The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1860-03-22
THE DISUNION FOLLY.
A SPEECH DELIVERED BY

In the U. S. Senate, January 18th. 1860.
Mr. PRESIDENT:-Wbe hen the Pepublic
had entered the family Of nations, it pro-
claimed to kings and princes, to mobiles
and privileged classes, to toiling freemen
and lowly bondmen, the equality of man.
Passing now through the eighty fourth
year of national life, America presents to
the gaze of nations the humiliatiug and
saddeniDg spectacle of Republic which
began it's independent existence by the
promulgation of bill of rights as old as
creation and as wide as humanity, dis
tracted by the discordant and angry dis
cussions upon issues growing out of the
bondage of four millions of men.
Slavery in America-our connections
with it, and relations to it, the obligations
these connections and relations impose
upon us as men, as citizens of the States
and the United States--make the issues
of the age, the trauscedant magnitude of
which command the profoundest attention
of the country.
Within fifteen States Of this democratic
Republic, which commenced its career By
uttering ideas Of equality and liberty that
live in the throbbing hearts of the toiling
masses, and nurse even the watering
hopes of hapless bondmen amid the thick
gloom of rayless oppression, more than
four million human beings, made in the
image of God, are held in perpetual
bondage. By inexorable laws, sanction
ed by the force of puoliO opinion, these
millions are denied the rights of man.
hood, and degraded to the abject condi-
ton of ehattlehood. To them, the hal
lowed relations of husband and wife, pa
rent and child, are held not BY the sacred
rights of common humanity, but by the
will of masters. The laws, the customs,
the public opinion which have sunk these
millions from the dignity of humanity
down to the degrad alton of ohattles, have
founded and developed privileged class,
which now controls the slaveholding
States. This class nov rules these fifteen
States, abrogating, iu support of its in
terests. the iuborn, inbred, constitutional
right of freedom of speech and FREEDOM of
the press. In these States the power of
this class is overshadowiDg resistless, ,com-
plete.
Over the Federal Government this
class, this slave power, has achieved do
minion. The slave power this day holds
tn national Government, in all its de-
partments, in absolute subjug gation. In
this Chamber, where sit the representa-
tives Of sovereign commonwealths, that
power retains unbroken sway. That
power bids the Supreme Court utter its
DEGREES, and that high tribunal obeys its
imperative commands. Thatpower holds
the President in the hollow of its hand,
compelling him to declare that "sSavery
exists in Kansas by virtue of the Constltu-
tion that the master has the right to take
bis slaves into the Territories as property,
and have it protected there under the
Federal Constitution; that uether Con-
gress nor the Territorial Legislature. nor
any human power, has any authority to
annul or impair this vested right. y
That power summoned the aspiring Vice
President to his own Kentucky to give
bis assurance, "that this constitutional
right exists, that We must hold to this
principle, we must stand By it; and if it
cannot be enforced for want of proper
legislation to enforce it, sufficient legisla-
ton must be passed, or our Government
is failure" That power lays its iron
hand upon the representatives of free and
proud commonwealths in this Cha@b Der
and 10 the other, compelling them to dis
avow their own recorded opinions, to ac-
cept the monstrous dogma that "neither
Congress, nor Territorial Legislature,
nor any human power, has any authority
to annul or impair the vested right" OF
the master to have his slave protected as
property in the Territories under the Fed
eral Constitution. Well might the Vice.
President, in view of the power, proudly
say to the men of his native Kentucky,
owe stand in a good position. We have
the Executive; we have the laws; we have
the courts; and that is a great advance
from where we stood ten years agol"
Sir, this expansion and growth of the
system of African slavery, this develop
meut of the slave power, during the past
seventy years, have wrought wonderful
change, complete revolution in the sen,
/ timebts and opinions of the public men
who control the councils of America
What a contrast between slavery in A
nerics in 1889, and slavery in America
! in ls60l Then it was weak; now it is
strong. Then it's influences over the ma.
ton were impotent; now it holds the gov
ernment in its iron grasp. Then the public
men who dictated the policy of the gov
ernment deemed it to be a moral and po-
litical evil, which umsnity and religion
deplored; now it is regarded by men who
control the government as positive good,
a benefcent system, in the words of the
Senator from Mississippi. Mr. Brown, } "a
great moral, social, and politiealblessing; a
blessing to the master and blessing to the
slave" Then, to prohibit it in the Ter
ritories, was deemed alike the right and
duty of the governments; now the avowed
doctrine of the administration of the gov
ernment is, that the shareholders have the