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Page 40
There is a more tangible and irritating cause of grievance at the
North. Free blacks are constantly employed in the vessels of the North,
generally as cooks or stewards. When the vessel arrives at a southern
port, these free colored men are taken on shore, by the police or
municipal authority, imprisoned, and kept in prison till the vessel
is again ready to sail. This is not only irritating, but exceedingly
unjustifiable and oppressive. Mr. Hoar's mission, some time ago to South
Carolina, was a well-intended effort to remove this cause of complaint.
The North thinks such imprisonments illegal and unconstitutional; and as
the cases occur constantly and frequently they regard it as a grievance.
Now, sir, so far as any of these grievances have their foundation in
matters of law, they can be redressed, and ought to be redressed; and so
far as they have their foundation in matters of opinion, in sentiment,
in mutual crimination and recrimination, all that we can do is to
endeavor to allay the agitation, and cultivate a better feeling and more
fraternal sentiments between the South and the North.
Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member
on this floor declarations of opinion that this Union could never be
dissolved, than the declaration of opinion by anybody, that in any
case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution
was possible. I hear with distress and anguish the word "secession,"
especially when it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic, and
known to the country, and known all over the world for their political
services. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are
never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast
country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the
great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish--I beg
everybody's pardon--as to expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who
sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and
expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion,
may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their
spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without
causing the wreck of the universe. There can be no such thing as a
peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is
the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country,
is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the
mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost
unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might
produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can
see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see
that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its
twofold character.
Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement
of all the members of this great Republic to separate! A voluntary
separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would
be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede?
What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I
to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in
common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other
house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Republic
to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and
shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, sir, our ancestors, our fathers
and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with
prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and
our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation
should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the Government and the
harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy
and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the
navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty
States to defend itself? I know, although the idea has not been stated
distinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible that there
will be, a Southern Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this
statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things.
I do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested
elsewhere, that the idea has been entertained, that, after the
dissolution of this Union, a Southern Confederacy might be formed. I am
sorry, sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, in the wildest
flights of human imagination. But the idea, so far as it exists, must
be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side, and the free
States to the other. Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps,
but there are impossibilities in the natural as well as in the physical
world, and I hold the idea of the separation of these States, those that
are free to form one government, and those that are slave-holding to
form another, as such an impossibility. We could not separate the States
by any such line, if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here
to-day and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men
in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us
together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not
break if we would, and which we should not if we could.
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