Note 33 — UNCLE SAM. BY ALBERT MATTHEWS.
Reading edition
In a speech on the admission of the Territory of Orleans, delivered in Congress on January 14, 1811, Josiah Quincy declared it as his "deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, . . . it will be the duty of some" of the States "to prepare definitely for a separation—amicably, if they can; violently, if they must" (Speeches, 1874, p. 196). While this remark has become historic, it is almost invariably misquoted. In a speech made in Congress on January 8, 1813, Henry Clay, referring to Quincy, said: "The gentleman can not have forgotten his own sentiments, uttered even on the floor of this House, 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must'" (Works, 1897, V, 58). It is the Clay version that has become a familiar quotation.
In the Boston Herald of November 23, 1904, appeared the following:
"In a signed article in the Huntsville, Ala., Mercury, R. T. Bentley, a well-known man, says:
"'It appearing that Theodore Roosevelt, the head and front of the republican party, which represents the dangerous policies of civilization, protective tariff, imperialism and social equality, has been elected president of the United States by a strictly sectional vote, and has established an insurmountable barrier between the north and south, I feel constrained to express my humble opinion, as a true and patriotic American citizen of the south, that if the republican party should continue its dangerous policies for the next 4 yrs. and should triumph in the next national election, that the 13 states which voted for A. B. Parker should secede from the union and by force of arms resist an oppression which means the early fall of our great republic.'"
At the present day such a statement merely excites amusement, as no one takes it seriously; but in 1812 it was different.