STATE OF THE UNION.
Mr. McLEAN asked and obtained leave to have the following spread on the Journal:
Mr. Speaker:
The undersigned, one of the members of the Committee of Thirteen, who submitted the minority Report of said committee to this House, desires to enter his dissent from so much of said minority report as reflects upon the ministers of the gospel. The undersigned would say that although the allusions contained in the said report reflecting upon the ministry may be lamentably true to a certain extent, yet he must regard the said charges as entirely too general, wholesale and sweeping in their character, in bad taste, foreign to the real object which should have been kept in view by the report, and not calculated to allay the bad feeling unfortunately existing among our people. The undersigned would say that the principal features and great body of the said minority Report meet his hearty and cordial approbation, but he cannot endorse the offensive allegations above referred to. The undersigned regards it due to himself to state that the said minority Report was presented to him for his signature at his desk in the House only a few minutes before the hour for which it was made the special order, not affording him either time or opportunity to examine the same. The undersigned cannot concur in the said minority report, unless the said offensive charges are stricken from the same, and would recommend the House that the same should be stricken out.
WM. E. McLEAN
Mr. McLEAN. was probably due to himself to state that his name was affixed to the report before he had time to consider that part to which he now excepted.
The House now resumed the consideration of the reports of the Committee of Thirteen.
The SPEAKER stated that the order of yesterday to restrict debate applied only to the consideration of that part of the report which refers to the appointment of Commissioners to the Washington Convention.
Mr. FRASIER. He had listened to the speech of the gentleman from Floyd, more in. sorrow than in anger. Was sorry to hear such sentiments on this floor. But the sentiments uttered by that gentleman were as harmless as the cooing of a dove, when compared with the treason, rank and foul, which breathes throughout this minority report. He was glad his honorable friend from Vigo had dissented from it. He was glad to learn under what circumstances his name was attached to that report. But he was sorry to see attached to that report the name of a gentleman, who a few days back had introduced a resolution to the effect, that the State of Indiana was ready to back up the General Government in any attempt to put down the treason of the south. When he page: 153[View Page 153]chargeded that the spirit of treason breathes through that report, he spoke what he knew. "When the language of the Declaration of Independence comes to be prostituted to the purpose of justifying a band of rebels and traitors, marshalled under their rattle snake ensign, it did seem to him that it must cause the very bones of our patriot fathers to rattle in their graves. What does this report say? It assumes that these men are justly, and rightfully and properly defending their rights, and tins minority of the committee more than intimate where they will be found in the conflict. Would it be in defence of the Constitution? No sir; they tell us that they are ready to shoulder the musket and assist rebellion and treason-assist to overthrow the best Government ever constituted on earth. And yet they denounce us as traitors to the country, because we see lit to stand up and boldly advocate our principles for the defense of the constitution and the enforcement of the laws, which are saered and next in our hearts, to the book of God. But this portion of the committee had invited investigation into the causes which have brought about this state of affairs He agreed with Mr. Stotsenberg that it was useless to inquire after the causes which have brought the country to the present crisis. But gentlemen have invited investigation, and we have heard it charged not only on the streets, but on the authority of leading newspapers repeating the sentiment of the late Goverdor Hammond, that it has been the work of demagogues and hypocritical ministers of the gospel.
He proceeded at length to examine the record of the past ten or twelve years, and to throw back the charge of responsibility for the Federal difficulties upon the Democratic party, and to convict them of various inconsistencies on the slavery issue; closing with strictures on the plans of adjustment and remedy for national difficulties proposed by them.
He referred to the Convention of the Democratic party in. 1849, in this State. Leading members of it were the late Gov. Willard, Attorney General McDonald and their late candidate for Governor. No man raised his voice in that Convention against the doctrines set forth in its platform. There is nothing in it recognizing the State rights about which they talk so much at this time.
He then read the platform, condemning the introduction of slavery in the territories. He also referred to the Joint Resolutions in the General Assembly at the ensuing session. In Ohio, the Democratic party assumed bolder ground and determined to eradicate slavery. Yet this party by its press and by its speakers have represented to the South, that it was the object of the Republican party to destroy slavery in the States where it now exists. When a United States Senator was to be elected, at that time, it was deemed necessary to learn the opinions of the leading men of their party and receive pledges of hostility to the extension of slavery, even to its abolishment in the District of Columbia. These facts are well known to all. Yet some of these rnen, thus pledged, cannot now take part in the raising of the flag of the country, but make it an occasion of especial denunciation of the very opinions they then so zealously advocated. He then read the correspondence with Mr. Fitch, in which he pledges himself to hostility to slavery, where it had long been existing.
Was it constitutional, then, to prohibit slavery from the Territories? Was it not extraordinary that no one of its ablest men then discovered, what all of the party now see so clearly, the unconstutionality of prohibiting slavery from the Territories?
He challenged any one of them to show that the Republican party, in any particular, went beyond these Democratic pledges and opinions of 1849. He then showed that by the decisions of the United States Courts in the slave States themselves, slavery was declared not to exist beyond the States under whose authority it existed. All these decisions, made during a long period of time, were in direct conflict with the principles of the Dred Scott decision.
The change of the party, so complete in its inconsistency, has been caused by its attempt to uphold a rotten and corrupt dynasty, which the people had so justly hurled from power. Even in last June the Democratic party refused to assume the position that is now taken in defense of those who are banded together in avowed rebellion against their Government. They did this, well knowing that the North would utterly repudiate the then demands of the South.
Some of the party admit that the Government has a right to enforce its laws by arms, but they should read the minority report, which now takes the position that a State has a right to secede whenever it chooses. He never would consent to the adoption of the Crittenden amendment, because it takes the opposite of that position assumed by the great Henry Clay, when he declared that no earthly power could force him to extend slavery where it does not now exist. Yet now, in open rebellion against the Government, in violation of the Constitution itself, in resistance to the law, with arms in their hands which they have stolen, there is a portion of the country demanding what Henry Clay thus declared no human power could force him to consent to. And now, in this minority report, men thus in open rebellion are sustained, and the State is menaced with the threat, that if any attempt is made to enforce the laws and defend the General Government, a power will arise in our own State, to withstand, by force of arms, such attempt.
He then referred to the evils of slavery as evidenced by the progress of the slave and free States, and maintained that the result was occasioned by this institution, and in the nature of things no prosperity could be expected where labor was based on the denial of the rights that belonged to a man.
page: 154[View Page 154]Mr. HEFFREN here desired to know whether a negro was a man.
Mr. FRASIER. He would reply to that by asking: whether Mr. Heffren thought he was not a man?
Mr. HEFFREN said he was not.
Mr. FRASIER. He is a man, although not enjoying the political rights which we do; just as our wives and daughters are women, although they are denied the right to vote, and are subjected to other legal disabilities. The negro had a right, no matter what his position by local legislation, to the product of his labor. It is a right that belongs to every human being, and this right is recognized by our State Constitution, the production of a Convention largely Democratic.
He maintained that if the Democratic party had stood up in support of the principles it advocated in times past, the present difficulties never would have existed, but to hold on to their political ascendancy they renounced every one of their principles, descending so low in their subserviency as here to maintain that a negro is not a man, and that he had no lights as a human being that can distinguish him from property, and, hence, that rebellion is to be supported in its demands to take this property wherever it shall be their pleasure to take it.
As to our Constitution it shall be supported; its flag shall be defended; the liberty of which it is an emblem shall be maintained at all hazards, and if destruction comes in their defence, that defence shall be made to the last drop of our hearts blood.
Mr. PACKARD supposed he shared in the feeling of all the members on this floor when he said the subject under consideration could not be overestimated. It must be acknowledged that the present is a time of great danger and difficulty, and to one as young as himself in political life, it was almost dangerous to approach the subject. Scylla is on the one hand, and Charyhdis on the other. But the heart that falters in the hour of peril, the spirit that quails when danger and difficulty surrounds, is unworthy the name of freeman. Therefore, whether he erred or not, he had an earnest heart and purpose in the matter, and by the indulgence of the House, he would-five utterance to the sentiments he cherished. The history of our coutry for eighty-four years had been a proud one. Our penury had become opulence; our feebleness had become a mighty power; our commerce had become the hope of the world, and our feeble and restricted colonies had become an ocean-bound empire.
But in the midst of all this prosperity there have been those who have gone about all over our free land sowing the seeds of discord ; and the cloud which, at the first, was no larger than a man's hand-than that seen by the servant of Elijah on the mountain top-has grown fearfully large and lowering, ready to break over our country in all the fierce horrors of a revolution. As the physician who would treat skillfully a fearful disease, inquires first into the cause, so in order that we may be able to prescribe a proper and wholsesome remedy, we should first seek out and find the true source of our troubles. In discussin the source and origin of our troubles, it was not his purpose to advert to them at great length, nor to indulge incriminations and recriminations! He believed that the great fault, the great source of the error of the American people, if they are in error, had arisen from this fact: We talk of the secession of South Carolina, but he affirmed that this Union was virtually dissolved long before the State of South Carolina declared her ordinance of secession. Dissolved! How? Not by any civil, overt act of dissolution; by no means.
But what was this Union? It was a great political constitution which rests on the popular good will-on the mutual feeling of love and respect of the people of the United States, Its foundations rest where all liberal and Constitutional Governments must rest. There was but one other bond of strength for government, and that was slavish fear. Then if this Union rests on the mutual good will of the people of the States, he said, the Union was destroyed when that feeling was destroyed. Joshua R. Giddings never utteard a greater Republican truth than when he said there was no enmity between any two foreign nations greater than that between the people of the Northern and the people of the Southern States. But certainly gentlemen would not accuse the Democracy of the North with entertaining that hatred. No; but it was a fearful fact that for a long time past a rancorous hatred had sprung up in the bosom of the people of the North against the people of the South. This feeling had assumed a political character, and increasing in power and momentum, had rolled wave after wave of its power in a reckless crusade on the peculiar institution of the South, in utter disregard of their right of protection, as recognized under the Constitution and in the solemn edicts of Congress.
The North had fostered and strengthened a hostile feeling against the South, until it had become a rankling hatred, as shown by the laws passed by these Northern States. They have refused the poor boon of allowing the slaveholders to pass through their States with their slaves; their leader has declared that slavery and freedom can not exist together; yet the North is dependent on the South for its prosperity, and hence it refuses to grant the request of the South when it asks a peaceable division of the property that belongs to both, and the right to live in peace separately, He would not justify all the South had done; but who can expect a people in a revolution to observe the laws. The grievances of the South have become intolerable, and, as in our revolutionary struggle, they had a right to demand another government. Legally they could not revolutionize, but the Republicans, who have caused all the difficulties, have no reason to complain of their own acts. They have elected to the Presidency a man pledged to hostility against the rights of the South.
But now the Republicans have grown belligerent ; they desire to conquer the cotton States. If they do subdue them, how could page: 155[View Page 155]they govern them? If disunion, however disgraceful must come, let it come rather than civil war. Never would he consent to vote men or money, or arms, or consent to any measure that will lead to a conflict.
A great difficulty arises from our not remembering the nature of the difficulty. If it was limited to Charleston, we might properly coerce her and force her to obedience; but the true nature of it may be seen in the answer of the Tennessee Legislature to the New York resolutions. The dominant party in the North have crushed out all fraternal feeling by their Constant denunciations of slavery-their abolition lectures in every school house in the country. If they loved this country half as much as they do their party, they could bring peace and harmony back again. But they oppose the Crittenden propositions, because they deny the principles of concession it embodies. He referred to the positions assumed by Mr. Seward in the telegraphic reports of last night, as indicating that he was ready to abandon his party platform rather than bring civil war upon the country.
The apathy of the Republican party is one of the chief things one of the most clangerous that stands in the way of conciliation. They seem to depend wholly upon Abraham Lincoln, but unless the difficulties are settled before he takes his seat, he will preside over but a small portion of our Confederacy.
Why do they not allow the people to vote on the adoption of the Crittenden amendments? If they could speak, fifty thousand majority in this State would demand their adoption. It had been asserted that the people had decided these questions in the recent elections. He denied this. The principles of the Republicans never have been endorsed by the majority of the people, The Democrats had made the country ; he rejoiced that they have had the control of the State, and now if they could have their way, they would soon preserve it from the dangers that threaten its destruction. Instead of meeting the Democrats in their efforts to preserve it, they bring forward resolutions cunningly worded with terms of peace and fraternal feeling, but so limiting the powers of the Commissioners, as to prevent any action that could harmonize the country.
He asked what had been the policy of the country toward foreign nations. Did it settle conflicting claims by war? No! But by sending peace commissions, invoking every kindly feeling, as in the Canada boundary and the Oregon disputed line. Shall we not pursue the same course toward our own brethren?
Mr. CAMERON obtained the floor.
