Year: 1861

gate those in revolt without having first offered
| them the olive branch, without first having re-


paired the injury we have done and retracted the
grievances which they have suffered at our hands


we will have party at the North that are not


prepared to second Mr. Lincoln when he beats his


morning drum for recruits We ought not to


commit ourselves to any rash measures, if these
resolutions contemplate such. First try peaceful


measures and when these fail, when the olive
branch is rejected with contumely and thrown in


our faces. it will then be time for Indiana with


one voice to declare that she will furnish men


and money to strengthen the hands of the Exec
| utive.


Who Mr.. President, is responsible for, and


what are the causes of this sectional conyulsiOnE
Whom shall we arraign for this perilous political


and financial disturbance? l shall briefly inquire.
In doing this | trust ! shall keep myself above
personal reflections and party ordinations.


shall not shrink, however, from inculpatng all


who are amenable to arraignment for this folly
and crime of tampering with the constitutional


rights OF one section and pandering to the morbid


passions of another.


| If in the Gulf States reason has abdicated her


throne and madness vociferates her audacOus


DEGREES, let me ask whether the Northern mind


has not also been labOring under delirium tremeRs
of type scarcely less dangerous? The causes


which have tended to intensity the Southern SEN


timent ought to control the dominant party in the
North to forbearance and moderation. The


South NAV lack numerical strength, but not


chivalry and courage; she lacks neither the phys


ical courage for war, nor the moral devotion for


martyrdom


If it can be shown that anti-slavery agitators


are responsible for existing evils, then obliga


ton is shown upon all such to 60 along with US


ia support of the minority report.


If South Carolina has taken a leap into the
deep, dark unexplored gulf of disunion, and is
lN<I


with her to assist in buffeting the waves of an


unknown sea- is not our duty a plain one to
support such scheme will hold the majority of
the Southern States in the Union, and ultimately
reach South Carolinag Do not the signs of the
times admonish us that if ultra men in the two
extremes are to WELD the sword and cut the
thread of our destiny that we will be blotted out
from the map of nations without the power to
avert the calamity7


Sir it is useless to attempt to disguise the fact
, that the attitude of the Republican party is be-


coming daily more ultra, defiant menacing and


hostile to the South. As they make their bed so


shall they lie The Republicans refuse to COM


promise to save the Union, and refuse to fight


30 dissolve it. They have brought the calamity
OF disunIon upon the country, and We, by peace


and compromise hope to restore it. They would
| push the Wide-awake columns into Southern soil,


and stir up the elements of servile insurrection,


while we would meet our Southern brethren in


national council, and in n spirit of frateTnal re-


gard for past grievances adjust our difficulties as
| our patriotic Fathers did before US. While seces-


sion is no remedy for the evils complained of,


yet disunion is the fruit and AbolitiOniSm is the
| blossom, and herein lies the true cause Of the
/ threatened dismemberment of a Government to
which we have always so proudly acknowledged


allegiance. | can give an impartial summary of


these grievances of whict, the South complains,


and we know them to be true; and it is


swer nor even palliation for the North to say that


the South provoked them, because we are bound
| to perform all our constitutional obligations and


abstain from irritation, insult and wrong. in order


to uphold the Constitution and laws. At a time


like this, when political ediice is giving way,


is perilous it is criminal to stop with an argu-


ment yindicating our own wrong by accusing
| some one else of dereliction Our inquiry must
| be, what wrongs have we done? and what rights
have we denied our brethren of the South?
Thirty years ago there sprang up in the North
| the Abolition society, composed at first of mis-


guided, short-sighted and bigoted phlanthropists
whose fundamental principle was antagonism to
| slavery, and whose mission was its extinction
not slavery in the North but slavery in the
| South-a society whose movements contemplated,


openly or covertly, presently remotely. direct
i hostility to the institution of slavery. Now, if
there was no constitutional warrant for the sub
ject of such organization then surely its



ing increase of boldness and audacit could not


create one At first this organization was des-


pissed for the weakness Of its members and the


incendiary extravaganza of its doctrines, but


agitation in the pulpit and lecture-room soon car


ried its pestilential discussions to the stump, and


thence to the halls of Congress. Patriots and


statesmen at once pronounced the slavery agta-


ton fraught with alienation, jealousy, strife


and disunion. Southern statesmen warned the


country against the fatal consequence of encour


aging an organization in the North whose avowed
mission was freedom to the slave. Twenty years


ago the Northern preachers and Northern dema-


gogues commenced bowling and pandering to this
disease of the Northern mind. The pulpit prop


osition, and the oil that fed the flame was, that


slavery is sin, and the higher law propagandists
called upon the Northern pulpit to denounce it,
upon the Northern people to hate it, and upon the
Northern press TO illustrate its horrors As this
organization grew bolder and more dangerous, and
at last despairing of its strength to get
control of the Federal Government, while the two


old national Whig and Democratic parties occupied
the political feld-Clay and Webster. having
died-this organization conceived the mighty and


daring enterprise of overthrowing and dsbanding
the Wing party, the occasion was presented in the
: : repeal of the Missouri compromise. They be
seiged the Whig CITADEL they stormed its gates
its walls gave way, its proud columns crumbled
! to dust, and the Abolition flag waved over it:
. runs-the mighty w hig hosts were scattered, and


the beseigers filled the plains.


Now up to this period in the progress of anti
slavery, it may be asked what acts of wrong oil
!. aggression towards the South have marked it:
;. history


i 1t will be borne in mind that the only offense o
4 which the South guilty the crime of hold
{ ing slaves it therefore became the selfmposet
: duty of the Abolition pulpit in the North to roas
shareholders once a week the spit of cerca
tt.utl l,-L 49,.
this day by the Beechers of the Northern pulpit
who preach the gospel of hate for the master an'
7 brotherly love for the slave. Thus they kept en-
2, rolling the selfrighteous and the bgots of tn
!, land in a sectional crusade for purposes destruc
= tive of the peace and constitutional rights of tn
u y South and ultimately made the morality, consti
u tuonality and the ultimate abolishment of SLAYER
y political test questions at the polls. This unwar
y antable intermeddlng with the moral aspect o
= slavery and with its evils to the social poty of
. State, is as offensive and humiliating to a slav
~ State as would be like interferences by a slav
= State with our liquor or election law.


a Emssaries and colporteurs were employed b.
: Abolition societies and with Abolition money 4
! travel and distribute incendary documents anon
the slaves of the South, melting seryile insured
y ton, and IT now and then one was hangel o
J" lynched forthwith he was placed in the calenda
. OF martyred saints, and the blood of the marty
- was declared to be the seed of the church. A
y these aggressions of the Abolitionists were re
!: sisted they became more desperate and determine,
= and in the name of free speech and in the yer
wantonness of the liberty of the press they frOI
Y time to time planted their newspaper batteries
N slave States, and because the STAKEHOLDER pr,
e ferred the destruction of the press the desola
e tion Of his own hearth stone, dismal songs wen
"a sung about the "aggressions of the slave power.
y, But if these instrumentalities have been acty
~ in stirring up the bad passions of men, cOnvulsin
'e society and undermining the Constitution, VIII.


must we say of portion of the Northern press
+ With special view to excite odium again
:. slavery and excite wrath and heart burnings b
S tween the sections, that portion of the press hs
never neglected an opportunity to seize every r.
W ported case of cruelty towards slave and pui
lsh, exagerae, critcise and stgmatize it until Il
III III bosom OF Abolitonsm was wrung with pity.
nd For years the New York Tribune has been en-
hell;shcl with the cuts and ad,erts Of