Senate or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it hap pens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! Sir, let me refer to pleasing recollections, let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust are the growth,_unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered. Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium on Massachusetts. She needs none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fall-* ing in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. And, Sir, where America raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin. THE UNION MUST BE PRESERVED. 231 Ex. CXLIX.-THE UNION MUST BE PRESERVED. Speech in Congress, January 26, 1830. DANIEL WEBSTER. MR. PRESIDENT: I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it without expressing once more my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the States, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and the honor of the whole country, and the preservation of the Federal Union. I have not allowed myself to look beyond the union, to see what might be hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depths of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant, that in my day at least, the curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout. the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a star obscured, not a stripe erased or polluted, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth? or those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and union afterward; but every where spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea, and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart: LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE. * A patriotic son of South Carolina. This poem was written July 4th, 1832, in the midst of the excitement attending the discussion of "nullification." Mr. Grimké, with many others of his fellow-citizens, strongly opposed this doctrine, and used all the eloquence of his tongue and pen in favor of maintaining the authority of the general government in contradistinction to what were called "State Rights." APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. By our common kindred tongue, Fathers, have ye bled in vain ? No! Receive our solemn vow, 233 Ex. CLI.-APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.* December 11th, 1832. ANDREW JACKSON. FELLOW-CITIZENS OF MY NATIVE STATE: Contemplate the condition of that country of which you form an important part. Consider its government, uniting in one bond of common interest and general protection so many different States, giving to all their inhabitants the proud title of American citizens, protecting their commerce, securing their literature and their arts, facilitating their intercommunication, defending their frontiers, and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth. Consider the extent of its territory, its increasing and happy population, its advance in arts which render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the mind. See education spreading the light of religion, humanity, and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of our Territories and States. Behold it as the asylum *This earnest appeal is the conclusion of a proclamation to the people of South Carolina, in which President Jackson stated his determination to enforce the U. S. Revenue Laws, notwithstanding the action of the S. C. Convention, which had just declared them null and void in that State. He agreed with the Convention in thinking that the Tariff Bill, which was the point in dispute, ought to be modified, but insisted that while the laws stood they should be obeyed. The matter was finally settled by a compromise, but not until after the passage of a bill by Congress enabling the President to maintain the supremacy of the law by force, if necessary. where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and sup port. Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say, We, too, are citizens of America! Carolina is one of these proud States. Her arms have defended, her best blood has cemented, this happy union! And then add, if you can without horror and remorse, "This happy union we will dissolve, this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface, -this free intercourse we will interrupt, these fertile fields we will deluge with blood,-the protection of that glorious flag we renounce, the very name of Americans we discard!" And for what, mistaken men, for what do you throw away these inestimable blessings-for what would you exchange your share in the advantages and honor of the Union? For the dream of a separate independence-a dream interrupted by bloody conflicts with your neighbors, and a vile dependence on a foreign power. If your leaders could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be your situation? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering some new revolution, or contending with a new insurrection,-do they excite your envy? But the dictates of a high duty oblige me solemnly to announce that you can not succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject; my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that they might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you; they could not have been deceived themselves. They knew that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they knew that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, but be not deceived by names; disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences; on. their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment; on your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal; it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. But it is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your Revolutionary history, |