The Van Buren press., 1860-01-20
Hon Ralph I. Ingersolrs speech.

Hon Ralph 7 Ingersolls Speech.
The following speech of the Hon.
RALPH /. IscERsoLL, of New Haven, Conn,
was delivered at Union meeting held in
that city short time since. 1t speaks, we
are confident, the sentiments of the masses
Of that State. We ask all our readers to
give it a careful perusal.
Mr. PRESIDENT AND Fellow CIrrzENs.-
1t is sixty years ago this day since the death
of Washington. What day SO appropri-
| ate to renew our vows to the Constitution
and the Union. and the principles of their
founders Few in this large meeting are
old enough to recollect the event that con-
vulsed continent but the one now adj
dressing you remembers it well. A nation
mourned as no nation ever mourned before.
There was one universal vail. The stur-
diest men were bowed down, and the stout
est hearts quailed. Mothers wept and chill
dren wore badges of woe. was but
school boy, then, but old enough to wear
Grape, in token of our own and the univer-
sal grief. The father of us all, his country's
father, was gone. Even the youngest of
us were taught to revere his precepts. And,
if there ever was time when we should
rewrite upon our hearts the emphatic war
nings of his Farewell Address, to avoid
the formation of geographical parties, and
frown Indignantly on the first dawning
of every attempt to ALLEVIATE any portion of
our country from the rest, or enfeebles the
ties which now link together the various
pafts," this, this is the time and now the
hours.
The occasion which brings together this
| vast assemblage, is not an ordinary one
One of the States of this confederacy, the
home of Washington, has been, as the call
for this meeting well expresses it, invaded
by a lawless band. Its citizens taken from
their beds at midnight, seized and impris-
oneu, VIr~ .f tharn tha near relative of Wash-
| ington, and bearing his name, wh;lu utl5aYs
were murdered on their own soil. One Of
the armories of the United States was for
chilly taken possession of by the same dep
| redators, and it was only after severe
struggle, attended by the loss of life, that
the public property was recaptured, and
the supremacy of the law upheld. 1t is
painful and mortifying fact that the most
active desperadoes in these outrages, were
natives of our good old State, though they
had been long estranged from the land of
their fathers, and the law abiding habits for
which Connecticut has ever been distin-
guished. An armed attack on the COM
monwealth of Virginia-the mother of
States-and that, too, by Connecticut -
Nothing could be more unnatural, nothing
more unjust. l have said that Virginia
was the mother of States. She has given
five free States, of the largest class to the
Union. Ohio. Indiana. Illinois, Wisconsin
and Michigan. If she chooses to adhere to
the institution of African slavery within
the jurisdiction that she has retained for
herself. that is an affair of her own, and it
is the last thing that Connecticut or any
son Of Connecticut has to complain Of
When the Constitution of the United States
was formed, it was by the vote of Connec-
ticut, given by as illustrious men as ever
adorned her history, added to the votes of
the other New England States, that the
federal government was virtually prohibit
ed for twenty years IT'LL lS0S) from inter
fering with the foreign slave trade and
that vote met the appreciation of vast ma
jority of our people. Virginia, as tie rec
ord tells us, voted against it. Connecticut,
Massachusetts,, and New Hampshire went
with the extreme South, who were anxious
for it. and thus the Constitution as it now
stands in this particular, received its shape.
1t was not that the delegates who gave
the vote for Connecticut were pro-slavery
men where they had the right to interfere
with the subject. On the contrary they had
already at home united with their fellow
citizens in taking incipient steps for the
very gradual and prospective deliverance
of this State from its then slave popula-
tion-for we were then slave-holding
| State, as We're twelve of the old thirteen
that formed the Union. Connecticut pass
ed laws for this gradual prospective process
operating only on future births-but she
never, even as to her own slave population
undertook to emancipate, against the will
Of the master, one that was born slave
| That was the kind of abolition known to
our fathers, and the abolition societies to
which they belonged, were only connected
| with this gradual home process. They
managed their own concerns in their own
way, as they had the rlght-and left other
sovereign States to do as to them should
seem best, within their own borders. They
never dreamed of interfering with slavery
in other States. They were In favor Of
SLrlnSeHt tuSttIvc 6laFo laws, I8ltni0lly ana
honestly executed, and would as soon been
connected with underground counterfeiting
or underground treason, as with under
ground roads to steal away slaves from the
other states of this confederacy. FCheers. I
Roger Sherman the leading delegate from
this state in the Constitutional Convention,
had previously, not only attached his name,
to. the Declaration of '76, bat lie was one
Of the committee with Jefferson, Adams,
Franklin and Livingston, who reported it,
and no one better understood than he did
the meaning of those expressions in the
Declaration, which have been SO often quo
ted. and misquoted, by the ultras of the
present day IS an excuse for their violence.
You will see by what he said in the Con-
vention for framing the Constitution sever
al years afterwards, how he understood the
principles Of that instrument, az applicable
/ to the different sovereignties. that were to
be brought together in barmeaions union.
As ] have before said, he WAS IN anti-sla-
very. man in dealing with t. subject in hil
own State, hut notwithstanding that, when
/ fho ouasfsnsn eanna mn A Il, the r;uhfa a,