Chapter IX: The Modern Orators (2)

To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for
mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted,
is an insult to their memory. The difference between the
excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman
in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this:
the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the
laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and
Constitution of the province. The rioters of our day go for
their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the
gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of
Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and
Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the
portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to
rebuke the recreant American--the slanderer of the dead.
The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance
if he dared not gainsay the principles of these
resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on
soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood
of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him
up.

Fellow citizens, I can not take back my words. Surely, the
attorney-general, so long and well known here, needs not
the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am--my
voice never before heard within these walls!

Another ground has been taken to excuse the mob, and throw
doubt and discredit on the conduct of Lovejoy and his
associates. Allusion has been made to what lawyers
understand very well--the "conduct of laws." We are told
that nothing but the Mississippi River rolls between St.
Louis and Alton; and the conflict of laws somehow or other
give the citizens of the former a right to find fault with
the defender of the press for publishing his opinions so
near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that argument
before lawyers? How the laws of the two states could be
said to come into conflict in such circumstances I question
whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or
understand. No matter whether the line that divides one
sovereign state from another be an imaginary one or
ocean-wide, the moment you cross it, the state you leave is
blotted out of existence, so far as you are concerned. The
Czar might as well claim to control the deliberations of
Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri demand reverence, or
the shadow of obedience, from an inhabitant of Illinois.

I must find some fault with the statement which has been
made of the events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy
and his friends did not appeal to the executive--trust
their defenses to the police of the city. It has been
hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men
within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in
the course of it--one mob resisting another. Recollect,
sir, that they did act with approbation and sanction of the
mayor. In strict truth there was no executive to appeal to
for protection. The mayor acknowledged that he could not
protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to
defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned
their assembling in arms to do so. They were not, then, a
mob, they were not merely citizens defending their own
property; they were in some sense the _posse comitatus,_
adopted for the occasion into the police of the city,
acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil
authority resisting lawless violence. Where, then, was the
imprudence? Is the doctrine to be sustained here that it is
imprudent for men to aid magistrates in executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, had Lovejoy a right
to resist? Sir, I protest against the question instead of
answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they
mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right of
self-defense. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the dogs
of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow.

Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual
protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men
resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful
city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring
back the scenes to old Indian cities, where family met
family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the
laws under foot. No! the men in that house were regularly
enrolled under the sanction of the mayor. There being no
militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled, with the
approbation of the mayor. These relieved each other every
other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night of
the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening it
was not thought necessary to summon more than half that
number; among these was Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you
perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting
rioters--civil government breasting itself to the shock of
lawless men.

Here is no question about the right of self-defense. It is
in fact simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to
put down a riot?

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy or
his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who have
the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired by the
mob. After being twice fired on, those within the building
consulted together and deliberately returned the fire. But
suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do--not
only the right which every citizen has to defend himself,
but the further right which every civil officer has to
resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it
would not lessen his claim to our sympathy or destroy his
title to be considered a martyr in defense of a free press.
The question now is, did he act within the Constitution and
the laws? The men who fell in State Street on the 5th of
March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They
were the first assailants. Upon some slight quarrel they
pelted the troops with every missile within reach. Did this
bate one jot of the eulogy with which Hancock and Warren
hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in
the cause of American liberty?

If, sir, I had adopted what are called peace principles, I
might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you
who believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates
to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base
hypocrisy the conduct of those who assemble year after year
on the Fourth of July to fight over the battles of the
Revolution, and yet "damn with faint praise" or load with
obloquy the memory of this man who shed his blood in
defense of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the
press!

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill
Battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run
thus: "The patriots are routed--the redcoats
victorious--Warren lies dead upon the field." With what
scorn would that Tory have been received who should have
charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that,
bred a physician, he was "out of place" in that battle, and
"died as a fool dieth!" How would the intimation have been
received that Warren and his associations should have
waited a better time? But, if success be indeed the only
criterion of prudence, _Respice finem_--Wait till the end.

Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that
brave band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that
Lovejoy had fled from city to city; suffered the
destruction of three presses patiently. At length he took
counsel with friends; men of character, of tried integrity,
of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the
crisis had come. It was full time to assert the laws. They
saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed
habits, of character molded and settled, but one "in the
gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." The
people there, children of our older states, seem to have
forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the
moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Something
was to be done to show them the priceless value of the
freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their
wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked
out on a community staggering like a drunken man,
indifferent to their rights, and confused in their
feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned
into sobriety. They saw that of which we can not judge: the
necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public
opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be
arrested.

Does not the event show they judged rightly? Absorbed in a
thousand trifles, how has the Nation all at once come to a
stand! Men begin, as in 1779 and 1640, to discuss
principles, to weigh characters, to find out where they
are. Haply we may awake before we are borne over the
precipice.

I am glad, sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for
us to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has
the right, it is her duty, to strike the keynote for these
United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such
as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here.
The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this
oppression, led by the attorney-general of the
commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, the
deep indignation with which Boston regards this outrage.

JEFFERSON DAVIS ON WITHDRAWING FROM THE UNION[7] (1861)

I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the
Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of
Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in
convention assembled, has declared her separation from the
United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my
functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper,
however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce
that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little
more. The occasion does not invite me to go into argument,
and my physical condition would not permit me to do so if
it were otherwise; and yet it seems to become me to say
something on the part of the state I here represent, on an
occasion so solemn as this.

It is known to senators who have served with me here that I
have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of
state sovereignty, the right of a state to secede from the
Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was
justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippi was
acting without sufficient provocation, or without an
existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the
government, because of my allegiance to the state of which
I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however,
may be permitted to say that I do think she has justifiable
cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her
people before the act was taken, counseled them then that
if the state of things which they apprehended should exist
when the convention met, they should take the action which
they have now adopted.

I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of
mine with the advocacy of the right of a state to remain in
the Union, and to disregard the constitutional obligations
by the nullification of the law. Such is not my theory.
Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are
indeed antagonistic principles. Nullification is a remedy
which it is sought to apply within the Union, and against
the agent of the states. It is only to be justified when
the agent has violated his constitutional obligation, and a
state, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of
the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other states of
the Union for a decision; but when the states themselves,
and when the people of the states, have so acted as to
convince us that they will not regard our constitutional
rights then, and then for the first time, arises the
doctrine of secession in its practical application.

A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has
been often arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union,
advocated the doctrine of nullification because it
preserved the Union. It was because of his deep seated
attachment to the Union, his determination to find some
remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties
which bound South Carolina to the other states, that Mr.
Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he
proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of state
power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of
bringing the agent before the tribunal of the states for
their judgment.

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is
to be justified upon the basis that the states are
sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the
time may come again when a better comprehension of the
theory of our government, and the inalienable rights of the
people of the states, will prevent any one from denying
that each state is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the
grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

I therefore say I concur in the action of the people of
Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and
should have been bound by their action if my belief had
been otherwise; and this brings me to the important point
which I wish on this last occasion to present to the
Senate. It is by this confounding of nullification and
secession that the name of the great man, whose ashes now
mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to justify
coercion against a seceded state. The phrase "to execute
the laws" was an expression which General Jackson applied
to the case of a state refusing to obey the laws while yet
a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now
presented. The laws are to be executed over the United
States, and upon the people of the United States. They have
no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of
terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case,
which cites that expression for application to a state
which has withdrawn from the Union. You may make war on a
foreign state. If it be the purpose of gentlemen, they may
make war against a state which has withdrawn from the
Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be
executed within the limits of a seceded state. A state
finding itself in the condition in which Mississippi has
judged she is, in which her safety requires that she should
provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union,
surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be
many), deprives herself of the advantages (they are known
to be great), severs all ties of affection (and they are
close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and
thus divesting herself of every benefit, taking upon
herself every burden, she claims to be exempt from any
power to execute the laws of the United States within her
limits.

I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was
arraigned before the bar of the Senate, and when then the
doctrine of coercion was rife and to be applied against her
because of the rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston. My
opinion then was the same that it is now. Not in a spirit
of egotism, but to show that I am not influenced in my
opinion because the case is my own, I refer to that time
and that occasion as containing the opinion which I then
entertained, and on which my present conduct is based. I
then said, if Massachusetts, following her through a stated
line of conduct, chooses to take the last step which
separates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and I
will neither vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her
back; but will say to her, Godspeed, in memory of the kind
associations which once existed between her and the other
states.

It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been
a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the
rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has
brought Mississippi into her present decision. She has
heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free
and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her
social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of
Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of
the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence
is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for
which it was made. The communities were declaring their
independence; the people of those communities were
asserting that no man was born--to use the language of Mr.
Jefferson--booted and spurred to ride over the rest of
mankind; that men were created equal--meaning the men of
the political community; that there was no divine right to
rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there
were no classes by which power and place descended to
families, but that all stations were equally within the
grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the
great principles they announced; these were the purposes
for which they made their declaration; these were the ends
to which their enunciation was directed. They have no
reference to the slave, else how happened it that among the
items of arraignment made against George III was that he
endeavored to do just what the North had been endeavoring
of late to do--to stir up insurrection among our slaves?
Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free
and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for stirring
up insurrection among them? And how was this to be
enumerated among the high crimes which caused the Colonies
to sever their connection with the mother country? When our
Constitution was formed the same idea was rendered more
palpable, for there we find provisions made for that very
class of persons as property; they were not put upon the
footing of equality with white men--not even upon that of
paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was
concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste,
only to be represented in the numerical proportion of
three-fifths.

Then, senators, we recur to the compact which binds us
together; we recur to the principles upon which our
government was founded; and when you deny them, and when
you deny us the right to withdraw from a government which,
thus perverted, threatens to be destructive to our rights,
we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim
our independence, and take the hazard.

I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of
my constituents toward yours, I am sure I feel no hostility
to you, senators from the North. I am sure there is not one
of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been
between us, to whom I can not now say, in the presence of
my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the
feeling of the people whom I represent toward those whom
you represent. I therefore feel that I but express their
desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful
relations with you, though we must part. They may be
mutually beneficial to use in the future as they have been
in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring
disaster on every portion of the country; and if you will
have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who
delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us
from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust
in God, and in our firm hearts and strong arms, we will
vindicate the rights as best we may.

In the course of my service here, associated at different
times with a great variety of senators, I see now around me
some with whom I have served long; there have been points
of collision; but whatever of offense there has been to me,
I leave here; I carry with me no hostile remembrance.
Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed,
or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have,
senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my
apology for any pain which, in the heat of discussion, I
have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of the remembrance
of any injury received, and having discharged the duty of
making the only reparation in my power for any injury
offered.

Mr. President and senators, having made the announcement
which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains
for me to bid you a final adieu.

ROBERT TOOMBS ON RESIGNING FROM THE SENATE[8] (1861)

The success of the Abolitionists and their allies, under
the name of the Republican party, has produced its logical
results already. They have for long years been sowing
dragons' teeth and have finally got a crop of armed men.
The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished fact
in the path of this discussion that men may as well heed.
One of your confederates has already, wisely, bravely,
boldly confronted public danger, she is only ahead of many
of her sisters because of her greater facility for speedy
action. The greater majority of those sister states, under
the circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; and I
charge you in their name today: "Touch not Saguntum."[9] It
is not only their cause, but it is a cause which receives
the sympathy and will receive the support of tens and
hundreds of thousands of honest patriot men in the
non-slaveholding states who have hitherto maintained
constitutional rights, and who respect their oaths, abide
by compacts, and love justice.

And while this Congress, this Senate, and this House of
Representatives are debating the constitutionality and the
expediency of seceding from the Union, and while the
perfidious authors of this mischief are showering down
denunciations upon a large portion of the patriotic men of
this country, those brave men are coolly and calmly voting
what you call revolution--aye, sir, doing better than that:
arming to defend it. They appealed to the Constitution,
they appealed to justice, they appealed to fraternity,
until the Constitution, justice, and fraternity were no
longer listened to in the legislative halls of their
country, and then, sir, they prepared for the arbitrament
of the sword; and now you see the glittering bayonet, and
you hear the tramp of armed men from your capital to the
Rio Grande. It is a sight that gladdens the eyes and cheers
the hearts of other millions ready to second them.
Inasmuch, sir, as I have labored earnestly, honestly,
sincerely, with these men to avert this necessity so long
as I deemed it possible, and inasmuch as I heartily approve
their present conduct of resistance, I deem it my duty to
state their case to the Senate, to the country, and to the
civilized world.

Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new government;
they have demanded no new Constitution. Look to their
records at home and here from the beginning of this
national strife until its consummation in the disruption of
the empire, and they have not demanded a single thing
except that you shall abide by the Constitution of the
United States; that constitutional rights shall be
respected, and that justice shall be done. Sirs, they have
stood by your Constitution; they have stood by all its
requirements, they have performed all its duties
unselfishly, uncalculatingly, disinterestedly, until a
party sprang up in this country which endangered their
social system--a party which they arraign, and which they
charge before the American people and all mankind with
having made proclamation of outlawry against four thousand
millions of their property in the Territories of the United
States; with having put them under the ban of the empire in
all the states in which their institutions exist outside
the protection of federal laws; with having aided and
abetted insurrection from within and invasion from without
with the view of subverting their institutions, and
desolating their homes and their firesides. For these
causes they have taken up arms.

I have stated that the discontented states of this Union
have demanded nothing by clear, distinct, unequivocal,
well-acknowledged constitutional rights--rights affirmed by
the highest judicial tribunals of their country; rights
older than the Constitution; rights which are planted upon
the immutable principles of natural justice; rights which
have been affirmed by the good and the wise of all
countries, and of all centuries. We demand no power to
injure any man. We demand no right to injure our
confederate states. We demand no right to interfere with
their institutions, either by word or deed. We have no
right to disturb their peace, their tranquility, their
security. We have demanded of them simply, solely--nothing
else--to give us equality, security and tranquility. Give
us these, and peace restores itself. Refuse them, and take
what you can get.

What do the rebels demand? First, "that the people of the
United States shall have an equal right to emigrate and
settle in the present and any future acquired territories,
with whatever property they may possess (including slaves),
and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment until
such territory may be admitted as a state into the Union,
with or without slavery, as she may determine, on an
equality with all existing states." This is our territorial
demand. We have fought for this territory when blood was
its price. We have paid for it when gold was its price. We
have not proposed to exclude you, though you have
contributed very little of blood or money. I refer
especially to New England. We demand only to go into those
territories upon terms of equality with you, as equals in
this great Confederacy, to enjoy the common property of the
whole Union, and receive the protection of the common
government, until the territory is capable of coming into
the Union as a sovereign state, when it may fix its own
institutions to suit itself.

The second proposition is, "that property in slaves shall
be entitled to the same protection from the government of
the United States, in all its departments, everywhere,
which the Constitution confers the power upon it to extend
to any other property, providing nothing herein contained
shall be construed to limit or restrain the right now
belonging to every state to prohibit, abolish, or establish
and protect slavery within its limits." We demand of the
common government to use its granted powers to protect our
property as well as yours. For this protection we pay as
much as you do. This very property is subject to taxation.
It has been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes.

The title to thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is
derived from the United States. We claim that the
government, while the Constitution recognizes our property
for the purposes of taxation, shall give it the same
protection that it gives yours.

Ought it not to be so? You say no. Every one of you upon
the committee said no. Your senators say no. Your House of
Representatives says no. Throughout the length and breadth
of your conspiracy against the Constitution there is but
one shout of no! This recognition of this right is the
price of my allegiance. Withhold it, and you do not get my
obedience. This is the philosophy of the armed men who have
sprung up in this country. Do you ask me to support a
government that will tax my property; that will plunder me;
that will demand my blood, and will not protect me? I would
rather see the population of my native state laid six feet
beneath her sod than they should support for one hour such
a government. Protection is the price of obedience
everywhere, in all countries. It is the only thing that
makes government respectable. Deny it and you can not have
free subjects or citizens; you may have slaves.

We demand, in the next place, "that persons committing
crimes against slave property in one state, and fleeing to
another, shall be delivered up in the same manner as
persons committing crimes against other property, and that
the laws of the state from which such persons flee shall be
the test of criminality." That is another one of the
demands of an extremist and rebel.

But the non-slaveholding states, treacherous to their oaths
and compacts, have steadily refused, if the criminal only
stole a negro and that negro was a slave, to deliver him
up. It was refused twice on the requisition of my own state
as long as twenty-two years ago. It was refused by Kent and
by Fairfield, governors of Maine, and representing, I
believe, each of the then friendly parties. We appealed
then to fraternity, but we submitted; and this
constitutional right has been practically a dead letter
from that day to this. The next case came up between us and
the state of New York, when the present senior senator (Mr.
Seward) was the governor of that state; and he refused it.
Why? He said it was not against the laws of New York to
steal a negro, and therefore he would not comply with the
demand. He made a similar refusal to Virginia. Yet these
are our confederates; these are our sister states! There is
the bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to it.
Both these governors swore to it. The senator from New York
swore to it. The governor of Ohio swore to it when he was
inaugurated. You can not bind them by oaths. Yet they talk
to us of treason; and I suppose they expect to whip freemen
into loving such brethren! They will have a good time in
doing it!

It is natural we should want this provision of the
Constitution carried out. The Constitution says slaves are
property; the Supreme Court says so; the Constitution says
so. The theft of slaves is a crime; they are a
subject-matter of felonious asportation. By the text and
letter of the Constitution you agreed to give them up. You
have sworn to do it, and you have broken your oaths. Of
course, those who have done so look out for pretexts.
Nobody expected them to do otherwise. I do not think I ever
saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not
invent some pretext to palliate his crime, or who could
not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old Bailey lawyer to
invent some for him. Yet this requirement of the
Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of an
extremist and a rebel.

The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves shall be
surrendered under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850, without being entitled either to a writ of habeas
corpus, or trial by jury, or other similar obstructions of
legislation, in the state to which he may flee: Here is the
Constitution:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence
of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such services or labor may be due."

This language is plain, and everybody understood it the
same way for the first forty years of your government. In
1793, in Washington's time, an act was passed to carry out
this provision. It was adopted unanimously in the Senate of
the United States, and nearly so in the House of
Representatives. Nobody then had invented pretexts to show
that the Constitution did not mean a negro slave. It was
clear; it was plain. Not only the federal courts, but all
the local courts in all the states, decided that it was a
constitutional obligation. How is it now? The North sought
to evade it; following the instincts of their natural
character, they commenced with the fraudulent fiction that
fugitives were entitled to habeas corpus, entitled to trial
by jury in the state to which they fled. They pretended to
believe that our fugitive slaves were entitled to more
rights than their white citizens; perhaps they were right,
they know one another better than I do. You may charge a
white man with treason, or felony, or other crime, and you
do not require any trial by jury before he is given up;
there is nothing to determine but that he is legally
charged with a crime and that he fled, and then he is to be
delivered up upon demand. White people are delivered up
every day in this way; but not slaves. Slaves, black
people, you say, are entitled to trial by jury; and in this
way schemes have been invented to defeat your plain
constitutional obligations.

Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all
our obligations and the duties of the federal government. I
am content and have ever been content to sustain it. While
I doubt its perfection, while I do not believe it was a
good compact, and while I never saw the day that I would
have voted for it as a proposition _de novo,_ yet I am
bound to it by oath and by that common prudence which would
induce men to abide by established forms rather than to
rush into unknown dangers. I have given to it, and intend
to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance, but I
choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on
the false idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say
that the Constitution is the whole compact. All its
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, belong 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. Even in a
monarchy the king can not prevent the subjects from
enjoying equality in the disposition of the public
property. Even in a despotic government this principle is
recognized. It was the blood and the money of the whole
people (says the learned Grotius, and say all the
publicists) which acquired the public property, and
therefore it is not the property of the sovereign. 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.

What, then, will you take? You will take nothing but your
own judgment; that is, you will not only judge for
yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our
construction, discard the practice of the government, but
you will drive us out, simply because you will it. Come and
do it! You have sapped the foundations of society; you have
destroyed almost all hope of peace. 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--that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands.

RUFUS CHOATE EULOGY OF WEBSTER[10] (1853)

Webster possessed the element of an impressive character,
inspiring regard, trust and admiration, not unmingled with
love. It had, I think, intrinsically a charm such as
belongs only to a good, noble, and beautiful nature. In its
combination with so much fame, so much force of will, and
so much intellect, it filled and fascinated the imagination
and heart. It was affectionate in childhood and youth, and
it was more than ever so in the few last months of his long
life. It is the universal testimony that he gave to his
parents, in largest measure, honor, love, obedience; that
he eagerly appropriated the first means which he could
command to relieve the father from his debts contracted to
educate his brother and himself; that he selected his first
place of professional practice that he might soothe the
coming on of his old age.

Equally beautiful was his love of all his kindred and of
all his friends. When I hear him accused of selfishness,
and a cold, bad nature, I recall him lying sleepless all
night, not without tears of boyhood, conferring with
Ezekiel how the darling desire of both hearts should be
compassed, and he, too, admitted to the precious privileges
of education; courageously pleading the cause of both
brothers in the morning; prevailing by the wise and
discerning affection of the mother; suspending his studies
of the law, and registering deeds and teaching school to
earn the means, for both, of availing themselves of the
opportunity which the parental self-sacrifice had placed
within their reach; loving him through life, mourning him
when dead, with a love and a sorrow very wonderful, passing
the sorrow of woman; I recall the husband, the father of
the living and of the early departed, the friend, the
counselor of many years, and my heart grows too full and
liquid for the refutation of words.

His affectionate nature, craving ever friendship, as well
as the presence of kindred blood, diffused itself through
all his private life, gave sincerity to all his
hospitalities, kindness to his eye, warmth to the pressure
of his hand, made his greatness and genius unbend
themselves to the playfulness of childhood, flowed out in
graceful memories indulged of the past or of the dead, of
incidents when life was young and promised to be
happy,--gave generous sketches of his rivals,--the high
contention now hidden by the handful of earth,--hours
passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for the
vernal emotions which they then made to live and revel in
the soul. And from these conversations of friendship, no
man--no man, old or young--went away to remember one word
of profaneness, one allusion of indelicacy, one impure
thought, one unbelieving suggestion, one doubt cast on the
reality of virtue, of patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the
progress of man,--one doubt cast on righteousness, or
temperance, or judgment to come.

I have learned by evidence the most direct and satisfactory
that in the last months of his life, the whole
affectionateness of his nature--his consideration of
others, his gentleness, his desire to make them happy and
to see them happy--seemed to come out in more and more
beautiful and habitual expressions than ever before. The
long day's public tasks were felt to be done; the cares,
the uncertainties, the mental conflicts of high place, were
ended; and he came home to recover himself for the few
years which he might still expect would be his before he
should go hence to be here no more. And there, I am assured
and duly believe, no unbecoming regrets pursued him; no
discontent, as for injustice suffered or expectations
unfulfilled; no self-reproach for anything done or anything
omitted by himself; no irritation, no peevishness unworthy
of his noble nature; but instead, love and hope for his
country, when she became the subject of conversation, and
for all around him, the dearest and most indifferent, for
all breathing things about him, the overflow of the kindest
heart growing in gentleness and benevolence--paternal,
patriarchal affections, seeming to become more natural,
warm, and communicative every hour. Softer and yet brighter
grew the tints on the sky of parting day; and the last
lingering rays, more even than the glories of noon,
announced how divine was the source from which they
proceeded; how incapable to be quenched; how certain to
rise on a morning which no night should follow.

Such a character was made to be loved. It was loved. Those
who know and saw it in its hour of calm--those who could
repose on that soft grass--loved him. His plain neighbors
loved him; and one said, when he was laid in his grave,
"How lonesome the world seems!" Educated young men loved
him. The ministers of the gospel, the general intelligence
of the country, the masses afar off, loved him. True, they
had not found in his speeches, read by millions, so much
adulation of the people; so much of the music which robs
the public reason of itself; so many phrases of humanity
and philanthropy; and some had told them he was lofty and
cold--solitary in his greatness; but every year they came
nearer and nearer to him, and as they came nearer, they
loved him better; they heard how tender the son had been,
the husband, the brother, the father, the friend, and
neighbor; that he was plain, simple, natural, generous,
hospitable--the heart larger than the brain; that he loved
little children and reverenced God, the Scriptures, the
Sabbath day, the Constitution, and the law--and their
hearts clave unto him. More truly of him than even of the
great naval darling of England might it be said that "his
presence would set the church bells ringing, and give
schoolboys a holiday, would bring children from school and
old men from the chimney-corner, to gaze on him ere he
died." The great and unavailing lamentations first revealed
the deep place he had in the hearts of his countrymen.

You are now to add to his extraordinary power of
influencing the convictions of others by speech, and you
have completed the survey of the means of his greatness.
And here, again, I begin, by admiring an aggregate made up
of excellences and triumphs, ordinarily deemed
incompatible. He spoke with consummate ability to the
bench, and yet exactly as, according to every sound canon
of taste and ethics, the bench ought to be addressed. He
spoke with consummate ability to the jury, and yet exactly
as, according to every sound canon, that totally different
tribunal ought to be addressed. In the halls of Congress,
before the people assembled for political discussion in
masses, before audiences smaller and more select, assembled
for some solemn commemoration of the past or of the
dead--in each of these, again, his speech, of the first
form of ability, was exactly adapted, also, to the critical
proprieties of the place; each achieved, when delivered,
the most instant and specific success of eloquence--some of
them in a splendid and remarkable degree; and yet, stranger
still, when reduced to writing, as they fell from his lips,
they compose a body of reading in many volumes--solid,
clear, rich, and full of harmony--a classical and permanent
political literature.

And yet all these modes of his eloquence, exactly adapted
each to its stage and its end, were stamped with his image
and superscription, identified by characteristics incapable
to be counterfeited and impossible to be mistaken. The same
high power of reason, intent in every one to explore and
display some truth; some truth of judicial, or historical,
or biographical fact; some truth of law, deducted by
construction, perhaps, or by illation; some truth of
policy, for want whereof a nation, generations, may be
worse--reason seeking and unfolding truth; the same tone,
in all, of deep earnestness, expressive of strong desire
that which he felt to be important should be accepted as
true, and spring up to action; the same transparent, plain,
forcible, and direct speech, conveying his exact thought to
the mind--not something less or more; the same sovereignty
of form, of brow, and eye, and tone, and manner--everywhere
the intellectual king of men, standing before you--that
same marvelousness of qualities and results, residing, I
know not where, in words, in pictures, in the ordering of
ideas, in felicities indescribable, by means whereof,
coming from his tongue, all things seemed mended--truth
seemed more true, probability more plausible, greatness
more great, goodness more awful, every affection more
tender than when coming from other tongues--these are, in
all, his eloquence.

But sometimes it became individualized and discriminated
even from itself; sometimes place and circumstance, great
interests at stake, a stage, an audience fitted for the
highest historic action, a crisis, personal or national,
upon him, stirred the depths of that emotional nature, as
the anger of the goddess stirs the sea on which the great
epic is beginning; strong passions, themselves kindled to
intensity, quickened every faculty to a new life; the
stimulated associations of ideas brought all treasures of
thought and knowledge within command; the spell, which
often held his imagination fast, dissolved, and she arose
and gave him to choose of her urn of gold; earnestness
became vehemence, the simple, perspicuous, measured and
direct language became a headlong, full, and burning tide
of speech; the discourse of reason, wisdom, gravity, and
beauty changed to that superhuman, that rarest consummate
eloquence--grand, rapid, pathetic, terrible; the _aliquid
immensum infinitumque_ that Cicero might have recognized;
the master triumph of man in the rarest opportunity of his
noble power.

Such elevation above himself, in congressional debate, was
most uncommon. Some such there were in the great
discussions of executive power following the removal of the
deposits, which they who heard them will never forget, and
some which rest in the tradition of hearers only. But there
were other fields of oratory on which, under the influence
of more uncommon strings of inspiration, he exemplified, in
still other forms, an eloquence in which I do not know that
he has had a superior among men. Addressing masses by tens
of thousands in the open air, on the urgent political
questions of the day, or designed to lead the meditations
of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some national era,
or of some incident marking the progress of the nation, and
lifting him up to a view of what is, and what is past, and
some indistinct revelation of the glory that lies in the
future, or of some great historical name, just borne by the
nation to his tomb--we have learned that then and there, at
the base of Bunker Hill, before the corner-stone was laid,
and again when the finished column the centuries looked on
him; in Faneuil Hall, mourning for those with whom spoken
or written eloquence of freedom its arches had so often
resounded; on the Rock of Plymouth; before the Capitol, of
which there shall not be one stone left on another before
his memory shall have ceased to live--in such scenes,
unfettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate,
multitudes uncounted lifting up their eyes to him; some
great historical scenes of America around; all symbols of
her glory and art and power and fortune there; voices of
the past, not unheard; shapes beckoning from the future,
not unseen--sometimes that mighty intellect, borne upward
to a height and kindled to an illumination which we shall
see no more, wrought out, as it were, in an instant a
picture of vision, warning, prediction; the progress of the
nation; the contrasts of its eras; the heroic deaths; the
motives to patriotism; the maxims and arts imperial by
which the glory has been gathered and may be
heightened--wrought out, in an instant, a picture to fade
only when all record of our mind shall die.

In looking over the public remains of his oratory, it is
striking to remark how, even in that most sober and massive
understanding and nature, you see gathered and expressed
the characteristic sentiments and the passing time of our
America. It is the strong old oak which ascends before you;
yet our soil, our heaven, are attested in it as perfectly
as if it were a flower that could grow in no other climate
and in no other hour of the year or day. Let me instance in
one thing only. It is a peculiarity of some schools of
eloquence that they embody and utter, not merely the
individual genius and character of the speaker, but a
national consciousness--a national era, a mood, a hope, a
dread, a despair--in which you listen to the spoken history
of the time. There is an eloquence of an expiring nation,
such as seems to sadden the glorious speech of Demosthenes;
such as breathes grand and gloomy from the visions of the
prophets of the last days of Israel and Judah; such as gave
a spell to the expression of Grattan and of Kossuth--the
sweetest, most mournful, most awful of the words which man
may utter, or which man may hear--the eloquence of a
perishing nation.

There is another eloquence, in which the national
consciousness of a young or renewed and vast strength, of
trust in a dazzling certain and limitless future, an inward
glorying in victories yet to be won, sounds out as by voice
of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize of
earth; such as that in which the leader of Israel in the
first days holds up to the new nation the Land of Promise;
such as that which in the well-imagined speeches scattered
by Livy over the history of the "majestic series of
victories" speaks the Roman consciousness of growing
aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as that
through which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the
bulletins of her rising soldiers, France told the world her
dream of glory.

And of this king somewhat is ours--cheerful, hopeful,
trusting, as befits youth and spring; the eloquence of a
state beginning to ascend to the first class of power,
eminence, and consideration, and conscious of itself. It is
to no purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste; that
it partakes of arrogance and vanity; that a true national
good breeding would not know, or seem to know, whether the
nation is old or young; whether the tides of being are in
their flow or ebb; whether these coursers of the sun are
sinking slowly to rest, wearied with a journey of a
thousand years, or just bounding from the Orient
unbreathed. Higher laws than those of taste determine the
consciousness of nations. Higher laws than those of taste
determine the general forms of the expression of that
consciousness. Let the downward age of America find its
orators and poets and artists to erect its spirit, or
grace, and soothe its dying; be it ours to go up with
Webster, to the Rock, the Monument, the Capitol, and bid
"the distant generations hail!"

Until the seventh day of March, 1850, I think it would have
been accorded to him by an almost universal acclaim, as
general and as expressive of profound and intelligent
conviction and of enthusiasm, love, and trust, as ever
saluted conspicuous statesmanship, tried by many crises of
affairs in a great nation, agitated ever by parties, and
wholly free.

JOHN BRIGHT The Strength of the American Government (1863)