The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath

Читать онлайн.
Название The Life of Jefferson Davis
Автор произведения Alfriend Frank Heath
Жанр Историческая литература
Серия
Издательство Историческая литература
Год выпуска 0
isbn



Скачать книгу

A Senator from Delaware holds a position entitled to the same respect, as such, as the Senator from any other State of the Union. More than that, the character, the conduct, the information, the capacity of that Senator might claim respect, if he was not entitled to it from his position.

      Twice on this occasion, and more than the same number of times heretofore, has the Senator referred to the great benefit derived from that provision which grants a trial in the local court, an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Territory, and an appeal from thence to the Supreme Court of the United States, on every question involving title to slaves. I wish to say that whatever merit attaches to that belongs to a Senator to whom the advocates of negro slavery have not often been in the habit of acknowledging their obligations – the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale], who introduced it in 1850 as an amendment to the New Mexico Bill. We adopted it as a fair proposition, equally acceptable upon one side and the other. On its adoption, no one voted against it. That proposition was incorporated in the Kansas Bill, but unless we acknowledge obligations to the Senator from New Hampshire, how shall they be accorded for that to the Senator from Illinois?

      I am asked whether the resolutions of the Senate can have the force of law. Of course not. The Senate, however, is an independent member of the Government, and from its organization should be peculiarly watchful of State rights. Before the meeting of the Charleston Convention, it was untruly stated that these resolutions were concocted to affect the action of the Charleston Convention. Now we are asked if they are to affect the Baltimore Convention. They were not designed for the one; they are not pressed in view of the other. They were introduced to obtain an expression of the opinion of the Senate, a proceeding quite frequent in the history of this body. It was believed that they would have a beneficial effect, and that they were stated in terms which would show the public the error of supposing that there was a purpose on the part of the Democracy, or of the South, to enact what was called a slave code for the Territories of the United States. It was believed that the assertion of sound principles at this time would direct public opinion, and might be fruitful of such reuniting, harmonizing results as we all desire, and which the public need. Whether it is to have this effect or not; whether at last we are to be shorn of our national strength by personal or sectional strife, depends upon the conduct of those who have it in their power to control the result. The Democratic party, in its history, presents a high example of nationality; its power and its usefulness has been its co-extension with the Union. The Democrats of the Northern States who vote for these resolutions, but affirm that which we have so often announced with pride, that there was a political opinion which pervaded the whole country; there was a party capable to save the Union, because it belonged to all the States. If the two Democratic Senators who alone have declared their opposition should so vote, to that extent the effect would be impaired, and they will stand in that isolation to which the Senator points as a consequence so dreadful to the Southern men at Charleston.

      [Here Mr. Davis gave way for a motion to adjourn, and on the 17th resumed.]

      Mr. Davis. At the close of the session of yesterday, I was speaking of the hope entertained that the Democratic party would yet be united; that the party which had so long wielded the destinies of the country, for its honor, for its glory, and its progress, was not about to be checked midway in its career – to be buried in a premature grave; but that it was to go on, with concentrated energy, toward the great ends for which it has striven since 1800, by a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, to bring the ship of State into that quiet harbor where

      “Vessels safe, without their hawsers, ride.”

      This was a hope, however, not founded on any supposition that we were to escape from the issues which are presented – a hope not based on the proposition that every man should have his own construction of our creed, and that we should unite together merely for success; but that the party, as heretofore, in each succeeding quadrennial convention, would add to the resolutions of the preceding one such declarations as passing events indicated, and the exigencies of the country demanded.

      In the last four years a division has arisen in the Democratic party, upon the construction of one of the articles of its creed. It behooves us, in that state of the case, to decide what the true construction is; for, if the party be not a union of men upon principle, the sooner it is dissolved the better; and if it be such a union, why shall not those principles be defined, so as to remove doubt or cavil, and be applied in every emergency to meet the demands of each succeeding case? Thus only can we avoid division in council and confusion in action.

      The Senator from Illinois, who preceded me, announced that he had performed a pleasing duty in defending the Democratic party. That party might well cry out, Save me from my defender. It was a defense of the party by the arraignment of its prominent members. It was the preservation of the body by the destruction of its head – for the President of the United States is, for the time being, the head of the party that placed him in position; and the head of the party thus in position can not be destroyed without the disintegration of the members and the destruction of the body itself. I suppose the Senator, however, was at his favorite amusement of “shooting at the lump.” The “lump” heretofore has been those Democratic Senators who dissented from him: this time he involved Democrats all over the country. Not even the presiding officer, whose position seals his lips, could escape him. And here let me say that I found nothing in the extract read from that gentleman’s address, which, construed as was no doubt intended, does not meet my approval; but if tried by the modern lexicon of the Senator, it might be rendered a contradiction to his avowed opinions, and by the same mode of expounding, non-intervention would be a sin of which the whole Democracy might be convicted, under the indictment of squatter sovereignty. The language quoted from the address of the Vice-President is to be construed as understood at the time, at the place, and by men such as the one who used it.

      With that force which usually enters into his addresses – with even more than his usual eloquence – the Senator referred to the scene which awaited him upon his return to Chicago, when, as represented, he met an infuriated mob, who assailed him for having maintained the measures of 1850 – those compromises which, in the Northern section, it was urged had been passed in the interest of the South. But, pray, what one of those measures was it which excited the mob so described? Only one, I believe, was put in issue at the North – the fugitive slave law; that one he did not vote for. But it was the part of manliness to say that, though absent and not voting for it, he approved of it. Such, I believe, was his commendable course on that occasion. I give him, therefore, all due credit for not escaping from a responsibility to which they might not have held him. Are we to give perpetual thanks to any one because he did not yield to so senseless a clamor, but conceded to us that small measure of constitutional right – because he has complied with a requirement so plain that my regret is that it ever required congressional intervention to enforce it? It belonged to the honor of the States to execute that clause of the Constitution. They should have executed it without congressional intervention; congressional action should only have been useful to give that uniformity of proceeding which State action could not have secured.

      Concurring in the depicted evil of the destruction of the Democratic organization, it must be admitted that such consequence is the inevitable result of a radical difference of principle. The Senator laments the disease, but instead of healing, aggravates it. While pleading the evils of the disruption of the party, it is quite apparent that, in his mind, there is another still greater calamity; for, through all his arraignment of others, all his self-laudation, all his complaints of persecution, like an air through its variations, appears and re-appears the action of the Charleston Convention. That seemed to be the beginning and the end of his solicitude. The oft-told tale of his removal from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories had to be renewed and connected with that convention, and even assumed as the basis on which his strength was founded in that convention. I think the Senator did himself injustice. I think his long Career and distinguished labors, his admitted capacity for good hereafter, constitute a better reason for the support which he received, than the fact that his associates in the Senate had not chosen to put him in a particular position in the organization of this body. It is enough that that fact did not divert support from him; and I am aware of none of his associates here who have forced it upon public attention with a view to affect him.

      He claims that an arraignment