CONGRESS, U. 8. 



267 



South could never be conquered never. And 

 not that only, but I was satisfied and you of 

 the abolition party have now proved it to the 

 world that the secret but real purpose of the 

 war was to abolish slavery in the States. 

 In any event, I did not doubt that whatever 

 might be the momentary impulses of those in 



war for the Union ; a union of consent and 

 good will. Our Southern brethren were to be 

 whipped back into love and fellowship at .the 

 point of the bayonet. Oh, monstrous delusion 1 

 I can comprehend a war to compel a people to 

 accept a master ; to change a form of govern- 

 ment; to give up territory; to abolish a do- 



power, and whatever pledges they might make mestic institution in short, a war of conquest 



in the midst of the fury for the Constitution, 

 the Union, and the flag, yet the natural and in- 

 exorable logic of revolutions would, sooner or 

 later, drive them into that policy, and with it 

 to its final but inevitable result, the change of 

 our present democratical form of government 

 into an imperial despotism. 



" These were my convictions on the 14th of 

 April. Had I changed them on the 15th, when 

 I read the President's proclamation, and be- 

 come convinced that I had been wrong all my 

 life, and that all history was a fable, and all 

 human nature false in its development from the 

 beginning of time, I would have changed my 

 public conduct also. But my convictions did 

 not change. I thought that if war was dis- 

 union on the 14th of April, it was equally dis- 

 union on the 15th, and at all times. Believing 

 this, I could not, as an honest man, a Union man, 

 and a patriot, lend an active support to the 

 war ; and I did not. I had rather my right 

 arm were plucked from its socket, and cast into 

 eternal burnings, than, with my convictions, 

 to have thus defiled my soul with the guilt of 

 moral perjury. Sir, I was not taught in that 

 school which proclaims that 'all is fair in poli- 

 tics.' I loathe, abhor, and detest the execrable 

 maxim. I stamp upon it. No state can endure a 

 single generation whose public men practise it. 

 Whoever teaches it is a corrupter of youth. 

 What we most want in these times, and at all 

 times, is honest and independent public men. 

 That man who is dishonest in politics is not 

 honest, at heart, in any thing ; and sometimes 

 moral cowardice is dishonesty. Do right ; and 

 trust to God, and Truth, and the People. Per- 

 ish office, perish honors, perish life itself; but 

 do the thing that is right, and do it like a man. 

 I did it. Certainly, sir, I could not doubt 

 what he must suffer who dare defy the opinions 

 and the passions, not to say the madness, of 

 twenty millions of people. Had I not read his- 

 tory ? Did I not know human nature ? But I 

 appealed to TIME, and right nobly hath the 

 Avenger answered me. 



" I did hot support the war ; and to-day I 

 bless God that not the smell of so much as 

 one drop of its blood is upon my garments. 

 Sir, I censure no brave man who rushed pa- 

 triotically into this war ; neither will I quarrel 

 with any one, here or elsewhere, who gave to 

 it an honest support. Had their convictions 

 been mine, I, too, would doubtless have done 

 as they did. With my convictions I could not. 



" But I was a Representative. War existed 

 by whose act no matter not mine. The 

 President, the Senate, the House, and the 

 country, all said that there should be war 



and subjugation ; but a war for Union ! "Was 

 the Union thus made ? Was it ever thus pre- 

 served? Sir, history will record that after 

 nearly six thousand years of folly and wicked- 

 ness in every form and administration of gov- 

 ernment, theocratic, democratic, monarchic, 

 oligarchic, despotic, and mixed, it was reserved 

 to American statesmanship in the nineteenth 

 century of the Christian era to try the grand 

 experiment, on a scale the most costly and gi- 

 gantic in its proportions, of creating love by 

 force, and developing fraternal affection by 

 war ; and history will record, too, on the same 

 page, the utter, disastrous, and most bloody 

 failure of the experiment. 



" But to return : the country was at war ; 

 and I belonged to that school of politics which 

 teaches that when -we are at war, the Govern- 

 ment I do not mean the executive alone, but 

 the Government is entitled to demand and 

 have, without resistance, such number of men, 

 and such amount of money and supplies gen- 

 erally, as may be necessary for the war, until 

 an appeal can be had to the people. Before 

 that tribunal alone, in the first instance, must 

 the question of the continuance of the war be 

 tried. This was Mr. Calhoun's opinion, and he 

 laid it down very broadly and strongly, in a 

 speech on the Loan bill, in 1841. Speaking of 

 supplies, he said : 



I hold that there is a distinction in this respect be- 

 tween a state of peace and war. In the latter, the right 

 of withholding supplies ought ever to be held subordi- 

 nate to the energetic and successful prosecution of the 

 war. I go fartner, and regard the withholding sup- 

 plies, with a view of forcing the country into a dishon- 

 orable peace, as not only to be what it has been called, 

 moral treason, but very little short of actual treason 

 itself. 



"Upon this principle, sir, he acted after- 

 ward in the Mexican war. Speaking of that 

 war in 1847, he said : 



Every senator knows that I was opposed to the war; 

 but none knows but myself the depth of that opposi- 

 tion. With my conception of its character and conse- 

 quences, it was impossible for me to rote for it. 



" And again, in 1848 : 



But, after war was declared, by authority of the Gov- 

 ernment, I acquiesced in what I could not prevent, and 

 what it was impossible for me to arrest: and I then 

 felt it to be my duty to limit my efforts to give such 

 direction to the war as would, as far as possible, pre- 

 vent the evils and dangers with which it threatened 

 the country and its institutions. 



" Sir, I adopt all this as my own position and 

 my defence ; though, perhaps, in a civil war, I 

 might fairly go farther in opposition. I could 

 not, with my convictions, vote men and money 

 for this war, and I would, as a representative, 

 vote against them. I meant that, without op- 



