The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1861-03-02
A SOUTHERN PROTEST AGAINST
DISUNION.

delivered in the House of Representatives,
Jan. 22d, 1861:
Mr.. Clemens began by saying that he
was permitted, after long sickness, to
stand on that floor in renovated health, to
lift a warning voice to his countrymen of
the South and Virginia, who were being
dragged out of the Union by the unholy
Vaccinations of wrecked and ambitious
men. He would speak to them as beftted
the solemn and portentous issues of the
hour. They were in the midst of great
events-it might be that they were in the
dying days of the Republic and he would
not, therefore, utter, even in whisper, one
word which might tend TO bring down the
impending avalanche upon the quiet homes
of the people. Ho would at the same time
speak as Southern man, identified with all
the interests of the South. He would speak
as Western Virginian, and as the custodian
of those who were not old enough to know
the perils to which they were exposed by
those who were now riding on the very crest
of the popular wave, but who were never
theless destined to sink into the very trough
of the sea-to depth so unfathomable that
a bubble would never rise to mark the spot
where they went so ANONYMOUSLY down.
Well might those who had inaugurated the
revolution which was now stalking over the
land, cry out, with uplifted hands, for peace,
and deprecate the effusion of blood. 1t was
the inventor of the guillotine who was its
first victim, and the day was not far off when
they would find among their own people
those who would have to re- y upon the
magnanimity of that population whom they
had most cruelty outraged and deceived.
He had not the heart to enter into de-
tail of arguments, or to express the indig-
nant emotions which rose to his lips for
utterance. But, before God and in his in
most conscience, he believed that slavery
would be crucifed, should this unhappy
contest end in a ACKNOWLEDGMENT of the
Union. If not cruciGed, it would carry the
death-rattle N its throat. It remained to
be seen whether treason could be carried out
with the same facility with which it had
been plotted. There was a holy courage
among the minority of every slave State,
that might be for the time overwhelmed.
Lazarus was not dead but slept, and ere
long the stone would be rolled away from
the mouth of the tomb, and they would wit
ness all the glories of a resurrection. 1t
would not be forgotten that among the clans
of Scotland, beacon-f fires used to be lit by
concerted signals from crag to crag in liv-
ing volumes of flame, yet expiring even in
its own fierceness, and sinking into ashes
as the fagots which had fed them were con-
sumed. To such a picture as that might
be ikened a rebellion such as political lead
ers sometimes excite for brief hour, but
the fires of rebellions burnt out with the
fagots, and all was cold and dark again.
In the present emergency, before this po-
litical conspiracy, it might be that he would
stand alone with his colleague Mr.. Millson)
Let it be so. He sought no Office. His
political race was very nearly voluntarily
run.
History would record the proceedings of
this turbulent period and time; the gentle
but infallible arbiter of all things earthly,
take his stand. They lived in an age of
political paradoxes. Broad, expansive love
of country had become diseased sentiment
tslity. Patriotism had become starved
birding, clinging with unhedged wings
around the nest of the twigs where it was
born. A statesman now must not only
"narrow his mind and give up to party
what was meant for mankind" but he must
become as submissive as blind horse in a
bark mill to every perverted opinion which
at the END of which he is harnessed. To be
q diamond of the first water, he must stand
in the Senate house of his country, and in
the face of forbearing people glory in being
traitor and rebel. He must solemnly
proclaim the death of nation to which he
had sworn allegiance, and with the grave
stolidity of an undertaken invite its citizens
to their own funeral. He must dwarf and
| A.
whose local passion he thrives 20 the
county where he practices at court, or to
the city where he f1aunts in all the meretri-
cious dignity of Doge of Venice. He can
take an oath to support the Constitution of
the United States, but he can enter with
honor into conspiracy to overthrow it. He
can, under the sanctity of the same oath,
advise the seizure of forts and arsenals,
dock yards and ships, and money belonging
to the Union, whose officer he is, and find
most loyal and convenient retreat in State
authority and State allegiance. He was
ready to laugh in their faces if they only
told him that before the time when he was
muling and puking in his nurses arms
there lived very obscure person named
George Washington, who, before he died,
became eminent by perpetrating the immor-
TAI JOKE OF ADVISING the people OF the Onlted
States that it was of infinite moment that
they should properly estimate the immense
value of their National Union that they
should cherish a cordial, habitual and i'm
movable attachment to it; that they should
accustom themselves to think and speak of
it as the palladium of their political safety
and prosperity: that they should watch its
preservation with jealous anxiety; discour-
tenance whatever might suggest suspicion
that it could in any event be abandoned
and Indignantly frown down the first dawn
ing of every attempt to ALLEVIATE one portion
OF the country from the rest, or to enfeeble
the sacred ties which linked together its va
rious parts. That great man penetrated
even as seer into these times, when those
sectional differences. arising from geograph-
zeal lines, against which he warned them,
should come. These times had come, and
these difficulties had been fomentsd and
brought about by the ultra men, North and
South-by the very men who now gloated
over the ruin impending upon the country.
Along the coasts of the Atlantic and Pa