ordinance of '87, and the Missouri compro- | mise, from the region lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, north of 37°, 39; it scarcely admits of a doubt that it would have divided the emigration with the North, and, by retaining her own people, would have, at least, equalled the North in population, under the census of 1840, and, probably, under that about to be taken. She would also, if she had retained her equal rights in those territories, have maintained equality in the number of States with the North, and have preserved the equilibrium between the two sections that existed at the commencement of the Government. The loss, then, of the equilibrium is to be attributed to the action of this Government. This territory, Mr. CALHOUN continued, thus wrested from the hands of the South, thus enriched and peopled at the expense of the South, is now, by the political tendency of the day, to be used to overwhelm them. Central The ization has converted this confederacy of independent powers into a consolidated democracy, and sectional interests, and political rights, are now mere questions of majorities. whole State at last rests in the lap of the North; and wherever rival interests clash, the South falls a helpless minority at the feet of the powerful majority of the North. This might be well acquiesced in, he thought, for the great good of union, so long as ordinary interests only were at stake. But the greatest of all interests, to a people, are those of social life and social institutions; and these the South see now attacked. Diametrically opposite are the views of these sections on this subject. In the North slavery is looked on as a crime and an evil, and the only question that there divides the fanatic and the man of moderate views is the how and when of its extinctions. In the South, the relation is regarded as one which cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to calamity, and the section to poverty and desolation; and they, in consequence, feel bound, by every consideration of interest and safety, to uphold it. The Senator then alluded to the rise and progress of the anti-slavery sentiment. Originating, he said, in the small and almost contemptible beginning of Abolitionism, it has, through the strife of party, become firmly rooted in the public opinion of the whole North. In its infancy, slight exertion would have stifled it, had there been in in the breasts of the people of those States a genuine love of the Union. But it was founded on opinions and feelings that found more or less sympathy in the heart of every Northern man. By toleration it gained strength. Its assistance was courted by rival factions. These factions have become tainted with its doctrines, and now, he feared, the only choice left the South was abolition or secession. The Union, Mr. CALHOUN Continued, was not to be severed at a single blow. But had it not trembled under many blows? Had not many a stroke been aimed at the cords that bound us together? These cords were not merely political. They are spiritual, social, and economical. The ties of religious feeling, the stoutest far of all, were already rent in twain, by the severance of the churches that once covered the Union, with a common interest and a common aim. When these have parted, embittered sectional feeling will soon do its worst on the rest. Nothing, then, he says, will be left to hold the Union together, except force. But, surely, that can, with no propriety of language, be called a Union, when the only means by which the weaker is held connected with the stronger portion is force. It may, indeed, keep them connected, but the connection will partake much more of the character of subjugation, on the part of the stronger, than the union of free, independent sovereign States in one confederation, as they stood in which only is worthy of the sacred name of the early stages of the Government, and Union. Mr. CALHOUN, having now traced the dangers that threaten the Union to the universal discontent of the South; having found the source of that discontent in their feeling of insecurity and political weakness; having traced that sense of insecurity to the aggressions and interferences of the North; and having seen the secret of these aggressions in the destruction of political equilibrium, and the conscious strength of the North, then asked how were those dangers to be averted? Clearly in the renewal of the balance of power between the two sections. He intimated that for this purpose, an amendment of the Constitution might be necessary. To the plan proposed by the administration, he utterly objected. Incompetent to effect its object, the salvation of the Union, he thought it, in fact, more exceptionable as regards the rights of the South, than even the Wilmot Proviso. That what the latter would effect by direct action of Congress, the former leaves to time and natural causes to bring about; while its measures and propositions respecting the admission of California, he looked upon as subversive of the Constitution. He cited precedents of former incipient States, as shewing the direct and previous action of Congress to be necessary even where the applicant for admission had more than the required number of inhabitants. How much more necessary, then, where the applying territory had less than that number, and its present population not even bona fide settlers, | but bands of roving adventurers. Nothing that has as yet been offered, said Mr. CALHOUN, no plans of compromise, can save the Union. Nothing could save it but justice; simple justice to the South. She had no concessions to make. She had already surrendered so much, that she had little left to surrender; and, in conclusion, he asked for this justice at the hands of the North, since from their action it alone could come. The South, politically weak, were necessarily passive, and in case of refusal of justice, or indirect action involving a refusal, the South would plainly feel, that before them was submission or resistance. California, then, would become the test question. He declared emphatically, that her admission, under the attendant difficulties, would prove beyond doubt that the real object of the North was power; and the South would be infatuated not to act accordingly. On the following day, the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. FOOTE, on the part of the South, protested against the ultra views of Mr. CALHOUN. He disclaimed, energetically, the position assumed by that gentleman, that the South demanded, as a sine qua non, amendment of the Constitution. "I am quite satisfied," he said, "with the existing provisions of the Constitution, if we can but secure their faithful enforcement. I am for the Constitution and its guarantees. It is not a new Constitution, nor an amended Constitution, for which I have been all along contending. The strong ground of the South has been that we seek only what the Constitution entitles us to command; we ask but justice under the Constitution, and that protection and safety which its provisions were intended to secure. And, Sir, I am not quite prepared to quit this strong ground, by asserting that we of the South will have no settlement of existing difficulties, unless we can effect a modification of the federal compact." He protested against this requisition of a change in the Constitution, as at present impossible, and the demand for which would be almost equivalent to pronouncing the Union at an end. With regard to Mr. CALHOUN's sweeping denunciations of the whole North as hostile to Southern institutions, he considered such censure as highly unjust to large portions of the free States. "Abolitionists," he said, "are numerous in most of the States, where slavery does not exist. Free-soilers, as a politica! faction, are still more numerous. There are thousands of bawling demagogues scattered through the North, some of whose monstrous voices are heard in the halls of Congress, who are constantly avowing the bitterest enmity to the South, and to Southern institutions. Yet still, Sir, there are many-yea, I doubt not, much the larger part of the Democratic por tion of the North, and many Whigs besideswho, though they are not the zealous advocates of slavery, and are unable to appreciate the manifold advantages, which we hold to belong to our system of domestic labor, are, notwithstanding, not hostile to it, in the sense in which the term has been obviously employed by the Senator from South Carolina. What, Sir! shall we say that those who have constantly signalized themselves by defending our domestic institutions against all unjust assailment; who are zealous upholders of the Constitution and all its guarantees; who have denounced the Abolitionists from the first, and who still denounce them; who have never affiliated with the free-soilers, and whose sturdy blows have consigned Wilmot provisionism, and all its ill-fated advocates to defeat and to disgrace ;-are these the enemies to our constitutional rights? Are these the persons justly accused of being hostile to the institution which they have thus defended? No, Sir, no. There are statesmen in the North, to whom the South is as much indebted for the defence of our rights, as to any of her own sons." Mr. FOOTE then alluded to the recent Union meetings at New York and Philadelphia, and the resolutions there adopted, which would have done no discredit, he said, to any city of the South, and which he, with the exception of a single one, should have voted for most enthusiastically. The letters, too, of the Senators of New York and Michigan, (Messrs. CASS and DICKENSON,) read at those meetings, he predicted, would be received with enthusiasm and gratitude throughout the whole South. On the following Thursday, Mr. WEBSTER addressed the Senate as follows: He spoke to-day, he said, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as a member of the Senate of the United States; of a body whose value was shewn in periods like the present, and to which the nation looks with confidence for wisdom, moderation, and stability. The times were troubled. He did not affect to be fit to hold the helm in the political storm; but he had a duty before him, which he should perform truthfully, fearfully and hopefully. I speak to-day, he said, for the preservation of the Union. Mr. WEBSTER then alluded to the sudden and extraordinary events that led to the present crisis; to the war declared against Mexico; to the piercing of that country, and occupation of her capital by our troops, and of her sea-ports by our marine; to the treaty thereupon negotiated, and the cession to the United States of a vast territory, reaching from the Pacific and the mountains of California to the frontiers of Texas. The opening of the sea-board of the Pacific to our citizens, he continued, created a rush of emigration. The California mines were then discovered, and adventurers poured forth in thousands. In a few short years this wilderness has received a population that makes it a subject of legislative consideration to provide for California a proper territorial government. This was not done, and the colonists found it necessary to form a local government for themselves. They have sent Senators and representatives who present the Constitution of the infant State of California, and desire its immediate recognition by the United States. This Constitution contains an express prohibition of slavery; and it is this prohibition which has chiefly raised the present dispute as to the propriety of her admis sion. No one will deny, the Senator continued, that whatever were the reasons for the war with Mexico, its purpose was the acquisition of territory; and no one will deny, that such territory was fully expected from its geographical position, to be the acquisition of the slaveholding interest of this country. Events have turned out otherwise, and hence the agitation of the vexed question which has so frequently divided our councils. Mr. WEBSTER then reviewed historically the question of slavery, from its rise in the earliest ages, to the present day. We find it, he said, among the earliest oriental nations. It existed among the Jews; their theocratic government made at least no injunction against it. It existed among Greeks; and the ingenious philosophy of that people justified it on precisely the same grounds assumed at this day, viz. the original inferiority of the black race to the white. The Senator thought the Greek logic faulty. The Romans, also, owned this institution, but by a higher philosophy, argued its justification, and rightly too, from the conventional law of that day, which placed the life and labor of captives of war at the absolute disposal of the captor. Christianity found slavery in full vigor, and no word of reprobation is met in its teachings. It is, then, upon the general tendencies and abstract lawfulness of slavery, the Senator continued, that arises the wide difference of opinion between the two sections of our country. The North consider that, if not under the direct injunction of Christianity, it is, nevertheless, against its spirit; that it is the offspring of might, not right, and conduces to oppression and selfishness. The South, accustomed to this relation from birth, see in it a development of the finest feelings of our nation. And thus, thousands of men of tender consciences, fully as sensitive in the South as in the North, are led to the most opposite conclusions. In this way the question of slavery has at last laid hold of the religious sentiments of mankind; and wherever discussion arises on such sentiments, all history shews that undue warmth must be expected, In disputes of this kind, men are always to be found who believe that right and wrong can be demonstrated with mathematical clearness; men who think what is plain to themselves, must be equally so to the moral perception of their neighbors; men, too, who in the pursuit of one duty, will trample on every other duty in its way; men who will not wait for the slow progress of moral causes in the cure of moral disease. In this class, with its want of charity and narrowness of mind, do we find the leaven that is now fermenting the Union. Partly, then, from the spread of this Pharisaical spirit in the North, and partly in the South from the uprising of a new element, namely, that of interest, public opinion has undergone a complete change; changed North and changed South. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, there was little invective against slavery as a crime; but all deplored it as an evil, None more so than the men of the South. With truth and with bitterness, they ascribed it to the selfish policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, entailed this blight on the colony. They that dwelt in its midst, were strongest in its execration. A blight they called it, a curse, a mildew. In efforts to prevent its spread, none were more active than the statesmen of the South. The objection to the use of the term slave in the written Constitution, was urged Southern men objected by a Southern man. to the great length of time (twenty years) to which the importation of slaves was limited by law; and all, North and South, united in the hope, that with such limitation, slavery would at last die out, and the Constitution in reality, as well as in name, know no slave. Mr. WEBSTER then alluded to the position taken by Mr. CALHOUN, that the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery from all the territory then owned by the United States, was the first of a series of acts calculated to enfeeble the South. If to enfeeble the South, how, then, was it passed with the entire concurrence of the South? There it stands-the hand and seal of every Southern member of Congress, prohibiting slavery north-west_of the Ohio! the vote of every Southern member of Congress, limiting the importation of slaves in the expressed hope that slavery would thereby become extinct! What, then, has produced this mighty change? What has made the blight a blessing, the blast a wholesome dew? Mr. WEBSTER attributed it all to the magic influence of cotton. When the Constitution was adopted, this great staple was hardly known. The first ship-load sent to Great Britain was refused admission into her ports, under the treaty, because the United States, it was said, raised no cotton. And now that the South, from raising only ordinary agricultural products, has become the great producer of this staple, she naturally wishes to extend the area of production. Mr. WEBSTER attributed nothing dishonorable to his fellow-citizens of the South. Their motives were mixed. He then spoke of the charge of Mr. CALHOUN, that not time and natural causes, but the act of man had increased, and at the expense of the South, the prosperity and rapid growth of the North. If this even were so, he asked, was it time, or the act of man that opened to that sectional interest, Alabama and Florida, the States of Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri? The North may have acted weakly: they may have been out-generalled; it is possible, also, that they were generous and fraternal; but from whatever cause it arose, the direction of our government has from first to last been under Southern auspices. The event bears out what no one acquainted with the history of our legislation will deny, and as the last of these acts of men, not time, we have illimitable Texas added as a great slave-territory, pledged as such by the most ample guaranties of law-and now, he continued, this final act of Northern Legislation for Southern interests, has closed the whole chapter, and settled the whole account, for at this moment there is not a foot of territory belonging to the United States, that is not stamped as slave or free territory by the law of the land, or by a law higher than that of the land. Texas, to her farthest boundary, has been, by the resolutions of annexation, admitted as a slave State, and her territory as slave territory. The faith of the Government has been pledged thereto, and that faith, he, for one, meant to uphold. "Those resolutions," said Mr. WEBSTER, "stipulate and enact that all Texas south 36° 30',-nearly all of it-shall be admitted into the Union as a slave State, and that new States shall be made out of it, and that such States as are formed out of that portion of Texas lying south of 36o 30', may come in as slave States to the number of four, in addition to the States then in existence, and admitted at that time by these resolutions. I know no mode of legislation which can strengthen that. I know no mode of recognition that can add a tittle of weight to it. I listened respectfully to the resolutions of my honorable friend from Tennessee, (Mr. BELL.) He proposed to recognize that stipulation with Texas. But any additional recognition would weaken the force of it; because it stands here on the ground of a contract for consideration. It is a law founded on a contract with Texas, and destined to carry that contract into effect. A recognition founded on any consideration and any contract would not be so strong as it now stands on the face of the resolution. And, therefore, | I say again that, so far as Texas was concerned--the whole of Texas south of 36° 30' which I suppose embraces all the slave territory— there is no land, not an acre, the character of which is not established by law, a law which cannot be repealed without the violation of a contract." But how came the faith of the Government to be thus pledged? How came it that within this body, in spite of its preponderance of Northern votes, this Southern measure was carried? By the aid, by the votes of that very Northern Democracy that now are raising the hue and cry of free soil. The very men that fastened slavery on new and boundless regions are now agitating the country with the wrongs of the slave. The very faction that was handand-glove with the slaveholder, are now taking to themselves the title of the free-soil party. They have saddled upon us this unfortunate compact with slavery, and now leave to us the odium of carrying out its provisions; and carried out they must be ; for I know, he said, of no way, by which this Government acting in good faith, can relieve itself of a stipulation and a pledge, by any honest course of legislation whatever. Texas then, he continued, being marked out by the law of the land, for the forced labor of the black man, a higher law, that of nature, destines California and New Mexico for the free labor of the white. Of Asiatic formation and character, the barren mountains and deserts of these countries possess no attractions for the slaveholder who seeks rich soil, and well-watered plains. If, then, all legislation to entail slavery on New Mexico would be useless, equally useless and ill-judged would be any legislation or Wilmot Proviso, for its prevention. Useless, for it cannot strengthen the fiat of God; illjudged, for it would be felt by the South as a taunt, as an evidence of the conscious power of the North. He wished to inflict no gratuitous insult on Southern feelings; and in that spirit should vote against the Wilmot Proviso. Mr. WEBSTER then spoke of the growing exasperation between the free and slave States; of their mutual reproaches and grievances, real and imaginary. One grievance the South complained of, and with justice: the unwillingness of individuals and legislatures at the North to perform their Constitutional duties in regard to the return of fugitive slaves. And he put to all the sober and sound minds of the North, as a question of morals and conscience, what right have they to embarrass the free exercise of rights secured by the Constitution to the slave owner? referred also to the frequent instructions of Northern Legislatures to members of Congress, on the means of abolishing slavery in the States. He thought State Legislatures had He nothing to do with that question, neither did he believe in the principle of instructions. Wherever the interests of his own State were not adverse to the general interests of the country, he should obey her instructions with gladness as a duty; but wherever the question affected the interests of other parts of the Union, he should feel called upon to act, not as a citizen of any particular State, but as a member of the General Government. Another grievance complained of by the South, was the abolition societies of the North. He did not deny to these societies conscientious motives. He thought them composed of good and honest men, but with excited feelings and perverted views. Their philanthropy did harm to its objects. Their well-intentioned efforts drew tighter the bonds of the slave. The North, too, was not without its list of injuries, and sources of unkind feeling. The change of Southern sentiment and action since the adoption of the constitution; the violent tirades against Northern character and institutions; the scornful comparisons of slave labor, with all its abject ignorance, with the educated and independent white laborer. "Why, who are the laborers of the North ?" he asked. "They are the North. They are the people who cultivate their own farms with their own hands; freeholders, educated men, independent men. Let me say, sir, that fivesixths of the whole property of the North is in the hands of the laborers of the North; they cultivate their farms, they educate their children, they provide the means of independence; if they are not freeholders, they earn wages, these wages accumulate, are turned into capital, into new freeholds, and small capitalists are created. That is the case. And what can these people think, when even Senators undertake to prove that the absolute ignorance and abject slavery of the South is more in conformity with the high purposes of immortal, rational, human beings, than the educated, the independent free laborers of the North ?" So far as these mutual grievances are matters of law, they should and can be redressed. So far as they are matters of opinion, a more charitable and fraternal feeling is their only cure. Mr. WEBSTER then alluded to the project of disunion. He scouted the idea of peaceable secession. Secession there might be, but it would be violent. It would be revolution. The foundations of order and society would be overturned. And how was it to be done? Where was the line to be drawn? The States planted along the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries, and made one nation by that great stream, how were they to be forced asunder? "What has the wildest enthusiast to say on the possibility of cutting off that river, and leaving free States at its source and its branches, and slave States down near its mouth? Pray, sir; pray, sir, let me say to the country that these things are worthy of their pondering and of their consideration. Here, sir, are five millions of freemen in the free States north of the river Ohio; can any body suppose that this population can be severed by a line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and an alien government, down somewhere, the Lord knows where, upon the lower banks of the Mississippi? What would become of Missouri? Will she join the arondissement of the slave States? Shall the man from the Yellowstone and the Mad River be connected in the new republic with the man who lives on the southern extremity of the Cape of Florida? Sir, I am ashamed to peruse this line of remark. I dislike it; I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up to break up this great government; to dismember this great country; to astonish Europe by an act of folly, such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government? No, sir; no sir! there will be no secession. Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession." In conclusion, Mr. WEBSTER stated, that any scheme proposed by Southern gentlemen for the mitigation of the admitted evils of slavery, would meet with his full consent and hearty concurrence. The territory ceded by Virginia to the United States, has yielded to its treasury eighty millions of dollars. Should the residue be sold at the same rate, the aggregate sum would exceed two hundred millions of dollars. Out of this sum of money could be defrayed the expenses of a large scheme of colonization, to be carried on by the Government, by which means the South could relieve itself of their free colored population. Any proposal of this sort would meet with his full co-operation. "And now," said, he, "instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, let us rather cherish those hopes that belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pigmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men, higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the preservation of this Constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. It is a great, popular Constitutional Government, guarded by legislation, by law, by judicature, and defended by the |
