I

THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION

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FEEL it, fellow-citizens, to be quite needless, for any purpose of affecting your votes now, or your judgment and acts for the future, that I should add a word to the resolutions before you, and to the very able addresses by which they have been explained and enforced. All that I would have said has been better said. In all that I would have suggested, this great assembly, so true and ample a representation of the sobriety, and principle, and business, and patriotism of this city and its vicinity-if I may judge from the manner in which you have responded to the sentiments of preceding speakers-has far outrun me. In all that I had felt and reflected on the supreme importance of this deliberation, on the reality and urgency of the peril, on the indispensable necessity which exists, that an effort be made, and made at once, combining the best counsels, and the wisest and most decisive action of the community-an effort to turn away men's thoughts from those things which concern this part or that part, to those which concern the whole of our America-to turn away men's solicitude about the small politics that shall give a State administration this year to one set, and the next year to another set, and fix it on the grander politics by which a nation is to be held together-to turn away men's hearts from loving one brother to the national household, and hating and reviling another, to that larger, juster, and wiser affection which folds the whole household to its bosom-to turn away men's conscience and sense of moral obligation from the morbid and mad pursuit of a single duty, and indulgence of a single sen

[This speech was delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, November 26, 1850, at a meeting called for the purpose of expressing disapproval of the spirit of disobedience to the slave-laws shown by the citizens of Massachusetts. The general sense of the meeting was that the necessity of preserving the Union was more urgent than the abolition of

slavery, and while many of the participants in the proceedings were personally opposed to slavery, they preferred to keep the Union intact rather than disMr. rupt it on the slavery question. Choate was preceded by speeches by B. R. Curtis, B. F. Hallett, and S. D. Bradford.-EDITOR.]

timent, to the practical ethics in which all duties are recognized, by which all duties are reconciled, and adjusted, and subordinated, according to their rank, by which the sacredness of compacts is holden to be as real as the virtue of compassion, and this supremacy of the law declared as absolute as the luxury of a tear is felt to be sweet—to turn away men's eyes from the glare of the lights of a philanthropy-they call it philanthropy-some of who ends may be specious, but whose means are bad faith, abusive speech, ferocity of temper, and resistance to law; and whose fruit, if it ripens to fruit, will be woes unnumbered to bond and free-to turn all eyes from the glitter of such light to the steady and unalterable glory of that wisdom, that justice, and that best philanthropy under which the States of America have been enabled and may still be enabled to live together in peace, and grow together into the nature of one people-in all that I hav reflected and felt on these things, you have outrun my warmest feelings and my best thoughts. What remain, then, but that I congratulate you on at least this suspicious indication, and take my leave? One or two suggestions, however, you will pardon to the peculiarity of the times.

I concur then, first, fellow-citizens, with one of the resolutions, in expressing my sincerest conviction that the Union is in extreme peril this day. Some good and wise men, I know, do not see this; and some not quite so good or wise deny that they see it. I know very well that to sound a false alarm is a shallow and contemptible thing. But I know also, that too much precaution is safer than too little, and I believe that less than the utmost is too little now. Better, it is said, to be ridiculed for too much care, than to be ruined by too confident a security. I have then a profound conviction that the Union is yet in danger. It is true that it has passed through one peril within the last few monthssuch a peril that the future historian of America will pause with astonishment and terror when he comes to record it. The sobriety of the historic style will rise to eloquence-to pious ejaculation to thanksgiving to Almighty God-as he sketches that scene and the virtues that triumphed in it. "Honor and praise," will he exclaim, " to the eminent men of all parties-to Clay, to Cass, to Foote, to Dickinson, to Webster-who rose that day to the measure of a true greatness—who remembered that they had a country to preserve as well as a local constituency to gratify

who laid all the wealth, and all the hopes of illustrious lives on the altar of a hazardous patriotism-who reckoned all the sweets of a present popularity for nothing in comparison of that more exceeding weight of glory which follows him who seeks to compose an agitated and save a sinking land."

That night is passed, and that peril; and yet it is still night, and there is peril still. And what do I mean by this? I believe, and rejoice to believe, that the general judgment of the people is yet sound on this transcendent subject. But I will tell you where I think the danger lies. It is, that while the people sleep, politicians and philanthropists of the legislative hall-the stump and the press-will talk and write us out of our Union. Yes, while you sleep, while the merchant is loading his ships, and the farmer is gathering his harvests, and the music of the hammer and shuttle wake around, and we are all steeped in the enjoyment of that vast and various good which a common government places within our reach—there are influences that never sleep, and which are creating and diffusing a public opinion, in whose hot and poisoned breath, before we yet perceive our evil plight, this Union may melt as frost-work in the sun. sufficiently appreciate how omnipotent is opinion in the matter of all government? Do we consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united government? Do we often enough advert to the distinction, that while our State governments must exist almost of necessity, and with no effort from within or without, the Union of the States is a totally different creation-more delicate, more artificial, more recent, far more truly a mere production of the reason and the will-standing in far more need of an ever-surrounding care, to preserve and repair it, and urge it along its highway? Do we reflect that while the people of Massachusetts, for example, are in all senses one-not e pluribus unum-but one single and uncompounded substance, so to speak and while every influence that can possibly help to hold a social existence together-identity of interest; closeness of kindred; contiguity of place; old habit; the ten thousand opportunities of daily intercourse; everything-is operating to hold such a State together, so that it must exist whether it will or not, and "cannot, but by annihilating, die "--the people of America compose a totally different community-a com

VOL. II.-12

munity miscellaneous and widely scattered; that they are many States, not one State, or if one, made up of many which still coexist; that numerous influences of vast energy, influences of situation, of political creeds, of employments, of supposed or real diversities of material interest, tend overmore to draw them asunder; and that is not, as in a single State, that instinct, custom and long antiquity, closeness of kindred, immediate contiguity, the personal intercourse of daily life and the like, come in to make and consolidate the grand incorporation, whether it will or not, but that it is not to be accomplished by carefully cultivated and acquired habits and states of feeling; by an enlightened discernment of great interests, embracing a continent and a future age; by a voluntary determination to love, honor, and cherish, by mutual tolerance, by mutual indulgence of one another's peculiarities, by the most politic and careful withdrawal of our attention from the offensive particulars in which we differ, and by the most assiduous development and appreciation, and contemplation of those things wherein we are alike— do we reflect as we ought, that it is only thus-by varieties of expedients, by a prolonged and voluntary educational process, that the fine and strong spirit of nationality may be made to penetrate and animate the scarcely congruous mass-and the full tide of American feeling to fill the mighty heart?

I have sometimes thought that the States in our system may be compared to the primordial particles of matter, indivisible, indestructible, impenetrable, whose natural condition is to repel each other, or, at least, to exist in their own independent identity-while the Union is an artificial aggregation of such particles; a sort of forced state, as some have said, of life; a complex structure made with hands, with gravity, attrition, time, rain, dew, frost, not less than tempest and earthquake, co-operate to waste away, and which the anger of a fool-or the laughter of a fool-may bring down in an hour; a system of bodies advancing slowly through a resisting medium, operating at all times to retard, and at any moment liable to arrest its motion; a beautiful, yet fragile creation, which a breath can unmake, as a breath has made it.

And now, charged with the trust of holding together such a nation as this, what have we seen? What do we see to-day? Exactly this. It has been for many months-years, I may say,

but, assuredly for a long season-the peculiar infelicity, say, rather, terrible misfortune of this country, that the attention of the people has been fixed without the respite of a moment, exclusively, on one of those subjects-the only one-on which we disagree precisely according to geographical lines. And not so only, but this subject has been one-unlike tariff, or internal improvements, or the disbursement of the public money, on which the dispute cannot be maintained, for an hour, without heat of blood, mutual loss of respect, alienation of regard-menacing to end in hate, strong and cruel as the grave.

I call this only a terrible misfortune. I blame here and now no man and no policy for it. Circumstances have forced it upon us all; and down to the hour that the series of compromise measures was completed and presented to the country, or certainly to Congress, I will not here and now say, that it was the fault of one man, or one region of country, or one party more than another.

"But the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!"

How appalling have been its effects; and how deep and damning will be his guilt who rejects the opportunity of reconcilement, and continues this accursed agitation, without necessity, for another hour!

Why, is there any man so bold or blind as to say he believes that the scenes through which we have been passing, for a year, have left the American heart where they found it? Does any man believe that those affectionate and respectful regards, that attachment and that trust, those "cords of love and bands of a man "—which knit this people together as one, in an earlier and better time-are as strong to-day as they were a year ago? Do you believe that there can have been so tremendous an apparatus of influences at work so long, some designed, some undesigned, but all at work in one way, that is, to make the two great divisions of the national family hate each other, and yet have no effect? Recall what we have seen in that time, and weigh it well! Consider how many hundred of speeches were 'made in Congress-all to show how extreme and intrepid an advocate the speaker could be of the extreme Northern sentiment, or the extreme Southern sentiment. Consider how many scores of thousands of every one of those speeches were printed