tions, reading patchwork from the opinions of men now mingled with the dust." Drifting into a position in which this is to become a government of the army and the navy, he inquired whether they would sit still and "permit it imperceptibly to slide from the moorings where it was originally anchored, and become a military despotism."

Alluding to the President's admission that he had no power to coerce a State, and yet asserting that he had power to use military force against those resisting the execution of the legal functions of the Federal officer, he denied the latter postulate, and contended that even in extreme cases troops could constitutionally be employed only as a posse comitatus; and he contended that under the first two Presidents no other idea was entertained. Alluding to a former speech respecting that idea, he said that he had never admitted the right of the general government to maintain a garrison in a State against the wishes of that State. He characterized the President's annual message as "diplomatic," in the sense that "diplomacy is said to abhor certainty, as nature abhors a vacuum," while he affirmed that "it was not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that message." Alluding to the special message just received, he complained, while some historical information had been communicated, that "no countervailing proposition is presented; no suggestion is made. We are left drifting loosely, without chart or compass."

He pointed to South Carolina as, in her new attitude, a sovereign nation threatening civil war, and yet, he complained, no suggestions of a peace policy have been made, the appointment of no commissioners to treat with her has been recommended. He enlarged upon the false pride, the cruel policy, of allowing the nation to drift into civil war, rather than withdraw the forces or lower the flag. He wished to regard the flag as that of brethren, and not as waving over angry belligerents. Opposing the position of those who contended that secession was unconstitutional, he took occasion to criticise the position of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who had said that "the true place to fight the battle is in the Union, and within the provisions of the Constitution." Assuming that such "fighting"

was but a figure of speech, and that the revolution he proposed was "a revolution under the forms of government," he contended that such was not the policy he believed in, nor the course he would pursue. He would not embarrass the incoming administration, or "handcuff the President," by using, with captious purpose, any legislative power he and those with whom he sympathized possessed. "If I must have a revolution," he said, "I say let it be a revolution such as our fathers made when they were denied their natural rights." The rights, he contended, which the fathers wrested from the British crown in the war of the Revolution, they did not delegate to the Federal government. Had they done so, those battles would have been fought and those sacrifices made in vain. It was only in the exercise of those rights that the people of the seceded States had left the Union and formed governments for themselves; and the only really practical questions were, "Has the Federal government the right to coerce them back? and secondly, has it the power?" In speaking of the relative damage to be apprehended from a collision between the Northern and Southern States, he expressed the conviction that the South, with its sparse population and plantation system, had much less to fear than a country with populous cities and manufacturing villages.

The question now arises, he said, What shall be done? Shall this condition of affairs be perpetual, or shall it be so improved that, having learned wisdom by sad experience, the two may return to first allegiance and former union? He referred to the proposition of dual legislatures and executives which had been made, and, though he distrusted the policy of such a course, contended that it was worthy of consideration. But the grand panacea, he contended, for all their troubles was the policy of peace. The dissolution of the Union he did not regard, with others, the failure of the experiment of self-government or of constitutional government. It was only the failure of that especial trial. He alluded again to the malign influence of the vacillating policy of the administration still in power, to the obstinacy of that which was incoming, and to his growing conviction that the die was cast, and that

the separation was inevitable. He referred to his sacrifices for the Union and his love for the flag, and expressed his deep sorrow at "taking a last leave of that object of early affection and proud association."

He said there were two modes of dissolving the Union, the one by secession, the other by consolidation, and both were equally real and effective. In either case the Union of the fathers was destroyed. He expatiated on the fact that the platform of the new party destroyed the equality of the States, and contained doctrines that could be made as potent by proclamations and platforms as by armies and invasion. The very figures of speech employed by its friends and advocates indicated, he said, the severity of their policy and the bitterness of their hate. Having their "heel on the Slave Power, grinding it into the dust, triumphing over slavery," these and like expressions betokened the fate in store for those against whose institution such metaphors were employed. Referring to Mr. Seward as "the directing intellect of the party," he said that "with less harshness of expression, but with more of method, he indicated this same purpose of deadly hostility." He said that Mississippi had sounded the warning, but the North unheeding persisted in its purpose of electing its sectional candidate. And now, he affirmed, "the issue is not of our making. Our hands are stainless; you aggressed upon our rights and our homes, and, under the will of God, we will defend them."

Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, then among the younger members of the Senate, immediately responded. Though his reply was less elaborate and extended, it abounded with points that well exposed the sophistries and plausible utterances of the arch secessionist. "We have listened," he said, "to the Senator from Mississippi; and one would suppose, in listening to him here, that he was a friend of the Union, that he desired the perpetuity of this government. He has a most singular way of preserving it, and a most singular way of maintaining the Constitution." It is for the government to abdicate, to withdraw its forces in favor of a mob, or of the constituted authorities of Charleston. To avoid civil war, he said, nothing was wanted but a surrender to those who questioned its authority

and threatened its power. He talks of the responsibility of Republicans for the state of affairs; but it is South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia that are the responsible parties. "They are making war, and modestly ask us to have peace by submitting to what they ask. . . . . The stars and stripes have been taken down from the United States buildings in the city of Charleston, and trampled in the dust, and a palmetto flag, with a snake, reared in their place; but if we would avoid civil war, we are told we must submit to this. Why, sir, any people can have peace at the price of degradation."

In reply to the argument that secession was a right because there was nothing in the Constitution that forbade it, he cited certain provisions in that instrument which inhibited States to levy imposts on imports, or to enter into compacts with foreign powers; while secession necessarily involved the right to do both. The doctrine, he contended, was fatal to anything like a constitutional government, for it invalidated all agreements, all laws, all compromises, making the statutes and guaranties of one day powerless the next, and destroying everything like confidence in the stability of legislation and in the binding force of the most sacred obligations. To the assertion that Congress could not coerce a State he replied that no such thing was claimed, but only the right to coerce the people or individuals of a State. The complaint that the exclusion of slaves from the Territories involved "the inequality of the States," he parried by the denial that any such inequality was either involved or intended. All that the Republican party insisted on was the power to prevent States from taking their own laws into the Territories. As for individuals, he insisted that the people of one State had identically the same power in them that the people of another had. "There is nothing," he said, "in this cry of inequality in regard either to the States or to citizens. We are all to have the same rights." To style the proposal of the Crittenden resolution, making the parallel of latitude of 36° 30′ the line between slave and free territory, a proposition "to restore the Missouri Compromise," involved, he contended, a grave "misapprehension." I will vote for the

Missouri Compromise, he said, to-morrow, for that would be in effect the exclusion of slavery from Kansas and Nebraska. The Crittenden proposition is a very different matter. That proposes to extend the dividing line into territory not in our possession at the time of the compromise of 1820, involving far more. To the remarks of Mr. Crittenden that the compromise of 1850 allowed New Mexico to establish slavery, and, as New Mexico had established it, he only proposed to recognize that as an established fact, he responded by the remark that he would leave the compromise of 1850 untouched, and not restrict the people of that Territory from the right to repeal that law if they saw fit. Still further, he said that if the Missouri Compromise could be restored as it was in 1854, he would stand by that of 1850.

Henry Clay had said that no human power could compel him to vote to extend slavery over a single foot of territory then free; and yet that is the very thing the Senator is now proposing to do. He expressed the conviction that the South had no cause of complaint. It had had control of the government, had dictated legislation and selected its own instruments to execute it, while the North had been willing to abide by the compromises the South had dictated, even to the execution of the most obnoxious Fugitive Slave Act. During the progress of his speech he was frequently interrupted with personal questions as to his position on the practical execution of this act. He closed with the reiteration of his belief that the South could find neither cause of complaint in the past, nor well-grounded apprehension in the future, in any policy or acts of the incoming administration.

On the 12th Mr. Seward addressed the Senate. His speech was looked for and listened to with profound interest, not to say solicitude. His eminent and statesmanlike abilities and the expectation that he was to be Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State caused it to be regarded as foreshadowing the policy, a kind of pronunciamento, of the incoming administration. It was marked with the usual characteristics of his eloquence, with its affluence of learning and language, forceful in logic and graceful in its rhetoric, adroit, diplomatic, plentiful in words