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sation, even if true, should not have come from his lips.

The President is about to retire to the shades of private life. He came into power in full favor. All are glad now that he is to retire from it. I am sure that I am. As to the incoming Administration, I am willing to give it a fair trial. I shall not prejudge it. The people of my State were promised "Buchanan, Breckinridge, and free Kansas." Mr. Breckinridge told his partisans in Indiana that he did not belong to a party which sought the extension of slavery. They believed him, and aided in forcing on us Buchanan and Breckinridge. Now, let the other part of the pledge be fulfilled. Let Kansas be admitted as a free State. Let that much be done to repair the great injury caused by the repeal of the Missouri compromise. But if this pledge is not redeemed, if the war between rival institutions be allowed to go on there as it has done, if Kansas is admitted as a slave State, who can tell where this agitation will end? If, by force and fraud, a Territory

which had long been consecrated to freedom be converted into a slave State, those in the North who have been instrumental in it will be overwhelmed by the indignation of an outraged people.

The President having committed his last great political blunder, now, like a criminal-I use the term in no offensive sense-has availed himself of the privilege given by the policy of our laws to all persons in a like situation, to show cause why the judgment of those who intrusted him with power should be tempered with mercy. If he had exercised this right without impugning the motives of others, I should have respected his compulsory retirement and remained silent. But as he deemed it his privilege to do otherwise, my duty to those who sent me here would not allow me to say less than I have done. Against the President as a citizen and a gentleman, I know no fault. I hope he may live to a hale old age, and have time to reflect that in politics, as well as in morals, honesty is the best policy.

SPEECH

OF

HON. J. COLLAMER, OF VERMONT.

DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 9, 1856.

The Senate having under consideration the || This message of the President of the United following order, submitted by Mr. FITZPATRICK on the 2d instant:

Ordered, That the message and accompanying documents be printed, and that fifteen thousand additional copies be printed for the use of the Senate.

Mr. COLLAMER said: Mr. President, in entering upon my duties as a member of this body, I entertained the notion that legitimate discussion should be confined to questions-especially questions of importance-which were pending before the Senate. But, sir, I was early disappointed in this view. I soon ascertained that Senators with a large measure of age and experience and learning, considered that there were other, and perhaps more important duties, than those lying within the scope of legitimate discussion; and particularly one was, to prepare the public mind. My own opinion was, that the public mind should prepare itself, and should not receive its direction from the debates and action of either the Senate or House of Representatives in Congress assembled. Those bodies should rather be the echo than the formation of public sentiment. It seemed to me that it was transforming this body from a deliberative assembly to an arena of political party debate.

But my views, it appears, are mistaken entirely. Experience has shown the fact to be entirely different. That experience has been sustained by the example of men of the first position in the country, and it is now too late to question its propriety. Therefore, even as to subjects that are legitimately before us, and are proper topics of debate, discussion takes a very latitudinous range. Much the largest part of what is said here is not said for the purpose of producing an impression on the body who are supposed to be its auditors; but it is said, as the vulgar and common expression is, for Buncombe. I suppose it is now too late for this ever to be corrected. It must go on. Inasmuch as it does go on, all men of all parties must, more or less, participate in it. It is idle for a man to undertake to elevate himself to a position of affected dignity, from which he will not condescend to mingle in these topics. His constituents have been taught to expect other things of him; and they have been so taught by men of such high position that their expectations cannot be disappointed by their representative.

I make these remarks, sir, because some gentlemen have suggested that there is really no important question before us. I think there is not; but there is a subject before us that I consider of deep importance; and inasmuch as discussion has been commenced upon, I presume it must go on.

States, especially all that part of it which relates to the subject we have been talking about the regulation of slavery in the Territories of the United States-its style and manner, the occasion and the time when it has been presented to us, have made the impression upon my mind that, however exceptionable it might be in my humble judgment, and however in bad taste, that was not a point for us to settle-" de gustibus non est dispu tandum;" but I regarded it rather as the ebullition of an impotent sort of rage on the part of a disappointed, ambitious man, worthy of no particular notice. I believe that scarcely a man, perhaps not one, can now be found in this body, who would have ever desired that any such matter should be there; but it is there. It comes ex cathedra. It comes indorsed by the authority of the highest executive officer of this Government. It is sent to the world with that indorsement, backed by that authority. I do not therefore wonder that it should be thought worthy of

some answer.

Now, sir, what are the leading features of this part of the message? The President seems to have reversed the order in which the Constitution puts the schedule of his duties. It provides that the President "shall, from time to time, give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." What does this mean? It is, that he shall lay before Congress the condition of the country, with a view to showing them the necessity of the measures he recommends; but he reverses that order entirely in this message. He says it is his duty to recommend such measures as he thinks proper; and also his duty to lay before Congress the condition of the country; the state of the nation; whether that condition requires any action or not, or whether he recommends any action or not. That is a new version-a new order of things. The leading features of this part of the message which I regard as worthy of any consideration at all, consist of some extracts which I shall read. Speaking of the recent presidential canvass in the country, he says: "Under the shelter of this great liberty,"

That is, the liberty of advancing their own

opinions

"and protected by the laws and usages of the Government they assail, associations have been formed in some of the States of individuals who, pretending to seck only to prevent the spread of the institution of slavery into the present or future inchoate States of the Union, are really inflamed with a desire to change the domestic institutions of exist ing States."

2

This is a direct charge of false pretenses.

"They seek an object which they well know to be a revolutionary one."

Again:

"Well knowing that such, and such only, are the means and the consequences of their plans and purposes, they endeavor to prepare the people of the United States for civil war by doing everything in their power to deprive

the Constitution and the laws of moral authority."

Again:

"This attempt has been pointedly rebuked."

What attempt?

"The attempt of a portion of the States, by a sectional organization and movement, to usurp the control of the Government."

I wish to call attention to another expression which is not particularly offensive in its manner, but in reference to the subject-matter contained: "Revolutionary disorder in Kansas had its origin in projects of intervention, deliberately arranged by certain

members of that Congress which enacted the law for the organization of the Territory. And when propagandist colonization of Kansas had thus been undertaken in one

section of the Union, for the systematic promotion of its peculiar views of policy, there ensued, as a matter of course, counteraction with opposite views in other sections."

There is one other feature which is too obvious to require quotation, and that is a charge that a regular course of aggression upon the rights and privileges of the southern part of the United States has been undertaken and prosecuted.

old notion of the boys when at copper-playheads I win, tails you lose. [Laughter.]

What was the leading feature of the vote cast for Mr Fillmore? What principle did Mr. Fillmore hold? I do not know whether his party had a very full platform of resolutions; but I ask what did Mr. Fillmore hold on this great topic of which we are speaking? What are we talking about? The repeal of the Missouri compromise and the enactment of the KansasNebraska law, and the principles involved in that measure. What did Mr. Fillmore say of that, publicly and openly to the world? That the repeal of the Missouri compromise line was the Pandora's box of all our troubles. I take it that those who voted for him thought so. Then, on this very point upon which we are now talking, and which gentlemen say was an issue in the election, the votes for Mr. Fillmore and for Mr. Fremont should be counted together; and they, put together, decide against the doctrines of the Cincinnati platform, and of course against Mr. Buchanan who sustained it. It leaves the vote for Mr. Buchanan more than three hundred thousand in a minority. Is that rebuking the Republicans, or approving the doctrines and platform of the Democrats? Certainly not at all.

There is another feature of this message to which I wish to call attention before entering upon it at large. The President says, in substance, that whatever degree of success the Republican party did attain to any considerable extent, must be attributed to the exercise of deception-the use of false pretenses. What were the false pretenses? The principle they presented to the world was, that the General Government possessed the power of sovereignty over the Territories, and ought to exclude the institution of slavery there

Such are some of the slight charges which this message contains. They are couched in no unequivocal terms; there can be no mistake about them. Shall gentlemen tell us that it is in bad taste now for us to presume to say anything about this subject here? Did we begin it even upon this occasion? The course of gentlemen on this matter really reminds me of a good anecdote that I recellect used to be told by the late Judge McKin- from. He says that was a pretense, and the real

ley. When some lynching operation was going on in one of our southern States, there happened to be a stranger present, who protested against that kind of violence. He was taken aside by one of the gentlemen present, who said to him: "Stranger, this is a free country, and we shall do as we please about this business, and you shall not say anything about it." [Laughter.] r.] That is their definition of liberty. The President may say and do precisely what he pleases about this business, and we shall not say anything about it. I think we are called upon rightly and fairly to say something.

The President talks a great deal about what he considers settled by this election, and the rebukes which it has dealt out. I do not know what has been settled by this election, except one thing, and that is what was said by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BIGLER,] that Mr. Buchanan has been elected President; and I believe that is all that has been settled by the election. If anything else is settled, it should be settled by majorities; and I cannot but observe that gentlenten on the other side, in talking about majorities, always put down, as against the Republican party, or their candidate, Mr. Fremont, the whole number of votes cast for Mr. Buchanan, and the whole number of votes cast for Mr. Fillmore. They add them together, and then tell us how we are rebuked. Thus the majority against Mr. Fremont was composed of the votes cast for Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Fillmore united; but the majority against Mr. Buchanan was not the vote of Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Frémont united. That is another thing. You must have it arranged arithmetically, like the

purpose was to intermeddle with slavery in the States. What is the legal notion of false pretenses? It is that men attempt to do a thing by some professed design, and unless you can expose their covert design, they will succeed in their object; and the only way to prevent them is to expose their covert purposes. Apply that principle to this case. The President as much as says that the doctrine which they hold-the exclusion of slavery from the Territories of the Union-is a doctrine in which they will succeed, unless he can make it appear that it is a covert design-a trick, a pretense. He admits that on that principle they will succeed. We are told fairly, frankly, honorably, by the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. MASON,] that the candidate, whoever he was, whether a man of straw or not, was entirely immaterial. The question is, what is the principle involved? That Senator told us that whenever the principle which I have stated shall be adopted by the majority and asserted, then will come a time for separation. The President tells us that unless he can make out that that is not the design which they have in view, they will succeed in it. Is not this a precious confession? It is an obvious and logical one, though probably not intended.

But, sir, the probable ultimate success of that principle is not simply to rest upon this oblique confession of the President. It rests on some more important basis than this.

Whenever we see a set or a party of men come forward with new doctrines, the advancement of new principles, for the commencement of a new set of measures, we are apt to think, and we suppose we have good grounds for the presumption, that they are made for the occasion, and they are entitled to very little consideration, from the fact that they are got up simply for the time being. If that were the character of the principles advocated and sustained by the Republican party, if they are the mere creatures of the day, they would be very likely to be of ephemeral existence. If they are mere novelties, if they be the creatures of the hour, the figments of the brain at the moment, then, indeed, it might be supposed that they had some other, and oblique, and covert purpose in view, and they will not be likely to be sustained. Though the Republican party is a party which may be a new one, the principles which it sustains, the doctrines on which it is based, the purposes which it announces, may be very ancient. What I insist upon is, that these principles, these purposes, and these objects, are as old as, and older, than the history of this Government; and further, that they have been sustained at every stage of this Government,

which was written in the cabin of the Mayflower. That contained a great seminal principle; and when they entered upon their colonial course, so far as lay within the circuit of their power they exerted themselves to realize that idea. Their first impression was: every man shall own the land he cultivates, and every man shall himself cultivate the land he owns. They established at once the idea of fee-simple-yes, of allodial title. They struck off all the notions of primogeniture, and they went on in their progress in this way so long as they continued in their colonial condition. When at last, in the ordering of Divine Providence, the time arrived when they were compelled to assert their independence against the Government of England, what did they say? We have acquired that position; we have passed into that strength of manhood by which we are enabled to say, "You have no right to make laws for us without our being represented, you have no right to tax us without our consent." The right of government lies in the people of great principle that the declaration was made. These same principles were embodied more fully and more largely, and in all their latitude, in the Declaration of Independence. When the crisis arrived, our fathers of New England found themselves not standing alone in relation to these principles. They looked down a little south of them, and there were the people from the Republic of Holland ripe and ready for sustaining the same principles. A little further on they found all the free, equal principles of the Quakers

until within a very recent period. They are doc-this country. It was for the assertion of this

trines which entered into the very frame-work of our Government. They were not only brought forward and supported by the slaveholding community itself, but they have been reënacted and reëstablished and reaffirmed at every stage of our history, from the commencement of this Government for more than half a century. The progress of this country, under these principles, until within a very recent occasion, and the prosperity which has attended it, go fully to affirm the soundness of those principles. I shall contend further, that these principles, which are now reaffirmed and declared by the Republican party, have been trenched upon only within a short time past, by the action of the southern people for local purposes, entering upon a system of measures that have now called out and demanded the formation of this Republican party, for the purpose of redeclaring and fully sustaining the principles of their fathers.

Sir, when the settlement of this country commenced, the history of the human race in all its civil and social relations commenced a new era of progress; it began from a new starting point. The institutions of government in all the forms in which they had existed in the European world, were intended and expected to be sloughed off. The idea was that here there should be established a system of equal laws and of happy men. They commenced the settlement of this land with the great idea of a popular system of government-a system of government which implied democracy, if you please-a system of government which implied the elevation of every man in the community to occupy an equal position, and to exercise an equal power in the regulation of its concerns. It has been said by some that their idea was the establishment of a State without a king, and a church without a bishop. Yes, sir; but it was equally clear in their minds that they were to be not only clear of tyrants and of kings, but they were also to discard the whole idea of nobility. There was to be no hierarchy and no oligarchy. All that relationship with which the world in its progress had been embarrassed for centuriesunder whatever name, whether patrician and plebeian, whether patron and client, whether landlord and tenant, whether lord and vassal, whether master and slave-should cease in this country. This great idea took form first upon that little piece of paper not bigger than a man's hand,

who established themselves under Penn. A little

further on, they looked at the liberal provisions which were found in the colony established by the English Catholics under Lord Baltimore. Virginia, with all her high notions of chivalry, then entertained, if not to the same extent, but, I believe, with as good foundation as now, was ready for the same thing. The institution of slavery had been pressed upon them by another country. It constituted one of their grounds of complaint against the mother country. Society had not formed itself with any reference to dependence upon that institution and condition of things at that time.

Passing further south, they came to North Carolina, where the Presbyterians of Mecklenburg had put forth the first declaration of independence, in anticipation of that of the 4th of July, 1776. The free, liberal notions of the Huguenots were deeply implanted in the feelings of the people of South Carolina. All these colonies rose up in a body of men ripe and ready to sustain the people of New England in all those great principles and theories of civil government. They embodied them in the Declaration of Independence. They together hazarded their lives upon the high places of the battle-field, in common to assert them; and they succeeded. When we came to the formation of our Constitution of government, we are told that the people of the then States, recently colonies, were slaveholders. Yes, sir, so they were. I believe Massachusetts had adopted her constitution, which the court afterwards said, in its bill of rights, abolished slavery; but at that time they were hardly conscious of it. We may say that all of them, or all except Massachusetts, if you please, were slaveholders. What if they were? So much the better for my argument. I want to know what they who actually held slaves, one and all, did upon that occasion? What they did then, I take it, was not a war aimed at the South. It was not a narrow, mean prejudice against the local institutions of some particular State. They acted in common together. What did they do in forming the Constitution of the United States? And, after formingit, in exercising the powers which they created under it. They held slaves; they understood the evils of slavery. They understood what the system was. They were recently out of the great struggle for independence, and they then said, one and all, this institution is of that kind; it is so inconsistent with those great principles which we have declared to the world, and for which we have fought and bled; it is so illy adapted to the prosperity of the nation at large; it is so at war with the first principles of liberty within us, that we here deliberately say it shall not go into those parts of the Union which are beyond the jurisdiction of any particular States, and within the jurisdiction of the General Government.

I am aware that the ordinance of 1787 was adopted before the present Government came into operation; but, after the adoption of the Constitution, it was immediately reenacted, and established in perpetuity by an act of the First Congress. The title by which the United States held the territory beyond the Ohio, now making the five States on that side of the river, was of the same tenure precisely as that by which they acquired Louisiana from France. Both rest on the same footing. Every essential provision was the same in the two grants; the one from Virginia, and the other from France. I shall, therefore, in all I have to say of them, treat the conduct of the United States, in relation to these different Territories which they possessed, as being precisely the same, resting on the same principles, and identical in character.

What has been the effect? I shall hereafter show more fully, and at large, why the power of prohibiting slavery in the Territories has been exercised, and repeated and continued by an unbroken succession of acts from that time up to a very recent period-within the last ten years. Congress enacted them because the institution of slavery was one which they considered should cease; for, if it continued, it would produce a social and political condition of society incompatible with the great principles they had adopted. Now, what has been the progress of events? What has been the result and the fruit of that course? After the first Congress had declared the Territories, which they then owned, to be consecrated to freedom; after they had fully provided and declared that no slavery should exist there forever-as soon as they ended the Indian difficulties by the treaty of Grenville, and opened up that country for peaceable possession-then commenced that great wave of emigration, that great exodus of civil life which has astonished and commanded the admiration of the world. Even within my recollection, I can remember almost the very commencement of that great emigration. The people of New England and the East, looking to the West, commenced the first emigration, as I remember, into Western New York; they went on to the Genesee; and they then went on to the Holland purchase. The next wave passed on to Ohio. Then they passed over the great lakes into Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa and Minnesota. In the mean time, all along the borders of the Atlantic,

from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, and North Carolina and Virginia, you saw the boating across the Ohio, leaving the now mucheulogized institution of slavery, going with the West to swell the great tide of emigration, and add to the success of the great experiment in the cause of civil liberty.

We cannot but see in this a new phase in the history of the world. Nothing like it has ever been witnessed before. I know there had been irruptions at times of men passing from the north of Europe-the Goths and Vandals, the Huns and Scythians-to the south; but they were great hordes of barbarians marshaled by ministers and kings. There was no such thing in these tides of emigration. There was no Tamerlane, no Ghengis Khan; there was no Attila of the Huns. It was not an irruption visiting the wrath of God on the degenerate people. No, sir; it was the human family led out to possess its great patri, mony. Who could look with indifference upon an experiment like this?

We saw in it not merely an enlargement of our numbers and an increase of population; we admired it, not merely because the forest was cleared away, and farms, houses, and dwellings, towns and cities, churches and school-houses, were everywhere erected; but as it spread over the great fertile valleys of the West, its prairies and its fields and its mountains, we saw in it an enlargement and expansion of the great theory of government for which our fathers first landed here, which had been reasserted in the Declaration of Independence, which had been sustained by the acts prohibiting the extension of slavery. These people carried with them their household gods away to the foot of the Rocky Mount ains; and we saw in it a manifestation to the world at large of the great principles we held dear. Every man, especially every man in New England, realized that the best of his own blood was beating in their veins. Every man felt in duty bound to contribute of his example, his encour agement, and his substance, for the purpose of advancing and encouraging this great experiment in the cause of civil liberty and humanity; and if any man in New England should withhold his exertions, or withhold his means, his tongue would cleave to the roof of his mouth. And yet, sir, in all this the President can see nothing but a fanatical propagation of our peculiar domestic theories. It was spreading over the Territories those ameliorating conditions and influences that are spread over New England. He thinks that any man, and especially any set of men, who associate to assist in this experiment, are entitled to nothing but disapprobation and executive reprehension.

I fancy, sir, that those much-abused members of Congress-I know not who they were, but I suppose they were of both Houses who presumed to undertake to advance their aid towards the extension of this great institution over the Territories, were, in the President's view, doing nothing but "abolitionizing Kansas!" That such is all we have been doing, and that is all our fathers have been doing in what they have labored and suffered and fought and bled, for these two hundred years. We are daily abused for starting new theories of government, new views of the Constitution; and very ingenious riddles are put out for us. Those who view the subject in anything like the light in which I have attempted to present, it, feel very much as if we

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