out.

SENATOR PUGH.-I think you had better leave the adjectives

SENATOR HALE.-I said that, in my humble judgment, the course of events would lead to war; and when the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown] asked me if I meant to threaten war, I repeated over and over again that I meant no such thing; but I believed that the course of events was tending in that direction. I said it, and I believed it, and I believe it now. I deprecate it as much as any man on this floor can; I would make as much honorable concession as any man can; but I should scorn myself, and the gallant people that sent me here would scorn me, if I could stand up on this floor to menace war. I will go further. I will say to the Senator from Ohio that I not only never said, but I never had such a thought as, that Mr. Buchanan would send an army down to South Carolina. I will tell you, sir, what I believe to be his position-and I am sorry to be provoked to say it. I believe that, instead of sending an army down to South Carolina, Mr. Buchanan is on his knees before them to-day, begging them for God's sake to stave this thing off until the 4th of March, so that he may get out of the way of the shower before it comes. [Laughter.]

There was one thing which the honorable Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis] said while he was up that I did not exactly catch, and nothing but my reluctance to break in upon a gentleman while he is speaking prevented me from asking him at that time if I understood him correctly. He said that he appealed to this side, to this party, who had committed the act which had driven us to this position. As I did not get the floor of the Senate, I went over and asked the Senator from Mississippi privately if I understood him, because, although the Senator from Georgia [Alfred Iverson] the other day represented that there is a state of armed neutrality here; that nobody here ever goes to the other side, and that nobody there ever comes here, I will say that whenever I have had occasion to go over on that side, even though it were to address the Senator from Georgia himself, I have always met kind, courteous, and gentlemanly treatment.

SENATOR IVERSON.-It is all on the surface; only skin deep. SENATOR HALE.-Well, then, sir, I have done you more credit than you deserve. [Laughter.] Thus encouraged, I went over and asked the Senator from Mississippi candidly, and it seems I misunderstood him. He did not speak of any particular act, but of a series of acts. Now, sir, I declare, before God and the country, that there is no one thing that I more desire in this

world than to see that bill of indictment fairly, honestly, and intelligently made out. What is it that my State has done? I represent but one State. I am unfortunate. A great many gentlemen represent whole squads of States. [Laughter.] I represent only one, and she is one of the smallest in the Union. I should be glad to see the bill of indictment fairly and squarely and legitimately and constitutionally made out. I would ask · gentlemen to put their finger on the place and name the time and the occasion when the State which I have the honor in part to represent here has done anything inconsistent with her constitutional dignity and her constitutional duty-inconsistent with that fraternal feeling which should govern the representatives of the States of this Confederacy. And, sir, I can tell the honorable Senator from Georgia that, when I speak of this fraternal feeling, it is a little more than skin deep with me. I have gloried in the Union and in the country, and the whole of it; and I believe, sir, that if evil days are before us, they are the just judgments of a righteous God for the iniquities of a people who have been blind to His mercies and reckless in the use of the great privileges that He has bestowed upon them.

SENATOR PUGH.-I certainly must apologize to the Senator from New Hampshire. I did understand his speech as I said; but I am very happy to be under the necessity of apologizing, he has left so much more pleasant impressions on my mind by this speech than he did by the other.

JAMES M. MASON [Va.].-I look upon the present crisis as a war of sentiment and opinion by one form of society against another form of society. How that will end I will not undertake to predict; but, if there be a remedy for it, it is not here; it must be at home in their own State councils; and I should regret extremely if any vote I am to give here should mislead public judgment so far as to lead them to suppose that they are to look here for safety.

I fear, too, sir, that in what fell from the honorable Senator from New York [Mr. King] we are admonished of the sort of legislation that is looked to on that side as a remedy for impending dangers. The honorable Senator says that it is the duty of the Executive head of the Confederacy to execute the laws; that it is the duty of Congress, if he has not sufficient power now under the law, to give it to him; that he knows of nothing that can resist the laws unless it originates in insurrection or rebellion, which is to be put down. That means, Mr. President, that, in the relation which subsists between the States of the Union and the Federal power, State existence is not to

be recognized; and that, if a State abandons the Union, separates from it, severs all political connection with it, that fact is not to be recognized by, or known to, the Federal Government. State in the full plenitude of her sovereignty entirely resumed by her fundamental law, absolves her citizens from the allegiance they formerly held to the Government which they abandoned. That is not to be known; but the law is to march straight forward, like the car of Juggernaut, crushing all who may oppose it. They may call it what they please; they may call it putting down resistance to the laws, or insurrection, or rebellion, or treason in a citizen, but at last it is war-open, undisguised war-by one political power against another political power. Well, sir, if this be true, I am not one of those who will lend my aid or my vote to any legislation contemplating such a state of things.

WILLIAM BIGLER [Pa.].-I tell you, Mr. President, that the question is settled in relation to this great movement which is now progressing in certain of the Southern States. I know the efforts that are now being made to stay the hand of the Southern people, and to cool down the patriotism which is burning within the Southern hearts; but it will be ineffectual, sir. When the barricades of Paris were raised and the masses of that great city were upheaving in their majesty against the arbitrary power of the monarchy, Louis Philippe saw his danger and attempted to avert it by changing his ministry. He turned out M. Guizot and nominated M. Thiers as his principal adviser. That he supposed would quiet the dissensions which he saw rising around him; but, sir, the words "too late," "too late," went all through the streets of Paris. The next day, when he found the streets barricaded, he abdicated the throne in favor of his grandson, and made an effort, through his friends, to obtain the regency of his daughter, the mother of the Count of Paris. When that was done, in the hope that he might quell the insurrection then rising around him, "the same words 'too late' ran through all the masses of Paris, ringing out in sepulchral tones like the trump of the archangel summoning the dead to judgment." So now, sir, you may tinker the Constitution, if you please; you may propose concessions; you may suggest additional legislation; you may present additional constitutional securities; you may attempt by all these ingenious devices to stay the storm which now rages in the Southern States, to prevent that people from marching on to the deliverance and liberty upon which they are resolved; but, sir, the words "too late" that ring here to-day will be reiterated from mountain to

valley in all the South, and are now sounding the death knell of the Federal Union.

Senator Douglas replied to the charge of Senator Iverson that the Fugitive Slave Law was not enforced in the Northern States. Other laws, notably that against the slave trade, were not enforced. The Fugitive Law was observed in nineteen cases out of twenty in Illinois. As to the personal liberty laws, they existed only in States where the fugitives rarely go. Illinois had no such law. Strangely enough the border States, whence the fugitives came, were not complaining.

If you go North, up into Vermont, where they scarcely ever see a slave, and would not know how he looked, they are disturbed by the wrongs of the poor slave just in proportion as they are ignorant of the South. When you get down South into Georgia and Alabama, where they never lose any slaves, they are disturbed by the outrages and losses under the non-fulfillment of the fugitive law just in proportion as they have no interest in it, and do not know what they are talking about. [Laughter and applause in the galleries.]

If this Union is to be severed, it will be because the two extremes, who are so far from each other that they do not understand the evils of the question, are each acting under a misapprehension toward the other, and, hence, are doing injustice to each other.

Senator Powell replied that the neighboring border States, North and South, were not as friendly as Senator Douglas stated. Thus the Governor of Ohio, William Dennison, had refused to deliver a fugitive slave upon requisition by the Governor of Kentucky. Kentucky, he said, lost every year more than $100,000 worth of slave property by the operation of the "Underground Railroad" (an Abolition organization which spirited away negroes from the South to Canada).

Benjamin F. Wade [O.] said that the requisition was not honored because it failed to show that the fugitive had ever been in Kentucky. Senator Powell denied that this flaw existed, and stated that Thomas Ewing, Sr. [O.], had denounced Governor Dennison for failing to comply with the requisition.

Senator Wade then admitted that the refusal could not be justified on the ground he had urged, but he claimed that a Governor of Kentucky had failed to comply with a requisition from the Governor of Indiana in a case of (negro) kidnapping, because this was not an offence in Kentucky, and Governor Dennison thus had precedent for his refusal.

SENATOR DAVIS.-Mr. President, we seem to have entered on exactly that field which I had hoped might be avoided-one of crimination and recrimination.

It is not by pleading to special cases and asking for specifications, it is not by crimination and recrimination that the sense of the people is likely to be changed or the action of the States now assuming to judge in the last resort is to be modified in any degree, or that their respect for the manner in which the subject is here treated is to be heightened. All that can serve a useful purpose at the time is to bring forth evidence, if the fact exists, of that kind of feeling toward us, the absence of which we consider the greatest grievance under which we labor.

Senator Mason again addressing himself to the subject of popular conventions in the States to discuss the subject of reconciliation, Senator Douglas replied as follows:

Why is it that the non-execution of a law, or a defect in an act of Congress, cannot be remedied in Congress, but must be referred to a convention of States? And what sort of a convention of the States is proposed? Not a convention of all the States; but it is proposed that the Southern States shall go into convention by themselves, and the Northern States by themselves; and when they get into separate conventions the same misapprehensions that have blinded the judgment of Senators here will blind the judgment of the conventions; and each convention will criminate against the other section, and have nobody there to expose the error. The Senator thinks it a misfortune that we have got upon these details. I am delighted that we have some specifications, so that we can discuss details. All I ask is that the specification of grievances shall be made out. Give us each charge and each specification. If there is any one that can be substantiated I will vote for the necessary legislation and the necessary power in the executive to remove it; and every one that is not true should be abandoned. I hold that