CONGKESS, U. S. 



265 



fourth ; and that just as soon as the Government 

 can enforce their rights, it is bound to enforce 

 them ; and the whole machinery of the State 

 Government can be set going by those who re- 

 main, who are loyal, whether one half, one 

 fourth, one tenth, or one hundredth. The right 

 of the Federal Government never was invalid- 

 ated, and never ceased for a moment." 

 The committee rose and reported. 



In the House, on the 14th of January, the 

 following resolutions, offered by Mr. Wright, 

 of Pennsylvania, were considered : 



Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Uni- 

 ted States in Congress assembled : 1. That the rebellion 

 on the part of the seceding States against the Govern- 

 ment and laws of this Union was deliberately wicked 

 and without reasonable cause ; the compact of union 

 being perpetual, no State has the constitutional power 

 to forcibly secede ; and that there was no grievance, 

 real or imaginary, upon the part of the seceding States, 

 for the redress of which the Constitution does not fur- 

 nish ample remedies. 



2. That the rebellion being in contravention of the 

 Constitution and laws, it is the duty of the Govern- 

 ment to put it down without regard to cost or the con- 

 sequences that may befall those engaged in it, and all 

 necessary constitutional means for this purpose, and 

 this alone, should be furnished by the people ; that in- 

 asmuch as the great and wicked crime invoked the 

 power of the sword, the war should be prosecuted 

 with all the vigor and strength and means of the 

 Federal Government till the rebellion is subdued, and 

 no longer. 



3. That an honorable peace is desirable, but no peace 

 while armed opposition menaces the capital and threat- 

 ens the overthrow of the Union, nor that peace which* 

 would be established upon the dismembered fragments 

 of a mighty and prosperous nation ; and that man who 

 would entertain peace upon these conditions is a trai- 

 tor to his country, and unworthy the protection of its 

 laws. 



4. That the war was inaugurated solely for the sup- 

 pression of the rebellion and the restoration of the 

 Union as it was ; that any or all attempts to change or 

 divert this line of policy is a fraud upon the nation, a 

 fraud upon the memory of the gallant men who have 

 sacrificed their lives, and a fraud upon the living sol- 

 diers who now stand up as a wall between their loved 

 country and its wicked invaders. 



5. That the value of dollars and cents does not en- 

 ter into the momentous question of the maintenance 

 of popular liberty, or the preservation of a free gov- 

 ernment, any more than the lives and comfort of the 

 traitors, who have conspired and leagued together for 

 their destruction. 



6. That the Union restored, the war should cease, 

 and the seceding States be received back into the 

 Union with all the privileges and immunities to which 

 they were originally entitled. 



Mr. Vallandigham, of Ohio, speaking in op- 

 position to the resolutions, said : " And now, 

 pardon me, sir, if I pause here a moment to de- 

 fine my position at this time upon this great 

 question of civil war. 



" Sir, I am one of that number who have op- 

 posed abolitionism, or the political development 

 of the anti-slavery sentiment of the North and 

 West, from the beginning. In school, at col- 

 lege, at the bar, in public assemblies, in the 

 Legislature, in Congress, boy and man, as a 

 private citizen, and in public life, in time of 

 peace and in time of war, at all times and at 

 every sacrifice, I have fought against it. It 



cost me ten years' exclusion from office and 

 honor, at that period of life when honors are 

 sweetest. No matter: I learned early to do 

 right and to wait. Sir, it is but the development 

 of the spirit of intermeddling, whose children 

 are strife and murder. Cain troubled himself 

 about the sacrifices of Abel, and slew him. 

 Most of the wars, contentions, litigation, and 

 bloodshed, from the beginning of time, have 

 been its fruits The spirit of non-intervention 

 is the very spirit of peace and concord. I do 

 not believe that if slavery had never existed 

 here we would have had no sectional contro- 

 versies. This very civil war might have hap- 

 pened fifty, perhaps a hundred years later. 

 Other and stronger causes of discontent and 

 of disunion, it may be, have existed between 

 other States and sections, and are now being 

 developed every day into maturity. The spirit 

 of intervention assumed the form of abolition- 

 ism because slavery was odious in name and by 

 association to the Northern mind, and because 

 it was that which most obviously marks the 

 different civilizations of the two sections. The 

 South herself, in her early and later efforts to 

 rid herself of it, had exposed the weak and of- 

 fensive parts of slavery to the world. Aboli- 

 tion intermeddling taught her at last to search 

 for and defend the assumed social, economic, 

 and political merit and values of the institution. 

 But there never was an hour from -the begin- 

 ning when it did not seem to me as clear as the 

 sun at broad noon, that the agitation in any 

 form in the North and West of the slavery 

 question must sooner or later end in disunion 

 and civil war. This was the opinion and predic- 

 tion for years of Whig and Democratic states- 

 men alike ; and after the unfortunate dissolu- 

 tion of the Whig party in 1854, and the organiza- 

 tion of the present Republican party upon the 

 exclusive anti-slavery and sectional basis, the 

 event was inevitable; because, in the then 

 existing temper of the public mind, and after the 

 education through the press and the pulpit, the 

 lecture and the political canvas, for twenty years, 

 of a generation taught to hate slavery and the 

 South, the success of that party, possesed as it 

 was of every engine of political, business, social, 

 and religious influence, was certain. It was 

 only a question of time, and short time. Such 

 was its strength, indeed, that I do not believe 

 that the union of the Democratic party in 1860 

 on any candidate, even though he had been sup- 

 ported also by the entire so-called conservative 

 or anti-Lincoln vote of the country, would 

 have availed to defeat it ; and if it had, the 

 success of the Abolition party would only have 

 been postponed four years longer. The disease 

 had fastened too strongly upon the system to 

 be healed until it had run its course. The doc- 

 trine of the " irrepressible conflict " had been 

 taught too long and accepted too widely and 

 earnestly to die out, until it should culminate 

 in secession and disunion, and, if coercion 

 were resorted to, then in civil war. I believed 

 from the first that it was the purpose of some 



