Year: 1861

Does history furnish us any satisfacto-
ry instruction upon the horrors of civil
war among a people SO brave, SO skill
ful in arms, so earnest in conviction,
and SO intent il. purpose as we are?


Is it mere chimera which suggests
an aggravation of those horrors be-
yond endurance, when on either side
there shall occur the intervention of an
uprising, ferocious African slave popu-
latioD of four, or six, perhaps twenty
millions? The opinions of mankind
change, and with them the policies of
nations.


One hundred years ago, all the COM
mercial European States were engaged
in transferring negro slaves from Afri-
ca to this hemisphere. To-day all
those States are firmly set in hostility
to the extension, and even to the prac-
tics of slavery. Opposition to it takes
two forms. One, European, which is
simple, direct abolition, effected if need
be, by compulsion; the other, Ameri-
can, which seeks to arrest the African
slave trade and resist the entrance of
domestic slavery into Territories where
it is yet unknown, while it leaves the
disposition of existing slavery to the
considerate action of the States by
which it is retained.


1t is the Union that restricts the op-
position to Slavery in this country with
in these limits. If dissolution prevail,
what guarantee shall there be against
the full development here of the fear
ful and uncompromising hostility to
Slavery which elsewhere pervades the
world, of which the recent invasion of
Virginia was an illustration?


Mr.. President, l have designedly
dwelt so long on the probable effects Of
disunion upon the safety Of the Ameri-
can people, as to leave me little time to
consider the other evils which must
follow in its train; but practically the
loss of safety involves every other form
of public calamity. When the guard
ian angel has taken flight everything is
lost. Dissolution would not only ar
rest but extinguish the greatness of
our country. Even separate confed-
eracies could not exist and endure !;
they could severally preserve no share
of the common prestige of the Union.
If the constellation is to be broken up,
the stars whether scattered widely
apart, or grouped in small clusters, will
therefore shed forth feeble glimmerings
and lurid lights. Nor will great
achievements be possible for the new
confederacies. Disunion would signal
ize its triumph by acts or wantonness
which would shock and astound the
world. 1t would provincialize Mount
Vernon, and give this Capitol over to
dissolution at the very moment when
the dome is rising over our heads that
was to be crowned with the statue of
Liberty.


After this there would remain for
disunion no act of stupendous infamy
to be committed. No petty confedera-
cy that should follow the United States
can prolong or even renew the majestic
drama of national progress.


Perhaps it is to be arrested because
its sublimity is incapable of continu-
ance. Let it be so, if we have indeed
become degenerate after Washington,
ard the infiexible Adams, Henry, and
the peerless Hamilton, Jefferson, and
the majestic Clay, Webster, and the
acute Calhoun, Jackson, the modest
Taylor, and Scott, who rises in great
ness under the burden of years, and
Franklin, and Fulton, and Whitney,
and Morse, have all performed their
parts, let the curtain fall While lis
tening TO these debates have some
times forgotten myself in making their
contrasted effects upon the page who
customarily stands on the dais before
me, and the venerable Secretary who
sits behind him. The youth exhibits
intense, but pleased emotion in the ex-
citement, while at every irreverent
word the aged mans eyes are suffused
with tears. Let him weep no more.
Rather rejoice, for yours has been lot
of rare felicity. You have seen and
been part of all the greatness of your
country, the towering national great
ness of all the world. Weep only you,
and weep with all the bitterness of an
guish, who are just stepping on the
threshold of life, for that greatness per-
ishes prematurely, and exists not for
: you nor for me, nor for any that shall
come after us! The public prosperity
'I-how could it survive the storm? Its
elements are industry, in the culture of
every fruit, mining of all the metals ;
commerce at home and on every sea /;
material Improvement that knows no
obstacle and has no end; invention
that ranges throughout the domain of
nature; increase of knowledge as broad
as the human mind can explore, per-
fection of art as high as human genius
can reach, and social refinement work
ling for the renovation of the world.


How could our successors prosecute
these noble objects in the midst of
brutalizing civil conflict? What guar
antees will capital invested for such
: purposes have that will outweigh the
premium offered by political and militia
Iry ambition? What leisure will the
citizens find for study, or invention, or
art, under the reign of conscription ?
Nay, what interest in them will society
feel when fear and hate shall have
taken possession of the national mind
Let the miner in California take he d,
for its golden wealth will become the