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OF

HON. WILL: CUMBACK, OF INDIANA,

ON THE

POLITICS OF THE COUNTRY;

DELIVERED

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 17, 1856.

WASHINGTON:

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE.

POLITICS OF THE COUNTRY.

The House having under consideration the question of

referring the President's Message to the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and the printing of ten thousand copies thereof

Mr. CUMBACK said:

Mr. SPEAKER: I do not propose to occupy all the time that is allowed me by the rules of the House in presenting what I desire to say in relation to this most extraordinary message, and the not less remarkable manner in which the friends of the Administration have attempted to defend

it. I am not one of those who this discussion unprofitable. It certainly has already disclosed the fact that the presidential canvass has settled no great principles-that on the great living question of the times, we are as much at sea as before. The election of the successful candidates has been advocated in one section of the Union by claiming for them that slavery would be extended into Kansas; while in the other section, on the banners of the same party, were emblazoned "Buchanan and Breckinridge and free Kansas;" and already we find that there is a want of harmony among the victors. It cannot be said that this discussion was brought on by the act of those on this side of the House. The President, who has become the arch-agitator of this question, is responsible for this renewed debate, for we are not of that craven spirit that we will sit silently by, and have our motives impugned, and our objects willfully misrepresented. assault upon the motives, the integrity,

the patriotism of those who cast their votes against the extension of slave labor and in favor of protecting free labor, we have arraigned him.

He charges that the Republican party, now numbering near a million and a half of the most patriotic and intelligent sons of our common country, are wanting in fidelity to the Constitution, and desire to overturn the Union of these States.

That charge on his part is entirely gratuitous, and without the shadow of foundation in truth. I ask his friends for the proof. We have interposed our flattest denial. Do they find it in the

Republican press? Do they find it in the avowed platform of principles of the party? Do they find it in the speeches of the acknowledged leaders and expounders of our political faith? No, sir, they find it nowhere; and their attempts to adduce the proof has been a most total failure, and the defense of that part of the message has been entirely abandoned. On the contrary, when the members of that party met to announce their purposes, and select their candidates for the contest, they unanimously promulgated this resolution as

of patriotic purposes:

Resolved, That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution, are essential to the preservation of our republican institutions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the Union of the States, shall be preserved.

Now, sir, I undertake to say, fearless of successful contradiction, a resolution so explicit in favor of the Union as the one I have just read, could not have passed the convention at Cincinnati unanimously. The Union at all hazards and under all circumstances, is not the sentiment of a large portion of the Democratic party in the South. It is with them the Union with provisoes and conditions. The Republicans intend, notwithstanding, that the Union shall be preserved: and they will not suffer the fanaticism of the South to remove a single pillar from the temple of American liberty. I commend the President, then, when he proposes to read lectures to those unfaithful in profession or practice to the Union of these

States, that he turn his face to the South; that he rebuke the Democratic journals in the South that are openly disunion in their professions; that he admonish sharply that class of politicians who make the threadbare threat, that when the government shall pass out of the hands of the slaveocracy into the hands of the free laboring masses, that they will not submit. "Physician, heal thyself," is a religious admonition that the President would do well to remember.

But, again, the President charges that the million and a half of the best and purest men of the country who have banded themselves together

for the good and peace of the Union, for the interest of the free white laborer, for the protection of the dignity, respectability, and value of free labor, are hypocrites-dishonest men; that they pretend to be in favor of one purpose, while in fact and in truth they are laboring for a totally different object. He says that while we are " pretending" to be in favor of the non-extension of slavery, we really desire to interfere with it in the States where it exists.

This misrepresentation is willful, and we have arraigned him for it; and gentlemen on the other side of the House have entered their appearance in his defense. What, sir, are the means used to rescue the President from the dilemma into which he has deliberately placed himself? What is the proof adduced in support of the message? It is of that character that only serves to convince the world of the falsity of the President's position and the feebleness of the defense. They come and produce as proof, not the platform of principle of the Republicans-not the speeches of avowed leaders, or the statements of the Republican press-but the opinions of a few individuals, and charge that to the Republican party, and urge it as a defense of the President. I hold this failure on their part to sustain the President, as well as the misstatements and falsity of this message, to be the highest possible commendation of the principles of the Republican party. The President dare not attempt to base his charges upon the avowed principles of the party, or dare his defenders attempt his justification in the same honest and manly way.

But, on the contrary, he erects his man of straw, makes out a platform of principles from his own imagination, and then, with an air of triumph, proceeds to destroy his own creation, Feeble would he be, indeed, if he were not able for such an effort. [Laughter.]

Suppose we were to hold the so-called Democracy responsible for the individual sentiments of men prominent in their councils, (and certainly they will accord to us the same right thus to reason and conclude that they have adopted themselves,) we could prove that their party was rank with disunion. We could show that the slave trade was a cardinal doctrine of that party; we could establish beyond doubt that they were in favor of polygamy, slavery, and murder. Ah, indeed, sir, what in the dark catalogue of human folly and wickedness could we not fasten upon them? But, sir, I scorn to resort to such logic. I regret that such a tone of argument has been introduced here it is unworthy the American

statesman.

sage. He charges that we desire to attack the "outposts of slavery." If, indeed, slavery has outposts beyond the limits of the slave States, I know not where they are, or how they constitutionally exist; but if the gentleman means that it is our purpose to prevent slavery from planting its outposts upon soil consecrated to freedom, then, indeed, he comprehends our purpose. We have no attack to make upon slavery, but will defend and maintain the outposts of freedom wherever they are, and at whatever cost. That, sir, is our whole purpose, and that, by the help of God, we will accomplish. “But," says the same gentleman, "what will be the consequence if you hem us in, and confine us to the limits of the slave States?" The able colleague of the gentleman [Mr. WARNER] took the same position last session, which I will present:

"There is not a slaveholder in this House or out of it, but who knows perfectly well that, whenever slavery is confined within certain special limits, its future existence is doomed; it is only a question of time as to its final destruction. You may take any single slaveholding county in the southern States, in which the great staples of cotton and sugar are cultivated to any extent, and confine the present slave population within the limits of that county. Such is the rapid, natural increase of the slaves, and the rapid exhaustion of the soil in the cultivation of those crops, (which add so much to the commercial wealth of the country.) that in a few years it would be impossible to support them within the limits of each county. Both master and slave would be starved out; and what would be the practical effect in any one county, the same result would happen to all the slaveholding States. Slavery cannot be confined within certain specified limits without producing the destruction of both master and slave. It requires fresh lands, plenty of wood and water, not only for the comfort and happiness of the slave, but for the benefit of the owner. We understand perfectly well the practical effect of the proposed restriction upon our rights, and to what extent it interferes with slavery in the States; and we also understand the object and purpose of that interference. If the slaveholding States should ever be so regardless of their rights, and their honor, as coequal States, to be willing to submit to this proposed restriction, for the sake of harmony and peace, they could not do it. There is a great, over

ruling, practical necessity, which would prevent it. They ought not to submit to it upon principle if they could, and could not if they would."

Slavery extension is an absolute necessity, to furnish fresh lands and fresh fields for the blight and curse of slavery, to prevent master and slave from perishing by starvation.

Sir, there is no crowding in the slave States yet. In the State represented by the gentlemen, while they have improved but six millions of acres of their land, there is still in the same State sixteen millions unimproved. There is no necessity for such a demand yet for the slaveholder in Georgia. From the census of 1850 we find that the slave States have not yet occupied one fourth of the territory within their limits. But, be that as it may, the advancement of such a reason for the extension of slavery is startling to the wellreasonable men everywhere of the patriotic purpose of the Republicans.

Sir, these special pleas, this feeble defense for the President, will not save him from the verdict that will be rendered against him by honest, intel-wisher of his country, and is sufficient to convince to the Pacific, when we have fifty slave States, with twenty-five million slaves, and no more room to expand?

ligent men in all sections of the country, for his willful misrepresentation of a great, wise, patriotic, and growing party in this country.

Mr. Speaker, the honorable gentleman from Georgia [Mr. CRAWFORD] made an able defense for the President on this floor yesterday. It was calm; it was eloquent; it was dispassionate. But, sir, he seems to have fallen into the same error that has found its way into the President's mes

Sir, when but one fourth of the territory given to slavery is occupied, and when there are now but three million slaves, and we are admonished that they want room for self-preservation-to expand over the free Territories to preserve the existence of master and slave, I ask, what will be the condition of things when slavery is extende

If, indeed, slavery is becoming dangerous and burdensome on your hands now, what will it be then upon your children?

But this cry for room is fallacious. It is not room that you are so anxious to obtain, but power-political power-the power of him who directs labor against those who labor-the power of the three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders against the millions of free laborers from all parts of the Union. When I stated, last session of Congress, that the Kansas bill was passed, the Missouri compromise repealed, simply to strengthen political power in the South, gentlemen on the other side manifested much sensitiveness, and denied any such purpose. Northern and southern men both said it was "to allow the people to be perfectly free to form their own institutions in their own way." Southern men said they did not expect it would be a slave State; but that the restriction was an odious discrimination against them. Were not the people of Oregon and Minnesota entitled to be "perfectly free" also, and was not the restriction around those Territories as odious as the other? Yet you never have complained of those restrictions. You have not taken the same zealous interest in the enlargement of their rights. The answer is obvious; and it is manifest to all men, that where you could not get power you cared not for the principle. The new Governor of South Carolina, in his inaugural, which I received this morning, makes an honest disclosure of your purposes. He says:

"Now, in order to preserve, in some measure, the power to protect the rights of the southern States in this behalf, we must preserve the equilibrium between the two sections in at least one of the Federal Councils. That equilibnum in the Senate was disturbed by the irregular admission of California-it may be restored by the admission of Kan

sas."

When you complain to us for want of roomwhen you talk to us about popular sovereignty, and making men "perfectly free," and all that, it is all well enough; but the great object that underlies it all is to maintain political supremacy in the hands of the slave power, and that power will be exerted to extend itself wider and wider; and yet at the same time you freely confess that, if unduly confined, this institution will involve all in certain destruction. Sir, if these results are to follow, then indeed is it the solemn duty of every man who loves his country, and feels an interest for her future and the safety of his own posterity, to confine the evil to its present limits, and let those who enjoy its blessings and hug it to their bosoms manage it in their own way and at their own time. It is a matter of your own; we neither wish nor desire any interference in its management; but it is unfair and unchristian for you to involve our posterity in the evils that will necessarily follow the extension of your own local institution. Republican principles are right, and I am proud to be an humble member of that party. True, I was defeated in the last canvass, and beaten by a ballot-box polluted with illegal votes; yet, sir, I do not abate in the least degree my ardor

for the principles I have always held. We, as a political party, are not looking to the interests of a section, but looking to the interest of the whole country-to the interest of all men at the North, and the non-slaveholder at the South; and, as I have repeatedly stated, we leave the slaveholder where we find him.

I am a Republican, because we stand by the Constitution in all its requirements. We say that free speech and a free press are essential to the preservation and perpetuity of our free institutions. To purchase these great constitutional rights my own ancestors poured out their blood; yet, so far as fifteen States of this Union are concerned, they made the sacrifice in vain. As slavery advances, the Constitution of the United States, in these the most essential features, becomes null and void.

Sir, I am not in favor of extending African slavery and limiting American freedom. When we extend the former, we limit, restrain, and prohibit the other. Many excellent men have been driven from the South for simply exercising their constitutional right.

But gentlemen of the slave States say to me, "Do you wish to come and speak your political sentiments and excite insurrections among our slaves?" I say I have no such desire; but when you tell me that such discussion is dangerous to your institutions, you confess to me that, to completely maintain slavery, you have to strike a blow at the Constitution itself. Before you read long lectures to us upon our constitutional duty, may I be permitted to suggest that you pluck the beam out of your own eyes that you may see more clearly what you will do for others?

But gentlemen of the South say that we are opposed to equality in the Territories, and that we desire to legislate for ourselves to the exclusion of them. I say no. I say that we are willing that you men who own slaves shall come to the Territories of the United States upon precisely the footing, and with the same rights and privileges, that we enjoy when we go into those Territories. What more can you ask? Are you made out of any better material than we are? Has God given you more rights and privileges than He has bestowed upon us? Why cannot you be content to come with your own hands and your own strong arms, and hew out civilization out of the western wilds by the side of us and upon the same platform with us? If indeed you were excluded by us, you would have reason to complain; but we say to you, come; but when you propose to come and introduce a species of labor that will strike down our labor, that will take away half of its value, that will degrade it and put us upon a level with your slaves, then we enter our protest; we say, no, come as we come; labor as we labor; we will strike hands together and build up free institutions, and cause the wilderness to bud and blossom as the rose.

Gentlemen say it is a question between fifteen slave States and sixteen free States. Not at all. It is a question whether the slave power-the few men interested in the institution of slavery-are to control the Territories of the United States, and govern the country, or whether the millions

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