The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-07-06
GREAT DEBATE IN THE SENATE.
Senate, MondGy, June 90, 1854,

no design to call in question the motives of the
Senator who had presented the petition. He
had no fault to find with the exercise Of the
right of petition. II was the undoubted right
eft every citizen, and one to which he would
give every latitude He would 90 so far as to
say that he believed it was the right of his Sa-
tanic Majesty, even, to send up a petition to
that Court which he had insulted, and from
which he had been hurled. But it was by mo-
tives and objects that petitions were to be
judged. So if, in sending up that petition, he
was actuased by purpose of mischief or was
| hypocritical in his prayer, he deserved deeper
infamy than than that to which he had already
been consigned. If this petition now before the
Senate be sent thither from proper motives and
for proper purposes it is entitled to all respect.
If it be sent hither for the purpose of mischief,
and to produce strife, then it deserved the con-
tempt Of every good man. This was not the
| first petition of this character sent here and,
had this come unattended with striking cir
cumstances, giving it the color of treason, he
would not have noticed it. But it came here
with all the circumstances tending to-show
that 1t is part Of the plan of operations of those
with whom agitation and repeal are watch
words He had seen, already, one attempt
made to give practical effect to the prayer of
this petition, and it had only found four Sena-
tors who would give the sanction of their names
to its unholy purpose. 1t was said that these
petitions were the result of the passage of the
Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Missouri
| Compromise. He did not believe it. It was
the result of combination of those willing to
take part in any scheme to break down the
| Constitution of the United States and place
the South under degradation aud humiliation.
1t came from q city where the laws were openly
set at defiance; where the temple of justice
was surrounded by an armed mob, to prevent
the execution of constitutional duty: where
treason stalked broadly through the streets at
MONDAY and where the officers of the law
were butchered. The petition came from such
people and from such place, following i'm
mediately upon those events Was he not right
in supposing this petition, got up at such a
time, had in view no consideration of public
interest 1t came from Boston, where the dust
of the first and the last martyrs in the coun-
try's cause, Warren and Batchelder, were now
mingled together
The orator then called attention to an Adj
dress published in the InteiigenceT Of the 22d
instant, said to have been adopted at a meet
ing of the members of Congress opposed to the
Nebraska bill. The simultaneous appearance
of this document with this petition might in
duce the belief that, like birds of omen and
perturbed spirits they desired companionship
in publicity as we'll as in sentiment. The meet
ing which adopted this extraordinary Address
was most irregular. No man save the three
whose names were attached to the Address
had been bold enough to ayow his connection
with it. He would rejoice if they had the man
illness to come forward and let the country
know who they were who had given sanction
| to this paper 1t was to be expected they
would do so, and that no man would be dGs-
tard enough to screen himself from RESPONSE
bility by avoiding any publicity of his conneo
ton with the meeting 1t was q most carefully
prepared paper. 1t did not say the members
Of Congress opposed to the Nebraska bill, nor
did it say part of them, but it said meeting
composed of members of Congress. Who were
they? How many were theye The Address
was signed by three persons. II may be said
that these were oil who were there. He had
known meetings heralded to the country as
large and respectable, composed only of q
chairman and secretaries, and whose only
claim to largeness consisted in the physical
proportions of the chairman. So far as the
chairman of this meeting was considered, it
might be considered large meeting. He could
not believe that any one member from the
South would give the sanction of his name to
the statements contained in that Address.
The orator then read the Address and its
arguments upon the encroachments by the
slave power by its acquisitions and the de-
signed extension of its area upon the adoption
of the Missouri Compromise and the Compro-
mise of 1850, and the repeal of the former, &c.,
go. He commented upon the same with great
severity Of language. He said he YVES happy
in the belief that not ono Southern man at
tended the meeting. After reading the AID.
dress, he suggested to its unknown author to
abandon the barren field of political itera-
| t,-a n 20 IN fba oh HalI
of the works of fiction. The author of this Ad-
dress bids fair to rival the writer of the Ara
bian Nights Entertainments, Eugene Sue,
Paul de Kock, and many others, who were so
prolific in works of fiction. He had never seen
a production which contained in so few words
so much fiction and pure Imagination as this
Address. The Address charged the South with
passing the Nebraska bill, with a covered de-.
sign Of making the Territories slave States
with annexing half dozen States of Mexico,
and making them slave; with planting slavery
on the Amazon with augmenting its power
by the acquisition of Cuba and Dominica and
in time reducing the North to abjeot submits
sion. He called for the author of this acousa-
ton. 1t was serious one and which no gen.
tleman should make behind the masked bat
terry of O secret meeting. The author of it
knew very well, that had every Southern Sena-
tor been IN his grave, the Nebraska bill could
have passed 1t would have parsed il no South
ern Senator had voted for it. The whole charge
was falsehood. 1t was wickedly malicious
ly false He could see no difference between
the petition for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave
Law and the dissolution of the Union. There
was no man that believed the Union could be
preserved one day after the repeal of the Fugi-
tive Slave Law. The South asked to do no
wrong to the North. All it asked was to pre-
serve the Constitution, and give us our equality
of rights He had been a Wing all his life ;
he was told now, by the Northern wing of that
party, that hereafter the test TO be applied to
all Wings was the repeal of the Nebraska
act-repeal of guarantees and equality to all
States given by the Constitution. If this was
to be the test of orthodoxy in the Wing party,
then he avowed himself q hereto, and suggest
| ed that against him now at once might be pre-
pared the edict of accommodation. IL to
trample on the rights Of any section or State
was necessary to be a Wing, he had to say to
his former friends and associates good bye He
would rather die than follow them in any such
rule of action.
| Mr.. ROCKWELL said he regretted that the
duty had fallen upon him to defend the State
of which he was representative. He regret
| ted that his predecessor was not here to dis
charge that duty, rather than himself. This
memorial was signed by over twenty-ons hun
| dred of the men of Boston. Its signers were
| the bone and sinew of the active business men
of that city. He saw nothing in their petition
| either extraordinary or wrong. They simply
asked for the repeal of an act of Congress only
four years old, which act was in addition to
the one which had been in force over fifty
| years. Was there treason in thisa Was it
treason to ask Congress to repeal an act of its
own makinge 1t was said that there were
circumstances attending it which gave 70 it