Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1860-03-16

sshall be found. the enly party thai de-
XsAeand maintains the integrity of the
; rSssn. s
Those who seek 10 awaken the terrors of
disunion, seem TO me to have too hastily con-
sidered the conditions under which they are
to make their attempt. Who believes that a
Republican Administration and Congress
: could practice tyranny under a Constitution
which interposes so many checks as ours ?
Yet that tyranny must not ealy be practied,
but must be intolerable, and, there must be no
remaining hope for constitutional relief, before
forcible resistance can find ground to stand on
anywhere.
The people of the United States, acting in
conformity with the Constitution, are the sp-
preme tribunal to try and determine all poll
teal issues. They are competent to decide
the issues Of to-day as they have been hereto
fore to decide the issues OF other days. They
can reconsider hereafter amt reverse, if need
be, the Judgment they shall pronounce to-day,
Is they have more than once reconsidered and
reversed their judgments in former times
It needs no revelations to- correct any error, or
prevent any danger, under any circumstances
Nor is any new or special cause for revolu-
ton likely to occur under a Republican ad-
ministration. We are engaged in no new
transaction, not even in a new dispute. Our
fathers undertook a great work for themselves,
for us, and for our successors-to erect a free
and federal empire, whose arches shall span the
North american continent, and reflect the
rays of the sun throughout his whole passage
from one to the other of the great oceans
They erected thirteen of its columns all at
once. These are standing now, the admiration
Of mankind. Their successors added twenty
moro even we who are here have shaped and
elevated three of that twenty, and all these
are as firm aEffas steadfast as the first thirteen;
and more will yet be necessary when we shall
have rested from our labors. Some among us
prefer for these columns a composite material /;
others the pure white marble. Our fathers
and our predecessors differed in the same way,
and on the same point. What execrations
should we not all unite in pronouncing on any
statesman who heretofore, from mere disap-
pointment and disgust at being overruled in
his choice Of materials for any new column
then to be quarried, should have lain violent
hands on the imperfect structure and brought
1t down to the earth, there to remain a
wreck, instead of a citadel of q worlds best
hoposl
I remain now in the opinion 1 have uniform
~ expressed here and elsewhere, that these
hssty threats of disuniun are so unnatural that
they will find no hand to execute them. We
are of one race, language, liberty, and faith
engaged, indeed, in varied industry but even
that industry SO diversified, brings US into
more intimate relations with each other than
any other people. however homogeneous, and
though living under q consolidated Govern
ment, ever maintained. We languish through
out if one joint of our Federal frame is smit-
ten; while it is certain that a part discovered
must perish. You may refine as you please
about the structure of the Government, and
say that it is a compact, and that a breach by
one of the States Or by Congress, or Of any
one article, absolves all the members from allie |
glance, and that the States may separate when
they have, or fancy they have, cause for war.
But once try to subvert it, and you will find
that it is a Government of the whole people
as individuals, as well as a compact of States
that every individual member of that body
polite is conscious of his interest and power
in it, and knows that he will be helpless, pow
erless, hopeless, when it shall have gone down..
Mankind have a natural right, a natural ill.,
stinct, and q natural capacity for selfgovern-
ment and when, as here, they are sufficiently
ripened by culture, they will and must have
selfgovernment, and no other. The trainers of
our Constitution, with a wisdom that surpas-
sed all previous understanding among men,
adapted it to these Inherent elements of hui
man nature. He strangely, b!indly misunder-
stands the anatomy Of the great system. who
thinks that its only bonds, or even its strong
est figaments, are the written compact, or even
the multiplied and thoroughly ranlifed roads
and t~horoughfares of trade, commerce and so
cial intercourse. These are strong, indeed, but
its chiefest instruments of cohesion-those
which render it inseparable and indivisible-
are the millions. of fbres of millions of con-
tented, happy human hearts, binding by their
affections, their ambitions and their best hopes
equally the high. and the low, the rich and the
poor, the wise and unwise, the learned and the
untutored, even the good aud the bad, to a
Government, the first, the last and the only
such one that has ever existed. which takes
equal heed always of their wants, their wishes
and their opinions /; and appeals to them all,
individually, once in o year, or in two years, or
at least in four years, for their expressed con
seut and renewal, without which IL must cease.
No, go where you will, and to what class you
MAY, with commissions for your fatal service
In one hand, and your bounty counted by the
hundred or the thousand pieces of silver in the
other, a thousand ~resisters will rise up for eve
ry recruit you can engage On the banks
equally of the St. Lawrence and of the Rio
Grande, on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, on
the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and in the
dells of the Rocky Mountains, among the fish
ermen on the banks of Newfoundland, the
weavers and spinners of Massachusetts,, the
stevedores of New York, the miners OF Penn
s~ylvania, Pixies Peak and California, the
wheat-growers of Indiana. the cotton and Sill
gar planters on the Mississippi, among the vol
untary citizens from every other land not less
than the native born, the Christian and the
Jew, among the Indians on the prairies, the
contumacious Mormons in Deseret, the Afri-
cans free, the Africans in bondage, the inmates
Of hospitals and alms-houses, and even the
criminals in the penitentiaries, rehearse the
story Of yoar wrongs and their own never so
eloquently and never so mournfuiiy, and appeal
to then, to rise They viii ask you, Is this
all?" Are you more Just than Washington, !
wiser than Hamilton, mere humane than JET
ferson 7" What new form of government
or of union have you the power to. establish, or
even the cunning to devise, that will be mort
Just, more safe, more free, more gentle, more
beni6cent, or more glorious than this And
by these simple ~interrogatories you will be ST.
fenced and COMPOUNDED.
Mr.. President, we are perpetually forgetting
this subtle and complex, yet obvious and nat
uraI, mechanism of our Constitution and be-