on the 28th of March last modified by the mover and passed by the votes of twenty-six senators out of forty-six who were present and voted,1 in the following words, viz. : Resolved, That the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both. Having had the honor, through the voluntary suffrages of the American people, to fill the office of President of the United States during the period which may be presumed to have been referred to in this resolution, it is sufficiently evident that the censure it inflicts was intended for myself. Without notice, unheard and untried, I thus find myself charged on the records of the Senate, and in a form hitherto unknown in our history, with the high crime of violating the laws and Constitution of my country. . . . Under the Constitution of the United States the powers and functions of the various departments of the Federal Government and their responsibilities for violation or neglect of duty are clearly defined, or result by necessary inference; . . . each of the three great departments is independent of the others in its sphere of action, and when it deviates from that sphere is not responsible to the others further than it is expressly made so in the Constitution. In every other respect each of them is the coequal of the other two, and all are the servants of the American people, without power or right to control or censure each other in the service of their common superior [the people], save only in the manner and to the degree which that superior has prescribed. . . . Tested by these principles, the Resolution of the Senate is wholly unauthorized by the Constitution, and in derogation of its entire spirit. It assumes that a single branch of the legislative department may, for the purposes of a public censure, consider and decide upon the official acts of the Executive. But in 1 Notice that this falls short of the two-thirds majority that would have been necessary to convict Jackson had he been tried on a regular charge of impeachment. no part of the Constitution is the President subjected to any such responsibility, and in no part of that instrument is any such power conferred on either branch of the Legislature. . . . The impeachment, instead of being preferred and prosecuted by the House of Representatives, originated in the Senate, and was prosecuted without the aid or concurrence of the other House. The oath or affirmation prescribed by the Constitution was not taken by the Senators, the Chief Justice did not preside, no notice of the charge was given to the accused, and no opportunity afforded him . . . to be heard in his defense. . . . The honest differences of opinion which occasionally exist between the Senate and the President in regard to matters in which both are obliged to participate are sufficiently embarrassing; but if the course recently adopted by the Senate shall hereafter be frequently pursued, it is not only obvious that the harmony of the relations between the President and the Senate will be destroyed, but that other and graver effects will ultimately ensue. If the censures of the Senate be submitted to by the President, the confidence of the people in his ability and virtue, and the character and usefulness of his Administration will soon be at an end, and the real power of the Government will fall into the hands of a body holding their offices for long terms, not elected by the people and not to them directly responsible.... With this view, and for the reasons which have been stated, I do hereby solemnly protest against the aforementioned proceedings of the Senate as unauthorized by the Constitution. . . The resolution of the Senate contains an imputation upon my private as well as upon my public character, and, as it must stand forever on their journals,1 I cannot close this substitute for that defense which I have not been allowed to present in the ordinary form without remarking that I have lived in vain if it be necessary to enter into a formal vindication of my character and purposes from such an imputation. . .. In the history of conquerors and usurpers, never in the fire of youth nor 1 As a matter of fact, after a bitter fight in the Senate lasting for three years, and headed by Thomas H. Benton, the resolution was expunged, January 16, 1837. 68. The specter of disunion, 1830-1832 [230] in the vigor of manhood could I find an attraction to lure me ... Andrew Jackson "The secession movement," says Professor Houston, "dates definitely from 1824. In the period from 1824 to 1832 all the principles that were fought for in the Civil War were formally enunciated by South Carolina, and a determination to apply them, if it should become necessary, was repeatedly expressed." In 1830 George McDuffie, Congressman from South Carolina, a sensational orator, and a most extreme advocate of state sovereignty, denounced the oppressive tariff measures in a fiery speech before a crowded House. 1 D. F. Houston, A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina, p. v. It is vain, then, that the people of the South attempt to palter with this question, or to disguise any longer the sad reality of their condition. They have no security against taxation, but the will of those who have a settled interest and a fixed determination to increase their burdens; they have no rights of property, no title to that commerce which gives the principal value to the productions of their industry, which they do not hold by the same miserable and degrading tenure. They are, to all intents and purposes, the slaves of northern monopolists. If I were called on to give a definition of slavery, I could not use language more appropriate than that which should accurately describe the condition of the people of the Southern States. There is no form of despotism that has ever existed upon the face of the earth, more monstrous and horrible than that of a representative Government acting beyond the sphere of its responsibility. Liberty is an empty sound, and representation worse than a vain delusion, unless the action of the Government be so regulated that responsibility and power shall be co-extensive. Now, I would be glad to know, under what responsibility the majority of this House act, in imposing burdens upon the industry of the southern people, and in waging this merciless warfare against their commerce. Are they, in the slightest degree, responsible to those upon whom they impose these heavy burdens? Have they any feelings of common interest or common sympathy to restrain them from oppression and tyranny? Does the system of prohibitory duties, which falls with such destructive power upon the dearest interests of the southern people, impose any burden, or inflict any injury at all, upon the constituents of that majority by which it has been adopted? The very reverse of this is the truth. The majority which imposes these oppressive taxes upon the people of the South, so far from being responsible to them, are responsible to the very men who have been, for the last ten years, making the welkin ring with their clamors for the imposition of these very burdens. Yes, sir, those who lay the iron hand of unconstitutional and lawless taxation upon the people of the southern States, are not the representatives of those who pay the taxes, or have any participation in it, but the representatives of those who receive the bounty, and put it in their pockets. . . . I am aware that the answer given to all this will be, that it is the right of the majority to govern, and the duty of the minority to submit. There is no political principle more undeniably true, in all the cases to which it properly applies. . It is contrary to the clearest principles of natural justice, that the majority, merely because they have the power, should violate the rights and destroy the separate and peculiar interests of the minority. This would make power and right synonymous terms. The majority have no natural right, in any case to govern the minority. It is a mere conventional right, growing out of necessity and convenience. On the contrary, the right of the minority to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, without any unjust interference on the part of the majority, is the most sacred of the natural rights of man. When the great antagonistic interests of society become arrayed against each other, particularly when they are separated by distance, and distinguished by a difference of climate, character, and civil institutions, the great object of the Government should undoubtedly be, not to become the partisan of either of those interests, but to interpose its power for the purpose of preventing the stronger from destroying the weaker. Instead, however, of assuming this attitude, instead of restraining the major interest from doing this act of injustice and oppression, this Government degrades itself into the character of a partisan of the stronger interest, and an instrument of its oppression. It cannot be otherwise, sir, as long as the majority in Congress, being nothing more than the agent of the major interest in the Confederacy, assumes the power of arbitrarily and unjustly appropriating to its own use the rightful and exclusive property of the minority. Only a few weeks before this speech of McDuffie's in the House, Daniel Webster, in his famous reply to Senator Hayne of South Carolina, had given classic expression to the doctrine of the sovereignty of the Union, basing his یات۔ |