Chapter II: Part 2

Among the objects which were of interest to him and which he had hoped to visit, was the fortification at the narrows of the Penobscot. During the last session of congress he had endeavored to obtain an appropriation for the completion of the work which had advanced to the point which made it effective against shipping, but left still liable to be carried by land attack. He was not of those who thought it necessary to raise walls wherever an enemy might land and march, for he would say that henceforward there would remain to an invading army but to choose between captivity and a grave. To protect commercial ports against naval assault forts are needful and should be completed so as to render them defensible by small garrisons, and to save those garrisons as far as possible from the sacrifice of life. Our people require no wall to separate them from other countries, unless it be needful for our own restraint. Our policy is peace, and the fact shines brightly on the pages of our history that not one acre of its extensive acquisitions have been claimed as the spoil of the sword. Unpeopled deserts have been purchased, and on its own application a community has been admitted to our family of states. But we have offered to the world the singular example of conquered territory returned to the vanquished.

Permit me in this connection, whilst ever mindful of the just relation and necessity for concurrent action between the civil and military departments of government, to bear testimony to the value of the militia for the purposes of peace. The principle of self-government and the spirit of independence are so deep rooted in the American mind that our people would illy brook the enforcement of law by any extraneous power, and it is to be hoped we never will see a case in which the people of a State will not be able to maintain the civil authority, and vindicate offended law against all opposers whomsoever. To give energy and activity to such popular action the organization of the militia will be most convenient whenever force shall be needful. It is not a little remarkable that though the first Presidents in emphatic language from time to time recommended a thorough organization of the militia as one of the most important duties of the government, but little more has yet been done than to make provisions for supplying them with arms, and for calling them out when required for federal purposes. There is a moral effect arising from the spectacle of each State possessed of a body of instructed militia, ready not only to maintain its government at home, but to unite with the militia of other States and to form an army upon which all can rely whenever a common danger calls for a common defence. It has been thus that from time to time the fraternity of our revolutionary fathers has been renewed among their sons, and additional assurance has been given that the sentiment of nationality on which our Union was founded could never die. That the expansion of the circle did not weaken its cohesive power, nor the piling of arch upon arch endanger the foundation on which our political temple was built. It was not a structure of expediency; master workmen cleared away the surface where the errors and prejudices of ages had accumulated, dug deep down to the unmutable rock of truth, and with unchanging principles constructed the walls to stand till time should become eternity. Who is there, then, forgetful of his revolutionary descent, insensible to the pride which the name of the United States justly inspires, faithless to the duty which the bond of his fathers imposes, and reckless of all which the honorable discharge of that duty ensures, would unite with impious purpose to destroy that foundation, and strive, with sacrilegious hand to tear the flag under which we had marched from colonial dependence to our present national greatness. Away with speculative theories, and false philanthropy of abstractions, which tend to destroy one half, one third, aye, or a single star of that bright constellation which lights the pathway of our future career, and sends a hopeful ray through the clouds of despotism which hang over less favored lands.

Our mission is not that of propagandists—our principles forbid interference with the institutions of other countries; but we may hope that our example will be imitated, and should so live that this model of representative liberty, community independence, and government derived from the consent of the governed, and limited by a written compact, should commend itself to the adoption of others. We now stand isolated among the great nations of the earth; the opposition of monarchial governments to the theory on which ours is founded, points to the possibility of an alliance against us, by which what is termed national law may be modified and warped to our prejudice if not to our assailment. It needs the united power, harmonious action and concentrated will of the people of all these States to roll the wheel of progress to the end which our fathers contemplated, and which their sons, if they are wise and true, may behold. May the kindness and courtesy which have characterized the present occasion on which Mississippi has been greeted by Maine, be a type of the feeling which shall ever exist between the extremes of our common country. From Florida to California, from Oregon to Maine, from the centre to the remotest border, may the possessors of our constitutional heritage appreciate its value, and faithfully, fraternally labor for its thorough development, looking back to the original compact for the purposes for which the Union was established, and forward to the blessing which such union was designed and is competent to confer.

Speech at the Portland Meeting.

When it became known that Mr. Davis had arrived at the Hall, he was loudly called for. Hon. Joseph Howard, chairman of the meeting, then introduced Mr. Davis, who, on coming forward, was greeted with cheer upon cheer from the vast audience. As soon as the prolonged and enthusiastic applause with which he was welcomed had subsided, Mr. Davis, addressing the audience as fellow citizens and Democratic brethren, said that the invitation with which he had been favored to address them, evinced a purpose to confer together for the common good—for the maintenance of the constitution, the bond of union. He would not be expected to discuss local questions; he would not in this imitate the mischievous agitators who inflame the Northern mind against the Southern States. He came among them, an invalid, advised by his physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of his health; as an American citizen, he had not expected that his right to come here would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rights of the South had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither his coming nor his going would attract attention. But his anticipations had proved erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted above the barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had chosen, without political distinction, to welcome his coming, and by constant acts of generous hospitality to make his sojourn as pleasant as his physical condition would permit.

On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capital consists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, had erroneously judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as a political mission; wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that the scavengers of that party had been employed in the publication of falsehoods, both in relation to himself and his political friends at the South.

So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more than the barking of a cur, which, by its clamor, indicates the inhospitable character of the master who keeps him. If his friends and himself were, as had been falsely charged, Disunionists and Nullifiers, they might naturally have looked for kinder considerations from a party which circulates petitions for a “prompt and peaceful dissolution of the Union” on account of the incompatibility of the sections—from a party, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitution in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and void the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to enact. The fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their honorable discharge of its obligations was their rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found the highest commendation in their power to bestow.

By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words into extracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his opinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his was the creed on which the people of Maine must vote next Monday.

It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their hands that he should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had not failed to remember the obligation; when republicans had introduced the subject of African slavery he had defended it, and answered pharisaical pretensions by citing the Bible, the constitution of the United States and the good of society in justification of the institutions of the State of which he was a citizen; in this he but exercised the right of a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southern citizen. Was it for this cause that he had been signalized as a slavery propagandists? He admitted in all its length and breadth the right of the people of Maine to decide the question for themselves; he held that it would be an indecent interference, on the part of a citizen of another State, if he should arraign the propriety of the judgment they had rendered, and that there was no rightful power in the federal government or in all the States combined, to set aside the decision which the community had made in relation to their domestic institutions. Should any attempt be made thus to disturb their sovereign right, he would pledge himself in advance, as a State-rights man, with his head, his heart and his hand, if need be, to aid them in the defence of this right of community independence, which the Union was formed to protect, and which it was the duty of every American citizen to preserve and to guard as the peculiar and prominent feature of our government.

Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men to converse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or exclude them? He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of our brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here, to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are the political abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of the character and the purposes of the Democracy of this State.

And now having brushed away the cob-webs which lay in his path, he would proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audience he had the honor to address.

Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may be known, you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and to posterity. The time is at hand when for good or for evil, the questions which have agitated the public mind are to be solved. Is it true as asserted by northern agitators that there is such contrariety between the North and the South that they cannot remain united! Or rather, is it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity in the character of the population, in the products and in the institutions of the several States formed a reason for their union and tended to secure to their posterity the liberty which was the common object of their love, and by cultivating untrammeled intercourse and free trade between the States, to duplicate the comforts of all?

There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness to sever the bond which bound the colonies to the mother country. Recently our people with joyous acclamation have welcomed the connection of the United States with Great Britain, by the Atlantic cable. The one is not inconsistent with the other. When the home government violated the charters of the colonies, and assumed to control the private interests of individuals, the love of political liberty, the determination at whatever hazard to maintain their rights, led our fathers to enter on the trial of revolution. Having achieved the separation, they did what was in their power for the development of commerce. They secured free trade between the States, without surrendering State independence. Their sons, not only free, but beyond the possibility of future interference in their domestic affairs, now seek the closest commercial connection with the country from which their fathers achieved a political separation.

Had the proposition been made to consolidate the States after their independence had been achieved, all must know it would have been rejected—yet there are those who now instigate you to sectional strife for the purpose of sectional dominion and the destruction of the rights of the minority. Do they mean treason to the Constitution and the destruction of the Union? Or do they vilely practice on credulity and passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested by the contradictory course they pursue. At the same time they proclaim war upon the slave property of the South, they ask for protection to the manufactures of the staple which could not be produced if that property did not exist. And while they assert themselves to be the peculiar friends of commerce and navigation, they vaunt their purpose to destroy the labor which gives vitality to both; whilst they proclaim themselves the peculiar friends of laboring men at the North, they insist that the negroes are their equals; and if they are sincere they would, by emancipation of the blacks, bring them together and degrade the white man to the negro level. They seek to influence the northern mind by sectional issues and sectional organization, yet they profess to be the friends of the Union. The Union voluntarily formed by free, equal, independent States.

We of the South, on a sectional division, are in the minority; and if legislation is to be directed by geographical tests—if the constitution is to be trampled in the dust, and the unbridled will of the majority in Congress is to be supreme over the States; we should have the problem which was presented to our Fathers when the Colonies declined to be content with a mere representation in parliament.

If the constitution is to be sacredly observed, why should there be a struggle for sectional ascendency? The instrument is the same in all latitudes, and does not vary with the domestic institutions of the several States. Hence it is that the Democracy, the party of the constitution, have preserved their integrity, and are to-day the only national party and the only hope for the preservation and perpetuation of the Union of the States.

Mr. Jefferson denominated the Democracy of the North, the natural allies of the South. It is in our generation doubly true; they are still the party with whom labor is capital, and they are now the party which stands by the barriers of the constitution, to protect them from the waves of fanatical and sectional aggression. The use of the word aggression reminded him that the people here have been daily harangued about the aggressions of the slave power, and he had been curious to learn what was so described. It is, if he had learned correctly, the assertion of the right to migrate with slaves into the territories of the United States. Is this aggression? If so, upon what? Not upon those who desire close association with the negro; not upon territorial rights, unless these self-styled lovers of the Union have already dissolved it and have taken the territories to themselves. The territory being the common property of States, equals in the Union, and bound by the constitution which recognizes property in slaves, it is an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into that territory of one of its joint owners, because carrying with him any species of property recognized by the constitution of the United States. The Federal government has no power to declare what is property anywhere. The power of each State cannot extend beyond its own limits. As a consequence, therefore, whatever is property in any of the States must be so considered in any of the territories of the United States until they reach to the dignity of community independence, when the subject matter will be entirely under the control of the people and be determined by their fundamental law. If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.

If Congress had the power to prohibit the introduction of slave property into the territories, what would be the purpose? Would it be to promote emancipation? That could not be the effect. In the first settlement of a territory the want of population and the consequent difficulty of procuring hired labor, would induce emigrants to take slaves with them; but if the climate and products of the country were unsuited to African labor—as soon as white labor flowed in, the owners of slaves would as a matter of interest, desire to get rid of them and emancipation would result. The number would usually be so small that this would be effected without injury to society or industrial pursuits. Thus it was in Wisconsin, notwithstanding the ordinance of ’87; and other examples might be cited to show that this is not mere theory.

Would it be to promote the civilization and progress of the negro race? The tendency must be otherwise. By the dispersion of the slaves, their labor would be rendered more productive and their comforts increased. The number of owners would be multiplied, and by more immediate contact and personal relation greater care and kindness would be engendered. In every way it would conduce to the advancement and happiness of the servile caste.

No—no—it is not these, but the same answer which comes to every inquiry as to the cause of fanatical agitation. ’Tis for sectional power, and political ascendency; to fan a sectional hostility, which must be, as it has been, injurious to all, and beneficial to none. For what patriotic purpose can the Northern mind be agitated in relation to domestic institutions, for which they have no legal or moral responsibility, and from the interference with which they are restrained by their obligations as American citizens?

Is it in this mode that the spirit of mutual support and common effort for the common good, is to be cultivated? Is it thus that confidence is to be developed and the sense of security to grow with the growing power of each and every State? Is it thus that we are to exemplify the blessings of self-government by the free exercise in each independent community of the power to regulate their domestic institutions as soil, climate, and population may determine?

Among the questions which have been made the basis of recent agitation, and has contributed as much, perhaps, as any other to popular delusion, was the act known as the Missouri Compromise. It will be remembered that the agitation of 1819 on the subject of slavery, was not masked as it has been since, by pretensions of philanthropy—it was an avowed opposition to the admission of a slave-holding State. A long and bitter controversy was terminated by the admission of the State of Missouri, and the prohibition of slavery north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30 minutes. He, and those with whom he most concurred, had always contended that Congress had no constitutional power to make the interdiction. But the people having generally acquiesced, the matter was considered settled; and when Texas, a slave-holding State, was admitted into the Union, Southern men, regarding the Missouri Act as a compact, assented to the extension of the line through the territory of Texas, with a provision that any State formed out of the territory north of 36: 30: should be non-slaveholding. But when, at a subsequent period, we made extensive acquisitions from Mexico, and it was proposed to divide the territory by the same parallel, the North generally opposed it, and after a long discussion, the controversy was settled on the principle of non-intervention by Congress in relation to property in the territories. The line of the Missouri Compromise was repudiated. And a Senator who had been most prominent in denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a violation of good faith on the part of the South, in 1850, described it as a measure which had been the grave of every Northern man who supported it, and objected to the boundary of 36: 30: for the territory of Utah, because of the political implication which its adoption would contain.

The act having been thus signally repudiated by the denial in every form of the power of Congress to fix geographical limits within which slavery might or might not exist; when it became necessary to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, it was but the corollary of the proposition which had been maintained in 1850 to repeal the act which had fixed the parallel of 36: 30: as the future limit of slavery in the territory of Louisiana.

Consistency demanded so much; fairness and manhood could not have granted less. He was not then a member of Congress; but if he had been, he should have voted for that repeal; for although in 1850 he had favored the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, and believed that it would most conduce to the harmony of the States, he had yielded to the action of the Government, and considered the position then taken as conclusive against the retention of the line in Louisiana and Texas, which its beneficiaries had refused to extend through the territories acquired from Mexico. As a general principle, he thought it was best to leave the territories all open. Equality of right demanded it, and the federal government had no power to withhold it. Whatever validity the Missouri Compromise act had, it derived from the acquiescence of the people. After 1850 then it had none. The South had not asked Congress to extend slavery into the territories, and he in common with most Southern statesmen, denied the existence of any power to do so. He held it to be the creed of the Democracy, both in the North and the South, that the General Government had no constitutional power either to establish or prohibit slavery anywhere; a grant of power to do the one must necessarily have involved the power to do the other. Hence it is their policy not to interfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individual in his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community to determine and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom may seem best.

Politicians of the opposite school seemed to forget the relation of the General Government to the States; even so far as to argue as though the General Government had been the creator instead of the creature of the States. He had learned that attempts had been made to impress upon the people of Maine the belief that they were in danger of having slavery established among them by decree of the Supreme Court of the United States. He scarcely knew how to answer so palpable an absurdity. The court was established, among other purposes, to protect the people from unconstitutional legislation; and if Congress, in the extreme of madness, should attempt thus to invade the sovereignty of a State, it would be within the power, and would be the duty of the court, to check the aggression by declaring such law void. The court have, on more than one occasion, asserted the right of transit as a consequence of the guarantees of the Constitution, but it would require much ingenuity to torture the protection of a traveller or sojourner into an assertion of a right to become resident and introduce property in contravention of the fundamental law of the State, or of a citizen to hold property within a State in violation of its constitution and its policy. The error of the proposition was so palpable that, like the truth of an axiom, it could not be rendered plainer by demonstration.

It is not within the scope of human foresight to see the embarrassments which may arise in the execution of any policy. When it was declared that soil, climate, and unrestrained migration should be left to fix the _status_ of the territories, and institutions of the States to be formed out of them, no one probably anticipated that companies would be incorporated to transport colonists into a territory with a view to decide its political condition. Congress, as he believed, yielding too far to the popular idea, had surrendered its right of revision and thus had recently lost its power to restrain improper legislation in the territories. From these joint causes had arisen the unhappy strife in Kansas, which at one time threatened to terminate in civil war. The Government had been denounced for the employment of United States troops. Very briefly he would state the case.

The movement of the Emigrant Aid Societies of the North was met by counteracting movements in Missouri and other Southern States. Thus opposing tides of emigration met on the plains of Kansas. The land was a scene of confusion and violence. Fortunately the murders which for a time filled the newspapers, existed nowhere else; and the men who were reported slain, usually turned up after a short period to enjoy the eulogies which their martyrdom had elicited. But arson, theft and disgraceful scenes of disorder did really exist, and bands of armed men indicated the approach of actual hostilities. What was the Government to do? Perhaps you will say, call out the militia. But that would have been to feed and arm one of the parties for the destruction of the other. To call out the militia of neighboring States would have been but little better. The sectional excitement then ran so high, that they would probably have met upon the fields of Kansas as combatants, the government in the meantime furnishing the supplies for both armies. It was necessary to have a force—one which would be free from sectional excitement or partisan zeal and under executive control. The army fulfiled these conditions. It was therefore employed. It dispersed marauding parties, disarmed organized invaders, arrested disturbers of the peace, gave comparative quiet and repose to the territory, without taking a single life, aye, or shedding one drop of blood. The end justified the means, and the result equaled all that could have been anticipated.

The anomalous condition of a territory possessing full legislative power, but not invested with the sovereignty of a State, justified the anxiety exhibited by Congress to be relieved from the embarrassment which the case of Kansas presented. The Senate passed a bill to authorize a convention for the preparation of a constitution for the admission of Kansas as a State. It however failed in the House of Representatives, and the legislature of Kansas, availing themselves of the plenary power conferred upon them by the organic act, proceeded to provide for the assembling of a convention, and the formation of a constitution. The law was minute and fair in its provisions, so nearly resembling the bill of the Senate that the one was probably copied from the other. It seemed to secure to every legal voter every desirable opportunity to exercise his right. One of the parties of the territory, however, denying the legal existence of the legislature, chose to abstain from voting. The other elected the delegates who formed the constitution. The validity of the instrument he has been denied, because it was not submitted for popular ratification. He held this position to be wholly untenable, and could but regard it as a gross departure from the principle of popular sovereignty. A people—he used the word in its strict political sense—having the right to make for themselves their fundamental law, may either assemble in mass convention for that purpose, or may select delegates and limit their power to the preparation of an instrument to be submitted to a popular decision; or they may appoint delegates with full powers to frame the fundamental law of the land. Whether they adopt one mode or the other is a question with which others have no right to interfere, and he who claims for Congress the power to sit in judgment on the manner in which a people may form a constitution, is outside of the barrier which would restrain him from claiming for Congress the right to dictate the instrument itself. If the right existed to form a constitution at all, the power of Congress in relation to the instrument was limited to the simple inquiry: is it republican? In this view of the case it would not matter to him the ninety-ninth part of a hair whether a people should chose to admit or exclude slave property. Their right to enter the Union would be a thing apart from that consideration.

He had felt great doubt as to the propriety of admitting Kansas, and had only yielded those doubts to the peculiar necessities which seemed to make the case exceptional. The inhabitants of the territory had however decided not to enter the Union upon the terms proposed, and he thought their decision was fortunate. They had not the requisite population; their resources were too limited to give assurance that they would be able to bear the expenses of their government and properly to perform the duties of a State. But more than this, their legislative history shows that they are wanting in the essential characteristics of a community; whichever party has had the control of the legislature, has manifested by its acts not a desire to promote the public good, and protect individual rights, but a purpose to war upon their political opponents as a hostile power. The political party with which he most sympathized had marked its legislation by requiring test oaths, offensive to all our notions of political freedom; and the other party had assumed to take from the territorial executive the control of the militia and to place it in irresponsible hands, where, it reports speak truly, it has been employed in the most wanton outrages and disgraceful persecution of citizens of the opposite political party. He held, therefore, that the decision of the inhabitants was fortunate and wise. It was well, that before they assume the responsibilities of a State, they should gather population, develop the natural resources of the country, and above all acquire the homogeneous character which would give security to person and property, and fit them to be justly denominated a community.

A stranger, and but a passing observer of events in Maine, he had nevertheless seen indications of a reaction in popular opinion, which promised hopefully for the future of Democracy, _hopefully_, it might be permitted for one to say who believed that the success of the Democracy was the only hope for the maintenance of the constitution and the perpetuation of the Union which sprung from and cannot outlive it. If the language of his friend who preceded him should prove prophetic, the waving of the banner he described would be the dawning of a day which would bring gladness and confidence to many a heart now clouded with distrust, and loud would be the cheers which, on distant plain and mountain, would welcome Maine again to her position on the top of the Democratic pyramid. He saw a brighter sky above him; he felt a firmer foundation beneath his feet, and hoped ere long through a triumph achieved by the declaration of principles, suited to every latitude and longitude of the United Slates, to receive the assurance that we have passed the breakers —that our ship may henceforth float freely on—that our flag, no longer threatened with mutilation or destruction, shall throw its broad stripes to the breeze and gather stars until its constellation shines a galaxy, and records a family of States embracing the new world and its adjacent islands.

Speech at State Fair at Augusta, ME.

[From the Eastern Argus, Sept 29,1858.]

On Thursday evening a large and brilliant audience assembled in the Representatives’ Hall, in the Capitol, to listen to the distinguished statesman from Mississippi, who, upon brief notice and without a moment’s leisure for preparation, had kindly consented to address the Agricultural Society. We have already spoken of the gratifying character of what he termed his desultory remarks and of the cordially enthusiastic manner in which both the orator and his address were received. As the occasion, as well as the character of the remarks, will make them interesting to the whole people of our State, we are gratified in being able to lay before our readers a more extended and accurate report of them than has before appeared.

At about half-past eight o’clock, the Society came into the Hall, already crowded in every part, and its President, Hon. Samuel F. Perley, in brief and complimentary terms, introduced Col. Davis, who advanced to the speaker’s stand, and was received with loud and prolonged applause. He said:

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and countrymen: To the many acts of kindness received from the people of Maine, I have to add the welcome reception this evening. The invitation of the Agricultural Society, with the attendant circumstances, serve further to impress me with the hospitality of ray fellow citizens of this State. Coming here, an invalid, seeking the benefits which your clime would afford, and preceded by a reputation which was expected to prejudice you unfavorably towards me, I have everywhere met courtesy and considerate attention, from the hour I landed on your coast to the present time. It was natural to ask, whence come these manifestations? Is it because the opinion which had been formed has been found to be unjust, and the reaction has been in proportion to the previous impulse? Or is it the exhibition of your regard for loyalty to one’s friends, and devotion by a citizen to the community to which he belongs? Either the one or the other is honorable to you; but there is a broader and more beneficent motive—the prompting of that sentiment which would cause you to recognize in every American citizen a brother. That feeling which Daniel Webster indicated when he met me in company with your distinguished townsman, ex-Senator Bradbury, and taking us with the right hand and with the left, said in the peculiarly impressive manner which belonged to him, “My brethren of the North and of the South, how are ye?”

It is usual to offer to an Agricultural Society nothing less than a prepared address, and had I come with an intention to speak to you, I should not have failed to make that preparation which is evidence of due regard for the audience. The invitation under which I now speak, having been given and accepted this evening, I have no power to do more than to offer you desultory remarks on such subjects as my visit to the Fair have suggested, and which may occur to me as I progress.

With great pleasure I have witnessed evidences of much attention and deep interest in agriculture. It is the basis of all wealth. It is the producer—brings all new contributions to the general store. The mechanic arts are essential to its success, and they serve by changing the form, to multiply the value of agricultural products. And commerce too, by exchanging the products of individuals and of countries, enhances the value of labor, and increases the comfort of man. They are all essential to each other. I have no disposition to magnify or depreciate either, but my proposition is, that the soil is the source from which human wealth springs. In addition to these pursuits, society requires what are termed liberal professions. They are not producers, though they may contribute, by diffusing knowledge, to increase production. They may be necessary to give security to property and to take care of some physical wants. For instance you have lawyers and doctors; and the less need you have of them the better; for though necessary, like government, it is evil which makes them so. As to another class—those who have the cure of souls—their mission is so sacred, their function so high as to place them beyond comment; and of them I have nothing to say, except that I propose to say nothing.

Among the products of agriculture I of course intended to include the farmer’s stock, and I must here bear my tribute of admiration to the fine display which has been made of horned cattle; particularly of work oxen, remarkable for their size, their adaptation to the purposes for which they are kept and the docility and yet the unflagging spirit which they manifested in the trials of strength and of deep ploughing. I have not before seen such fine specimens of the Devon cattle,—of course I speak of them as they present themselves to the eye—not pretending to judge of their relative value to other stock exhibited. Improvement in the breed of domestic animals goes hand in hand with agricultural mechanism, to give the ability to make two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, and thus to render you indeed benefactors. Skill in the use, and ingenuity in devising and constructing implements, serve to render labor productive, and relieve it of its most dreary drudgery. It is this mechanical ingenuity which has compensated for the high price of labor among us, and aided in the development of resources which makes our country the greatest of the earth. Blest by soil, climate and government, if we are, as claimed, pre-eminent among nations, it is because we have added to other advantages a more general cultivation of the mind. The superiority is attributable not so much to physical energy, activity and perseverance, as to the improvement of that portion of the man which lies above the eyes.

Though you have done much for the improvement of agricultural implements, your work is far from being completed. It is not a little surprising that we should, to this day, have no reliable rule by which to make a plough, and though the model has been improved, certainly it is yet not unlike, and so far as exact science is concerned, is on a par with that implement as used by the Romans, and as it appeared in ancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular relation of the parts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied, offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useful to the cultivator. In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was afforded of the fitness of the implements employed to turn deep and wide furrows; but should we be content with such result as is obtained by trying different models, and then copying one which is found to be good?

Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timber that it was naturally to be expected, as it has fallen out, that the pursuits of navigation would most occupy the attention of her people. But let not her sons look to the period when her forests have disappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue. There are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directed to lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley of the Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep vegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be less permanent than those. In them the elements which support the farmer’s crop may be exhausted by cultivation or carried down into substrata of gravel or sand. In the remote West to which so many are pressing, the emigrant will encounter an arid climate in which irrigation is necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry, and this involves an original expenditure which it will usually require large capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mighty pump, is daily raising the water which the currents of cold air from the mountains, or from the sea, precipitate in the form of genial showers during the period of your growing crops; and the granite of the mountains slowly, but steadily disintegrating, gives up its fertilizing property to be scattered by unseen hands over plain and over valley. With care and with skill in its use I can see no end to the productiveness of that portion of your land which is fit for cultivation.

Your crops, and your mode of tillage are different from that to which I am accustomed, and the result is that each supplies a different segment in the circle of man’s wants. I am glad that it is so, that it must necessarily be so. Glad, because it is an everlasting bond between us; one which, whilst it binds, renders both doubly prosperous. Blessed is our lot in this, that our fathers linked us together, and established free trade between us. In the diversity of climate, and of crops, there is an assurance that entire failure cannot occur. If disaster and blight should fall upon one section, it need not go to a foreign land in search of bread. Famine, gaunt famine, with its skeleton step, can never pass our borders whilst the free trade of the Union continues.

But difference in pursuits, in population, and domestic institutions, have been made the basis of hostile agitation, and urged as a cause of separation. To my mind the reverse would be the rational conclusion. Each exchanging, the surplus of that which it can best produce for the surplus of another which it most requires, the benefit must be mutual, and the advantage common. Here is a commercial, a selfish bond to hold us together. But I will stop here, because the current of my thought is carrying me beyond the limit of topics proper to the occasion, and I must offer as an apology the fact, that though myself a cultivator of the soil, my mind has for several years been given so much to political subjects, that in speaking without having previously arranged what to say, the thought inadvertently runs from the matter I wished to present, into collateral questions of governmental concern. Before turning back, however, into the original channel, permit me to say that the diversity of which I have been speaking, formed no small inducement to the union of the States, and that it has been through that union that we have attained to our present position, and stand to-day, all things considered, the happiest, and among the greatest in the family of nations.

In looking around upon the evidences you have brought of mechanical and agricultural improvement, I have viewed it not with the curiosity of a stranger, but with the interest of one who felt that he had a part in it, as an exhibition of the prosperity of his country. The whole confederacy is my country, and to the innermost fibres of my heart I love it all, and every part. I could not if I would, and would not if I could, dwarf myself to mere sectionality. My first allegiance is to the State of which I am a citizen, and to which by affection and association I am personally bound; but this does not obstruct the perception of your greatness, or admiration for much which I have found admirable among you.

Yankee is a word once applied to you as a term of reproach, but you have made it honorable and renowned. You have borne the flag of your country from the time when it was ridiculed as a piece of striped bunting, until it has come to be known and respected wherever the ray of civilization has reached; and your canvass-winged birds of commerce have borne civilization into regions, where it is not boasting to say, but for your prowess it would not have gone. You have a right to be proud of your achievements as well on the land as the sea. Well may you point as you do with satisfaction, to your school houses and your work-shops, and to the fruits they have borne on the forum and in the council chamber, and in the manufactures which have increased the comforts of our own people, and have encircled the globe to find exchangeable products required at home. Those are the greatest and most beneficent triumphs—the triumph of mind over matter. These are the monuments of greatness, which resist both time and circumstance.

I have spoken of diversity among the people of the United States; yet there is probably greater similitude than is to be found elsewhere over the same extent of country, and in the same number of people. In language, especially, our people are one; surely much more so than those of any other country. The diversity between the people of the different States, even those most remote from each other, is not as great as that between inhabitants of adjoining countries of England, or departments of France or Spain, where provinces have their separate dialects. And chief among the causes for this I would place the primary book, in which children of my day learned their letters, and took their first lessons in spelling and reading. I refer to the good old spelling book of Noah Webster, on which I doubt if there has been any improvement, and which had the singular advantage of being used over the whole country. To this unity of language and general similitude, is to be added a community of sentiment wherever the American is brought into contrast or opposition to any other people.

If shadows float over our disc and threaten an eclipse; if there be those who would not avert, but desire to precipitate catastrophe to the Union, these are not the sentiments of the American heart; they are rather the exceptions and should not disturb our confidence in that deep-seated sentiment of nationality which aided our fathers when they entered into the compact of union, and which has preserved it to us. You manifest that sentiment to-day in the courtesy which you have extended to me. In what other land could a countryman go so far from his home and receive among strangers the attention which could only be expected from friends? But it is not your kindness only, which has caused me here to feel at home; I have been brought in contact with men of my own pursuit, the tillers of the ground and the breeders of stock; and in my intercourse with this class of your citizens, I have been further confirmed in the high estimate heretofore placed upon that portion of our population. Happily for our country and its institutions, extensive territory and favorable climate, have attracted a large part of our population to agricultural pursuits. It is in the individuality, the sobriety, and self reliance of the rural population that I look for the highest development of those qualities essential to self-government, and the brightest illustration of patriotic devotion. They may not be the best informed, but learning and wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation and entire dependence upon himself; give independence of character and favor that self-inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure the motives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind becomes as it were acadamized; and though the intercourse is favorable to the acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality, independence, and purity, without which republican governments rapidly sink into decay. It was probably in this view that Mr. Jefferson said, great cities were sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes of commerce, required for the exchanges on which agricultural and manufacturing industry depend for their prosperity,—they are not evils which we could desire to see abated. My desire, however, is, that the rural districts shall not lose their relative importance or cease to control in public affairs. Misled and deceived they may be, interested in a public wrong they cannot be, and theirs is the sober thought upon which reliance must be placed for the correction of errors and delusions, which may temporarily prevail.

In societies like this the farmers have the opportunity of comparing opinions and results, and thus increasing the amount of their knowledge. The spirit of emulation which is excited must lead to improvement, by better directing energy in their pursuit. The publication of the results and the comparisons thus instituted with what is done in other States, encourages State pride and developes community feeling. Whatever tends to the cultivation of the idea of State sovereignty and community independence, strengthens the foundation on which rests our federal government—the fruition of that principle which led our fathers into the war of the revolution, where they purchased with their blood the rich inheritance transmitted to us.

Man once received the title of Domitor Equi, he being proud of the achievement of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn, gentler woman sat like Penelope handling the distaff. Subsequently there arose a race of Amazons, who, aspiring to the feats of man, lost the gentleness of woman; but in our happy land and day, rising above the one without running to the excess of the other, lovely woman, with all the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, musters her energy when occasion requires, and displays her prowess in commanding the horse. Among the interesting features of the exhibition I shall remember the equestrianism of the ladies. Though it was beautiful in every sense of the word, it was not regarded as mere sport, but the rather looked upon as part of that mental and physical training which makes a woman more than the mere ornament of the drawing-room—fits her usefully to act her appropriate part in the trying scenes to which the most favored may be subjected—to become the mother of heroes, and live in the admiration of posterity.

Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly made to an extension of the area of the United States. A wiser policy, however, prevailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasing the variety of our productions, have magnified the advantages of free trade between the States, and made us almost independent of other countries for the supply of every object whether of necessity or of luxury. I would be glad to extend our boundary and make the circle of our products complete, so that, whilst we would encourage commerce with christendom we should be, commercially as we are politically, absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary to terminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman of former days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of fire, that it might be a barrier to shut out European contamination. Whatever fear was once justifiable, no apprehension now need to exist, that our people will imitate or seek to adopt the political theories of Europe. We have recently rejoiced in the success of the attempt to establish telegraphic communication with England; because in closer commercial ties we saw no danger of political influence. I was happy this evening to receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at last complete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger than their hopes—thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from the beginning anticipated success, and have heretofore said that if the present attempt riled I was sure that Yankee enterprise and skill could make a cable and lay it across the Atlantic. And we look forward to the result with hope, not doubting, that the closest commercial connexion with other countries can only bring to us benefits. We are not, and have not been, political propagandists, yet believing our form of government the best, we properly desire its extension and invite the world to scrutinize our example of representative liberty.