PREFACE (continued 10)

We have shown, by all that we have suffered in war, how great is our estimate of the Southern States of this Union; and we will measure that estimate, now, in peace, by still greater exertions for their rebuilding. Will reflecting men not perceive, then, the wisdom of accepting established facts, and, with alacrity of enterprise, begin to retrieve the past? Slavery cannot come back. It is the interest, therefore, of every man to hasten its end. Do you want more war? Are you not yet weary of contest? Will you gather up the unexploded fragments of this prodigious magazine of all mischief, and heap them up for continued explosions? Does not the South need peace? And, since free labor is inevitable, will you have it in its worst forms or in its best? Shall it be ignorant, impertinent, indolent, or shall it be educated, self-respecting, moral, and self-supporting? Will you have men as drudges, or will you have them as citizens? Since they have vindicated the government, and cemented its foundation stones with their blood, may they not offer the tribute of their support to maintain its laws and its policy? It is better for religion; it is better for political integrity; it is better for industry; it is better for money—if you will have that ground motive—that you should educate the black man, and, by education, make him a citizen. They who refuse education to the black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, incessantly vibrating between poverty and indolence. From this pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our earnest greeting to all our land. We offer to the President of these United States our solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years, and permitted him to behold this auspicious consummation of that national unity for which he has waited with so much patience and fortitude, and for which he has labored with such disinterested wisdom. To the members of the government associated with him in the administration of perilous affairs in critical times; to the senators and representatives of the United States, who have eagerly fashioned the instruments by which the popular will might express and enforce itself, we tender our grateful thanks. To the officers and men of the army and navy, who have so faithfully, skillfully, and gloriously upheld their country's authority, by suffering, labor, and sublime courage, we offer a heart-tribute beyond the compass of words. Upon those true and faithful citizens, men and women, who have borne up with unflinching hope in the darkest hour, and covered the land with their labor of love and charity, we invoke the divinest blessing of him whom they have so truly imitated. But chiefly to thee, God of our fathers, we render thanksgiving and praise for that wondrous Providence that has brought forth from such a harvest of war the seed of so much liberty and peace! We invoke peace upon the North. Peace be to the West! Peace be upon the South! In the name of God we lift up our banner, and dedicate it to peace, union, and liberty, now and for evermore! Amen.

EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN (Delivered in Brooklyn, April 16th. 1865)

Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the promised land of peace, into which he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black with storms. By day and by night, he trod a way of danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to the depths of despondency, he held on with unmovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his people as by fire.

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness, and the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy, such rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remains the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice exceedingly, thou that hast enough suffered! Thou hast beheld him who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that bide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity, and goodness.

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth—these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days—all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe.

In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow—noon and midnight, without a space between.

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to some one in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels; but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. …

This nation has dissolved—but in tears only. It stands foursquare, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. The government is not weakened, it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward, in the hour that the one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant of the Constitution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal experiences.

Where could the head of government in any monarchy be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the country, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of this people is such that now, when the head of government is stricken down, the public funds do not waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our mountains.

Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems, in the providence of God, to have been clothed, now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, "Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe."

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington, and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort thy people of old, to thy care we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that ever was fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.

LORD BELHAVEN (1656-1708)

Scotland ceased to exist as a nation by the act of union, May 1st, 1707. As occasions have been so rare in the world's history when a nation has voluntarily abdicated its sovereignty and ceased to exist by its own free act, it would be too much to say that Lord Belhaven's speech against surrendering Scotch nationality was worthy of so remarkable a scene as that presented in he Scotch Parliament when, soon after its opening, November 1st, 1706, he rose to make the protest which immortalized him.

Smollet belongs more properly to another generation, but the feeling against the union was rather exaggerated than diminished between the date of its adoption and that of his poem, 'The Tears of Scotland,' into the concluding stanza of which he has condensed the passion which prompted Belhaven's protest:—

"While the warm blood bedews my veins And unimpaired remembrance reigns, Resentment of my country's fate Within my filial heart shall beat, And spite of her insulting foe, My sympathizing verse shall flow;— 'Mourn, helpless Caledonia, mourn, Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!'"

If there is nothing in Belhaven's oration which equals this in intensity, there is power and pathos, as well as Ciceronian syntax, in the period: "Hannibal, my lord, is at our gates; Hannibal is come within our gates; Hannibal is come the length of this table; he is at the foot of this throne; if we take not notice he'll seize upon these regalia, he'll take them as our spolia opima, and whip us out of this house, never to return."

It is unfortunate for Belhaven's fame as an orator that his most effective passages are based on classical allusions intelligible at once to his audience then, but likely to appear pedantic in times when Latin has ceased to be the "vulgar tongue" of the educated, as it still was in the Scotland of Queen Anne's time.

The text of his speech here used is from 'The Parliamentary Debates,' London 1741.

A PLEA FOR THE NATIONAL LIFE OF SCOTLAND (Delivered 1706 in the Scotch Parliament)

My Lord Chancellor:—

When I consider the affair of a union betwixt the two nations, as it is expressed in the several articles thereof, and now the subject of our deliberation at this time I find my mind crowded with a variety of melancholy thoughts, and I think it my duty to disburden myself of some of them, by laying them before, and exposing them to, the serious consideration of this honorable house.

I think I see a free and independent kingdom delivering up that which all the world hath been fighting for since the days of Nimrod; yea, that for which most of all the empires, kingdoms, states, principalities, and dukedoms of Europe, are at this very time engaged in the most bloody and cruel wars that ever were, to-wit, a power to manage their own affairs by themselves, without the assistance and counsel of any other.

I think I see a national church, founded upon a rock, secured by a claim of right, hedged and fenced about by the strictest and most pointed legal sanction that sovereignty could contrive, voluntarily descending into a plain, upon an equal level with Jews, Papists, Socinians, Arminians, Anabaptists, and other sectaries, etc. I think I see the noble and honorable peerage of Scotland, whose valiant predecessors led armies against their enemies, upon their own proper charges and expenses, now divested of their followers and vassalages, and put upon such an equal foot with their vassals, that I think I see a petty English exciseman receive more homage and respect than what was paid formerly to their quondam Mackallamores.

I think I see the present peers of Scotland, whose noble ancestors conquered provinces, over-run countries, reduced and subjected towns and fortified places, exacted tribute through the greatest part of England, now walking in the court of requests like so many English attorneys, laying aside their walking swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defense should be found murder.

I think I see the honorable estate of barons, the bold assertors of the nation's rights and liberties in the worst of times, now setting a watch upon their lips and a guard upon their tongues, lest they be found guilty of scandalum magnatum.

I think I see the royal state of boroughs walking their desolate streets, hanging down their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitate to become 'prentices to their unkind neighbors; and yet, after all, finding their trade so fortified by companies, and secured by prescriptions, that they despair of any success therein.

I think I see our learned judges laying aside their practiques and decisions, studying the common law of England, graveled with certioraries, nisi prius's, writs of error, verdicts indovar, ejectione firmae, injunctions, demurs, etc., and frighted with appeals and avocations, because of the new regulations and rectifications they may meet with.

I think I see the valiant and gallant soldiery either sent to learn the plantation-trade abroad; or at home petitioning for a small subsistence, as the reward of their honorable exploits; while their old corps are broken, the common soldiers left to beg, and the youngest English corps kept standing.

I think I see the honest, industrious tradesman loaded with new taxes and impositions, disappointed of the equivalents, drinking water in place of ale, eating his saltless pottage, petitioning for encouragement to his manufactories, and answered by counter-petitions.

In short, I think I see the laborious plowman, with his corn spoiling upon his hands, for want of sale, cursing the day of his birth, dreading the expense of his burial, and uncertain whether to marry or do worse.

I think I see the incurable difficulties of the landed men, fettered under the golden chain of equivalents, their pretty daughters petitioning for want of husbands, and their sons for want of employment.

I think I see our mariners delivering up their ships to their Dutch partners, and what through presses and necessity, earning their bread as underlings in the royal English navy.

But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Caesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round about her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with an Et tu quoque, mi fili.

Are not these, my lord, very afflicting thoughts? And yet they are but the least part suggested to me by these dishonorable articles. Should not the consideration of these things vivify these dry bones of ours? Should not the memory of our noble predecessors' valor and constancy rouse up our drooping spirits? Are our noble predecessors' souls got so far into the English cabbage stock and cauliflowers that we should show the least inclination that way? Are our eyes so blinded? Are our ears so deafened? Are our hearts so hardened? Are our tongues so faltered? Are our hands so fettered that in this our day, I say, my lord, that in this our day, we should not mind the things that concern the very being and well-being of our ancient kingdom, before the day be hid from our eyes?

No, my lord, God forbid! man's extremity is God's opportunity; he is a present help in time of need, and a deliverer, and that right early. Some unforeseen Providence will fall out, that may cast the balance; some Joseph or other will say, "Why do ye strive together, since ye are brethren?" None can destroy Scotland, save Scotland itself; hold your hands from the pen, you are secure. Some Judah or other will say, "Let not our hands be upon the lad, he is our brother." There will be a Jehovah-Jireh, and some ram will he caught in the thicket, when the bloody knife is at our mother's throat. Let us up then, my lord, and let our noble patriots behave themselves like men, and we know not bow soon a blessing may come.

My lord, I wish from my heart, that this my vision prove not as true as my reasons for it are probable. I design not at this time to enter into the merits of any one particular article; I intend this discourse as an introduction to what I may afterwards say upon the whole debate as it falls in before this honorable house; and therefore, in the farther prosecution of what I have to say, I shall insist upon few particulars, very necessary to be understood, before we enter into the detail of so important a matter.

I shall, therefore, in the first place, endeavor to encourage a free and full deliberation, without animosities and heats. In the next place I shall endeavor to make an inquiry into the nature and source of the unnatural and dangerous divisions that are now on foot within this isle, with some motives showing that it is our interest to lay them aside at this time. Then I shall inquire into the reasons which have induced the two nations to enter into a treaty of union at this time, with some considerations and meditations with relation to the behavior of the lord's commissioners of the two kingdoms in the management of this great concern. And lastly, I shall propose a method, by which we shall most distinctly, and without confusion, go through the several articles of this treaty, without unnecessary repetitions or loss of time. And all this with all deference, and under the correction of this honorable house.

My lord chancellor, the greatest honor that was done unto a Roman was to allow him the glory of a triumph; the greatest and most dishonorable punishment was that of parricide. He that was guilty of parricide was beaten with rods upon his naked body till the blood gushed out of all the veins of his body; then he was sewed up in a leathern sack, called a culeus with a cock, a viper, and an ape, and thrown headlong into the sea.

My lord, patricide is a greater crime than parricide, all the world over.

In a triumph, my lord, when the conqueror was riding in his triumphal chariot, crowned with laurels, adorned with trophies, and applauded with huzzas, there was a monitor appointed to stand behind him, to warn him not to be high-minded, not puffed up with overweening thoughts of himself; and to his chariot were tied a whip and a bell, to mind him that for all his glory and grandeur he was accountable to the people for his administration, and would be punished as other men, if found guilty.

The greatest honor amongst us, my lord, is to represent the sovereign's sacred person in Parliament; and in one particular it appears to be greater than that of a triumph, because the whole legislative power seems to be wholly intrusted with him. If he give the royal assent to an act of the estates, it becomes a law obligatory upon the subject, though contrary or without any instructions from the sovereign. If he refuse the royal assent to a vote in Parliament, it cannot be a law, though he has the Sovereign's particular and positive instructions for it.

His Grace, the Duke of Queensbury, who now presents her Majesty in this session of Parliament, hath had the honor of that great trust, as often, if not more, than any Scotchman ever had. He hath been the favorite of two successive sovereigns; and I cannot but commend his constancy and perseverance, that notwithstanding his former difficulties and unsuccessful attempts, and maugre some other specialties not yet determined, that his Grace has yet had the resolution to undertake the most unpopular measures last. If his Grace succeed in this affair of a union, and that it prove for the happiness and welfare of the nation, then he justly merits to have a statue of gold erected for himself; but if it shall tend to the entire destruction and abolition of our nation, and that we the nation's trustees will go into it, then I must say that a whip and a bell, a cock and a viper and an ape, are but too small punishments for any such bold, unnatural undertaking and complaisance.

That I may pave a way, my lord, to a full, calm, and free reasoning upon this affair, which is of the last consequence unto this nation, I shall mind this honorable house, that we are the successors of our noble predecessors, who founded our monarchy, framed our laws, amended, altered, and corrected them from time to time, as the affairs and circumstances of the nation did require, without the assistance or advice of any foreign power or potentate, and who, during the time of 2,000 years, have handed them down to us, a free independent nation, with the hazard of their lives and fortunes. Shall not we then argue for that which our progenitors have purchased for us at so dear a rate, and with so much immortal honor and glory? God forbid. Shall the hazard of a father unbind the ligaments of a dumb son's tongue; and shall we hold our peace, when our patria is in danger? I speak this, my lord, that I may encourage every individual member of this house to speak his mind freely. There are many wise and prudent men amongst us, who think it not worth their while to open their mouths; there are others, who can speak very well, and to good purpose, who shelter themselves under the shameful cloak of silence, from a fear of the frowns of great men and parties. I have observed, my lord, by my experience, the greatest number of speakers in the most trivial affairs; and it will always prove so, while we come not to the right understanding of the oath de fideli, whereby we are bound not only to give our vote, but our faithful advice in Parliament, as we should answer to God; and in our ancient laws, the representatives of the honorable barons and the royal boroughs are termed spokesmen. It lies upon your lordships, therefore, particularly to take notice of such whose modesty makes them bashful to speak. Therefore, I shall leave it upon you, and conclude this point with a very memorable saying of an honest private gentleman to a great queen, upon occasion of a State project, contrived by an able statesman, and the favorite to a great king, against a peaceable, obedient people, because of the diversity of their laws and constitutions: "If at this time thou hold thy peace, salvation shall come to the people from another place, but thou and thy house shall perish." I leave the application to each particular member of this house.

My lord, I come now to consider our divisions. We are under the happy reign (blessed be God) of the best of queens, who has no evil design against the meanest of her subjects, who loves all her people, and is equally beloved by them again; and yet that under the happy influence of our most excellent Queen there should be such divisions and factions more dangerous and threatening to her dominions than if we were under an arbitrary government, is most strange and unaccountable. Under an arbitrary prince all are willing to serve because all are under a necessity to obey, whether they will or not. He chooses therefore whom he will, without respect to either parties or factions; and if he think fit to take the advices of his councils or parliaments, every man speaks his mind freely, and the prince receives the faithful advice of his people without the mixture of self-designs. If he prove a good prince, the government is easy; if bad, either death or a revolution brings a deliverance. Whereas here, my lord, there appears no end of our misery, if not prevented in time; factions are now become independent, and have got footing in councils, in parliaments, in treaties, armies, in incorporations, in families, among kindred, yea, man and wife are not free from their political jars.

It remains therefore, my lord, that I inquire into the nature of these things; and since the names give us not the right idea of the thing, I am afraid I shall have difficulty to make myself well understood.

The names generally used to denote the factions are Whig and Tory, as obscure as that of Guelfs and Gibelins. Yea, my lord, they have different significations, as they are applied to factions in each kingdom; a Whig in England is a heterogeneous creature, in Scotland he is all of a piece; a Tory in England is all of a piece, and a statesman in Scotland, he is quite otherways, an anti-courtier and anti-statesman.

A Whig in England appears to be somewhat like Nebuchadnezzar's image, of different metals, different classes, different principles, and different designs; yet take the Whigs all together, they are like a piece of fine mixed drugget of different threads, some finer, some coarser, which, after all, make a comely appearance and an agreeable suit. Tory is like a piece of loyal-made English cloth, the true staple of the nation, all of a thread; yet, if we look narrowly into it, we shall perceive diversity of colors, which, according to the various situations and positions, make various appearances. Sometimes Tory is like the moon in its full, as appeared in the affair of the bill of occasional conformity; upon other occasions it appears to be under a cloud, and as if it were eclipsed by a greater body, as it did in the design of calling over the illustrious Princess Sophia. However, by this we may see their designs are to outshoot Whig in his own bow.

Whig in Scotland is a true blue Presbyterian, who, without considering time or power, will venture their all for the Kirk, but something less for the State. The greatest difficulty is how to describe a Scots Tory. Of old, when I knew them first, Tory was an honest-hearted comradish fellow, who, provided he was maintained and protected in his benefices, titles, and dignities by the State, was the less anxious who had the government and management of the Church. But now what he is since jure divino came in fashion, and that Christianity, and, by consequence, salvation comes to depend upon episcopal ordination, I profess I know not what to make of him; only this I must say for him, that he endeavors to do by opposition that which his brother in England endeavors by a more prudent and less scrupulous method.

Now, my lord, from these divisions there has got up a kind of aristocracy something like the famous triumvirate at Rome; they are a kind of undertakers and pragmatic statesmen, who, finding their power and strength great, and answerable to their designs, will make bargains with our gracious sovereign; they will serve her faithfully, but upon their own terms; they must have their own instruments, their own measures; this man must be turned out, and that man put in, and then they will make her the most glorious queen in Europe.

Where will this end, my lord? Is not her Majesty in danger by such a method? Is not the monarchy in danger? Is not the nation's peace and tranquillity in danger? Will a change of parties make the nation more happy? No, my lord, the seed is sown that is like to afford us a perpetual increase; it is not an annual herb, it takes deep root; it seeds and breeds; and, if not timely prevented by her Majesty's royal endeavors, will split the whole island in two.

My lord, I think, considering our present circumstances at this time, the Almighty God has reserved this great work for us. We may bruise this Hydra of division, and crush this Cockatrice's egg. Our neighbors in England are not yet fitted for any such thing; they are not under the afflicting hand of Providence, as we are; their circumstances are great and glorious; their treaties are prudently managed, both at home and abroad; their generals brave and valorous; their armies successful and victorious; their trophies and laurels memorable and surprising; their enemies subdued and routed; their strongholds besieged and taken, sieges relieved, marshals killed and taken prisoners; provinces and kingdoms are the results of their victories; their royal navy is the terror of Europe; their trade and commerce extended through the universe, encircling the whole habitable world and rendering their own capital city the emporium for the whole inhabitants of the earth. And, which is yet more than all these things, the subjects freely bestow their treasure upon their sovereign! And, above all, these vast riches, the sinews of war, and without which all the glorious success had proved abortive —these treasures are managed with such faithfulness and nicety, that they answer seasonably all their demands, though at never so great a distance. Upon these considerations, my lord, how hard and difficult a thing will it prove to persuade our neighbors to a self-denying bill.

'Tis quite otherwise with us, my lord; we are an obscure poor people, though formerly of better account, removed to a remote corner of the world, without name, and without alliances, our posts mean and precarious, so that I profess I don't think any one post of the kingdom worth the briguing after, save that of being commissioner to a long session of a factious Scotch Parliament, with an antedated commission, and that yet renders the rest of the ministers more miserable. What hinders us then, my lord, to lay aside our divisions, to unite cordially and heartily together in our present circumstances, when our all is at stake? Hannibal, my lord, is at our gates; Hannibal is come within our gates Hannibal is come the length of this table; he is at the foot of this throne; he will demolish this throne; if we take not notice, he'll seize upon these regalia, he'll take them as our spolia opima, and whip us out of this house, never to return again.

For the love of God then, my lord, for the safety and welfare of our ancient kingdom, whose sad circumstances, I hope, we shall yet convert into prosperity and happiness, we want no means, if we unite. God blessed the peacemakers; we want neither men, nor sufficiency of all manner of things necessary, to make a nation happy; all depends upon management, Concordia res parvae crescunt. I fear not these articles, though they were ten times worse than they are, if we once cordially forgive one another, and that, according to our proverb, bygones be bygones, and fair play for time to come. For my part, in the sight of God, and in the presence of this honorable house, I heartily forgive every man, and beg that they may do the same to me; and I do most humbly propose that his grace, my lord commissioner, may appoint an Agape, may order a love feast for this honorable house, that we may lay aside all self-designs, and after our fasts and humiliations may have a day of rejoicing and thankfulness, may eat our meat with gladness, and our bread with a merry heart; then shall we sit each man under his own fig-tree, and the voice of the turtle shall be heard in our land, a bird famous for constancy and fidelity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good God! What, is this an entire surrender!

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

JOHN BELL (1797-1869)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you of the North complain that the policy of the government, under the long-continued influence of Southern Presidents, has been injurious or fatal to your interests? Has it paralyzed your industry? Has it crippled your resources? Has it impaired your energies? Has it checked your progress in any one department of human effort? Let your powerful mercantile marine, your ships whitening every sea—the fruit of wise commercial regulations and navigation laws; let your flourishing agriculture, your astonishing progress in manufacturing skill, your great canals, your thousands of miles of railroads, your vast trade, internal and external, your proud cities, and your accumulated millions of moneyed capital, ready to be invested in profitable enterprises in any part of the world, answer that question. Do you complain of a narrow and jealous policy under Southern rule, in extending and opening new fields of enterprise to your hardy sons in the great West, along the line of the great chain of American lakes, even to the head waters of the Father of Rivers, and over the rich and fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the teeming populations—let the hundreds of millions of annual products that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts of the red man—answer that question. That very preponderance of free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that there is at last a North side of this Chamber, has been hastened by the liberal policy of Southern Presidents and Southern statesmen; and has it become the ambition of that Senator to unite and combine all this great, rich, and powerful North in the policy of crippling the resources and repressing the power of the South? Is this to be the one idea which is to mold the policy of the government, when that gentleman and his friends shall control it? If it be, then I appeal to the better feelings and the better judgment of his followers to arrest him in his mad career. Sir, let us have some brief interval of repose at least from this eternal agitation of the slavery question. Let power go into whatever hands it may, let us save the Union!

I have all the confidence other gentlemen can have in the extent to which this Union is intrenched in the hearts of the great mass of the people of the North and South; but when I reflect upon and consider the desperate and dangerous extremes to which ambitious party leaders are often prepared to go, without meaning to do the country any mischief, in the struggle for the imperial power, the crown of the American presidency, I sometimes tremble for its fate.

Two great parties are now dividing the Union on this question. It is evident to every man of sense, who examines it, that practically, in respect to slavery, the result will be the same both to North and South; Kansas will be a free State, no matter what may be the decision on this question. But how that decision may affect the fortunes of those parties, is not certain; and there is the chief difficulty. But the greatest question of all is, How will that decision affect the country as a whole?

Two adverse yet concurrent and mighty forces are driving the vessel of State towards the rocks upon which she must split, unless she receives timely aid—a paradox, yet expressive of a momentous and perhaps a fatal truth.

There is no hope of rescue unless the sober-minded men, both of the North and South, shall, by some sufficient influence, be brought to adopt the wise maxims and sage counsels of the great founders of our government.

TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILROADS (Delivered in the United States Senate, February 17th, 1858. in Support of the Pacific Railroad Bill)

An objection made to this bill is, the gigantic scale of the projected enterprise. A grand idea it is. A continent of three thousand miles in extent from east to west, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is to be connected by a railway! Honorable Senators will remember, that over one thousand miles—one-third of this whole expanse of the continent—the work is already accomplished, and that chiefly by private enterprise. I may, as a safe estimate, say, that a thousand miles of this railroad leading from the Atlantic to the West, upon the line of the lakes, and nearly as much upon a line further south, are either completed, or nearly so. We have two thousand miles yet to compass, in the execution of a work which it is said has no parallel in the history of the world. No, sir; it has no parallel in the history of the world, ancient or modern, either as to its extent and magnitude, or to its consequences, beneficent and benignant in all its bearings on the interests of all mankind. It is in these aspects, and in the contemplation of these consequences, that it has no parallel in the history of the world—changing the course of the commerce of the world—bringing the West almost in contact, by reversing the ancient line of communication, with the gorgeous East, and all its riches, the stories of which, in our earlier days we regarded as fabulous; but now, sir, what was held to be merely fictions of the brain in former times, in regard to the riches of Eastern Asia, is almost realized on our own western shores. Sir, these are some of the inducements to the construction of this great road, besides its importance to the military defenses of the country, and its mail communications. Sir, it is a magnificent and splendid project in every aspect in which you can view it. One-third of this great railway connection is accomplished; two-thirds remain to be. Shall we hesitate to go forward with the work?

Now, with regard to the means provided for the construction of the road. It is said, here is an enormous expenditure of the public money proposed. We propose to give twenty millions of dollars in the bonds of the government, bearing five per cent. interest, and fifteen millions of acres of land, supposed to be worth as much more, on the part of the government. This is said to be enormous, and we are reminded that we ought to look at what the people will say, and how they will feel when they come to the knowledge that twenty millions in money and twenty millions in land have been given for the construction of a railway! Some doubtless there are in this chamber who are ready to contend that we had better give these fifteen millions of acres of land to become homesteads for the landless and homeless. What is this twenty millions in money, and how is it to be paid? It is supposed that the road cannot be constructed in less than five years. In that event, bonds of the government to the amount of four millions of dollars will issue annually. Probably the road will not be built in less than ten years, and that will require an issue of bonds amounting to two millions a year; and possibly the road may not be finished in less than twenty years, which would limit the annual issue of bonds to one million. The interest upon these bonds, at five per cent, will of course have to be paid out of the treasury, a treasury in which there is now a surplus of twelve or fourteen millions of dollars. When the road is completed and the whole amount of twenty millions in lands is paid, making the whole sum advanced by the government forty millions, the annual interest upon them will only be two millions. And what is that? Why, sir, the donations and benevolences, the allowances of claims upon flimsy and untenable grounds, and other extravagant and unnecessary expenditures that are granted by Congress and the executive departments, while you have an overflowing treasury, will amount to the half of that sum annually. The enormous sum of two millions is proposed to be paid out of the treasury annually, when this great road shall be completed! It is a tremendous undertaking, truly! What a scheme! What extravagance! I understand the cost of the New York and Erie road alone, constructed principally by private enterprise, has been not less than thirty millions—between thirty and thirty-three millions of dollars. That work was constructed by a single State giving aid occasionally to a company, which supplied the balance of the cost. I understand that the road from Baltimore to Wheeling, when it shall have been finished, and its furniture placed upon it, will have cost at least thirty millions. What madness, what extravagance, then, is it for the government of the United States to undertake to expend forty millions for a road from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Mr. President, one honorable Senator says the amount is not sufficient to induce a capitalist to invest his money in the enterprise. Others, again, say it is far too much; more than we can afford to give for the construction of the work. Let us see which is right. The government is to give twenty millions in all out of the treasury for the road; or we issue bonds and pay five per cent, interest annually upon them, and twenty millions in lands, which, if regarded as money, amounts to a cost to the government of two millions per annum.

What are the objects to be accomplished? A daily mail from the valley of the Mississippi to the Pacific; the free transportation of all troops and munitions of war required for the protection and defense of our possessions on the Pacific; which we could not hold three months in a war either with England or France, without such a road. By building this road we accomplish this further object: This road will be the most effective and powerful check that can be interposed by the government upon Indian depredations and aggressions upon our frontiers or upon each other; the northern tribes upon the southern, and the southern upon the northern. You cut them in two. You will be constantly in their midst, and cut off their intercommunication and hostile depredations. You will have a line of quasi fortifications, a line of posts and stations, with settlements on each side of the road. Every few miles you will thus have settlements strong enough to defend themselves against inroads of the Indians, and so constituting a wall of separation between the Indian tribes, composed of a white population, with arms in their hands. This object alone would, perhaps, be worth as much as the road will cost; and when I speak of what the road will be worth in this respect, I mean to say, that besides the prevention of savage warfare, the effusion of blood, it will save millions of dollars to the treasury annually, in the greater economy attained in moving troops and military supplies and preventing hostilities.

. . .

I have been thus particular in noting these things because I want to show where or on which side the balance will be found in the adjustment of the responsibility account between the friends and the opponents of this measure—which will have the heaviest account to settle with the country.

For myself, I am not wedded to this particular scheme. Rather than have no road, I would prefer to adopt other projects. I am now advocating one which I supposed would meet the views of a greater number of Senators than any other. I think great honor is due to Mr. Whitney for having originated the scheme, and having obtained the sanction of the legislatures of seventeen or eighteen States of the Union. Rather than have the project altogether fail, I would be willing to adopt this plan. It may not offer the same advantages for a speedy consummation of the work; but still, we would have a road in prospect, and that would be a great deal. But if gentlemen are to rise here in their places year after year—and this is the fifth year from the time we ought to have undertaken this work—and tell us it is just time to commence a survey, we will never have a road. The honorable Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] says there ought to be some limitation in this idea of progress, when regarded as a spur to great activity and energy, as to what we shall do in our day. He says we have acquired California; we have opened up those rich regions on our western borders, which promises such magnificent results; and he asks, is not that enough for the present generation? Leave it to the nest generation to construct a work of such magnitude as this—requiring forty millions of dollars from the government. Mr. President, I have said that if the condition was a road or no road, I would regard one hundred and fifty millions of dollars as well laid out by the government for the work; though I have no idea that it will take such an amount. Eighty or one hundred millions of dollars will build the road.

But with regard to what is due from this generation to itself, or what may be left to the next generation, I say it is for the present generation that we want the road. As to our having acquired California, and opened this new world of commerce and enterprise, and as to what we shall leave to the next generation, I say that, after we of this generation shall have constructed this road, we will, perhaps, not even leave to the next generation the construction of a second one. The present generation, in my opinion, will not pass away until it shall have seen two great lines of railroads in prosperous operation between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and within our own territory, and still leave quite enough to the next generation—the third and fourth great lines of communication between the two extremes of the continent. One, at least, is due to ourselves, and to the present generation; and I hope there are many within the sound of my voice who will live to see it accomplished. We want that new Dorado, the new Ophir of America, to be thrown open and placed within the reach of the whole people. We want the great cost, the delays, as well as the privations and risks of a passage to California, by the malarious Isthmus of Panama, or any other of the routes now in use, to be mitigated, or done away with. There will be some greater equality in the enjoyment and advantages of these new acquisitions upon the Pacific coast when this road shall be constructed. The inexhaustible gold mines, or placers of California, will no longer be accessible only to the more robust, resolute, or desperate part of our population, and who may be already well enough off to pay their passage by sea, or provide an outfit for an overland travel of two and three thousand miles. Enterprising young men all over the country, who can command the pittance of forty or fifty dollars to pay their railroad fare; heads of families who have the misfortune to be poor, but spirit and energy enough to seek comfort and independence by labor, will no longer be restrained by the necessity of separating themselves from their families, but have it in their power, with such small means as they may readily command, in eight or ten days, to find themselves with their whole households transported and set down in the midst of the gold regions of the West, at full liberty to possess and enjoy whatever of the rich harvest spread out before them their industry and energy shall entitle them to. It will be theirs by as good a title as any can boast who have had the means to precede them. We hear much said of late of the justice and policy of providing a homestead, a quarter section of the public land, to every poor and landless family in the country. Make this road, and you enable every poor man in the country to buy a much better homestead, and retain all the pride and spirit of independence. Gentlemen here may say that the region of California, so inviting, and abundant in gold now, will soon be exhausted, and all these bright prospects for the enterprising poor pass away. No, sir; centuries will pass—ages and ages must roll away before those gold-bearing mountains shall all have been excavated—those auriferous sands and alluvial deposits shall give out all their wealth; and even after all these shall have failed, the beds of the rivers will yield a generous return to the toil of the laborer. …

Mr. President, I alluded to the importance of having a communication by railway between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, in the event of war with any great maritime Power. I confess that the debates upon the subject of our foreign relations within the last few weeks, if all that was said had commanded my full assent, would have dissipated very much the force of any argument which I thought might be fairly urged in favor of this road as a necessary work for the protection and security of our possessions on the Pacific coast. We now hear it stated, and reiterated by grave and respectable and intelligent Senators, that there is no reason that any one should apprehend a war with either Great Britain or France. Not now, nor at any time in the future; at all events, unless there shall be a total change in the condition, social, political, and economical, of those Powers, and especially as regards Great Britain. All who have spoken agree that there is no prospect of war. None at all. I agree that I can see nothing in the signs of the times which is indicative of immediate and certain war. Several gentlemen have thrown out the idea that we hold the bond of Great Britain to keep the peace, with ample guarantees and sureties, not only for the present time, but for an indefinite time; and as long as Great Britain stands as an independent monarchy. These sureties and guarantees are said to consist in the discontented and destitute class of her population, of her operatives and laborers, and the indispensable necessity of the cotton crop of the United States in furnishing them with employment and subsistence, without which it is said she would be torn with internal strife.

I could tell gentlemen who argue in that way, that we have another guarantee that Great Britain will not break with the United States for any trivial cause, which they have not thought proper to raise. We may threaten and denounce and bluster as much as we please about British violations of the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, and the Mosquito protectorate, about the assumption of territorial dominion over the Balize or British Honduras, and the new colony of the Bay Islands; and Great Britain will negotiate, explain, treat, and transgress, and negotiate again, and resort to any device, before she will go to war with us, as long as she can hope to prolong the advantages to herself of the free-trade policy now established with the United States. It is not only the cotton crop of America which she covets, but it is the rich market for the products of her manufacturing industry, which she finds in the United States; and this has contributed as much as any other cause to improve the condition of her operatives, and impart increased prosperity to her trade and revenue. As long as we think proper to hold to our present commercial regulations, I repeat that it will require very great provocation on our part to force Great Britain into a war with the United States. . . .

As for this road, we are told at every turn that it is ridiculous to talk of war in connection with it, for we will have no wars except those with the Indians. Both England and France dare not go to war with us. I say this course of argument is not only unwise and delusive, but if such sentiments take hold on the country, they will be mischievous; they will almost to a certainty lead to a daring and reckless policy on our part; and as each government labors under a similar delusion as to what the other will not dare to do, what is more probable than that both may get into such a position—the result of a mutual mistake—that war must ensue? It is worth while to reflect upon the difference between the policy of Great Britain and this country in her diplomatic correspondence and debates in Parliament. When we make a threat, Great Britain does not threaten in turn. We hear of no gasconade on her part. If we declare that we have a just right to latitude 54 degrees 40', and will maintain our right at all hazard, she does not bluster, and threaten, and declare what she will do, if we dare to cany out our threat. When we talk about the Mosquito king, of Balize, and of the Bay Islands, and declare our determination to drive her from her policy and purposes in regard to them, we do not hear of an angry form of expression from her. We employed very strong language last year in regard to the rights of American fishermen; but the reply of Great Britain scarcely assumed the tone of remonstrance against the intemperate tone of our debates. Her policy upon all such occasions is one of wisdom. Her strong and stern purpose is seldom to be seen in her diplomatic intercourse, or in the debates of her leading statesmen; but if you were about her dock-yards, or in her foundries, or her timber-yards, and her great engine manufactories, and her armories, you would find some bustle and stir. There, all is life and motion.

I have always thought that the proper policy of this country is to make no threats—to make no parade of what we intend to do. Let us put the country in a condition to defend its honor and interests; to maintain them successfully whenever they may be assailed; no matter by what Power, whether by Great Britain, or France, or both combined. Make this road; complete the defenses of the country, of your harbors, and navy yards; strengthen your navy—put it upon an efficient footing; appropriate ample means for making experiments to ascertain the best model of ships-of-war, to be driven by steam or any other motive power; the best models of the engines to be employed in them; to inquire whether a large complement of guns, or a few guns of great calibre, is the better plan. We may well, upon such questions, take a lesson from England. At a recent period she has been making experiments of this nature, in order to give increased efficiency to her naval establishment. How did she set about it? Her Admiralty Board gave orders for eleven of the most perfect engines that could be built by eleven of the most skillful and eminent engine-builders in the United Kingdom, without limit as to the cost, or any other limitation, except as to class or size. At the same time orders were issued for the building of thirteen frigates of a medium class by thirteen of the most skillful shipbuilders in the kingdom, in order to ascertain the best models, the best running lines, and the best of every other quality desirable in a war vessel. This is the mode in which Great Britain prepares for any contingencies which may arise. She cannot tell when they may occur, yet she knows that she has no immunity from those chances which, at some time or other, are seen to happen to all nations. In my opinion, the construction of this road from the Mississippi to the Pacific is essential to the protection and safety of this country, in the event of a war with any great maritime Power. It may take ten years to complete it; but every hundred miles of it, which may be finished before the occurrence of war, will be just so much gained—so much added to our ability to maintain our honor in that war. In every view of this question I can take, I am persuaded that we ought at least prepare to commence the work, and do it immediately.

JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN (1811-1884)

Judah P. Benjamin, the "Beaconsfield of the Confederacy," was born at St. Croix in the West Indies, where his parents, a family of English-Jews, on their way to settle in New Orleans, were delayed by the American measures against intercourse with England. In 1816 his parents brought him to Wilmington, North Carolina, where, and at Yale College, he was educated. Not until after he was ready to begin life at the bar, did he reach New Orleans, the destination for which his parents had set out before he was born. In New Orleans, after a severe struggle, he rose to eminence as a lawyer, and his firm, of which Mr. Slidell was a partner, was the leading law firm of the State. He was elected to the United States Senate as a Whig in 1852 and re-elected as a Democrat in 1859. With Mr. Slidell, who was serving with him in the Senate, he withdrew in 1861 and became Attorney-General in the Confederate cabinet. He was afterwards made Secretary of War, but as the Confederate congress censured him in that position he resigned it and Mr. Davis immediately appointed him Secretary of State. After the close of the war, when pursuit after members of the Confederate cabinet was active, he left the coast of Florida in an open boat and landed at the Bahamas, taking passage thence to London where he rose to great eminence as a lawyer. He was made Queen's Counsel, and on his retirement from practice, because of ill health, in 1883, a farewell banquet was given him by the bar in the hall of the Inner Temple, probably the most notable compliment paid in England to any orator since the banquet to Berryer. He died in 1884.

Benjamin was called the "brains of the Confederacy" and in acuteness of intellect he probably surpassed most men of his time. He resembled Disraeli in this as well as in being a thorough-going believer in an aristocratic method of government rather than in one based on universal suffrage and the will of the masses determined by majority vote.

FAREWELL TO THE UNION (On Leaving the United States Senate in 1861)

Mr. President, if we were engaged in the performance of our accustomed legislative duties, I might well rest content with the simple statement of my concurrences in the remarks just made by my colleague [Mr. Slidell]. Deeply impressed, however, with the solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible to the duty of recording, among the authentic reports of your proceedings, the expression of my conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged and acted well and wisely in this crisis of her destiny.

Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion, in the discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing. It has been said that whatever may be the rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution, —even granting their right to resume, for sufficient cause, those restricted powers which they delegated to the general government in trust for their own use and benefit,—still Louisiana can have no such right, because she was acquired by purchase. Gentlemen have not hesitated to speak of the sovereign States formed out of the territory ceded by France as property bought with the money of the United States, belonging to them as purchasers; and, although they have not carried their doctrine to its legitimate results, I must conclude that they also mean to assert, on the same principle, the right of selling for a price that which for a price was bought.

I shall not pause to comment on this repulsive dogma of a party which asserts the right of property in free-born white men, in order to reach its cherished object of destroying the right of property in slave-born black men—still less shall I detain the Senate in pointing out how shadowy the distinction between the condition of the servile African and that to which the white freeman of my State would be reduced, if it, indeed, be true that they are bound to this government by ties that cannot be legitimately dissevered without the consent of that very majority which wields its powers for their oppression. I simply deny the fact on which the argument is founded. I deny that the province of Louisiana, or the people of Louisiana, were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that could be bought or sold at will. Without entering into the details of the negotiation, the archives of our State Department show the fact to be, that although the domain, the public lands, and other property of France in the ceded province, were conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was not conveyed otherwise than in trust.

A hundredfold, sir, has the Government of the United States been reimbursed by the sales of public property, of public lands, for the price of the acquisition; but not with the fidelity of the honest trustee has it discharged the obligations as regards the sovereignty.

I have said that the government assumed to act as trustee or guardian of the people of the ceded province, and covenanted to transfer to them the sovereignty thus held in trust for their use and benefit, as soon as they were capable of exercising it. What is the express language of the treaty?

"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyments of all rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess."

And, sir, as if to mark the true nature of the cession in a manner too significant to admit of misconstruction, the treaty stipulates no price; and the sole consideration for the conveyance, as stated on its face, is the desire to afford a strong proof of the friendship of France for the United States. By the terms of a separate convention stipulating the payment of a sum of money, the precaution is again observed of stating that the payment is to be made, not as a consideration or a price or a condition precedent of the cession, but it is carefully distinguished as being a consequence of the cession. It was by words thus studiously chosen, sir, that James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson marked their understanding of a contract now misconstrued as being a bargain and sale of sovereignty over freemen. With what indignant scorn would those stanch advocates of the inherent right of self-government have repudiated the slavish doctrine now deduced from their action!

How were the obligations of this treaty fulfilled? That Louisiana at that date contained slaves held as property by her people through the whole length of the Mississippi Valley, that those people had an unrestricted right of settlement with their slaves under legal protection throughout the entire ceded province, no man has ever yet had the hardihood to deny. Here is a treaty promise to protect their property—their slave property—in that Territory, before it should become a State. That this promise was openly violated, in the adjustment forced upon the South at the time of the admission of Missouri, is a matter of recorded history. The perspicuous and unanswerable exposition of Mr. Justice Catron, in the opinion delivered by him in the Dred Scott case, will remain through all time as an ample vindication of this assertion.

If then, sir, the people of Louisiana had a right, which Congress could not deny, of the admission into the Union with all the rights of all the citizens of the United States, it is in vain that the partisans of the right of the majority to govern the minority with despotic control, attempt to establish a distinction, to her prejudice, between her rights and those of any other State. The only distinction which really exists is this, that she can point to a breach of treaty stipulations expressly guaranteeing her rights, as a wrong superadded to those which have impelled a number of her sister States to the assertion of their independence.

The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State are those of Virginia; no more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated powers successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of her express reservation made and notified to her sister States when she consented to enter the Union! And, sir, permit me to say that, of all the causes which justify the action of the Southern States, I know none of greater gravity and more alarming magnitude than that now developed of the right of secession. A pretension so monstrous as that which perverts a restricted agency constituted by sovereign States for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape from such despotism, when powers not delegated are usurped, converts the whole constitutional fabric into the secure abode of lawless tyranny, and degrades sovereign States into provincial dependencies.

It is said that the right of secession, if conceded, makes of our government a mere rope of sand; that to assert its existence imputes to the framers of the Constitution the folly of planting the seeds of death in that which was designed for perpetual existence. If this imputation were true, sir, it would merely prove that their offspring was not exempt from that mortality which is the common lot of all that is not created by higher than human power. But it is not so, sir. Let facts answer theory. For two-thirds of a century this right has been known by many of the States to be, at all times, within their power. Yet, up to the present period, when its exercise has become indispensable to a people menaced with absolute extermination, there have been but two instances in which it has been even threatened seriously; the first, when Massachusetts led the New England States in an attempt to escape from the dangers of our last war with Great Britain; the second, when the same State proposed to secede on account of the admission of Texas as a new State into the Union.