people to be execrated for their wicked designs to sever and destroy the only good government on the globe, and that prosperity and happiness we enjoy over every other portion of the world. Haman's gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men, who would involve their country in civil war, and all the evils in its train, that they might reign and ride on its whirlwinds and direct the storm. The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom. Take care of your nullifiers; you have them among you; let them mect with the indignant frowns of every man who loves his country. The tariff, it is now"

and he italicizes or underscores the word "now".

"known, was a mere pretext.

or slavery question.

The next pretext will be the negro

These are the words of a patriot slaveholder of Tennessee, addressed to a patriot clergyman of a slaveholding State, and they are directly applicable to the present hour. Of practical sense, of inflexible purpose, and of various experience, Andrew Jackson saw intuitively the springs and motives of human conduct, while he loved his country with a firm and all-embracing attachment. Thus inspired, he was able to judge the present and to discern the future. The tariff, in his opinion, was a pretext only; disunion and a Southern confederacy the real object. "The next pretext," says he-and you, sir, will mark

the words "will be the negro or slavery question." These, sir, are his words, not mine. This is his emphatic judgment. These words and this judgment now belong to history; nor can they be assailed without assailing one of the greatest examples that a slaveholding community has given to our common country.

JAMES DIXON [Conn.].-There is a class of men, small in numbers and in influence, who assume that the present controversy is a conflict, as they say, of two civilizations; that it cannot be reconciled; that freedom or slavery must now perish. The great body of those whom I represent do not thus believe. We believe that there is no conflict of systems of labor in the different States which is incompatible with the peaceful existence of our Union. We believe that the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States may still revolve in harmonious spheres, and that, if the question of slavery shall destroy our Union, it will not be because it could not be satisfactorily and rightfully adjusted, but because the statesmen of the day are incompetent to the task.

ALBERT G. BROWN [Miss.].-Mr. President, I cannot vote for the resolution introduced by the Senator from Kentucky; and I desire, in a single word, without making a speech, to state the reason. Things have reached a crisis. The crisis can be met only in one way effectually, in my judgment; and that is for the Northern people to review and reverse their whole policy upon the subject of slavery. I see no evidence anywhere of any such purpose. On the contrary, the evidences accumulate all around, day by day, that there is no such purpose. In their newspapers, in the action of so many of their legislatures as have assembled, in the speeches of their Senators, with but one or two rare exceptions, we have accumulated evidence that there is no purpose on the part of the Northern people to reverse their action or their judgment upon this question. The Southern States do not expect that they are going to do it; and, having despaired of that reversal of judgment and that change of conduct, they are proceeding in the only mode left them to vindicate their rights and their honor. I cannot vote for the resolu tion of my friend from Kentucky because it would be an intimation-darkly given, it is true, but yet an intimation—to my State which is moving, that there is a hope of reconciliation. I do not believe there is any such hope. I see no evidence upon which to base a hope. I see, through this dark cloud that surrounds us, no ray of light. To me it is all darkness, midnight gloom.

If the same spirit could prevail which actuates the Senator

who has just now taken his seat [Mr. Dixon] a different state of things might be produced in the next twenty days; but we know that is not the spirit of Republican Senators; it is not the spirit of Republican Representatives; it is not the spirit of the dominant party. They have forced the matter to the present crisis, and they mean to stand by their arms. We have registered our oaths in high Heaven that we will not submit. Submission, to us, is the deepest dishonor that ever fell upon a free people. I will not, while things are progressing as they now are in my State, intimate to the people there that I have any hope of a different course. On the contrary, to-day, speaking in this presence, under all the solemnities of this occasion, with all the responsibilities which surround me, I say to them, there is no hope that this matter is to be remedied.

We read your newspapers. We have noted the fact that the great leading journal of New York, next to the Tribune-I speak of the Albany Evening Journal-proposed something which looked to a reconciliation; and the electoral college of that great State assembled a day or two after, and rebuked them for it. If any thirty-five men in the State of New York understand the public sentiment of that great State, the members of the electoral college are the men. They understand it better, perhaps, than the two Senators and thirty-three Representatives. They rebuked that journal for holding out the olive branch for an instant.

Are these evidences that there is any disposition on the part of the Republicans to abandon any part of their program? No, sir; what was said only yesterday by a Republican member of the House is true: "We never mean to ground our arms until we have emancipated the last slave in America." That is their purpose, disguise it as they may; and we never mean to sink down to that position. Better, ten thousand times better, that we separate in peace; but if that cannot be done, then we must separate in war. To be under your domination we cannot and will not. Calmly, deliberately, dispassionately, the Southern people have made up their minds to that.

Gentlemen talk about making appeals. I make no appeals, because I will not appeal where I know my appeal is to be rejected. I will not make appeals that my own friends will read as a hope that this difficulty may be reconciled. I prefer to present to them the plain stubborn facts as they are; to tell them that Republicanism has shown no disposition to recede, and we stand face to face, and all that is left to us is either a peaceable or a violent separation.

If it be true that the Northern people have been taught in the schools and in the churches following the advice delivered to them by the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward] more than twelve years ago, when he told them: "slavery must be abolished and you and I must do it," and that the mode to do it was to begin in the schools and in the churches; if this kind of teaching has so seized on the minds of the Northern people that the rising generation, and even the young and active generation, have learned to hate the Southern people with all the bitterness with which you have taught them to hate us, is it not nonsense to bring forward resolutions like these with the hope of remedying the evil? It has taken you twenty-five years to teach your people thus intently to hate us. If I could believe that you would go to work in earnest and unteach them in twenty-five years to come, I would wait for it; but I see no evidence of this. Your teaching is going on; it is going on now in your newspapers, in your churches, and in your schools; and even your gray-headed Senators go home and inculcate it. We have been driven to a position where it is absolutely necessary for us to take care of ourselves. I will hold up no false lights to the State which I represent. I will tell them the plain and stubborn truth, and let them act, as I think they ought to act, for themselves. I hope they will act like men and freemen; and, whatever their action may be, I shall stand by them for good or for evil. If Senators on the other side have propositions to submit which look to reconciliation, I will consider them; but they must be propositions which, in my judgment, strike at the root of this evil, not mere propositions for delay, such as that introduced by my friend from Kentucky. I can understand why a lawyer in court who has been driven to the wall may file an affidavit for delay, or put in a plea for delay; but I cannot understand why a Southern Senator in the present condition of affairs puts in a plea, or an affidavit, or makes any application for delay. We are better prepared to defend ourselves now than we shall be next year. The people are ripe for it. Let them go on. Hold out no delusive hopes. Let them meet the issue as it is, and I undertake to give my judgment that they will meet it successfully.

GEORGE E. PUGH [0.].-Mr. President, I did not intend to utter one word in regard to this resolution, except to vote for it; but I cannot permit the speech of the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown] to pass without some particular observation. Granting the premises of his argument, which I do not entirely grant, he has failed to justify the conclusion announced. After

more than seventy years of liberty and happiness and prosperity as a confederation of States must we now acknowledge that our constituents, some thirty million in all, with every advantage that men could desire for self-government, are unable to decide their differences in a satisfactory manner? Why, sir, what hope is left for mankind anywhere? Will you pretend that the Southern people are capable of free government hereafter if they cannot now commune with their Northern brethren upon fair and honorable terms of adjustment? Or shall we, on our side, indulge a pretension equally vain? We stultify ourselves, all of us, in saying that we cannot hear, cannot discuss, and cannot compromise the controversy with which we are threatened. That is to say, in so many words, that our experiment of the Union is a failure; and, more than that, your Southern Confederacy will be a failure, and all other confederacies to the end of time. Mr. President, I have not attained any such conclusion; I am not of opinion, as yet, that a majority, or any considerable number of the people, South or North, desire the bonds of this Confederacy to be torn asunder. There has been crimination upon both sides; there have been outrages on both sides; there have been things which ought to be redressed, some by the arm of the law, some by a more faithful administration of our Federal and State governments; but there has been nothing which cannot be redressed promptly, fairly, and in the most efficacious manner. I believe, before God and my country, that ninety-nine hundredths of the people in every State, North and South, are anxious this day to redress all outrages and all causes of reasonable complaint.

Why, then, do we hear such defiances exchanged? I heard them on Wednesday last when I came hither and resumed my seat. I heard the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Iverson] declare that the people of the North hated the people of the South, and the people of the South reciprocated that sentiment. I believe the Senator has pronounced a calumny on his constituents as well as on mine. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of him; I speak of his accusation, and not of himself. I understood the Senator from New Hampshire [John P. Hale] to proclaim, in like manner, not the gospel of peace between brethren, but a circumspect waiting to ascertain whether Mr. Buchanan would or would not send a Federal army to coerce the State of South Carolina. I trust, sir, if Mr. Buchanan should commit so highhanded and fatal an act of violence as that, his term is not too brief as President of the United States for him to be arraigned at our bar by an impeachment. What would South Carolina