186 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



consider themselves freed from it on the ground 

 of breach of compact ; if the bargain be not 

 broken, but the powers be perverted to their 

 wrong and their oppression, then, whenever 

 that wrong and oppression shall become suffi- 

 ciently aggravated, the revolutionary right 

 the last inherent right of man to preserve 

 freedom, property, and safety arises, and must 

 be exercised, for none other will meet the case." 



The act of a State absolves all its subjects, 

 says the Senator, addressing the Eepublican 

 side, and when you deny that you will coerce 

 a State, but assert that you mean to execute 

 the laws against individuals, it is an absurdity. 

 " This whole scheme, this whole fancy, that 

 you can treat the act of a sovereign State, 

 issued in an authoritative form, and in her col- 

 lective capacity as a State, as being utterly out 

 of existence ; that you can treat the State as 

 still belonging collectively to the Confederacy, 

 and that you can proceed, without a solitary 

 Federal officer in the State, to enforce your 

 laws against private individuals, is as vain, as 

 idle, and delusiv.e, as any dream that ever en- 

 tered into the head of man. The thing cannot 

 be done. It is only asserted for the purpose 

 of covering up the true question, than which 

 there is no other ; you must acknowledge the 

 independence of the seceding State, or reduce 

 her to subjection by war." 



Mr. Baker, of Oregon, rising for the final 

 time to speak on the floor of the Senate, after 

 a few preliminary words, thus proceeded : 

 " It is my purpose to reply, as I may, to the 

 speech of the honorable and distinguished Sen- 

 ator from the State of Louisiana. " I do so, be- 

 cause it is, in my judgment at least, the ablest 

 speech which I have heard, perhaps the ablest 

 I shall hear, upon that side of the question, and 

 in that view of the subject; because it is re- 

 spectful in tone and elevated in manner ; and 

 because, while it will be my fortune to differ 

 from him upon many, nay, most of the points 

 to which he has addressed himself, it is not, I 

 trust, inappropriate for me to say that much of 

 what he lias said, and the manner in which he 

 has said it, has tended to increase the personal 

 respect nay, I may say the admiration which 

 I have learned to feel for him. And yet, sir, 

 while I say this, I am reminded of the saying 

 of a great man Dr. Johnson, I believe who, 

 when he was asked for his critical opinion upon 

 a book just then published, and which was 

 making a great sensation in London, said : ' Sir, 

 the fellow who has written that, has done very 

 well what nobody ought ever to do at all.' 



" The entire object of the speech is, as I un- 

 derstand it, to offer a philosophical and consti- 

 tutional disquisition to prove that the Govern- 

 ment of these United States is, in point of fact, 

 no Government at all ; that it has no principle 

 of vitality ; that it is to be overturned by a 

 touch ; dwindled into insignificance by a doubt ; 

 dissolved by a breath ; not by maladministra- 

 tion merely, but in consequence of organic de- 

 fects, interwoven with its very existence. 



" But, sir, this purpose strange and mourn- 

 ful in anybody, still more so in him this pur- 

 pose has a terrible significance now and here. 

 In the judgment of the honorable Senator, the 

 Union is this day dissolved ; it is broken and 

 disintegrated ; civil war is a consequence at 

 once necessary and inevitable. Standing in 

 the Senate chamber, he speaks like a prophet 

 of woe. The burden of the prediction is the 

 echo of what the distinguished gentleman now 

 presiding in that chair has said before (Mr. 

 Iverson in the chair) ' Too late ! too late ! ' 

 The gleaming and lurid lights of war flash 

 around his brow, even while he speaks. And, 

 sir, if it were not for the exquisite amenity of 

 his tone and manner we could easily persuade 

 ourselves that we saw the flashing of the 

 armor of the soldier beneath the robe of the 

 Senator. 



" My purpose is far different ; sir, I think it 

 is far higher. I desire to contribute my poor 

 argument to maintain the dignity, the honor 

 of the Government under which I live, and be- 

 neath whose august shadow I hope to die. I 

 propose, in opposition to all that has been said,, 

 to show .that the Government of the United 

 States is in very deed a real, substantial power, 

 ordained by the people, not dependent upon 

 States ; sovereign in its sphere ; a Union, and 

 not a compact between sovereign States ; that, 

 according to its true theory, it has the inherent 

 capacity of self-protection ; that its Constitution 

 is a perpetuity, beneficent, unfailing, grand ; 

 and that its powers are equally capable of exer- 

 cise against domestic treason and against for- 

 eign foes. Such, sir, is the main purpose of my 

 speech ; and what I may say additional to this, 

 will be drawn from me in reply to the speech 

 to which I propose now to address myself." 



He then proceeded to deny that this Gov- 

 ernment was a compact, that there was such 

 a right as that of secession, or that the 

 grievances complained of by the South, wer'e 

 sufficient to justify their proposed course of 

 action. 



Tnese propositions went to the Committee 

 of Thirteen,' and the subsequent debate em- 

 braced all the measures before that committee. 

 No separate and favorable action was taken 

 upon them in the Senate. 



The following resolution, presented in the 

 Senate by Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, 

 previous to his retirement, contains in a few 

 words the entire claim made by Southern mem- 

 bers of what was necessary to secure their 

 rights. It was ordered to be printed. 



Resolved, That it shall be declared, by amendment 

 of the Constitution, that property in slaves, recognized 

 as such by the local law of any of the States of the 

 Union, shall stand on the same footing in all consti- 

 tutional and Federal relations as any other species of 

 property so recognized ; and, like other property, shall 

 not be subject to be divested or impaired by the local 

 law of any other State, either in escape thereto, or of 

 transit or sojourn of the owner therein ; and in no case 

 whatever shall such property be subject to be divested 

 or impaired by any legislative act of the United States, 

 or of any of the territories thereof. 



