Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and duties of the Federal Government. . . . All the obligations, all the chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that the powers not granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to the States, belonged to the States respectively or the people. Now I will try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The law of nature, the law of justice, would say — and it is so expounded by the publicists-that equal rights in the common property shall be enjoyed. . . . This right of equality being, then, according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to all States, when did we give it up? You say Congress has a right to pass rules and regulations concerning the Territory and other property of the United States. Very well. Does that exclude those whose blood and money paid for it? Does "dispose of" mean to rob the rightful owners? You must show a better title than that, or a better sword than we have. But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. But how? By our judgment? No, not until the last resort. What then; by yours? No, not until the same time. How then try it? The South has always said, by the Supreme Court. But that is in our favor, and Lincoln says he will not stand that judgment. Then each must judge for himself of the mode and manner of redress. But you deny us that privilege, and finally reduce us to accepting your judgment. We decline it. You say you will enforce it by executing laws; that means your judgment of what the laws ought to be. Perhaps you will have a good time of executing your judgment. The Senator from Kentucky comes to your aid, and says he can find no constitutional right of secession. Perhaps not; but the Constitution is not the place to look for State rights. If that right belongs to independent States, and they did not cede it to the Federal Government, it is reserved to the States, or to the people. Ask your new commentator where he gets your right to judge for us. Is it in the bond?... . . . In a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, arbiter. Your party says that you will not take the decision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago; you said so in committee; every man of you in both Houses says so. What are you going to do? You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we have passed that point; they demand equal rights: you had better heed the demand. . . . - I have, then, established the proposition it is admitted that you seek to outlaw $4,000,000,000 of property of our people in the Territories of the United States. Is not that a cause of war? Is it a grievance that $4,000,000,000 of the property of the people should be outlawed in the Territories of the United States by the common Government? . . . Then you have declared, Lincoln declares, your platform declares, your people declare, your Legislatures declare there is one voice running through your entire phalanx - that we shall be outlawed in the Territories of the United States. I say we will not be ; and we are willing to meet the issue; and rather than submit to such an outlawry, we will defend our territorial rights as we would our household gods.. You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What, then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, to lie down and submit because political fossils raise the cry of the glorious Union? Too long already have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude four thousand million of our property from the common Territories; that it has declared us under the ban of the Empire, and out of the protection of the laws of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Federal Power, and the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own defense. All these charges I have proven by the record; and I put them before the civilized world, and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have appealed, time and time again, for these constitutional rights. You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people have said they are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will restore fraternity, and peace, and unity, to all of us. Refuse them, and what then? We shall then ask you, "let us depart in peace." Refuse that, and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, "liberty and equality," we will trust to the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity. Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 2 sess. (John C. Rives, Washington, 1861), 269-271 passim, January 7, 1861. 55. A Fire-Eater (1861) BY SENATOR LOUIS TREZEVANT WIGFALL Wigfall did not enter the United States Senate until 1860, but during his brief service he became prominent as an uncompromising advocate of the rights of slavery. The speech from which this extract is taken is characteristic of the air of indifference to the war assumed by many of the southern statesmen. Wigfall took part in the bombardment of Sumter, and demanded the surrender of the fort (see No. 72 below). - Bibliography as in No. 53 above. TH HIS Federal Government is dead. The only question is, whether we will give it a decent, peaceable, Protestant burial, or whether we shall have an Irish wake at the grave. ... I think myself it would be for the benefit of both sections that we should not have an Irish wake at our funeral; but that is for the North to decide, and not for us. Believing-no, sir, not believing, but knowing that this Union is dissolved, never, never to be reconstructed upon any terms - not if you were to hand us blank paper, and ask us to write a constitution, would we ever again be confederated with you. . . . Then, knowing that the Union is dissolved, that reconstruction is impossible, I would, myself, had I been consulted by the Union-savers, have told them that Union-saving was impracticable, but that peaceable separation was practicable. . . . I suppose commissioners, in a few days, will be here from the confederate States. . . . Turn your backs upon these commissioners, attempt to reinforce the forts and retake those which we now have; attempt to collect the revenues, or do any other manner or matter of thing that denies to the free white men, living in those seven sovereign States, the right which they have asserted of self-government, and you will have war, and it will be war in all its stern realities. I say this not in bravado, but I say it because I know it and you know it. . . . . . The Senator from Illinois seemed to be shocked at my speaking with a feeling of gratification at the flag of what he chooses to call my country being insulted. It is not the flag of my country, I hope and believe; but I have not official information on that point. That flag was never insulted with impunity until it floated over a cargo of Black Republican hirelings, sent to one of the sovereign States of this Union to coerce them to obedience to a Government that was distasteful to them. . . . . . . I was speaking of this parenthesis that is now incumbent in the War office. Without allowing even the President to know it, as it is said in the newspapers - I am not in the confidence of the last Cabinet, and I suspect will not be in the new one, it is said that, without allowing even the President to know it, he surreptitiously, in the dead of night, sneaked a merchant vessel out of the harbor of New York, intending to sneak it into Charleston harbor; but they had put out the lights and blocked up the channel, and she was obliged to come up in broad daylight. A shot was thrown athwart the bow of this vessel containing armed men; they displayed a flag and it was fired at. I did say that that vessel had swaggered into Charleston harbor, had received a blow in the face, and had staggered out; and that this Secretary of War, who had brought the flag of this country in a condition to be fired at, had never dared, from that time to this, to resent the injury and insult; and in consequence of that, the State to which I owe my allegiance has withdrawn and cut loose from all connection with a Government that allows its flag to be so insulted. She has plucked her bright star from a bunting that can be fired at with impunity. If your President elect has recovered from that artificial fright, see if you cannot induce him to try and wipe out the insult; but I predicted last night that he would. not; and I predict again that he will not. You fear to pass your force bills; you abandon them in both Houses. If you can get a Cabinet properly organized, with fire-eaters enough in it, the Cabinet may precipitate the country into a war, and then call upon what is denominated the conservative elements of your party to sustain the country in a war in which you have already involved it; but I know, and you know, that those men whom you represent are not in favor of war, and that their representatives here, a large number of them, fear it. What will be the result, I do not know; and to be very frank, I do not care. Now, having explained why it was that I felt rejoiced at this insult to the flag of your country, I shall take up very little more time. The country is composed of States; and when that Government which was established by those States, and that flag which bears upon its broad folds the stars representing those States, is used for the purpose of making war upon some of those States, I say that it has already been degraded, and that it ought to be fired at, and it should be torn down and trampled. upon. These are my feelings upon the subject; and "if this be treason, make the most of it." I owe my allegiance — and Senators are not mistaken about that, for I have said it frequently — to the State which I here represent. I do not owe my allegiance to this Government. The Senator from Illinois spoke of the necessity of coercing these States, or not entertaining propositions from them, and likened it to the case of a Government in which there were revolted provinces. Your President elect, a short time ago, in a speech, asked the question gravely, what is the difference between a State and a county? And he seemed to be really in quest of information. Now, I was not astonished at that, for I did not expect anything better of him. From a man who is taken up because he is an ex-rail splitter, an ex-grocery keeper, an ex-flatboat captain, and an ex-Abolition lecturer, and is run upon that question, I would not expect any great information as to the Government which he was to administer. But I was surprised to hear a Senator a Senator of education and ability, such as the Senator from Illinois is-compare the States of this Union, the States that formed this Government, the States without the consent of which this Government could not originally have had existence, and without the consent of which this Government cannot exist a day. To hear him talk about those States as revolted provinces, did surprise and shock me. Then, briefly, a party has come into power that represents the antagonism to my own section of the country. It represents two million men who hate us, and who, by their votes for such a man as they have elected, have committed an overt act of hostility. That they have done. You have won the Presidency, and you are now in the situation of the man who had won the elephant at a raffle. You do not know what to do with the beast now that you have it; and one half of you to-day would give your right arms if you had been defeated. But you succeeded, and you have to deal with facts. Our objection to living in this Union, and therefore the difficulty of reconstructing it, is not your personal liberty bill, not the territorial question, but that you utterly and wholly misapprehend the form of government. You deny the sovereignty of the States; you deny the right of self-government in the people; you insist upon negro equality; your people interfere impertinently with our institutions and attempt to subvert them; you publish newspapers; you deliver lectures; you print pamphlets, and you send them among us, first, to excite our slaves |