take? You will take nothing but your own judgment; that is, you will not only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our construction, discard the practice of the government, but you will drive us out, simply because you will it. Come and do it! You have sapped the foundations of society; you have destroyed almost all hope of peace. In a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, arbiter. Your party says that you will not take the decision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago;" you said so in committee; every man of you in both Houses says so. What are you going to do? You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands.

The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we have passed that point; they demand equal rights; you had better heed the demand. * *

12

SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX,*

OF OHIO.'

(BORN, 1824-DIED, 1889.)

ON SECESSION; DOUGLAS DEMOCRATIC OPINION ; IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JANUARY 14, 1861.2

MR. CHAIRMAN:

I speak from and for the capital of the greatest of the States of the great West. That potential section is beginning to be appalled at the colossal strides of revolution. It has immense interests at stake in this Union, as well from its position as its power and patriotism. We have had infidelity to the Union before, but never in such a fearful shape. We had it in the East during the late war with England. Even so late as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts resolved herself out of the Union. That resolution has never been repealed, and one would infer, from much of her conduct, that she did not regard herself as bound by our covenant. Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity *For notes on Cox, see Appendix, p. 410.

to the Union, more insidious infractions of the Constitution than by open rebellion. Now, sir, as a consequence, in part, of these very infractions, we have rebellion itself, open and daring, in terrific proportions, with dangers so formidable as to seem almost remediless. * * * 3

I would not exaggerate the fearful consequences of dissolution. It is the breaking up of a federative Union, but it is not like the breaking up of society. It is not anarchy. A link may fall from the chain, and the link may still be perfect, though the chain have lost its length and its strength. In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in matters of war and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage, copyrights, tariff, and other Federal and national affairs, this great government may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties and rights which government is the agent to establish and protect, the seceding State has no revolution, and the remaining States can have none. This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes the States the basis of our instituted labor. Greece was broken by the Persian power, but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary lost her national crown, but her home institutions

remain. South Carolina may preserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content to glimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellated band. She even goes out by the ordinance of a socalled sovereign convention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoes the hopes, the boasts, the flag, the music, all the emotions, all the traits, and all the energies which, when combined in our United States, have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement. Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully "looks back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to find language to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from the contemplation." The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history are all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian with the "idem sententiam de republica," which makes unity and nationality. What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in the contaminated reason of man!

Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to

last for a night, or a reality to be dealt with, with the world's rough passionate handling? It is sad and bad enough; but let us not overtax our anxieties about it as yet. It is not the sanguinary regime of the French revolution; not the rule of assignats and guillotine; not the cry of “ Vivent les Rouges! A mort les gendarmes!" but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attempt to withdraw from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is unlike every other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, according as it is managed, involve consequences more terrific than any revolution since government began.

If the Federal Government is to be maintained, its strength must not be frittered away by conceding the theory of secession. To concede secession as a right, is to make its pathway one of roses and not of thorns. I would not make its pathway so easy. If the government has any strength for its own preservation, the people demand it should be put forth in its civil and moral forces. Dealing, however, with a sensitive public sentiment, in which this strength reposes, it must not be rudely exercised. It should be the iron hand in the glove of velvet. Firmness should be allied with kind