who had no sympathy with his political views:

DAVIS, HUNTER, AND TOOMBS, THE SOUTHERN TRIUMVIRATE

[Correspondence of the Missouri Democrat.]

“Washington City, January 21.

“Yesterday, when Hale was speaking, the right side of the chamber was empty, (as it generally is during the delivery of an antislavery speech,) with the exception of a group of three who sat near the centre of the vacant space. This remarkable group, which wore the air if not the ensigns of power, authority, and public care, was composed of Senators Davis, Hunter, and Toombs. They were engaged in an earnest colloquy, which, however, was foreign to the argument Hale was elaborating; for though the connection of their words was broken before it reached the gallery, their voices were distinctly audible, and gave signs of their abstraction. They were thinking aloud. If they had met together, under the supervision of some artist gifted with the faculty of illustrating history and character by attitude and expression, who designed to paint them, in fresco, on the walls of the new Senate chamber, the combination could not have been more appropriately arranged than chance arranged it on this occasion. Toombs sits among the opposition on the left, Hunter and Davis on the right; and the fact that the two first came to Davis’ seat – the one gravitating to it from a remote, the other from a near point – may be held to indicate which of the three is the preponderating body in the system, if preponderance there be; and whose figure should occupy the foreground of the picture if any precedence is to be accorded. Davis sat erect and composed; Hunter, listening, rested his head on his hand; and Toombs, inclining forward, was speaking vehemently. Their respective attitudes were no bad illustration of their individuality. Davis impressed the spectator, who observed the easy but authoritative bearing with which he put aside or assented to Toomb’s suggestions, with the notion of some slight superiority, some hardly-acknowledged leadership; and Hunter’s attentiveness and impassibility were characteristic of his nature, for his profundity of intellect wears the guise of stolidity, and his continuous industry that of inertia; while Toomb’s quick utterance and restless head bespoke his nervous temperament and activity of mind. But, though each is different from either of the others, the three have several attributes in common. They are equally eminent as statesmen and debaters; they are devoted to the same cause; they are equals in rank, and rivals in ambition; and they are about the same age, and none of them – let young America take notice – wears either beard or mustache. I come again to the traits which distinguish them from each other. In face and form, Davis represents the Norman type with singular fidelity, if my conception of that type be correct. He is tall and sinewy, with fair hair, gray eyes, which are clear rather than bright, high forehead, straight nose, thin, compressed lips, and pointed chin. His cheek bones are hollow, and the vicinity of his mouth is deeply furrowed with intersecting lines. Leanness of face, length and sharpness of feature, and length of limb, and intensity of expression, rendered acute by angular, facial outline, are the general characteristics of his appearance.”

The controversy, excited by the question of the admission of Kansas, can not be viewed as having terminated with the mere practical decision of her status, as a State tolerating or prohibiting slavery. Southern men had freely admitted the improbability of the permanent abiding of the institution in that Territory, or elsewhere, north of the line of 36° 30', and their defeat had a far more alarming significance than the exclusion of slavery from soil where the laws of nature opposed its location. Important conclusions were deducible from the lesson of Kansas, which the South must have been smitten with voluntary blindness not to have accepted. Of the purpose of the Republican party, never to consent to the admission of additional slave States, there was added to constantly accumulating proof from other sources, the bold declarations of Abolition members of Congress. Recent experience clearly demonstrated that the South could no longer rely upon the Northern Democracy in support of the plainest guarantees of the Constitution, for the protection of her property, when they were in conflict with the dominant fanaticism of that section. Accordingly, the Southern Democracy, wisely and bravely resolved, and the unfortunate issue should not prejudge their action, to require of their Northern associates, as the condition of continued coöperation, a pledge of better faith in the future.

It was in the progress of events, which may be justly called the sequel of the Kansas controversy, that Mr. Davis was most conspicuous during his second service in the Senate. His course was such as might have been anticipated from his zealous and vigilant regard for constitutional principles, and the rights and interests of his section. His feeble health had prevented his frequent participation in the struggles incidental to the Kansas question, but in those subsequent struggles, which marked the dissolution of the Democratic party, he was the constant, bold, and able adversary of Douglas. The ingenious sophistries of the latter were subjected to no more searching and scathing refutations than those with which Davis met his every attempt at their illustration.

At this period the position of Mr. Davis was no less prominent than in 1850, though his speeches were less frequent and voluminous. Upon both occasions his elevation was an ample reward to honorable ambition, but would have been perilous in the extreme had he been deficient in those great and rare qualities which were necessary to its maintenance. Among his numerous contests with the distinguished exponents of the sentiment in opposition to the South, none are more memorable than his collisions with Douglas.

Of these the most striking occurred on the 23d of February, 1859, and on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860. To have matched Douglas with an ordinary contestant, must always have resulted in disaster; it would have been to renew the contest of Athelstane against Ivanhoe. Douglas was accustomed to testify, cheerfully, to the power of Davis, as evinced in their senatorial struggles; and it is very certain that at no other hands did he fare so badly, unless an exception be made in favor of the remarkable speech of Senator Benjamin, of Louisiana. The latter was an adept in the strategy of debate, a parliamentary Suchet.

The 23d of February, 1859, was the occasion of a protracted battle between Davis and Douglas, lasting from midday until nearly night. This speech of Mr. Davis is, in many respects, inferior to his higher oratorical efforts, realizing less of the forms of oratory which he usually illustrated so happily, and is wanting somewhat in that symmetry, harmony, and comeliness in all its features, with which his senatorial efforts are generally wrought to the perfection of expression. The circumstances under which it was delivered, however, fully meet this criticism, and show a most remarkable readiness for the instantaneous and hurried grapple of debate, and this latter quality was the strong point of Douglas’ oratory. The latter had replied at great length, and with evident preparation, to a speech made by Mr. Davis’ colleague (Mr. Brown), who was not present during Douglas’ rejoinder. Without hesitation Mr. Davis assumed the place of his absent colleague, and the result was a running debate, lasting several hours, and exhibiting on both sides all the vivacious readiness of a gladiatorial combat.

In their ordinary and characteristic speeches there was an antithesis, no less marked than in their characters as men. Douglas was peculiarly American in his style of speaking. He dealt largely in the argumentum ad hominem; was very adroit in pointing out immaterial inconsistencies in his antagonists; he rarely discussed general principles; always avoided questions of abstract political science, and struggled to force the entire question into juxtaposition with the practical considerations of the immediate present.

In nearly all of Davis’ speeches is recognized the pervasion of intellect, which is preserved even in his most impassioned passages. He goes to the very “foundations of jurisprudence,” illustrates by historical example, and throws upon his subject the full radiance of that noble light which is shed by diligent inquiry into the abstract truths of political and moral science. Strength, animation, energy without vehemence, classical elegance, and a luminous simplicity, are features in Mr. Davis’ oratory which rendered him one of the most finished, logical, and effective of contemporary parliamentary speakers.

During the Thirty-sixth Congress, which assembled in December, 1859, Mr. Davis was the recognized leader of the Democratic majority of the Senate. His efforts, during this session, were probably the ablest of his life, and never did his great powers of analysis and generalization appear to greater advantage. On the second of February, 1860, Mr. Davis presented a series of seven resolves, which embodied the views of the administration, of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic members of the Senate, and of the Southern Democracy, and were opposed by Mr. Douglas (though absent from the Senate by sickness), Mr. Pugh, and by the Abolition Senators. They are important as the substantial expression of the doctrines upon which the Southern Democracy were already prepared to insist at the approaching National Convention.

The first resolution affirms the sovereignty of the States and their delegation of authority to the Federal Government, to secure each State against domestic no less than foreign dangers. This resolution was designed with special reference to the recent outrages of John Brown and his associate conspirators, several of whom had expiated their crimes upon the gallows, at the hands of the authorities of Virginia.

Resolution second affirms the recognition of slavery as property by the Constitution, and that all efforts to injure it by citizens of non-slaveholding States are violations of faith.

Third insists upon the absolute equality of the States.

The fourth resolution of the series, which embodied the material point of difference between Mr. Douglas and the majority of Democratic Senators, was modified, as stated by Mr. Davis, “after conference with friends,” and finally made to read thus:

“Resolved, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation, or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition remains.”

Fifth declares it the duty of Congress to supply any needed protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, provided the executive and judicial authority has not the adequate means.

The sixth resolution was an emphatic repudiation of what Mr. Douglas, by an ingenious perversion of terms, and a bold array of sophisms, was pleased to designate “popular sovereignty” – reading thus:

“Resolved, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within their jurisdiction; and ‘they shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.’”

The seventh and last of the series affirmed the validity and sanctity of the Fugitive Slave Law, and denounced all acts, whether of individuals or of State Legislatures, to defeat its action.

The struggle upon these resolutions lasted more than three months, the Senate not reaching a vote upon the first of the series until May 24, 1860. They constituted substantially the platform presented by the South at the Charleston Democratic Convention, in April, and upon which, after the withdrawal of the Southern delegations, the Presidential ticket of Breckinridge and Lane was nominated, and supported in the ensuing canvass, receiving the electoral votes of eleven States of the South.

It was alleged against these resolutions, and the general principle of protection to Southern property in the Territories, which their advocates demanded should be asserted in the Democratic creed, that they involved a new issue, raised for factious purposes, and were not sanctioned by any previous action of the party. This, even if it had been true, which assuredly it was not, constituted no sufficient reason for denying a plain constitutional right.

But, however sustained might have been this charge of inconsistency against other Southern leaders, it had no application to Davis. Indeed, Douglas unequivocally admitted that the position assumed by Davis in 1860 was precisely that to which he had held for twenty years previous. While the Oregon Bill was pending in the Senate, on the 23d of June, 1848, Mr. Davis offered this amendment:

“Provided, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed as to authorize the prohibition of domestic slavery in said Territory whilst it remains in the condition of a Territory of the United States.”

Eleven years afterwards, in his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, July 5, 1859, he said:

“But if the rules of proceeding remain unchanged, then all the remedies of the civil law would be available for the protection of property in slaves; or if the language of the organic act, by specifying chancery and common-law jurisdiction, denies to us the more ample remedies of the civil law, then those known to the common law are certainly in force; and these, I have been assured by the highest authority, will be found sufficient. If this be so, then we are content; if it should prove otherwise, then we but ask what justice can not deny – the legislation needful to enable the General Government to perform its legitimate functions; and, in the meantime, we deny the power of Congress to abridge or to destroy our constitutional rights, or of the Territorial Legislature to obstruct the remedies known to the common law of the United States.”

In 1848 he advocated General Cass’ election in spite of the Nicholson letter, and not because he either approved or failed to detect the dangerous heresies which it contained. As a choice of evils, he preferred Cass, even upon the Nicholson letter, to General Taylor, his father-in-law, both because Cass was the choice of his own party, and he distrusted the influences which he foresaw would govern the administration of Taylor.

The attention of Mr. Davis was far from being confined to the slavery question and the issues which grew out of it during the important period which we have sketched. His extensive acquaintance with the practical labors of legislation, and his uniformly thorough information upon all questions of domestic economy, foreign affairs, the finances, and the army, were amply exemplified, to the great benefit of the country.

During the debate in the Thirty-fifth Congress, on the bill proposing the issue of $20,000,000 of Treasury notes, which he opposed, he avowed himself in favor of the abolition of custom-houses, and the disbanding of the army of retainers employed to collect the import duties. Free trade was always an important article of his political creed. He valued its fraternizing effects upon mankind, its advantages to the laboring classes; and held that, under a system of free trade, the Government would not be defrauded. He traced the financial distress of the country, in the “crisis” of 1857, to its commercial dependence on New York, whose embarrassments must, so long as that dependence continued, always afflict the country at large. The army, as on previous occasions, received a large share of his attention, and he advocated its increase on a plan similar to that of Mr. Calhoun, when Secretary of War under President Monroe, providing a skeleton organization in peace, capable of expansion in the event of war. The fishing bounties he opposed, as being obnoxious to the objections urged against class legislation.

In the summer of 1858, during the recess of Congress, Mr. Davis visited the North, with a view to the recuperation of his health. Sailing from Baltimore to Boston, he traversed a considerable portion of New England, and sojourned for some time in Portland, Maine. His health was materially benefited by the bracing salubrity of that delightful locality, and, both here and at other points, he was received with demonstrations of profound respect. Upon several occasions he was persuaded to deliver public addresses, which were largely read and criticized. They were every-where commended for their admirable catholicity of sentiment, and not less for their bold assertions of principles than for their emphatic avowals of attachment to the union of the States. His speech at Portland, Maine,13 was especially admired for its statesman-like dignity, and was singularly free from partisan or sectional temper. In his journey through the States of Massachusetts and New York, he was tendered distinguished honors, and addressed the people of the leading cities. On the 10th of October, he spoke in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and, on the 19th, he addressed an immense Democratic ratification meeting in New York.

The following is an extract from his address upon the latter occasion:

“To each community belongs the right to decide for itself what institutions it will have – to each people sovereign in their own sphere. It belongs only to them to decide what shall be property. You have decided it for yourselves, Mississippi has done so. Who has the right to gainsay it? [Applause.] It was the assertion of the right of independence – of that very right which led your fathers into the war of the Revolution. [Applause.] It is that which constitutes the doctrine of State Rights, on which it is my pleasure to stand. Congress has no power to determine what shall be property anywhere. Congress has only such grants as are contained in the Constitution; and it conferred no power to rule with despotic hands over the independence of the Territories.”

The second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress was comparatively uneventful. Mr. Davis was an influential advocate of the Pacific Railroad by the Southern route. His most elaborate effort during this session was his argument against the French Spoliation Bill – denying that the failure of the Government, in its earlier history, to prosecute the just claims of American citizens on the Government of France, made it incumbent upon the present generation to satisfy the obligations of justice incurred in the past.

In reply to an invitation to attend the Webster Birthday Festival, held in Boston, in January, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote as follows:

“At a time when partisans avow the purpose to obliterate the landmarks of our fathers, and fanaticism assails the barriers they erected for the protection of rights coeval with and essential to the existence of the Union – when Federal offices have been sought by inciting constituencies to hostile aggressions, and exercised, not as a trust for the common welfare, but as the means of disturbing domestic tranquillity – when oaths to support the Constitution have been taken with a mental reservation to disregard its spirit, and subvert the purposes for which it was established – surely it becomes all who are faithful to the compact of our Union, and who are resolved to maintain and preserve it, to compare differences on questions of mere expediency, and, forming deep around the institutions we inherited, stand united to uphold, with unfaltering intent, a banner on which is inscribed the Constitutional Union of free, equal, and independent States.

“May the vows of ‘love and allegiance,’ which you propose to renew as a fitting tribute to the memory of the illustrious statesman whose birth you commemorate, find an echo in the heart of every patriot in our land, and tend to the revival of that fraternity which bore our fathers through the Revolution to the consummation of the independence they transmitted to us, and the establishment of the more perfect Union which their wisdom devised to bless their posterity for ever!

“Though deprived of the pleasure of mingling my affectionate memories and aspirations with yours, I send you my cordial greeting to the friends of the Constitution, and ask to be enrolled among those whose mission is, by fraternity and good faith to every constitutional obligation, to insure that, from the Aroostook to San Diego, from Key West to Puget’s Sound, the grand arch of our political temple shall stand unshaken.”

In the meantime a variety of events measurably added to the vehemence of the sectional dispute, which never, for a moment, had exhibited any abatement since the opening of the Kansas imbroglio. The antagonism between the two sections, becoming more and more pronounced each day, rapidly developed the true character of the struggle, as one for existence on the part of the South, against the revolutionary designs of the North. Mr. Seward, the Ajax of Black Republicanism, the founder and leader of the party organized for the destruction of Southern institutions, in the fall of 1858, at the city of Rochester, for the first time proclaimed his revolutionary doctrine of an “irrepressible conflict” between the civilizations of the two sections. This announcement, from such a source, could only be accepted by the South as a menace to her peace and security. Such was her construction of it.

In his address before the Mississippi Democratic Convention, in July, 1859, from which we have already quoted, Mr. Davis said:

“We have witnessed the organization of a party seeking the possession of the Government, not for the common good, not for their own particular benefit, but as the means of executing a hostile purpose against a portion of the States.”

Approaching more directly the doctrine of Mr. Seward, he said:

“The success of such a party would indeed produce an ‘irrepressible conflict.’ To you would be presented the question, Will you allow the Constitutional Union to be changed into the despotism of a majority? Will you become the subjects of a hostile Government? or will you, outside of the Union, assert the equality, the liberty and sovereignty to which you were born? For myself I say, as I said on a former occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the platform of Mr. Seward’s Rochester speech, let the Union be dissolved. Let the ‘great, but not the greatest, evil’ come; for, as did the great and good Calhoun, from whom is drawn that expression of value, I love and venerate the Union of these States, but I love liberty and Mississippi more.”

When Congress assembled, in December, 1859, the lawless expedition of John Brown had greatly accelerated the inevitable climax of disunion. Thenceforward the incipient revolution was, to a great extent, transferred from the hands of Congress, whose action was but lightly regarded in comparison with the animated scenes which marked the State conventions and popular assemblages, held with reference to the approaching presidential nominations.

Mr. Davis approved the test made at the Charleston Convention, by the Southern Democracy, as to the construction of the Cincinnati platform, and the demand for a more explicit announcement of the position of the party concerning slavery in the Territories. His speech, in reply to Judge Douglas, on the 16th and 17th of May, 1860, is a vindication of Southern action at Charleston, and an exhaustive discussion of all the phases of the issue upon which the Democracy had divided.

Events soon demonstrated the irreconcilable nature of the antagonism which had severed this giant organization. It had simply realized the destiny of political parties. In one generation they rise, as a virtue and a necessity, to remedy disorders and reform abuses; in another generation, they are themselves the apologists of corruption and the perpetrators of wrong. The Democratic party became insensible to the appeals of principle, and its fifty years’ lease of power terminated, not speedily to be recovered.

HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS AT PORTLAND, MAINE

[From the Eastern Argus.]

We are gratified in being able to offer our readers a faithful and quite full report of the speech of Hon. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, on the occasion of the serenade given him by the citizens of Portland, without distinction of party, on Friday evening last. It will be read with interest and pleasure, and we can not doubt that every sentiment, uttered by the distinguished Mississippian, will find a hearty response and approval from the citizens of Maine. The occasion was indeed a pleasing, a hopeful one. It was in every respect the expression of generous sentiments, of kindness, hospitality, friendly regard, and the brotherhood of American citizenship. Prominent men of all parties were present, and the expression, without exception, so far as we have heard, has been that of unmingled gratification; and the scene was equally pleasant to look upon. The beautiful mansion of Rensallaer Cram, Esq., directly opposite to Madame Blanchard’s, was illuminated, and the light thrown from the windows of the two houses revealed to view the large and perfectly orderly assemblage with which Park and Danforth Streets were crowded. We regret that our readers can get no idea of the musical voice and inspiring eloquence of the speaker from a report of his remarks; but it is the best we can do for them. After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and as soon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided, he spoke in substance as follows:

Fellow-citizens: Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of your kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not the less gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an expression of regard to her sister, Mississippi. It is, moreover, with feelings of profound gratification that I witness this indication of that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one people. At a period but as yesterday, when compared with the life of nations, these States were separate, and, in some respects, opposing colonies, their only relation to each other was that of a common allegiance to the Government of Great Britain. So separate, indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when General Stark, of Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the headwaters of the Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albany, where they went to sell furs, and again led away a captive, without interference on the part of the inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain his release. United as we now are, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world, whether on land or sea, the people of each and every State of the Union, with one heart and with one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother’s blood cried to us from the ground. Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the justice with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation, and blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that, shoulder to shoulder, they entered on the trial of the Revolution, and step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence, and founded the constitutional representative liberty which is our birthright.

When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, in disregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers did not stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whether the pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in it the infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, in defense of which they made common cause – Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost in the struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorable grave. Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, dignified by its noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared to each other by its glorious memories, they abandoned the Confederacy, not to fly apart when the outward pressure of hostile fleets and armies were removed, but to draw closer their embrace in the formation of a more perfect Union.

By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our Constitution was framed. It stands a monument of principle, of forecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made each willing to sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice, or temporary good to the general welfare and the perpetuity of the republican institutions which they had passed through fire and blood to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for the functions of the general agent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing him who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domestic government – requisite in the social organization of each community – was retained by the States and the people thereof; and these it was made the duty of all to defend and maintain. Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart responds; and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed. It but requires that each should attend to that which most concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to act; that each should adhere to the terms of a written compact, and that all should coöperate for that which interest, duty, and honor demand.

For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we have a national Executive and a national Legislature. Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people. He who, holding either seat, would confine his investigations to the mere interests of his immediate constituents, would be derelict to his plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section, would be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depository, if not a treacherous guardian, of the inheritance with which we are blessed. No one more than myself recognizes the binding force of the allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a party to our compact, a member of the Union, fealty to the Federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the allegiance due to one of the United States. Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at Boston, nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their several States by their campaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her fame free from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations and to fulfill her duties to her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by the names and deeds of those who have well understood and discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated that we can no longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was formed lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact that the industry and persevering intelligence of the North has placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world – that our mother country, whose haughty Minister, some eighty odd years ago, declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was brought, some four years ago, to recognize our preëminence by sending a commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, and caused the name and character of the United States to be known and respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce and intelligence to honor merit? So long as we preserve and appreciate the achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of Hamilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole country, and lived for mankind, we can not sink to the petty strife which would sap the foundations and destroy the political fabric our fathers erected and bequeathed as an inheritance to our posterity forever.

Since the formation of the Constitution a vast extension of territory, and the varied relations arising therefrom, have presented problems which could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration, even wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law should have been so fully adequate to all the wants of government, new in its organization, and new in many of the principles on which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as to the consequences of territorial expansion must give way before the evidence which the past affords. The General Government, strictly confined to its delegated functions, and the State left in the undisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice which fits our Government for immeasurable domain, and might, under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind.

From the slope of the Atlantic our population, with ceaseless tide, has poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific; from the West and the East the tides are rushing toward each other, and the mind is carried to the day when all the cultivable land will be inhabited, and the American people will sigh for more wildernesses to conquer. But there is here a physico-political problem presented for our solution. Were it purely physical your past triumphs would leave but little doubt of your capacity to solve it. A community which, when less than twenty thousand, conceived the grand project of crossing the White Mountains, and unaided, save by the stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure gave, successfully executed the Herculean work, might well be impatient if it were suggested that a physical problem was before us too difficult for mastery. The history of man teaches that high mountains and wide deserts have resisted the permanent extension of empire, and have formed the immutable boundaries of States. From time to time, under some able leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of Asia swept over the adjacent country, and rolled their conquering columns over Southern Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few generations, the physical law, to which I have referred, has asserted its supremacy, and the boundaries of those States differ little now from those which were obtained three thousand years ago.

Rome flew her conquering eagles over the then known world, and has now subsided into the little territory on which the great city was originally built. The Alps and the Pyranees have been unable to restrain imperial France; but her expansion was a feverish action, her advance and her retreat were tracked with blood, and those mountain ridges are the reëstablished limits of her empire. Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a dividing barrier to us? Were ours a central consolidated Government, instead of a Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from the history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give co-intelligence, unity of interest, and coöperation among all parts of our continent-wide Republic. The net-work of railroads which bind the North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic and the valley of the Mississippi, together testify that our people have the power to perform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to do.

We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses; the time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three, it may be, more. Because of the desert character of the interior country the work will be difficult and expensive. It will require the efforts of a united people. The bickerings of little politicians, the jealousies of sections must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal for the common good. If the object be obstructed by contention and division as to whether the route shall be Northern, Southern, or Central, the handwriting is on the wall, and it requires little skill to see that failure is the interpretation of the inscription. You are practical people, and may ask, How is that contest to be avoided? By taking the question out of the hands of politicians altogether. Let the Government give such aid as it is proper for it to render to the company which shall propose the most feasible plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment, sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and the difficulties will diminish, as did those which you overcame when you connected your harbor with the Canadian provinces.

It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate the proprieties of the occasion were I to detain the vast concourse which stands before me by entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by further indulging in the expression of such reflections as circumstances suggest. I came to your city in quest of health and repose. From the moment I entered it you have showered upon me kindness and hospitality. Though my experience has taught me to anticipate good rather than evil from my fellow-man, it had not prepared me to expect such unremitting attention as has here been bestowed. I have been jocularly asked in relation to my coming here, whether I had secured a guarantee for my safety, and lo! I have found it. I stand in the midst of thousands of my fellow-citizens. But, my friends, I came neither distrusting nor apprehensive, of which you have proof in the fact that I brought with me the objects of tenderest affection and solicitude, my wife and my children; they have shared with me your hospitality, and will alike remain your debtors. If, at some future time, when I am mingled with the dust, and the arm of my infant son has been nerved for deeds of manhood, the storm of war should burst upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his inheriting the instincts of his ancestors and mine, I may pledge him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in the defense of your hearth-stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flag whose constellation, though torn and smoked in many a battle by sea and land, has never been stained with dishonor, and will, I trust, forever fly as free as the breeze which unfolds it.

A stranger to you, the salubrity of your location, and the beauty of its scenery were not wholly unknown to me, nor were there wanting associations which busy memory connected with your people. You will pardon me for alluding to one whose genius shed a lustre upon all it touched, and whose qualities gathered about him hosts of friends wherever he was known. Prentiss, a native of Portland, lived from youth to middle age in the county of my residence; and the inquiries which have been made show me that the youth excited the interest which the greatness of the man justified, and that his memory thus remains a link to connect your home with mine. A cursory view, when passing through your town on former occasions, had impressed me with the great advantages of your harbor, its easy entrance, its depth, and its extensive accommodations for shipping. But its advantages and its facilities, as they have been developed by closer inspection, have grown upon me, until I realize that it is no boast, but the language of sober truth, which, in the present state of commerce, pronounces them unequaled in any harbor of our country.

And surely no place could be more inviting to an invalid who sought refuge from the heat of Southern summer. Here waving elms offer him shaded walks, and magnificent residences, surrounded by flowers, fill the mind with ideas of comfort and rest. If, weary of constant contact with his fellow-men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, in the background of this grand amphitheater, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow of rock and cap of snow upon smiling fields beneath, and there in its recesses may be found as much wildness and as much of solitude as the pilgrim, weary of the cares of life, can desire. If he turn to the front, your capacious harbor, studded with green islands of ever-varying light and shade, and enlightened by all the stirring evidences of commercial activity, offer him the mingled charms of busy life and nature’s calm repose. A few miles further, and he may sit upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring wave until the troubled spirit sinks to rest; and in the little sail that vanishes on the illimitable sea we find the type of the voyage which he is soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, he embarks for that better state which lies beyond the grave.

Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes to pleasure and to usefulness, the stranger can not pass without paying a tribute to the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves. Where else will one find a more happy union of magnificence and comfort? Where better arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where so much of industry with so little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase, so much effected in proportion to the means employed? We hear the puff of the engine, the roll of the wheel, the ring of the ax and the saw, but the stormy, passionate exclamation so often mingled with the sounds are nowhere heard. Yet neither these nor other things which I have mentioned, attractive though they be, have been to me the chief charm which I have found among you. Far above all these, I place the gentle kindness, the cordial welcome, the hearty grasp which made me feel truly and at once, though wandering afar, that I was still at home. My friends, I thank you for this additional manifestation of your good-will.

REPLY OF HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI, TO THE SPEECH OF SENATOR DOUGLAS, IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, May 16 and 17, 1860

[The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolutions submitted by Mr. Davis on the first of March, relative to State rights, the institution of slavery in the States, and the rights of citizens of the several States in the Territories.]

Mr. Douglas having concluded his speech —

Mr. Davis arose and said:

Mr. President: When the Senator from Illinois commenced his speech, he announced his object to be to answer to an arraignment, or, as he also termed it, an indictment, which he said I had made against him. He therefore caused extracts to be read from my remarks to the Senate. Those extracts announce that I have been the uniform opponent of what is called squatter sovereignty, and that, having opposed it heretofore, I was now, least of all, disposed to give it quarter. At a subsequent period, the fact was stated that the Senator from Illinois and myself had been opposed to each other, on those questions which I considered as most distinctly involving Southern interests in 1850. He has not answered to the allegation. He has not attempted to show that he did not stand in that position. It is true he has associated himself with Mr. Clay, and, before closing, I will show that the association does not belong to him; that upon those test questions they did not vote together. He then, somewhat vauntingly, reminded me that he was with the victorious party, asserted that the Democracy of the country then sustained his doctrine, and that I was thus outside of that organization. With Mr. Clay! If he had been with him, he would have been in good company; but the old Jackson Democracy will be a little surprised to learn that Clay was the leader of our party, and that a man proves his allegiance to it by showing how closely he followed in the footsteps of Henry Clay.

When the Senator opened his argument, by declaring his purpose to be fair and courteous, I little supposed that an explanation made by me in favor of the Secretary of State, and which could not at all disturb the line of his argument, would have been followed by the rude announcement that he could not permit interruption thereafter. A Senator has the right to claim exemption from interruption if he will follow the thread of his argument, direct his discourse to the question at issue, and confine himself to it; but if he makes up a medley of arraignments of the men who have been in public life for ten years past, and addressing individuals in his presence, he should permit an interruption to be made for correction as often as he misrepresents their position. It would have devolved on me more than once, if I had been responsible for his frequent references to me, to correct him and show that he misstated facts; but as he would not permit himself to be interrupted, I am not responsible for any thing he has imputed to me.

The Senator commenced with a disclaimer of any purpose to follow what he considered a bad practice of arraigning Senators here on matters for which they stood responsible to their constituents; but straightway proceeded to make a general arraignment of the present and the absent. I believe I constitute the only exception to whom he granted consistency, and that at the expense of party association, and, he would have it, at the expense of sound judgment. He not only arraigned individuals, but even States – Florida, Alabama, and Georgia – were brought to answer at the bar of the Senate for the resolutions they had passed; Virginia was held responsible for her policy; Mississippi received his critical notice. Pray, sir, what had all this to do with the question? Especially, what had all this to do with what he styled an indictment against him? It is a mere resort to a species of declamation which has not been heard to-day for the first time; a pretext to put himself in the attitude of a persecuted man, and, like the satyr’s guest, blowing hot and cold in the same breath, in the midst of his complaint of persecution, vaunts his supreme power. If his opponents be the very small minority which he describes, what fear has he of persecution or proscription?

Can he not draw a distinction between one who says: “I give no quarter to an idea,” and one who proclaims the policy of putting the advocates of that idea to the sword? Such was his figurative language. That figure of the sword, however, it seemed, as he progressed in his development, referred to the one thought always floating through his brain – exclusion from the spoils of office, for, at last, it seemed to narrow down to the supposition that no man who agreed with him was, with our consent, to be either a Cabinet officer or a collector. Who has advanced any such doctrine? Have I, at this or any other period of my acquaintance with him, done any thing to justify him in attributing that opinion to me? I pause for his answer.

Mr. Douglas. I do not exactly understand the Senator. I have no complaint to make of the Senator from Mississippi of ever having been unkind or ungenerous towards me, if that is what he means to say.

Mr. Davis. Have I ever promulgated a doctrine which indicated that if my friends were in power, I would sacrifice every other wing of the Democratic party?

Mr. Douglas. I understood the making of a test on this issue against me would reach every other man that held my opinions; and, therefore, if I was not sound enough to hold office, no man agreeing with me would be; and hence, every man of my opinions would be excluded.

Mr. Davis. Ah, Mr. President; I believe I now have caught the clue to the argument; it was not before apprehended. I was among those who thought the Senator, with his opinions, ought not to be chairman of the Committee on Territories. This, I suppose, then, is the whole imposition. But have I not said to the Senator, at least once, that I had no disposition to question his Democracy; that I did not wish to withhold from him any tribute which was due to his talent and his worth? Did I not offer to resign the only chairmanship of a committee I had if the Senate would confer it upon him? Then, where is this spirit of proscription, the complaint of which has constituted some hours of his speech? If others have manifested it, I do not know it; and as the single expression of “no quarter to the doctrine of squatter sovereignty” was the basis of his whole allegation, I took it for granted his reference to a purpose to do him and his friends such wrong must have been intended for me.

The fact that the Senator criticised the idea of the States prescribing the terms on which they will act in a party convention recognized to be representative, is suggestive of an extreme misconception of relative position; and the presumption with which the Senator censured what he was pleased to term “the seceders,” suggested to me a representation of the air of the great monarch of France when, feeling royalty and power all concentrated in his own person, he used the familiar yet remarkable expression, “the State, that’s me.” Does the Senator consider it a modest thing in him to announce to the Democratic Convention on what terms he will accept the nomination; but presumptuous in a State to declare the principle on which she will give him her vote? It is an advance on Louis Quatorze.

Nothing but the most egregious vanity, something far surpassing even the bursting condition of swollen pride, could have induced the Senator to believe that I could not speak of squatter sovereignty without meaning him.

Towards the Senator, personally, I have never manifested hostility – indeed, could not, because I have ever felt kindly. Many years of association, very frequent coöperation, manly support from him in times of trial, are all remembered by me gratefully. The Senator, therefore, had no right to assume that I was making war upon him. I addressed myself to a doctrine of which he was not the founder, though he was one of the early disciples; but he proved an unprofitable follower, for he became rebellious, and ruined the logic of the doctrine. It was logical in Mr. Cass’s mind; he claimed the power to be inherent in the people who settled a new Territory, and by this inherent power he held that they might proceed to form government and to exercise its functions. There was logic in that – logic up to the point of sovereignty. Not so with the Senator. He says the inhabitants of the Territories derive their power to form a government from the consent of Congress; that when we decide that there are enough of them to constitute a government, and enact an organic law, then they have power to legislate according to their will. This power being derived from an act of Congress – a limited agency tied down to the narrow sphere of the constitutional grant – is made, by that supposition, the bestower of sovereignty on its creature.

I had occasion the other day to refer to the higher law as it made its first appearance on earth – the occasion when the tempter entered the garden of Eden. There is another phase of it. Whoever attempts to interpose between the supreme law of the Creator and the creature, whether it be in the regions of morals or politics, proclaims a theory that wars upon every principle of government. When Congress, the agent for the States, within the limits of its authority, forms, as it were, a territorial constitution by its organic act, he who steps in and proclaims to the settlers in that Territory that they have the right to overturn the Government, to usurp to themselves powers not delegated, is preaching the higher law in the domain of politics, which is only less mischievous than its other form, because the other involves both politics and morals in one ruinous confusion.

The Senator spoke of the denial of Democratic fellowship to him. After what has been said and acknowledged by the Senator, it is not to be supposed that it could have any application to me. It may be proper to add, I know of no such denial on the part of other Democratic Senators. Far be it from me to vaunt the fact of being in a majority, and to hold him to the hard rule he prescribes to us, of surrendering an opinion where we may happen to have been in a minority. Were I to return now to him the measure with which he metes to us, when he assumes that a majority in the Charleston Convention has a right to prescribe what shall be our tenets, I might, in reply to him, say, as a sincere adherent of the Democratic party, how can you oppose the resolutions pending before the Senate? If twenty-seven majority in a body of three hundred and three constituent members had, as he assumes, the power to lay down a binding law, what is to be said of him who, with a single adherent, stands up against the whole of his Democratic associates? He must be outside of the party, according to his enunciation; he must be wandering in the dark regions to which he consigns the followers of Mr. Yancey.

The Senator said he had no taste for references to things which were personal, and then proceeded to discuss that of which he showed himself profoundly ignorant – the condition of things in Mississippi. It is disagreeable for me to bring before the Senate matters which belong to my constituents and myself, and I should not do so but for the fact of their introduction into the Senator’s elaborate speech, which is no doubt to be spread over all parts of the country. The Senator, by some means or other, has the name of very many citizens of Mississippi, and as there is nothing in our condition to attract his special attention, his speech is probably to be sent over a wide field of correspondence; and it is, therefore, the more incumbent on me to notice his attempt to give a history of affairs that were transacted in Mississippi. He first announces that Mississippi rebuked the idea of intervention asserted in 1850; then that Mississippi rejected my appeal; that Mississippi voted on the issue made up by the compromise measure of 1850, and vaunts it as an approval of that legislation of which he was the advocate and I the opponent. Now, Mississippi did none of these things. Mississippi instructed her Senators, and I obeyed her instructions. I introduced into this body the resolutions which directed my course. On that occasion I vindicated Mississippi, and especially the Southern rights men, from the falsehood of that day, and reiterated now, of a purpose to dissolve the Union. I vindicated her by extracts from the proceedings as well of her convention as of her primary assemblies; and my remarks on that occasion, as fully as the events to which he referred in terms of undeserved compliment, justified the Senator in saying to-day that he knew I had always been faithful to the Government of which I was a part.

Acting under the instructions from Mississippi – not merely voting and yielding reluctant compliance; but, according to my ideas of the obligation of a Senator, laboring industriously and zealously to carry out the instructions which my State gave me, I took and maintained the position I held in relation to the measures of 1850. As it was with me a cordial service, I went home to vindicate the position which was hers, as well as my own. Shortly after that a canvass was opened, in which a distinguished gentlemen of our party, who had not been a member of Congress, was nominated for Governor. Questions other than the compromise measures of 1850 arose in that canvass; they were discussed in a great degree to the exclusion of a consideration of the merits of the action of Congress in 1850; and, at the election in September, for delegates to a convention, we had fallen from a party majority of some eight thousand to a minority of nearly the same number. It was after the decision of the question involved in calling a convention – after our party was defeated – after the candidate for Governor had retired, that the Democracy of Mississippi called upon me to bear their standard. It was esteemed a forlorn hope, therefore an obligation of honor not to decline the invitation. But so far as the action in the Senate in 1850 was concerned, if it had any effect, it must have been the reverse of that assumed, as, in the subsequent election for State officers on the first Monday in November, this majority of nearly eight thousand against us was reduced to about one thousand.

But when this convention assembled, though a large majority of the members belonged to the party which the Senator has been pleased to term the “Submissionists” – a name which they always rejected – this convention of the party most adverse to me, when they came to act on the subject said, after citing the “compromise” measures of the Congress of 1850:

“And connected with them, the rejection of the proposition to exclude slavery from the Territories of the United States, and to abolish it in the District of Columbia; and, while they do not entirely approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy, so long as the same, in all its features, shall be faithfully adhered to and enforced.”

Then they go on to recite six different causes, for which they will resort to the most extreme remedies which we had supposed ever could be necessary. The case only requires that I should say that the party to which I belonged did not then, nor at any previous time, propose to go out of the Union, but to have a Southern convention for consultation as to future contingencies, threatened and anticipated. It was at last narrowed down to the question, whether we should meet South Carolina and consult with her. Honoring that gallant State for the magnanimity she had manifested in the first efforts for the creation of the Government, in the preliminaries to the struggle for independence, when she, a favored colony, feeling no oppression, nursed by the mother country, cherished in every method, yet agreed with Massachusetts, then oppressed, to assert the great principle of community independence, and to carry it to the extent of war – honoring her for her unvarying defense of the Constitution throughout her whole course – believing that she was true to her faith, and would redeem all her pledges – feeling that a friendly hand might restrain, while, if left to herself, her pride might precipitate her on the trial of separation, I did desire to meet South Carolina in convention, though nobody but ourselves should be there to join her.

But, to close the matter, this convention, in its seventh resolution, after stating all those questions on which it would resist, declared:

“That, as the people of Mississippi, in the opinion of this convention, desire all further agitation of the slavery question to cease, and have acted upon and decided the foregoing questions, thereby making it the duty of this convention to pass no act in the perview and spirit of the law under which it is called, this convention deems it unnecessary to refer to the people, for approval or disapproval, at the ballot-box, its action in the premises.”

So that when the Senator appealed to this as evidence of what the people of Mississippi had done, he was ignorant of the fact that the delegates of the people of Mississippi did not agree with him; that their resolutions did not sustain the view which he took, and that the people of Mississippi never acted on them. If, then, there had been good taste in the intervention of this local question, there was certainly very bad judgment in hazarding his statements on a subject of which he was so little informed.

The Senator here, as in relation to our friends at Charleston, takes kind care of us – supposes we do not know what we are about, but that he, with his superior discrimination, sees what must necessarily result from what we are doing; he says that, at Charleston, they – innocent people – did not intend to destroy the Government; but he warns them that, if they do what they propose, they will destroy it; and so he says we of Mississippi, not desiring to break up the Union, nevertheless pursued a course which would have had that result if it had not been checked. Where does he get all this information? I have been in every State of the Union except two – three now, since Oregon has been admitted – but I have never seen a man who had as much personal knowledge. It is equally surprising that his facts should be so contrary to the record.

We believed then, as I believe now, that this Union, as a compact entered into between the States, was to be preserved by good faith, and by a close observance of the terms on which we were united. We believed then, as I believe now, that the party which rested upon the basis of truth; promulgated its opinions, and had them tested in the alembic of public opinion, adopted the only path of safety. I can not respect such a doctrine as that which says, “You may construe the Constitution your way, and I will construe it mine; we will waive the merit of these two constructions, and harmonize together until the courts decide the question between us.” A man is bound to have an opinion upon any political subject upon which he is called to act; it is skulking his responsibility for a citizen to say, “Let us express no opinion; I will agree that you may have yours, and I will have mine; we will coöperate politically together; we will beat the opposition, divide the spoils, and leave it to the court to decide the question between us.”

I do not believe that this is the path of safety; I am sure it is not the way of honor. I believe it devolves on us, who are principally sufferers from the danger to which this policy has exposed us, to affirm the truth boldly, and let the people decide after the promulgation of our opinions. Our Government, resting as it does upon public opinion and popular consent, was not formed to deceive the people, nor does it regard the men in office as a governing class. We, the functionaries, should derive our opinions from the people. To know what their opinion is, it is necessary that we should pronounce, in unmistakable language, what we ourselves mean.

My position is, that there is no portion of our country where the people are not sufficiently intelligent to discriminate between right and wrong, and no portion where the sense of justice does not predominate. I, therefore, have been always willing to unfurl our flag to its innermost fold – to nail it to the mast, with all our principles plainly inscribed upon it. Believing that we ask nothing but what the Constitution was intended to confer – nothing but that which, as equals, we are entitled to receive – I am willing that our case should be plainly stated to those who have to decide it, and await, for good or for evil, their verdict.

For two days, the Senator spoke nominally upon the resolutions, and upon the territorial question; but, like the witness in the French comedy, who, when called upon to testify, commenced before the creation, and was stopped by the judge, who told him to come down, for a beginning, to the deluge, he commenced so far back, and narrated so minutely, that he never got chronologically down to the point before us.

What is the question on which the Democracy are divided? Are we called upon to settle what every body said from 1847 down to this date? Have the Democracy divided on that? Have they divided on the resolutions of the States in 1840, or 1844, or 1848? Have the Democracy undertaken to review the position taken in 1854, that there should be a latitude of construction upon a particular point of constitutional law while they did await the decision of the Supreme Court? No, sir; the question is changed from before to after the event; the call is on every man to come forward now, after the Supreme Court has given all it could render upon a political subject, and state that his creed is adherence to the rule thus expounded in accordance with previous agreement.

The Senator tells us that he will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court; but it was fairly to be inferred, from what he said, that, in the Dred Scott case, he held that they had only decided that a negro could not sue in a Federal Court. Was this the entertainment to which we were invited? Was the proclaimed boon of allowing the question to go to judicial decision, no more than that, one after another, each law might be tested, and that, one after another, each case, under every law, might be tried, and that after centuries should roll away, we might hope for the period when, every case exhausted, the decision of our constitutional right and of the federal duty would be complete? Or was it that we were to get rid of the controversy which had divided the country for thirty years; that we were to reach a conclusion beyond which we could see the region of peace; that tranquillity was to be obtained by getting a decision on a constitutional question which had been discussed until it was seen that, legislatively, it could not or would not be decided? If, then, the Supreme Court has judicially announced that Congress can not prohibit the introduction of slave property into a Territory, and that no one deriving authority from Congress can do so, and the Senator from Illinois holds that the inhabitants derive their power from the organic act of Congress, what restrains his acknowledgment of our right to go into the Territories, and his recognition of the case being closed by the opinion of the court? I can understand how one who has followed to its logical consequences the original doctrine of squatter sovereignty might still stand out, and say this inherent right can not be taken away by judicial decision; but is not one who claims to derive the power of the territorial legislation from a law of Congress, and who finds the opinion of the court conclusive as to Congress, and to all deriving their authority from it, estopped from any further argument?

Much of what the Senator said about the condition of public affairs can only be regarded as the presentation of his own case, and requires no notice from me. His witticism upon the honorable Senator, the Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary [Mr. Bayard], who is now absent, because of the size of the State which he represents, reminds one that it was mentioned as an evidence of the stupidity of a German, that he questioned the greatness of Napoleon because he was born in the little island of Corsica. I know not what views the Senator entertained when he measured the capacity of the Senator from Delaware by the size of that State, or the dignity of his action at Charleston by the number of his constituents. If there be any political feature which stands more prominently out than another in the Union, it is the equality of the States. Our stars have no variant size; they shine with no unequal brilliancy. A Senator from Delaware holds a position entitled to the same respect, as such, as the Senator from any other State of the Union. More than that, the character, the conduct, the information, the capacity of that Senator might claim respect, if he was not entitled to it from his position.

Twice on this occasion, and more than the same number of times heretofore, has the Senator referred to the great benefit derived from that provision which grants a trial in the local court, an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Territory, and an appeal from thence to the Supreme Court of the United States, on every question involving title to slaves. I wish to say that whatever merit attaches to that belongs to a Senator to whom the advocates of negro slavery have not often been in the habit of acknowledging their obligations – the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale], who introduced it in 1850 as an amendment to the New Mexico Bill. We adopted it as a fair proposition, equally acceptable upon one side and the other. On its adoption, no one voted against it. That proposition was incorporated in the Kansas Bill, but unless we acknowledge obligations to the Senator from New Hampshire, how shall they be accorded for that to the Senator from Illinois?

I am asked whether the resolutions of the Senate can have the force of law. Of course not. The Senate, however, is an independent member of the Government, and from its organization should be peculiarly watchful of State rights. Before the meeting of the Charleston Convention, it was untruly stated that these resolutions were concocted to affect the action of the Charleston Convention. Now we are asked if they are to affect the Baltimore Convention. They were not designed for the one; they are not pressed in view of the other. They were introduced to obtain an expression of the opinion of the Senate, a proceeding quite frequent in the history of this body. It was believed that they would have a beneficial effect, and that they were stated in terms which would show the public the error of supposing that there was a purpose on the part of the Democracy, or of the South, to enact what was called a slave code for the Territories of the United States. It was believed that the assertion of sound principles at this time would direct public opinion, and might be fruitful of such reuniting, harmonizing results as we all desire, and which the public need. Whether it is to have this effect or not; whether at last we are to be shorn of our national strength by personal or sectional strife, depends upon the conduct of those who have it in their power to control the result. The Democratic party, in its history, presents a high example of nationality; its power and its usefulness has been its co-extension with the Union. The Democrats of the Northern States who vote for these resolutions, but affirm that which we have so often announced with pride, that there was a political opinion which pervaded the whole country; there was a party capable to save the Union, because it belonged to all the States. If the two Democratic Senators who alone have declared their opposition should so vote, to that extent the effect would be impaired, and they will stand in that isolation to which the Senator points as a consequence so dreadful to the Southern men at Charleston.

[Here Mr. Davis gave way for a motion to adjourn, and on the 17th resumed.]

Mr. Davis. At the close of the session of yesterday, I was speaking of the hope entertained that the Democratic party would yet be united; that the party which had so long wielded the destinies of the country, for its honor, for its glory, and its progress, was not about to be checked midway in its career – to be buried in a premature grave; but that it was to go on, with concentrated energy, toward the great ends for which it has striven since 1800, by a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, to bring the ship of State into that quiet harbor where

This was a hope, however, not founded on any supposition that we were to escape from the issues which are presented – a hope not based on the proposition that every man should have his own construction of our creed, and that we should unite together merely for success; but that the party, as heretofore, in each succeeding quadrennial convention, would add to the resolutions of the preceding one such declarations as passing events indicated, and the exigencies of the country demanded.

In the last four years a division has arisen in the Democratic party, upon the construction of one of the articles of its creed. It behooves us, in that state of the case, to decide what the true construction is; for, if the party be not a union of men upon principle, the sooner it is dissolved the better; and if it be such a union, why shall not those principles be defined, so as to remove doubt or cavil, and be applied in every emergency to meet the demands of each succeeding case? Thus only can we avoid division in council and confusion in action.

The Senator from Illinois, who preceded me, announced that he had performed a pleasing duty in defending the Democratic party. That party might well cry out, Save me from my defender. It was a defense of the party by the arraignment of its prominent members. It was the preservation of the body by the destruction of its head – for the President of the United States is, for the time being, the head of the party that placed him in position; and the head of the party thus in position can not be destroyed without the disintegration of the members and the destruction of the body itself. I suppose the Senator, however, was at his favorite amusement of “shooting at the lump.” The “lump” heretofore has been those Democratic Senators who dissented from him: this time he involved Democrats all over the country. Not even the presiding officer, whose position seals his lips, could escape him. And here let me say that I found nothing in the extract read from that gentleman’s address, which, construed as was no doubt intended, does not meet my approval; but if tried by the modern lexicon of the Senator, it might be rendered a contradiction to his avowed opinions, and by the same mode of expounding, non-intervention would be a sin of which the whole Democracy might be convicted, under the indictment of squatter sovereignty. The language quoted from the address of the Vice-President is to be construed as understood at the time, at the place, and by men such as the one who used it.

With that force which usually enters into his addresses – with even more than his usual eloquence – the Senator referred to the scene which awaited him upon his return to Chicago, when, as represented, he met an infuriated mob, who assailed him for having maintained the measures of 1850 – those compromises which, in the Northern section, it was urged had been passed in the interest of the South. But, pray, what one of those measures was it which excited the mob so described? Only one, I believe, was put in issue at the North – the fugitive slave law; that one he did not vote for. But it was the part of manliness to say that, though absent and not voting for it, he approved of it. Such, I believe, was his commendable course on that occasion. I give him, therefore, all due credit for not escaping from a responsibility to which they might not have held him. Are we to give perpetual thanks to any one because he did not yield to so senseless a clamor, but conceded to us that small measure of constitutional right – because he has complied with a requirement so plain that my regret is that it ever required congressional intervention to enforce it? It belonged to the honor of the States to execute that clause of the Constitution. They should have executed it without congressional intervention; congressional action should only have been useful to give that uniformity of proceeding which State action could not have secured.

Concurring in the depicted evil of the destruction of the Democratic organization, it must be admitted that such consequence is the inevitable result of a radical difference of principle. The Senator laments the disease, but instead of healing, aggravates it. While pleading the evils of the disruption of the party, it is quite apparent that, in his mind, there is another still greater calamity; for, through all his arraignment of others, all his self-laudation, all his complaints of persecution, like an air through its variations, appears and re-appears the action of the Charleston Convention. That seemed to be the beginning and the end of his solicitude. The oft-told tale of his removal from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories had to be renewed and connected with that convention, and even assumed as the basis on which his strength was founded in that convention. I think the Senator did himself injustice. I think his long Career and distinguished labors, his admitted capacity for good hereafter, constitute a better reason for the support which he received, than the fact that his associates in the Senate had not chosen to put him in a particular position in the organization of this body. It is enough that that fact did not divert support from him; and I am aware of none of his associates here who have forced it upon public attention with a view to affect him.

He claims that an arraignment made against his Democracy has been answered by the action of a majority of the Convention at Charleston; and then proceeds to inform the minority men that he would scorn to be the candidate of a party unless he received a majority of its votes. There was no use in making that declaration; it requires not only a majority, but, under our ruling, a vote of two-thirds, for a nomination. It was unnecessary for any body to feel scorn toward that which he could not receive. Other unfortunate wights might mourn the event; it belonged to the Senator from Illinois to scorn it. The remark of Mr. Lowndes, which has been so often quoted, and which, beautiful in itself, has acquired additional value by time, that the Presidency was an office neither to be sought nor declined, has no application, therefore, to the Senator, for, under certain contingencies, he says he would decline it. It does not devolve on me to decide whether he has sought it or not.

But, sir, what is the danger which now besets the Democratic party? Is it, as has been asserted, the doctrine of intervention by Congress, and is that doctrine new? Is the idea that protection, by Congress, to all rights of person or property, wherever it has jurisdiction, so dangerous that, in the language employed by the Senator, it would sweep the Democratic party from the face of the earth? For what was our Government instituted? Why did the States confer upon the Federal Government the great functions which it possesses? For protection – mainly for protection beyond the municipal power of the States. I shall have occasion, in the progress of my remarks, to cite some authority, and to trace this from a very early period. I will first, however, notice an assault which the Senator has thought proper to make upon certain States, one of which is, in part, represented by myself. He says they are seceders, bolters, because they withdrew from a party convention when it failed to announce their principles. There can be no tie to bind me to a party beyond my will. I will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or not they do agree, and find that they differ – radically, essentially, irreconcilably differ – what belongs to an honorable position except to part? They can not consistently act together any longer. It devolves upon them frankly to announce the difference, and each to pursue his separate course.

The letter of Mr. Yancey – acknowledged to be a private letter, an unguarded letter, but which, somehow or other, got into the press – was read to sustain this general accusation against what are called the Cotton States. I do not pretend to judge how far the Senator has the right here to read a private letter, which, without the authority of the writer, has gone into the public press. It is one of those questions which every man’s sense of propriety must, in his own case, decide. Whether or not the use of that letter was justifiable, how is it to be assumed that the Southern States are bound by any opinion there enunciated? How to be asserted that we, the residents in those States, have pinned our faith to the sleeve of any man, and that we will follow his behest, no matter whither he may go? But was this the only source of information, or was the impression otherwise sustained? Did Mr. Yancey, in his speech delivered at Charleston, justify the conclusions which the Senator draws from this letter? Did he admit them to be correct? There he might have found the latest evidence, and the best authority. Speaking to that point, Mr. Yancey said:

“It has been charged, in order to demoralize whatever influence we might be entitled to, either from our personal or political characteristics, or as representatives of the State of Alabama, that we are disruptionists, disunionists per se; that we desire to break up the party in the State of Alabama – to break up the party of the Union, and to dissolve the Union itself. Each and all of these allegations, come from what quarter they may, I pronounce to be false. There is no disunionist, that I know of, in the delegation from the State of Alabama. There is no disruptionist that I know of; and if there are factionists in our delegation, they could not have got in there, with the knowledge upon the part of our State Convention that they were of so unenviable a character. We come here with two great purposes: first, to save the constitutional rights of the South, if it lay in our power to do so. We desire to save the South by the best means that present themselves to us; and the State of Alabama believes that the best means now in existence is the organization of the Democratic party, if we shall be able to persuade it to adopt the constitutional basis upon which we think the South alone can be saved.”

He further says:

“We have come here, then, with the twofold purpose of saving the country and saving the Democracy; and if the Democracy will not lend itself to that high, holy, and elevated purpose; if it can not elevate itself above the mere question of how perfect shall be its mere personal organization, and how wide-spread shall be its mere voting success, then we say to you, gentlemen, mournfully and regretfully, that, in the opinion of the State of Alabama, and, I believe, of the whole South, you have failed in your mission, and it will be our duty to go forth, and make an appeal to the loyalty of the country to stand by that Constitution which party organizations have deliberately rejected.” [Applause.]

Mr. Yancey answers for himself. It was needless to go back to old letters. Here were his remarks delivered before the convention, speaking to the point in issue, and answering both as to his purposes and as to the motives of those with whom he conferred and acted.

The Senator next cited the resolutions of the State of Alabama; and here he seemed to rest the main point in his argument. The Senator said that Alabama, in 1856, had demanded of the Democratic convention, non-intervention, and that, in 1860, she had retired from the convention because it insisted upon non-intervention. He read one of the resolutions of the Alabama Convention of 1856; but the one which bore upon the point was not read. The one which was conclusive as to the position of Alabama then, and its relation to her position now, was exactly the one that was omitted – I read from the resolutions of this year – was as follows:

“Resolved, further, That we re-affirm so much of the first resolution of the platform adopted in the convention by the Democracy of this State, on the 8th of January, 1856, as relates to the subject of slavery, to-wit.”

It then goes on to quote from that resolution of 1856, as follows:

“The unqualified right of the people of the slaveholding States to the protection of their property in the States, in the Territories, and in the wilderness, in which territorial governments are as yet unorganized.”

That was the resolution of 1856; and like it was one of February, 1848:

“That it is the duty of the General Government by all proper legislation, to secure an entry into those Territories to all the citizens of the United States, together with their property, of every description; and that the same shall be protected by the United States, while the Territories are under its authority.”

So stands the record of that State which is now held responsible for retiring, and is alleged to have withdrawn because she received now what, in former times, she had demanded as the full measure of her rights. Did she receive it? The argument could only be made by concealing the fact that her resolutions of 1848 and 1856 asserted the right to protection, and claimed it from the General Government. What, then, is the necessary inference? That, in the Cincinnati platform, they believed they obtained that which they asserted, or that which necessarily involved it. So much for the point of faith; so much for the point of consistency in the assertion of right. But if it were otherwise; if they had neglected to assert a right; would that destroy it? If they had failed at some time to claim this protection, are they to be estopped, in all time to come, from claiming it? Constitutional right is eternal – not to be sacrificed by any body of men. A single man may revive it at any period of the existence of the Constitution. So the argument would be worthless, if the facts were as stated. That they are not so stated, is shown by the record.

Here allow me to say, in all sincerity, that I dislike thus to speak about conventions; it does not belong to the duties of the Senate; we did not assemble here to make a President, except in the single contingency of a failure by the people and by the House of Representatives to elect. When that contingency arrives, the question will be before us. I am sorry that it should have been prematurely introduced. But since the action of the recent convention at Charleston is presented as the basis of argument, it may be as well to refer to it, and see what it is. The majority report, presented by seventeen States of the Union, and those the States most reliable to give Democratic votes – the States counted so certain to give Democratic votes that they have been regarded as a fixed basis, a nucleus to which others were to be attracted – these seventeen States reported to the convention a series of resolutions, one of which asserted the right to protection. A minority of States reported another series, excluding the avowal of the right – not exactly denying it, but not avowing it – and a second minority report was submitted, being the Cincinnati platform, pure and simple. It is true that a majority of delegates adopted the minority report, but not a majority of States, nor does it appear, by an analysis of the votes, and the best evidence I have been able to obtain, that it was by a majority of delegates, if each had been left to his own choice; but that, by one of those ingenious arrangements – one of those incidents which, among jurists, is described as the favor the vigilant receives from the law – it so happened that, in certain States, the delegates were instructed to vote as a unit; in other States they were not; so that, wherever they were instructed to vote as a unit, the vote must so be cast, and wherever they were not, they might disintegrate. Thus minorities were bound in one instance, and released in another; and, by a comparison made by those who had an opportunity to know, it appears that the minority report could not have got a majority of the delegates, if each delegate had been permitted to cast his own vote in the Convention. Neither could it have obtained, as appears by the action of the committee, in a majority of the States, if they had been spoken as such. So that this vaunt as to the effect of the adoption of the platform by a majority, seems to have very little of substance in it. Again, I find that, after this adoption of a platform, a delegate from Tennessee offered a resolution:

“That all the citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the Territories of the United States; and that, under the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which we recognize as a correct exposition of the Constitution of the United States, neither their rights of person or property can be destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation.”

It does not appear that a vote was taken on it. There is a current belief that it would have been adopted. If it had been, it would have been an acknowledgment by the Democracy, in convention assembled, that the question had been settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court. But in the progress of the convention, when they came to balloting, it appears, by an analysis of the vote for candidates, that the Senator from Illinois received from seventeen undoubted Democratic States of the Union, casting one hundred and twenty-seven electoral votes, but eleven votes. It is not such a great triumph, then, in the Democratic view, as is claimed. It does not suffice to add up the number of votes where they do not avail. It is not fair to bring the votes of Vermont, where I believe nobody expects we shall be successful, and count them for a particular candidate. The electoral votes – and these alone, tell upon the result; and it appears that in those States which have been counted certain to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who might have been nominated at that convention, the Senator received but eleven. This is but meagre claim to bind us to his car as the successful champion of the majority. This is but small basis for the boast that his hopes were gratified, that he would not receive the nomination unless sustained by a majority of the party, and that his opinions had received the indorsement of the Democracy.

My devotion to the party is life-long. If the assertion be allowable, it may be said that I inherited my political principles. I derive them from a revolutionary father – one of the earnest friends of Mr. Jefferson; who, after the revolution which achieved our independence, bore his full part in the civil revolution of 1800, which emancipated us from federal usurpation and consolidation. I therefore have all that devotion to party which belongs to habitual reverence and confidence. But, sir, that devotion to party rests on the assumption that it is to maintain sound principles; that it is to strive hereafter, as heretofore, to carry out the great cardinal creed in which the Democratic party was founded. When the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 are discarded; when we fly from the extreme of monarchy to land in the danger to republics, anarchy, and the Democratic party says its arm is paralyzed – can not be raised to maintain constitutional rights, my devotion to its organization is at an end. It fails thenceforward in the purposes for which it was established; and if there be a constitutional party in the land which, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, would find in the vigor of the Federal Government the best hope for our liberty and security, to that party I should attach myself whenever that sad contingency arose.

The resolutions of 1798 and 1799, though directed against usurpation, were equally directed against the dangers of anarchy. Their principles are alike applicable to both. Their cardinal creed was a Federal Government, according to the grants conferred upon it, and these righteously administered. It is not fair to the men who taught us the lessons of Democracy that they should be held responsible for a theory which leaves the Federal Government, as one who has abdicated all authority, to stand at the mercy of local usurpations. Least of all does their teaching maintain that this Government has no power over the Territories; that this Government has no obligation to protect the rights of person and property in the Territories; for, among the first acts under the Constitution, was one which both asserted and exercised the power.

After the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, an act was passed, to which reference is frequently made as being a confirmation of the ordinance of 1787; and this has been repeated so often that it has received general belief. There was a constitutional provision which required all obligations and engagements under the confederation to hold good under the Constitution. If there was an obligation or an engagement growing out of the ordinance of 1787, out of the deed of cession by Virginia, it was transmitted to the Government established under the Constitution; but that Congress under the Constitution gave it no vitality – that they added no force to it, is apparent from the fact which is so often relied upon as authority. It was in view of this fact, in full remembrance of this and of other facts connected with it, that Mr. Madison said, in relation to passing regulations for the Territories, that “Congress did not regard the interdiction of slavery among the needful regulations contemplated by the Constitution, since, in none of the territorial governments created by them, was such an interdict found.” I am aware that Justice McLean has viewed this as an historical error of Mr. Madison. I shall not assume to decide between such high authorities. The act is as follows:

“An Act to provide for the government of the Territory north-west of the Ohio River

“Whereas, In order that the ordinance of the United States in Congress assembled, for the government of the territory north-west of the river Ohio, may continue to have full effect, it is requisite that certain provisions should be made so as to adapt the same to the present Constitution of the United States.

“Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, in all cases in which, by the said ordinance, any information is to be given, or communication made, by the governor of the said Territory to the United States in Congress assembled, or to any of their officers, it shall be the duty of the said governor to give such information, and to make such communication, to the President of the United States; and the President shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint all officers which, by the said ordinance, were to have been appointed by the United States in Congress assembled; and all officers so appointed shall be commissioned by him; and in all cases where the United States in Congress assembled might, by the said ordinance, make any commission, or remove from any office, the President is hereby declared to have the same powers to revocation and removal.

“Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That in the case of the death, removal, resignation, or necessary absence of the governor of the said Territory, the secretary thereof shall be, and he is hereby authorized and required to execute all the powers and perform all the duties of the governor during the vacancy occasioned by the removal, resignation, or necessary absence of the said governor.

“Approved August 7, 1789.”

All that is to be found in this act which favors the supposition and frequent assertion that, under the Constitution, the ordinance of 1787 was ratified and confirmed is to be found in the preamble, and that preamble so vaguely alludes to it that the idea is refuted by reference to an act which followed soon afterwards – the act of 1793 – from which I will read a single section:

“Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That when a person held to labor in any of the United States, or in either of the Territories on the north-west or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said States or Territories, the person to whom such service or labor may be due, his agent, or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor,” etc.

Is it not apparent that, when the Congress legislated in 1793, they recognized the existence of slavery and protected that kind of property in the territory north-west of the river Ohio, and is it not conclusive that they did not intend, by the act of 1789, to confirm, ratify, and give effect to the ordinance of 1787, which would have excluded it?

This doctrine of protection, then, is not new. It goes back to the foundation of the Government. It is traceable down through all the early controversies; and they arose at least as early as 1790. It is found in the messages of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, and in the legislation of Congress; and also in the messages of the elder Adams. There was not one of the first four Presidents of the United States who did not recognize this obligation of protection, who did not assert this power on the part of the Federal Government; and not one of them ever attempted to pervert it to a power to destroy. If division in the Democratic party is to arise now, because of this doctrine, it is not from the change by those who assert it, but of those who deny it. It is not from the introduction of a new feature in the theory of our Government, but from the denial of that which was recognized in its very beginning.

As I understood the main argument of the Senator, it was based upon the general postulate that the Democratic Convention of 1848 recognized a new doctrine, a doctrine which inhibited the General Government from interfering in any way, either for the protection of property or otherwise, with the local affairs of a Territory; he held the party responsible for all the opinions entertained by the candidate in 1848, because the party had nominated him, and he quoted the record to show what States, by voting for him, had committed themselves to the doctrine of the “Nicholson letter.” He even quoted South Carolina, represented by that man who became famous for a single act, and, as South Carolinians said, without authority at home to sustain it. But this was cited as pledging the faith of South Carolina to the doctrine of the “Nicholson letter;” and, worse than all, the Senator did this, though he knew that the doctrine of the “Nicholson letter” was the subject of controversy for years subsequently; that, what was the true construction of that letter, entered into the canvass in the Southern States; that the construction which Mr. Cass himself placed upon it at a subsequent period was there denied; and the Senator might have remembered, if he had chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to explain to him, ten years ago, the fact that I repudiated the doctrine of that letter at the time it was published, and that the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified me for the construction which I placed upon it; there were men mean enough to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson letter was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly reviewed it. He uttered, for him, very harsh language against all who had doubted the true construction of his letter, and he construed it just as I had done during the canvass of 1848. It remains only to add that I supported Mr. Cass, not because of the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite of it; because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two houses of Congress, and he as honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a safer reliance than his opponent, who personally possessed my confidence as much as any man living, but who was of and must draw his advisers from a party, the tenets of which I believed to be opposed to the interests of the country as they were to all my political convictions.

I little thought at that time that my advocacy of Mr. Cass, upon such grounds as these, or his support by the State of which I am a citizen, would at any future day be quoted as an indorsement of the opinions contained in the Nicholson letter, as those opinions were afterwards defined. But it is not only upon this letter, but equally upon the resolutions of the convention as constructive of that letter, that he rested his argument. I will here say to the Senator that if, at any time, I do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as I could take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct me.

But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt about its construction; there were men who asserted that they had positive authority for saying that it meant that the people of a Territory could only exclude slavery when the Territory should form a constitution and be admitted as a State. This doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If the true construction had been certainly known he would have had no chance to get it. Our majority went down from thousands to hundreds, as it was. In Alabama the decrease was greater. It was not that the doctrine was countenanced, but the doubt as to the true meaning of the letter, and the constantly reiterated assertion that it only meant the Territories when they should be admitted as States, enabled him to carry those States.

But if I mistook the Senator there, I think probably I did not on another point: that he claimed the support of certain Southern men for Mr. Richardson as Speaker of the House to be by them an acknowledgment of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty.

I suppose those Southern men who voted for Mr. Richardson voted for him as I did for Mr. Cass, in despite of his opinions on that question, because they preferred Mr. Richardson to Mr. Banks, even with squatter sovereignty. They considered that the latter was carrying an amount of heresies which greatly exceeded the value of squatter sovereignty. It was a choice of evils – not an indorsement of his opinions. Neither did they this year indorse the opinions on that point of Mr. McClernand when they voted for him. According to the Senator’s argument I could show him that Illinois was committed to the doctrine of federal protection to property in the Territories and the remedy of secession as a State right; committed irrevocably, unmistakably, with no right to plead any ignorance of the political creed of the individual, or the meaning of his words.

In 1852 – I refer to it with pride – Illinois did me the honor to vote consistently for me for the Vice-Presidency, up to the time of adjournment; though in 1850, and in 1851, I had done all these acts which have been spoken of, and the Senator has admitted my consistency, in opinions which were avowed with at least such perspicuity as left nobody in doubt as to my opinion. Did Illinois then adopt my theory of protection in the Territories, or of the right of State secession? No, sir. I hold them to no such consequences. Some of the old inhabitants of Illinois may have remembered me when their northern frontier was a wilderness, when they and I had kind relations in the face of hostile Indians. Some of them may have remembered me, and, I believe, kindly, as associated with them, at a later period, on the fields of Mexico. The Senator himself, I know, remembered kindly his association with me in the halls of Congress. It was these bonds which gave me the confidence of the State of Illinois. I never misconstrued it. I never pretended to put them in the attitude of adopting all my opinions. Never required it, never desired it, save as in so far as wishing all men would agree with me, confidently believing my position to be true. At a later period, and when these questions were more important in the public mind, when public attention has been more directed to them, when public opinion has been more matured, at the very time when the Senator claims that his doctrine culminated, the State of Illinois voted for a gentleman for Vice-President at Cincinnati who held the same opinions with myself, or, if there was a difference, held them to a greater extreme – I mean General Quitman.

Mr. Douglas. We made no test on any one.

Mr. Davis. Then, how did the South become responsible for the doctrine of General Cass, by consenting to his nomination in 1848, and supporting his election? But at a later period, down to the present session, what is the position in which the Senator places his friends – those sterling Democrats, uncompromising Anti-Know-Nothings; men who give no quarter to the American party, and yet who voted this year for Mr. Smith, of North Carolina, to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. Is the Senator answered? Does he not see that there is no justice in assuming a vote for an individual to be the entire adoption of his opinions?

He cited, in this connection, a resolution of 1848, as having been framed to cover the doctrines of the Nicholson letter; and he claimed thus to have shown that the convention not only understood it, but adopted it, and made it the party creed, and that we were bound to it from that period forward. He even had that resolution of 1848 read, in order that there should be, at no future time, any question as to the principle which the party then avowed; that it should be fixed as a starting point in all the future progress of Democracy. I was surprised at the importance the Senator attached to that resolution of 1848, because it was not new; it was not framed to meet the opinions of the Nicholson letter, but came down from a period as remote as 1840; was copied into the platform of 1844, and again into that of 1848, being the expression which the condition of the country in 1840 had induced – a declaration of opinion growing out of the agitation in the two houses of Congress at that day, and the fearful strides which antislavery was making, and which Mr. Calhoun had labored to check by the declaration of constitutional truths, as set forth in his Senate resolutions of 1837-’8.

That there may be no mistake on this point, and particularly as the Senator attached special importance to it, I will turn to the platform of 1840, and read from it, so that it shall be found to be —

Mr. Douglas. It is conceded.

Mr. Davis. The Senator concedes the fact, that the resolution of 1848 was a copy of that of 1840, and with the concession falls his argument. The platforms of 1840 and 1844 were re-affirmed in 1848; and, consequently, the resolution of ’48 being identical with that of ’40, was not a construction of the letter written in 1847.

True to its instincts and to its practices, the Democratic party, from time to time, continued to add to their “platform” whatever was needful for action by the Government in the condition of the country. Thus, in 1844, they re-asserted the platform of 1840; and they added thereto, because of a question then pending, that —

“The re-annexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period, is a great American measure, which the convention recommend to the cordial support of the Democracy of the Union.”

In 1848 they re-adopted the resolutions of 1844; and were not a little laughed at for keeping up the question of Texas after it had been annexed. In 1852 a new question had arisen; the measures of 1850 had presented, with great force to the public mind, the necessity for some expression of opinion upon the disturbing questions which the measures of 1850 had been designed to quiet. Therefore, in 1852, the party, true to its obligation to announce its principles, and to meet issues as they arise, said:

“Resolved, That the foregoing proposition (referring to the resolution of 1848) covers, and was intended to embrace, the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and, therefore, the Democratic party in the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the act known as the compromise measure, settled by the last Congress, the act for reclaiming fugitives from labor included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the Constitution, can not, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so changed as to destroy or impair its efficacy.

“Resolved, That the Democratic party will restrain all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slave question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.”

This was the addition made in 1852, and it was made because of the agitation which then prevailed through the country against the fugitive slave act, and it was because the fugitive slave act, and that alone, was assailed, that the Democratic convention met the issue on that measure specifically, and for the same reason it received the approbation of the Southern States. Had this been considered as the indorsement of the slave trade bill for the District of Columbia, it would not have received their approval. The agitation was in relation to recovering fugitive slaves, and the Democratic party boldly and truly met the living issue, and declared its position upon it.

In 1856 other questions had arisen. It was necessary to meet them. The convention did meet them, and met them in a manner which was satisfactory, because it was believed to be full. I will not weary the Senate by reading the resolutions of 1856; they are familiar to every body. I only quote a portion of them:

“The American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the ‘slavery question’ upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the Union – non-interference by Congress with slavery in State and Territory, or in the District of Columbia.

“That, by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect, the equal rights of all States will be preserved intact, the original compacts of the Constitution maintained inviolate, and the perpetuity and expansion of this Union insured to its utmost capacity of embracing, in peace and harmony, every future American State that may be constituted or annexed with a republican form of government.”

Pray, what can this mean? Squatter sovereignty? Incapacity of the Federal Government to enact any law for the protection of slave property anywhere? Could that be in the face of a struggle that we were constantly carrying on against the opponents of the fugitive slave law? Could that be, in the face of the fact that a majority had trodden down our constitutional rights in the District of Columbia, by legislating in relation to that particular character of property, and that they had failed to redeem a promise they had sacredly made to pass a law for the protection of slave property, so as to punish any one who should seduce, or entice, or abduct it from an owner in this District?

With all these things fresh in mind, what did they mean? They meant that Congress should not decide the question, whether that institution should exist within a Territory or not. They did not mean to withdraw from the inhabitants of the District of Columbia that protection to which they were entitled, and which is almost annually given by legislation; and yet States and Territories and the District of Columbia are all grouped together, as the points upon which this idea rests, and to which it is directed. It meant that Congress was not to legislate to interfere with the rights of property anywhere; not to attempt to decide what should be the institutions maintained anywhere; but surely not to disclaim the right to protect property, whether on sea or on land, wherever the Federal Government had jurisdiction and power. But some stress has been laid upon the resolution, which says that this principle should be applied to

“The organization of the Territories, and to the admission of new States, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect.”

What does “may elect” mean? Does it refer to organization of the Territory? Who may elect? Congress organizes the Territories. Did it mean that the Territories were to elect? It does not say so. What does it say?

“That by the uniform application of this Democratic principle to the organization of Territories, and to the admission of new States, with or without domestic slavery, as they may elect.”

And here it met a question which had disturbed the peace of the country, and well-nigh destroyed the Union – the right of a State holding slaves to be admitted into the Union. It was declared here that the State so admitted should elect whether it would or would not have slaves. There is nothing in that which logically applies to the organization of a Territory. But if this be in doubt, let us come to the last resolution, which says: