tion. If, however, on the other hand, there were any attempts at enforcing the laws, the Senator, in the same easy rhetoric, sketched the conditions of that emergency. "You will find us," said he, in a careless manner, "ready to meet you with the outstretched hand of fellowship, or in the mailed panoply of war, as you may will it. Elect between these alternatives." In cool, insulting phraseology, he travestied the maintenance of the government, representing its acts as hostilities, and pictured, in glowing colors, the means of resistance. "We will not permit the introduction or consumption of any of your manufactures; every sea will swarm with our volunteer militia of the ocean, with the striped bunting floating over their heads, for we do not mean to give up that flag without a bloody struggle; it is ours as much as yours; and although, for a time, more stars may shine on your banner, our children, if not we, will rally under a constellation more numerous and more resplendent than yours." Again, danger to slavery was put forth. The election of Lincoln, the Senator asserted, was conclusive evidence of the determined hostility of the northern masses to our institutions, and this presumption was given as "the cause of our action." Senator Benjamin brought his eminent legal faculty to the occasion. He was argumentative and astute, and ingeniously presented the doctrine of the right of secession, as an element of strength rather than weakness. "Nothing," said he, "can be more obvious to the calm and candid observer of passing events, than that the disruption of the Confederacy has been due, in great measure, not to the existence but to the denial of this right. Few candid men would refuse to admit that the Republicans of the North would have been checked in their mad career, had they been convinced of the existence of the right and the intention to assert it. The very knowledge of its existence, by preventing occurrences which alone could prompt its exercise, would have rendered it a most efficient instrument in the preservation of the Union. But if the fact were otherwise-if all the teachings of experience were reversed-better, far better, a rope of sand, aye, the flimsiest gossamer that ever glistened in the morning dew, than chains of iron and shackles of steel; better the wildest anarchy, with the hope, the chance, of one hour's inspiration of the glorious breath of freedom, than ages of the hopeless bondage and oppression to which our enemies would reduce us." Toombs of Georgia, who was speedily to be appointed to a chief seat in the Rebel Confederacy, unlike his comrades, took no formal leave of the Senate : though shortly before his final disappearance he left on record a speech which may serve well enough for the purpose. It was delivered on the 7th of January, immediately after a calm, earnest, expostulatory address by Senator Crittenden, in support of his joint resolution on the subject of slavery. The tone of the Georgia Senator seemed doubly outrageous by contrast. Bold, truculent, reckless, defiant, extreme in his demands, he argued the territorial question with a copy of the Constitution in one hand and a sword in the other. "But," he roughly exclaimed, in words no doubt sufficiently astounding to the calm, venerable statesman he was addressing, "no matter what may be our grievances, the honorable Senator from Kentu ky, Mr. Crittenden, says we cannot secede. Well, what can we do? We cannot revolu- telegraphed from Washington an address tionize. He will say that is treason. to the people of Georgia, in which, after What can we do? Submit? They say informing them of the fate of certain they are the strongest and they will hang propositions which he had submitted to us. Very well; I suppose we are to be the Committee of Thirteen, he had openthankful for that boon. We will take ly invited them to revolt. "I tell you," that risk; we will stand by the right; said he in this missive,—an extraordiwe will take the Constitution; we will nary paper to proceed from a Senator defend it by the sword with the halter sitting in his seat the sworn defender of round our necks. Will that satisfy the the Constitution, "upon the faith of a honorable Senator from Kentucky? You true man, that all further looking to the cannot intimidate my constituents by North for security for your constitutional talking to them about treason. They rights in the Union should be instantly are ready to fight for the right with the abandoned. It is fraught with nothing rope round their necks, and meet the but ruin to yourselves and your posterblack Republicans and their allies upon ity. Secession by the fourth day of whatever ground they may select. Trea- March next, should be thundered from son! bah!" the ballot-box, by the unanimous vote of Georgia, on the second day of January next. Such a voice will be your best guarantee for liberty, security, tranquility and glory. In this key United States Senators pitched their public correspondence in Washington, in the winter of 1860. 11 Again, in reference to Mr. Crittenden's proposed extension of the line of the Missouri Compromise, "I am willing," said he, "to take the proposition of the Senator as it was understood in committee, putting the North and the South on the same ground, prohibiting slavery on the one side, acknowledging slavery and protecting it on the other, and applying that to all future acquisition, so that the whole continent to the north pole shall be settled upon the one rule, and to the south pole under the other. I will not buy a shameful peace. I will have equality or war. Georgia is on the war path and demands a full and final settlement this time." The Georgia Senator was evidently not in a proper mood for adjusting a disputed question. In fact he had already prejudged the case, and cared little what heed might be paid either to his arguments or his denunciations --for certainly no sane man could hope to convince a body of Senators by hurling his assumptions at them in this fash- * Address of Senator Toombs by telegraph, December ion. The next that we hear of Senator Toombs is from his native State of Georgia, not long after his speech in the Senate, when we find him engaged in another characteristic telegraphic correspondence. On the 24th of January, a few days after the State had adopted the Secession Ordinance, he addressed this interrogatory from Milledgeville, to His Honor Mayor Wood at New York:-"Is it true that any arms, intended for and consigned to the State of Georgia, have been seized by public authorities in New York? Your answer is important to us and to New York. Answer at once. Toombs." To which His Honor, Fernando Wood, something more than apol A fortnight before, indeed, he had | 23, 1860. R. ogetically replied: "I regret to say that unnecessarily to wound the generous arms intended for and consigned to the mother of States in whose embrace they State of Georgia, have been seized by had been raised to honor. It may have the police of this State, but that the City been, that while they were willing to place of New York should in no way be made their act upon record as one of obediresponsible for this outrage. As Mayor, ence to the authority of their respective I have no authority over the police. If State governments, they were loth, in I had the power I should summarily pun-view of possible future reconciliation, to ish the authors of this illegal and unjus- brand themselves with the stigma of untifiable seizure of private property." forced expressions of treason. Or it may The very day Senator Toombs made this have been that they feared the temper indignant inquiry, Governor Brown of of the House as less forbearing than the Georgia helped himself to the property courteous indifference of the Senate. of the United States arsenal at Augusta. The correspondence is most curious, as a picture of the time when people's ideas at the North were as yet undetermined in relation to what constituted treasonable communications; though few, if they had looked into the matter, would have had much doubt of the treason. With a single exception, the House of Representatives was spared the uncomfortable leavetakings with which the seceders afflicted the Senate. The members from the several revolting States, in most cases, were content with sending in a brief notice of withdrawal, generally stating their resolve to share the fortunes of their State whatever they might be, and, in one or two instances, adding a few words of courtesy addressed to the Speaker. The card or document was laid on the table without action or debate. The signers disappeared from their accustomed seats and that was all. What may have been the motive for this concerted silence with men certainly not accustomed to let such excellent opportunity of airing their eloquence pass by, we cannot say. It may have been, that coming directly from the people to the popular branch of the national legislature, they may have had some reluctance One of the retiring members, however, broke the silence, Miles Taylor, a representative from Louisiana. His speech was noticeable for its expositions of the hopes and reliance of the Southern Confederacy should the North endeavor to maintain the authority of the government and the integrity of the Union. He spoke particularly of the dependence of the seceding States in that event upon the power which they held in their hands in the possession of cotton; how in supplying a consumption in manufactures at the North of eight hundred thousand bales annually, which by capital and industry ensured a value of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, and in Europe of nearly three millions of bales, expanding in like manner to an aggregate of four hundred millions of dollars, this staple article controlled the interests and policy of the great manufacturing States at home and abroad. He looked particularly to England and France to interfere in breaking the threatened blockade. As he proceeded, he was more than once interrupted by members who felt these minatory intimations as insults to the government which they were all alike pledged by a solemn oath to maintain. Francis E. Spinner, from the Mohawk SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH. 61 under her guidance, until every Southern State will be banded together to maintain that independence which all will have declared, and to vindicate the right of their people to exercise for themselves all the powers of self-government When district of New York, chafed at the language of the speaker, and would, if he had not been overruled, have arrested his speech at its beginning by denying a hearing. "I think," said he, "it is high time to put a stop to this countenancing of treason in the halls of legislation." that blow is struck, gentlemen, let me Later, when the member for Louisiana, in the continuance of his remarks, had been drawn by a pertinent query of Daniel E. Sickles, another New York representative, into a defence of the seizure of the public property by his State, Spinner again indignantly interposed. "I make a point of order upon the gentleman from Louisiana. I want to know whether it is competent for a member, sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, to stand upon the floor of the House of Representatives and boldly avow, advocate and justify treason to the United States, and to defend the stealing of United States forts, United States arsenals, United States hospitals and United States ships. The gentleman from Louisiana avows, I believe, that he is no longer a member of this House; yet he justifies in this House the spoliation of property to this government. Is it competent for him to stand here and defend acts of insult and disgrace to this government?" The Chair indulgently permitted the orator to go on. "I have said," continued he, in words strangely prophetic of the subsequent event, "if the United States send ships to blockade our ports, and if the armies of the United States invade the soil of the seceding States, that would be war; and that when the first blow is struck, the spirit of Southern nationality will leap from the hearts of the Southern people, like Pallas all armed;' and that State after State will array themselves tell you, whatever you may think to the contrary, that the people of the State of Maryland, in which the first act was done which led to the formation of the existing government, will come to the rescue. The sons of Virginia, the mother of States and of statesmen, will come to the rescue. And the children of Kentucky, the dark and bloody ground, will come to the rescue. When that blow is struck, North Carolina will awake; and from her mountains and her valleys will stream that people who have never yet failed to hear the calls of duty, or the demands of honor. Tennessee will send forth her thousands filled with the memories of the patriotic dead whose remains now repose in her soil-the hero of the last war-Andrew Jackson. And even the hardy pioneers of Missouri, one of the younger of the sisters, will, like their own mighty river when at the flood, rush to the assistance of their Southern brethren; and then such a conflict as this world has never yet witnessed, will be upon us. Fields which are now filled with men engaged in the employments of ordinary life, will be trenched with the march of war, and every hillside will be the scene of combat, and the streams of every valley will run with blood. But I will not look upon the horrid picture which a swiftcoming future may but too soon, perhaps, force upon the unwilling gaze." Notwithstanding, however, the general secession drif of Mr. Taylor's remarks, it might have been observed that, unlike the virulent representatives of his State Senator from Tennessee, supported by in the Senate, he admitted and even Emerson Etheridge in the House of Repdwelt upon the prospect of future ad-resentatives, did generous service in the justment. He saw in the distance the cause, reminding the people that the reUnion again restored under one flag, gion which had cherished Jackson and provided constitutional amendments and Clay, was not yet barren of patriots. He changes in the organic law should be was instant in season and out of season, in made, "which will meet the changes defence of the beleaguered Union. Plantthat have taken place in the situation ing himself on the firm basis of popular of a portion of our people, and in the rights, secured by the national Governfeelings and views of a portion of the ment, rights which he saw were endanStates, and restore the Union to the gered by the dreams and pretensions of condition in which it was when it was the Southern oligarchy, he exclaimed, in framed, by erecting positive barriers one of the ablest of his speeches, "I have which will restrain the action of the peo- an abiding faith, I have an unshaken conple and of the departments of the Fede-fidence in man's capability to govern ral Government, within the boundaries himself. I will not give up this Governset to that action by the public sentiment ment that is now called an experiment, of the country, when the Government which some are prepared to abandon for went into operation."* The speaker's associate in the House John E. Bouligny, declined to follow the example of his colleague in retiring. He had received no direction to leave, from the legislature of Louisiana, and if he had, he would not obey it. He had been elected by the people. If they recalled him, he would go. "Then, and not till then," said he, "I shall resign; and after resigning my position here, I shall yet be a Union man, and stand under the flag of the country which gave me birth." In the midst of these ill omened voices of secession, there were not wanting resolute words of good cheer, animated by a sense of duty. It was the fashion, indeed, to speak contemptuously of the government; that was the tone of political society in Washington at the time; if the Constitution was not directly assailable, it was despised. Yet good men and true rallied to its defence. Andrew Johnson, Remarks of Mr. Taylor in the House of Representatives. February 5, 1861. a constitutional monarchy. No! I intend to stand by it, and I entreat every man throughout the nation, who is a patriot, and who has seen and is compelled to admit the success of this great experiment, to come forward, not in heat, not in fanaticism, not in haste, not in precipitancy, but in deliberation, in full view of all that is before us, in the spirit of brotherly love and fraternal affection, and rally round the altar of our common country, and lay the Constitution upon it as our last libation, and swear by our God and all that is sacred and holy, that the Constitution shall be saved and the Union preserved.”* Emerson Etheridge exhibited the inoperative character of the personal liberty bills of the North, testified to the very inconsiderable losses of the South from fugitives, and warned the slaveholding secessionists of their condition when the Canada line should be brought down to the banks of the Ohio. His speech of * Speech on the state of the Union, December 19, 1860. |