A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Part 13

It was under English, yes, British, Anglo-Saxon instigation that it first commenced. By this instigation it has been fed, been given life, continuity and power. Think you the English authors of this instigation had any purpose but to disrupt this Republic? They professed to regard slavery as an evil and a sin. The fruits of their action were first manifested in religious societies--first in the largest churches in New England, in the Presbyterian or Congregational churches, next the Methodist, then the Baptist, and finally, the venom spread so widely, its influence separated other churches. What has the moral influence of this power done? It has made the abstraction of our slaves a virtue. Societies have been formed for that very purpose, inciting their members and others, by the vilest motives, to steal our slaves, to destroy our property.

Nor have they been sufficiently modest to cloak their designs under the veil of secrecy. These people advocated their pernicious doctrines openly in your leading cities, even within the consecrated walls of Fanueil Hall.

Openly among your people, in the very light of day, these efforts were carried on for the destruction of your sister States. There has not been an effort of the law nor an exertion of public opinion to put them down.

These efforts culminated in the actual invasion of my own old honored State, and your people thought they were doing G.o.d service in signing a pet.i.tion to our authorities for mercy to John Brown and his ruffian invaders of our soil. And when these men met the just reward of their crime, there was, throughout the North, in your meetings and your public prints, expressions of sympathy for these robbers and murderers. They were looked upon as the victims of oppression, as martyrs to a holy and righteous cause. Gentlemen, consider these things, and tell me, is there not to-day reason for suspicion; on the part of the South for grave apprehension?

But the half is yet to be told; I have looked only at the moral aspect of the question. Dangerous enough hitherto, it becomes far more dangerous when it culminates on the arena of politics, and asks, with the powerful aid of a majority, the interference and the aid of the Government.

As soon as it became the party of one idea it began to draw to it, first the support of one, then another political party. It went on securing the a.s.sistance of one after another until it demoralized, until it brought each to ruin. It destroyed the grand old Whig party.

Fanatic enough before, when it had brought that party to its grave, it thrust upon the arena of politics this question of slavery in the territories. Then for the first time it raised the cry of "Free Soil,"

and brought to its support the hearts of a majority of the people of the northern States.

The people of the North and Northwest have long been noted for their acquisitive disposition, especially for the acquisition of lands. This has been manifested in every form. Carried into effect it has made them powerful, until, not long since, they thought they might get entire dominion at no distant day. Then arose in their hearts a desire greater than the greed of land--the greed of office and power. They then saw that perhaps the North alone might control the national government, and with it the South. Then, too, the great cla.s.s of protected interests at the North--always greater at the North than at the South--joined with them. All these protected cla.s.ses, whose advantages had been diverted from other cla.s.ses to which they belonged, joined with landseekers to secure power. Influence after influence of this sort combined, until it produced your great Republican party; in other words, your great Sectional party, which has at length come to majority and power.

I do not wish to dwell upon the principles of that party, or to discuss them; I simply a.s.sert that their principles involve all the sentiments of abolitionism. They may be summed up in this: you determine to oppose the admission of slave States in the future.

You say that the whole power of the country, the whole power of the administration, shall be used in future for the final extinction of slavery.

This, now, is the ruling idea of your great sectional party. It is simply the rule of one portion of the country over another. There is no difference between attacking slavery in the States and keeping it out of the territories. It is only drawing a parallel around the citadel at a more remote point.

Now, see how the South is placed. The South has forborne as long as it can, just as long as party organization existed, and as long as the South could keep it in existence. It was only when we saw that the whole united Government was to be turned against us, that we began to think of taking the subject into our own hands.

What are we to expect now, when the power, direct and indirect, of this great Government is to be used in the most effective manner against us? A power which claims that we shall not exercise the rights of States even, a power which seeks to coerce us, when we propose to protect ourselves against this lowering and impending danger. You of the North are descended from men who honored the scaffold for the very rights we now seek to exercise. So are we. You would deserve to be spurned by the maids and matrons among you, if you refused to protect yourselves against the dangers thus drawing around you. Can you expect less of us?

Do you tell me that this is an artificial crisis? Would seven States have abandoned all the grand interest they possessed in a glorious and happy Confederacy like ours, but for more serious and vital interests, the interests of safety, security, and honor? Think well of these things, gentlemen!

I have hastily endeavored to show you where I conceive we of the South stand. The feelings which I express are entertained likewise by the border States, by all the citizens of the South, by every householder of my State in a greater or less degree.

The State to which I refer, Virginia, is now met in solemn convocation to consider whether she shall remain in the Union or go out of it; and with the most earnest desire to secure to herself a longer connection with the American Union, a Union of so much honor and pride, and with an equally earnest desire to bring back the wandering States of the South which have already left us, she, my own, my native State, comes here to ask for these guarantees. In my deliberate judgment, the Union and the Const.i.tution, as they now stand, are unsafe for the people of the South, unsafe without other guarantees which will give them actual power instead of mere paper rights. Her stake in this controversy is too deep. In my judgment she has asked too little; I think fuller and greater guarantees ought to be required, and that this Convention should not stand upon ceremony, but in a free and liberal spirit of concession should yield to us all that we ask. Be a.s.sured we shall ask none but adequate guarantees.

But I am told that Virginia is content with the Crittenden Resolutions--I say this because I am instructed to say so--that is, if we are to treat these resolutions, not as the principles of the man who offers them, but as the principles of the great party just come into power.

Gentlemen, remember that we of the South are already stripped of one-half our sister States; our system is dislocated; the Union is disrupted.

How can you expect now to retain Virginia, to retain the border States, when they stand in the face of such a great, such an immense party? How can you expect Virginia to remain in the Union without these added guarantees?

I told you I would make no appeals to your pity. If we are not ent.i.tled to the guarantees we ask, according to the principles of sound philosophy, of right and justice, then we do not ask them at all.

Mr. BOUTWELL:--I have not been at all clear in my own mind as to when, and to what extent, Ma.s.sachusetts should raise her voice in this Convention. She heard the voice of Virginia, expressed through her resolutions in this crisis of our country's history. Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated, not because she was unwilling to respond to the call of Virginia, but because she thought her honor touched by the manner of that call and the circ.u.mstances attending it. She had taken part in the election of the sixth of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the Government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen, was based upon a Const.i.tution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that Government--seceded is the word used; had gone out from this great Confederacy, and were defying the Const.i.tution and the Union.

Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day, but I have heard no specification of these charges. Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated I say; she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. I know Ma.s.sachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns. I have seen and conversed with her men and her women, and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.

Ma.s.sachusetts has made war upon slavery wherever she had the right to do it; but much as she _abhors_ the inst.i.tution, she would sacrifice everything rather than a.s.sail it where she has not the right to a.s.sail it.

Can it be denied, gentlemen, that we have elected a President in a legal and const.i.tutional way? It cannot; and yet you tell us in tones that cannot be misunderstood, that as a precedent condition of his inauguration we must give you these guarantees.

Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated, not because her blood was not stirred, but because she insisted that the Government and the inauguration should go on, in the same manner they would have done had Mr. Lincoln been defeated. She felt that she was touched in a tender point when invited here under such circ.u.mstances.

It is true, and I confess it frankly, that there are a few men at the North who have not yielded that support to the grand idea upon which this confederated Union stands, that they should have done; who have been disposed to infringe upon, to attack certain rights which the entire North, with these exceptions, accords to you. But are you of the South free from the like imputations? The John Brown invasion was never justified at the North. If, in the excitement of the time, there were those to be found who did not denounce it as gentlemen think they should, it was because they knew it was a matter wholly outside the Const.i.tution--that it was a crime to which Virginia would give adequate punishment.

Gentlemen, I believe, yes, I know, that the people of the North are as true to the Government and the Union of the States now, as our fathers were when they stood shoulder to shoulder upon the field, fighting for the principles upon which that Union rests. If I thought the time had come when it would be fit or proper to consider amendments to the Const.i.tution at all, I should believe that we would have no trouble with you except upon this question of slavery in the territories. You cannot demand of us at the North any thing that we will not grant, unless it involves a sacrifice of our principles.

These we shall not sacrifice--these you must not ask us to abandon. I believe further, and I speak in all frankness, for I wish to delude no one, that if the Const.i.tution and the Union cannot be preserved and effectually maintained without these new guarantees for slavery, that the Union is not worth preserving.

The people of the North have always submitted to the decisions of the proper const.i.tuted powers. This obedience has been unpleasant enough when they thought these powers were exercised for sectional purposes; but it has always been implicitly yielded. I am ready, even now, to go home and say that, by the decision of the Supreme Court, slavery exists in all the territories of the United States. We submit to the decision and accept its consequences. But in view of all the circ.u.mstances attending that decision, was it quite fair--was it quite generous for the gentleman from Maryland to say that, under it, by the adoption of these propositions, the South was giving up every thing, the North giving up nothing? Does he suppose the South is yielding the point in relation to any territory, which by any probability would become slave territory? Something more than the decision of the Supreme Court is necessary to establish slavery anywhere. The decision may give the _right_ to establish it, other influences must control the question of its actual establishment.

I am opposed, further, to any restrictions on the acquisition of territory. They are unnecessary. The time may come when they would be troublesome. We may want the Canadas. The time may come when the Canadas may wish to unite with us. Shall we tie up our hands so that we cannot receive them, or make it forever your interest to oppose their annexation? Such a restriction would be, by the common consent of the people, disregarded.

There are seven States out of the Union already. They have organized what they claim is an independent Government. They are not to be coerced back, you say. Are the prospects very favorable that they will return of their own accord? But _they_ will annex territory. They are already looking to Mexico. If left to themselves they would annex her and all her neighbors, and we should lose our highway to the Pacific coast. They would acquire it, and to us it would be lost forever.

The North will consider well before she consents to this--before she even permits it. Ever since 1820 we have pursued, in this respect, a uniform policy. The North will hesitate long before, by accepting the condition you propose, she deprives the nation of the valuable privilege, the unquestionable right, of acquiring new territory in an honorable way.

I have tried to look upon these propositions of the majority of the committee, as true measures of pacification. I have listened patiently to all that has been said in their favor. But I am still unconvinced, or rather I am convinced that they will do nothing for the Union. They will prove totally inadequate; may, perhaps, be positively mischievous. The North, the free States, will not adopt them--will not consent to these new endors.e.m.e.nts of an inst.i.tution which they do not like, which they believe to be injurious to the best interests of the Republic; and if they did adopt them, as they could only do by a sacrifice of principles which you should not expect, the South would not be satisfied; she would not fail to find pretexts for a course of action upon which I think she has already determined. I see in these propositions any thing but true measures of pacification.

But the North will never consent to the separation of the States. If the South persists in the course on which she has entered we shall march our armies to the Gulf of Mexico, or you will march yours to the Great Lakes. There can be no peaceful separation. There is one way by which war may be avoided and the Union preserved. It is a plain and a const.i.tutional way. If the slave States will abandon the design, which we must infer from the remarks of the gentleman from Virginia they have already formed, will faithfully abide by their const.i.tutional obligations, and remain in the Union until their rights are in _fact_ invaded, all will be well. But if they take the responsibility of involving the country in a civil war; of breaking up the Government which our fathers founded and our people love, but one course remains to those who are true to that Government. They must and will defend it at every sacrifice--if necessary, to the sacrifice of their lives.

Mr. GUTHRIE:--I came here with my colleagues representing a Southern State. I have had full and free communication with the people of all portions of the South, before, during, and since the election of the sixth of November, and I state here, that I have never dreamed that there was the slightest objection anywhere to the inauguration of Mr.

LINCOLN. To-day is the first time I ever heard the question raised, and yet I do not believe that any such objection now exists.

It is said that this is not a fit time to hold such a conference--not a suitable time to consider the questions now before us. Is there any reason why we should not consider the rights of any section of the country, whether a President is going out or coming in? As one delegate I will not consent to postpone the action necessary to secure our rights for any such reason as this.

Now, as to this question of slavery in the Territories. It is true that the Supreme Court has decided it in favor of the South. It is equally true that parties have repudiated that decision both in platforms and on the stump.

When territory has been acquired by the blood and treasure of the common Union, you cannot exclude one portion of the _cestuis que trust_ from its rights. The Supreme Court so decided, and its decision was just and equitable.

At the South, we ask for our rights _under the Const.i.tution_. We say, let all questions which affect or concern them be decided. The gentleman from Ma.s.sachusetts says he will not give them up, that his State will not yield. Well, if this is so, let us go to the ballot box. If the question is decided in the gentleman's favor there, _we know how to take care of ourselves_.

The gentleman from Ma.s.sachusetts does not understand this question. He does not understand why we of the South want it--why we must have it settled. There _was_ a time when the embargo law threw our slaves out of employment. The North then contemplated a dissolution of the Union.

Why? Because she thought the Government wanted power--was inefficient. Now, there is a sense of insecurity felt throughout the South. Our property is depreciating, going down every day. We feel this want of security very deeply, this want of faith in the Government under which we live. The South is in agitation.

Suppose some event should in some way strike down the value of your property at the North. Would you not wish to have its security restored? Would you not call for guarantees? If you would not, you are not men. This is all we want; all we ask for, is security. There is nothing in the territorial question that we may not settle by a fair compromise.

The commonwealth of Virginia called this Conference in high patriotism. I have an earnest faith in her sincerity and her purity in doing so. She hoped to meet her sisters animated by the same patriotism--that they would join with her in granting the a.s.surances, in giving the securities we need. Gentlemen, you can give us these securities--these a.s.surances. We shall then go home and tell our people that we can still live on together, in security. Will it do to say that this cannot be done before the inauguration of Mr. LINCOLN?

No! No such answer should go to the people of any of the States--no such answer will satisfy them. Give us the guarantees _here_. We will satisfy the people of the whole nation as to the appropriateness of the time.

There is no truth in the a.s.sertions of the gentleman from Ma.s.sachusetts. We are willing to go before the old commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts with all her glorious memories, willing to go before New York with her half million of voters, confident that both will do us justice. Why stand between us and the people? At least, let us ask their judgment upon our propositions.

We come here to confer, to propitiate, not to awaken old troubles and differences. If there are such existing and which must be settled, why should we not settle them here? We all wish to bring back the seven States which have left us; we have a common interest in them. I think they should not have deserted us; that they should have consulted us first, and then there would have been no necessity. If they were here, their presence surely would not have weakened us, nor would their presence have disturbed the North. We come not here to widen our separation--to drive them further off. We come to consult together, to give and receive justice.

I confess I am not much in favor of the second proposition of amendment. We must regard this as a progressive country. From four millions of people we have risen to thirty millions! Where will we be in eighty years more? There will be in that time a great population in our now unsettled territory--perhaps greater than all our present population. I thought the amendment unwise, but I consented to it, for if we would agree we must all yield something.

And now I hope, and hope most earnestly, that without crimination or recrimination we shall vote in good temper and in good time, so that our proposals may in due time go before Congress and before the people.

Do not let us give up to revolution anywhere, in any section of the Union! Do not you of the North impose upon us the necessity of fleeing our country! G.o.d knows this same necessity may come to you of the North, and sooner than you expect it. If disruption--if war must come, one-half your merchants, one-half your mechanics will become bankrupt.

You are marching that way with hasty steps. Not one man, North or South, but must suffer if the sad conclusion comes. Our products will depreciate. Next year not one-half the fields now whitened by the rich growth of cotton will be cultivated if this unhappy contest goes on.

The people of my section, the people of the South, are restless and impatient. They are already in the way of revolution--all these influences are leading them on. Can they remain quiet when the fortunes of one-half of them are struck down? Can you at the North remain quiet under like provocations? And yet harmony may even yet be restored. All these differences may be settled harmoniously. We believe they may be settled now.