CHAPTER X, SECESSION-PROSECUTION OF THE WAR. Extracts from Speeches of Senator Trumbull and Representative McCler- SPEECH OF LYMAN TRUMBULL. "MR. PRESIDENT-It has been very hard for me, and, I doubt not, my Republican associates around me, to bear the many misapprehensions, not to say misstatements, of our position, and to see a perverted state of facts day after day urged upon the Senate and the country by gentlemen upon the other side. We have listened to the Senator from Mississippi; and one would suppose, in listening to him here, that he was a friend of this Union, that he desired the perpetuity of this Government. He has a most singular way of preserving it, and a most singular way of maintaining the Constitution. What is it? Why, he proposes that the Government should abdicate. If it will simply withdraw its forces from Charleston, and abdicate in favor either of a mob or of the constituted authorities of Charleston, we will have peace! He dreads civil war, and he will avoid it by a surrender! He talks as if we Republicans were responsible for civil war if it ensues. If civil war comes, it comes from those with whom he is acting. Who proposes to make civil war but South Carolina? Who proposes to make civil war but Mississippi, and Alabama, and Georgia, seizing, by force of arms, upon the public property of the United States? Talk to us of making civil war! You inaugurate it, and then talk of it as if it came from the friends of the Constitution and the Union. Here stands this great Government; here stands the Union-a pillar, so to speak, already erected. * Mr. ARNOLD died at Chicago, his home, or Thursday, April 24, 1884while this book was passing through the press. Do we propose to pull it down? Do we propose undermining the foundations of the Constitution or disturbing the Union? Not at all; but the proposition comes from the other side. They are making war, and modestly ask us to have peace by submitting to what they ask. "It is nothing but rebellion; it is nothing but insurrection. But not only in South Carolina, where there was the pretense of secession to justify the act, which, I think, really amounts to nothing, but in Georgia and Alabama, which have not seceded, we are told that the public property of the United States has been seized; and the Senator from Mississippi thinks the best way to avoid civil war is for the United States to withdraw their forces, to surrender their forts, and strike the flag under which he was nurtured, and beneath which he has marched so often. The Stars and Stripes have been taken down from the United States buildings in the city of Charleston, and trampled in the dust, and a palmetto flag with a snake, reared in their place; but if we would avoid civil war, we are told, we must submit to this! Why, sir, any people can have peace at the price of degradation. No despot makes war upon subjects who submit their necks to the tread of his heel. But if we would maintain constitutional liberty; if we would maintain constitutional freedom; if we would maintain this great Government, we must not suffer every faction, and every mob, and every State, that thinks proper, to trample its flag under foot. "Sir, it is clear to my mind that this doctrine of secession is utterly destructive of a constitutional government. On the same principle, a county may secede from a State, and a town from a county. The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Crittenden) has been talking about compromises, and has introduced a string of resolutions here. When they are adopted, what is your Government good for? What is to prevent the State of Illinois next week, or the State of Kentucky the following week, from seceding, as South Carolina has done, and demanding new guarantees as a condition of the existence of the Union? By submitting to this doctrine, you destroy the stability of the Government. Constitutional governments are worth nothing if this doctrine is to obtain; and hence it is that those of us who are for sustaining the Constitution and sustaining the Union, believe that the question involved is the existence of constitutional government. We now have nothing to do with the extension of African slavery-that is not the question before the American people; but the question is, Has this Government any power to protect itself?' In other words, have we a Government at all? That is what is to be tested. The people of Illinois believe we have a Government, and a Government that has power to maintain itself, not by making civil war, but by enforcing the laws, and defending itself against those who would make war upon it. "But, sir, what is the cause of this complaint? Why is it that the Southern States are inaugurating civil war? I have as much horror for it as the Senator from Mississippi. I would do anything honorable to avoid it. I certainly will not be the instrument to inaugurate it. But what is it the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Davis) complains of? To use his language, he says, if you are to make us hewers of wood and drawers of water for you in the North, we will not submit. If they are to be reduced to subjection to the North, they will not submit. I do not ask them to do so. So far as I am concerned, I will ask them to submit to nothing that I will not submit to myself. I ask to impose no inequality upon the State of Mississippi. "Now, sir, my idea of preserving the peace of this country, and of the duty which is devolved upon us here, is not what we should yield, as the Senator from Mississippi suggests, to the threats and demands of States which say that they want no compromise, and want no concessions, and are determined to set up for themselves, and expel the Federal Government from their borders; but that we should rally around the Constitution, and enforce the laws under it; and then, not when States come here threatening civil war, not when our vessels are fired into, not when our forts are taken possession of, but when the States all acknowledge themselves within the Union, and under the Constitution, if there are any grievances, let them be removed. Then, if there is anything wrong in the Constitution, let us amend it according to the mode provided in the instrument. I do not believe that we shall better the Constitution by any amendment which may be made to it. "But, sir, I did not intend making any lengthened remarks, but only to reply in a few words to what I thought to be the false assumptions of Senators on the other side as to this whole controversy. I shall not take up the time of the Senate by going into any lengthened argument, but will state in a few words what I suppose to be our duty here; and that is, in the first place, to endeavor to maintain the Constitution and the laws as we have them. When the attack is made by the seceding States, or by mobs in the Southern States, upon the constituted authorities, there can be no doubt as to our duty in such a case. I was saying, when interrupted, that the North was not disposed to make any encroachments upon the South. I was saying that even this Fugitive Slave Law would most likely be better executed under Mr. Lincoln's Administration than under Mr. Buchanan's, and was giving some reasons for this opinion. We know that Mr. Lincoln, in his public speeches, has said that so long as this statute stands, objectionable as it may be, he would consider it his duty to have it executed. He has said, further, that in his opinion the slave owners were entitled, under the Constitution, to a reasonable law to reclaim their runaway slaves; and he has said that he would not object to any law for that purpose which was not more likely to enslave a free man, than your common criminal laws are to punish an innocent one. "I do not desire to engage the Senator from Kentucky in a discussion at this time, but simply to call his attention to the compromise of 1850, and see if we do not stand in a better position, just as we are, than by attempting to patch up some new compromise. For my life, I cannot see the occasion for all this agitation in the country, and for States threatening to go out of the Union, unless it be simply the fact that the Republican party has, in the constitutional mode, elected its candidate for the Presidency. That is all I can see. Inasmuch as we have not been in power, we certainly have done nothing; and although Senators who say they love the Union will pick out an isolated passage from Mr. Lincoln's speeches, or from the speeches of some extreme man, and reiterate it over and over again, as if further to inflame the public mind; still, when you come back and look at the public course of the President elect, at his avowed opinions, at the platform upon which he is elected, you will find nothing that interferes in the least with the rights of the South; nothing that denies the equality of the States; nothing that denies the equality of any individual from any of the States in the common territories of the United States." SPEECH OF JOHN A. McCLERNAND. "MR. CHAIRMAN-When an impending danger can be no longer stayed or averted, is it not the part of wisdom and duty to meet, and, if possible, overcome it? Such, I think, is a sound canon of statesmanship. Acting on this belief, I propose rather briefly, to deal with the question of secession now actually upon us. "First, I deny the constitutional right of any State to secede from the Union; second, I deprecate the exercise of any such assumed right as a measure of revolution, which in the present case, must embroil the country in a sanguinary and wasting civil war." "Let me not be misunderstood. I do not desire war. I would avoid it by all honorable means, particularly a civil war between any of the States of this Union. Such a war would be fratricidal, unnatural, and most bloody. It would be a war between States equally jealous of their honor, and men equally brave. I would forfeit my own self-respect if I would disparage the courage of my brethren, either of the North or the South; for courage is the distinction of neither, but the virtue of both. The only difference between them is, that the man of the South fights from impetuosity, the man of the North from purpose, and the man of the West from a restless spirit of adventure. Myself, a Kentuckian by birth, and an Illinoisan by nurture and education, I would deplore such a war as the greatest calamity that could befall the country; yet, as a practical man, and a representative of the people, I must not shut my eyes to the logic of the cause and effectto the popular instinct of self-preservation.' "Let us all let all conservative men of all parties and of all sections, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf of Mexico to the far lakes-rally in favor of the integrity of the Constitution and the Union. Let them merge the partisan in the patriot, and, coming up to the altar of their country, generously sacrifice every angry feeling and ambitious aim for the welfare and glory of that country. Let no man, whether he be Democrat, Republican, or American, refuse to yield something of his opinions and prepossessions in deference to others, and the higher claims of patriotism. All government, all authority, all human life, is a compromise. Christianity itself is a compromise between justice and mercy-between disobedience and its predoomed punishment. Let us, therefore, in a |