Year: 1861

ana threats tO tle iOoiuCil.

 groaned under the weight of letters del1 desuais ing a change of policy; while a secresle

 clave of the Governors of Massachuseft. New York, Ohio, and other State, assem- bled here, promised men and money to support the president in the irrepressible conflict which they now invoked. And thus it was, sir, that the necessities of Q party in the bangs of dissolution, in the very hour and article of death, demanding vigorous measures, which could result in nothing but civil war, renewed secession, absolute and eternal disunion, were prefer red and hearkened to before the peace and harmony and prosperity of the whole coun- try

 But there was another and yet stronger impelling cause without which this horrid calamity of civil war might have been postponed, and, perhaps, finally averted. One of the last and worst acts of Con- gress, which, born in bitterness and nur- tured in convulsion, literally did those things which it ought not to have done, and left undone those things which 1t ought to have done, was the passage of an obscure, ill-digested, and understandable high protective tariff act, commonly known as "that Morrill," Just about the same time, too, the Confederate Congress at Montgomery adopted our old tariff of 1857, which we had just rejected to make way for the Morrill, act, fixing their rate of duties at five and twenty per cent. lower than ours. The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade are inexerable. Trade and commerce-and especially the trade and commerce of the West-began to look to the South. Turned out of their natu- ral course years ago, by the canals and railroads of Pennsylvania and New York, and diverted eastward at heavy loss to the West, they threatened now to resume their ancient and accustomed channels the water -cources-the Ohio and the Miss issippi. And political association and union, it was well known, must soon fol- low the direction of interest and trade. The city of New Y orz, the great commer- cial emporium of the Union, and the North west, the ,grainery of the Union, began to clamor now loudly for a repeal of the per nicious and ruinous tariff. Threatened thus with the loss of both political power and wealth, or the repeal of the tariff, and at last of both, New England-and Pennsyl- vania, too, the land of Penn, cradled in peace-demanding now coercion and civil war, with all it's horrors. as the price of preserving either from destruction. Ay, sir Pennsylvania, the great keystone of the arch of the Union, was willing to lay the weight of her iron upon that sacred arch, and crush it beneath the lead. The subiugation of the South-ay, sir, the Sub- joqation of the South l am not talking to children or fools; for there is not man in this house fit to be a representative here who does not know that the South cannot be forced to yield obedience to your laws and authority until you have conquered and subiugated her-the subjugation of the South, and the closing up of her ports, first by force, in war, and afterwards by tariff laws, In peace, was deliberately resolved upon by the East. And, sir, when once this policy was begun, the self same motives of waning commerce and threatened loss of trade impelled the great city of New York, and her merchants and her politicians and press, with here and there an honorable exception, to place her self in the very front rank among the wor- shipers of Moloch. Much, indeed of that outburst and uprising in the North, which followed the proclamation of the 10th of April, as well, perhaps, as the proclama- tion itself was called forth, not so much by the fall of Fort Sumter-an event long anticipated-as by the notion that the' surrection" might be crushed out in few weeks, if not by the display, certainly, at least by the presence of an overwh helming force.

 These, sir, were the chief causes which, along with others, led to change in the policy of the administration, and, instead of peace, forced us headlong into civil war, with all its accumulated horrors.

 But whatever may have been the causes or the motives of the act, it is certain that there was change in the policy which the administration meant to adopt, or which at least they led the country to believe they intended to pursue. l will not venture now to assert what may yet some day be made to appear, that the subsequent acts Of the administration, and its enormous and per sistent infractions of the constitution, its high-handed usurpations of power, formed any part of deliberate conspiracy to over- throw the present form of the federal re- publican government, and to establish a strong consolidated government in its stead. No, sir, whatever their purposes now, rather think that, in the beginning they rushed heedlessly and headlong into the gulf, believing that, at the seat of war was then far distant and difficult of access, the display of vigor in reinforcing Fort Sumter and Pickens, and in calling out seventy five thousand militia upon the fir ing of the first gun, and above all, in that exceedingly happy and original concelt of commanding the insurgent States to "dls- perse in twenty days" would not on the one hand, precipitate crisis, while upon the other, it would satisfy its own violent partisans, and thus revive and restore the falling fortunes of the republican party.

 can hardly conceive, sir, that the pre-, sident and his advisers could be guilty of the exceeding folly of expecting to carry on general civil war by mere posse con- itotus of three months militia It may be, indeed, that, with wicked and most deper- ate cunning, the president meant all this as mere entering wedge to that which was to rive the oak asunder, or possibly as a test, to learn the public sentiment of the north and west. But, however, that may