shall have tamed them, they may come back, in the spirit of our fathers, to the task of reconstruction? Or will they have that separation partial; will they give to each State all its military power; will they give to each State its revenue power; will they still preserve the common agent, and will they thus carry on a Government different from that which now exists, yet not separating the States so entirely as to make the work of reconstruction equal to a new creation; not separating them so as to render it utterly impossible to administer any functions of the Government in security and peace?

I waive the question of duality, considering that a dual Executive would be the institution of a King Log. I consider a dual legislative department would be to bring into antagonism the representatives of two different countries, to war perpetually, and thus to continue, not union, but the irrepressible conflict. There is no duality possible (unless there be two confederacies) which seems to me consistent with the interests of either or of both. It might be that two confederacies could be so organized as to answer jointly many of the ends of our present Union; it might be that States, agreeing with each other in their internal policy-having a similarity of interests and an identity of purpose-might associate together, and that these two confederacies might have relations to each other so close as to give them a united power in time of war against any foreign nation. These things are possibilities; these things it becomes us to contemplate; these things it devolves on the majority section to consider now; for with every motion of that clock is passing away your opportunity. It was greater when we met on the first Monday in December than it is now; it is greater now than it will be on the first day of next week. We have waited long; we have come to the conclusion that you mean to do nothing. In the Committee of Thirteen, where the resolutions of the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN] were considered, various attempts were made, but no prospect of any agreement on which it was possible for us to stand, in security for the future, could be matured. I offered a proposition, which was but the declaration of that which the Constitution announces; but that which the Supreme Court had, from time to time, and from an early period asserted; but that which was necessary for equality in the Union. Not one single vote of the Republican portion of that committee was given for the proposition.

Looking, then, upon separation as inevitable, not knowing how that separation is to occur, or at least what States it is to embrace, there remains to us, I believe, as the consideration which is most useful, the inquiry, How can this separation be effected so as to leave to us the power, whenever we shall have the will, to reconstruct? It can only be done by adopting a policy of peace. It can only be done by denying to the Federal Government all power to coerce. It can only be done by returning to the point from which we started, and saying, "This is a Government of fraternity, a

Government of consent, and it shall not be administered in a departure from those principles."

I do not regard the failure of our constitutional Union, as very many do, to be the failure of self-government—to be conclusive in all future time of the unfitness of man to govern himself. Our State governments have charge of nearly all the relations of person and property. This Federal Government was instituted mainly as a common agent for foreign purposes, for free trade among the States, and for common defense. Representative liberty will remain in the States after they are separated. Liberty was not crushed by the separation of the colonies from the mother-country, then the most constitutional monarchy and the freest Government known. Still less will liberty be destroyed by the separation of these States, to prevent the destruction of the spirit of the Constitution by the mal-administration of it. There will be injury-injury to all; differing in degree, differing in manner. The injury to the manufacturing and navigating States will be to their internal prosperity. The injury to the Southern States will be mainly to their foreign commerce. All will feel the deprivation of that high pride and power which belong to the flag now representing the greatest republic, if not the greatest Government, upon the face of the globe. I would that it still remained to consider what we might calmly have considered on the first Monday in December-how this could be avoided; but events have rolled past that point. You would not make propositions when they would have been effective. I presume you will not make them now; and I know not what effect they would have if you did. Your propositions would have been most welcome if they had been made before any question of coercion, and before any vain boasting of power; for pride and passion do not often take counsel of pecuniary interest, at least among those whom I represent. But you have chosen to take the policy of clinging to words [the Chicago platform], in disregard of passing events, and have hastened them onward. It is true, as shown by the history of all revolutions, that they are most precipitated and intensified by obstinacy and vacillation. The want of a policy, the obstinate adherence to unimportant things, have brought us to a condition where I close my eyes, because I can not see anything that encourages me to hope.

In the long period which elapsed after the downfall of the great republics of the East, when despotism seemed to brood over the civilized world, and only here and there constitutional monarchy even was able to rear its head-when all the great principles of republican and representative government had sunk deep, fathomless, into the sea of human events-it was then that the storm of our Revolution moved the waters. The earth, the air, and the sea became brilliant; and from the foam of ages rose the constellation which was set in the political firmament, as a sign of unity and confederation and community independence, coexistent with confederate strength. That constellation has served to bless our people. Nay, more;

APPENDIX H.

621 its light has been thrown on foreign lands, and its regenerative power will outlive, perhaps, the Government as a sign for which it was set. It may be pardoned to me, sir, who, in my boyhood, was given to the military service, and who have followed, under tropical suns and over northern snows, the flag of the Union, if I here express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me when I think of taking a last leave of that object of early affection and proud association; feeling that henceforth it is not to be the banner which, by day and by night, I was ready to follow; to hail with the rising and bless with the setting sun. But God, who knows the hearts of men, will judge between you and us, at whose door lies the responsibility. Men will see the efforts made, here and elsewhere; that we have been silent when words would not avail, and have curbed an impatient temper, and hoped that conciliatory counsels might do that which could not be effected by harsh means. And yet, the only response which has come from the other side has been a stolid indifference, as though it mattered not: "Let the temple fall, we do not care!" Sirs, remember that such conduct is offensive, and that men may become indifferent even to the objects of their early attachments.

If our Government should fail, it will not be from the defect of the system, though each planet was set to revolve in an orbit of its own, each moving by its own impulse, yet being all attracted by the affections and interests which countervailed each other; there was no inherent tendency to disruption. It has been the perversion of the Constitution; it has been the substitution of theories of morals for principles of government; it has been forcing crude opinions upon the domestic institutions of others, which has disturbed these planets in their orbit; it is this which threatens to destroy the constellation which, in its power and its glory, had been gathering stars one after another, until, from thirteen, it had risen to thirty-three.

If we accept the argument of to-day in favor of coercion as the theory of our Government, its only effect will be to precipitate men who have pride and self-reliance into the assertion of the freedom and independence to which they were born. Our fathers would never have entered into a confederate Government which had within itself the power of coercion. would not agree to remain one day in such a Government after I had the power to get out of it. To argue that the man who follows the mandate of his State, resuming her sovereign jurisdiction and power, is disloyal to his allegiance to the United States, which allegiance he only owed through his State, is such a confusion of ideas as does not belong to an ordinary comprehension of our Government. It is treason to the principle of community independence. It is to recur to that doctrine of passive obedience which, in England, cost one monarch his head and drove another into exile; a doctrine which, since the Revolution of 1688, has obtained nowhere where men speak the English tongue. Yet all this it is needful to admit, before we accept this doctrine of coercion, which is to send an army and a navy

to do that which there are no courts to perform; to execute the law without a judicial decision, and without an officer to serve process. This, I say, would degrade us to the basest despotism under which man could live-the despotism of a many-headed monster, without the sensibility or regardful consideration which might belong to an hereditary king.*

There is a strange similarity in the position of affairs at the present day to that which the colonies occupied. Lord North asserted the right to collect the revenue, and insisted on collecting it by force. He sent troops to Boston Harbor and to Charlestown, and he quartered troops in those towns. The result was, collision; and out of that collision came the separation of the colonies from the mother-country. The same thing is being attempted to-day. Not the law, not the civil magistrate, but troops, are relied upon now to execute the laws. To gather taxes in the Southern ports, the army and navy must be sent to perform the functions of magistrates. It is the old case over again. Senators of the North, you are reenacting the blunders which statesmen in Great Britain committed; but among you there are some who, like Chatham and Burke, though not of our section, yet are vindicating our rights.

I have heard, with some surprise, for it seemed to me idle, the repetition of the assertion heretofore made, that the cause of the separation was the election of Mr. Lincoln. It may be a source of gratification to some gentlemen that their friend is elected; but no individual had the power to produce the existing state of things. It was the purpose, the end, it was the declaration by himself and his friends, which constitute the necessity of providing new safeguards for ourselves. The man was nothing, save as he was the representative of opinions, of a policy, of purposes, of power, to inflict upon us those wrongs to which freemen never tamely submit.

Senators, I have spoken longer than I desired. I had supposed it was possible, avoiding argument and not citing authority, to have made to you a brief address. It was thought useless to argue a question which now belongs to the past. The time is near at hand when the places which have known us as colleagues laboring together can know us in that relation no more for ever. I have striven to avert the catastrophe which now impends over the country, unsuccessfully; and I regret it. For the few days which I may remain, I am willing to labor in order that that catastrophe shall be as little as possible destructive to public peace and prosperity. If you desire at this last moment to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we can not live peaceably together, to leave with the rights we had before we were united, since we can not enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations

* Here occurred a colloquy with another Senator, followed by some paragraphs not essential to the completeness of the subject.

which may still subsist between us, drawn from the associations of our struggles from the Revolutionary era to the present day, which may be .beneficial to you as well as to us.

If you will not have it thus-if in the pride of power, if in contempt of reason, and reliance upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you-then, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen. Sufficiently numerous on both sides, in close contact, with only imaginary lines of division, and with many means of approach, each sustained by productive sections, the people of which will give freely both of money and of store, the conflicts must be multiplied indefinitely, and masses of men, sacrificed to the demon of civil war, will furnish hecatombs, such as the recent campaign in Italy did not offer. At the end of all this what will you have effected? Destruction upon both sides; subjugation upon neither; a treaty of peace leaving both torn and bleeding; the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan substituted for those peaceful notes of domestic happiness that now prevail throughout the land; and then you will agree that each is to pursue his separate course as best he may. This is to be the end of war. Through a long series of years you may waste your strength, distress your people, and yet at last must come to the position which you might have had at first, had justice and reason, instead of selfishness and passlon, folly and crime, dictated your course.

Is there wisdom, is there patriotism in the land? If so, easy must be the solution of this question. If not, then Mississippi's gallant sons will stand like a wall of fire around their State; and I go hence, not in hostility to you, but in love and allegiance to her, to take my place among her sons, be it for good or for evil.

I shall probably never again attempt to utter here the language either of warning or of argument. I leave the case in your hands. If you solve it not before I go, you will have still to decide it. Toward you individually, as well as to those whom you represent, I would that I had the power now to say there shall be peace between us for ever. I would that I had the power now to say the intercourse and the commerce between the States, if they can not live in one Union, shall still be uninterrupted; that all the social relations shall remain undisturbed; that the son in Mississippi shall visit freely his father in Maine, and the reverse; and that each shall be welcomed when he goes to the other, not by himself alone, but also by his neighbors; and that all that kindly intercourse which has subsisted between the different sections of the Union shall continue to exist. This is not only for the interest of all, but it is my profoundest wish, my sincerest desire, that such remnant of that which is passing away may grace the memory of a glorious though too brief existence.

Day by day you have become more and more exasperated. False reports have led you to suppose there was in our section hostility to you with mani