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only till the next political fit should rend it into fragments and consign it to merited ignominy? What, for example, would be the fate of the great commercial emporium of our State, contributing now so largely to our wealth at home and our consideration abroad, when shorn of her markets by the amputation of our great rivers and the dismemberment of the great valley which she feeds, and by which she is fed? There is in truth no substantial interest in our State which would not be dwarfed in its dimensions and disparaged in its significance by the dismemberment of the Republic. It is passing strange that a man can be found in Missouri to advocate a policy so suicidal in its necessary and manifest results.

But aside from these considerations of interest, is nothing due to the ennobling sentiments of patriotism, of fidelity, of gratitude? I appeal to all these exalted sentiments when I assert that never was constituted authority over men administered more benignly than has been that of the Government of the United States over the State of Missouri. With more than parental care she protected your infancy from the exposures and the dangers of frontier life till the gristle of youth might harden into the bone of manhood. She admitted you into the family of States with all the rights and privileges of the original members. She generously extended your borders by adding the Platte country to your already wide domain. She has laid the foundation and furnished the means to establish and build up a splendid system of common schools, a brimming reservoir of living waters where every son and daughter of the State may drink in copious drafts of knowledge" without money and without price." She has richly endowed your higher institutions of learning, affording a generous culture to the ripened intellect of the State. She has aided in building up your benevolent policies and fostering your charitable establishments demanded by our Christian civilization for the benefit of the unfortunate of our race. She has laid her powerful hand on your great rivers, and commerce in mightier volumes courses in safety through these natural arteries of trade. She has founded your magnificent system of public works by princely grants of the national domain, without which the whistle of the locomotive would hardly have been heard in our State. She has granted millions of acres of swamp lands for general beneficent uses, in development of our physical resources or in further aid of our public establishments of education and benevolence. Even in the midst of this unnatural warfare waged against our national life, overlooking the disloyalty which has distempered so many of our citizens, she has just granted 400,000 acres of land lying beyond the borders of the State to endow agricultural colleges for the benefit of this your great industrial interest from generation to generation. In addition to all these acts of beneficent administration towards you and your children she, at the last Congressional session, gave you a crowning demonstration of her firm resolve never to give up Missouri, in that she has

adopted the central track for interoceanic communication traversing your State from its eastern to its western border, uniting you forever to her bosom by bands of iron. Thus the Pacific Railroad, the enterprise of the age in which we live, the great prize so long an object of interest and contest with many States, is destined to pour a continued stream of wealth into your lap, making the commerce of our own country and of the world tributary to the greatness of Missouri. It is not irrelevant to the purpose of this address for me to say that the bill for the construction of the Pacific Railroad was introduced by myself and, with some modifications proposed in committee, in most of which I concurred, was passed after a severe struggle over all opposition. How keenly should we disrelish the diminution or withdrawal of the mail service of the country, bringing to the door of every citizen, daily, news of the sayings and doings of men throughout the habitable globe, subserving the interests of friendship, of business, of science, of civilization; coming to us like those blessings of heaven, for which we cease to be grateful for the largeness of the bounty? How few of us reflect that this mail service is done for the State of Missouri by the Government of the United States at a cost to the national treasury of $500,000 per annum over and above the receipts of postage? What cheek does not mantle with shame to use and enjoy this daily bounty of the Government with a disloyal heart?

While this stream of beneficence has been poured upon us from the everwilling and heretofore overflowing treasury of the country, no direct tax has ever been paid to the Federal Government by any citizen of the State; we have been fully represented, amply protected, and have shared in the good name which our Government has won for us abroad as one of the foremost powers of all the earth.

Nor is this all. No man can point to a law on the statute book of the general Government calculated to oppress our citizens, to endanger any of our interests. On the contrary, all its legislation has tended to elevate our people, to develop our resources, to strengthen and invigorate our growth. Such, fellow-citizens, are some of the beneficent fruits which have been secured to us by our connections with the general Government as one of the States of the American Union. And is there a man in Missouri who asks me to raise my arm to destroy this Government and to break up this Union? For one I cannot, I will not, lend any aid to such a strange work as this. On the contrary, holding as I do the duties of protection and allegiance to be reciprocal, I am bound by every obligation of honor and of duty as a citizen to vindicate its authority and maintain its supremacy, and, if need be, to spend the last dollar and shed the last drop of blood in securing these objects.

The authority of the Government must be maintained, the integrity of the country vindicated, and the Union preserved against all assailants. The

war was brought upon the country by those in rebellion. Rebellion is war. Every ordinance of secession was a declaration of war, denouncing a forcible dislodgment of the authority of the Government. Every seizure of a fortification, every capture of a Government vessel, every occupation of a custom-house, every robbery of an arsenal, every plunder of a mint, every confiscation of loyal property was an act of war. The attack on Sumter was but the last feather that broke the endurance of the country, and it demonstrated the necessity of meeting the issue of force thus unequivocally tendered. In this issue the insurgents are the war party. The party of peace is the Government and those who sustain it, seeking by arms (the only means left to it) the restoration of the peaceful reign of law. The spear is entwined by the olive branch, and I see hope for the termination of this war when those who commenced it shall lay down their arms, return to their allegiance, and do their duty under the Constitution. On these terms, worthy of all acceptation, peace may be restored in a day. Those who continue the rebellion continue the war, and on them must rest the responsibility before God and man.

At the special session of Congress in July, 1861, the following resolution introduced by the venerable and patriotic Crittenden of Kentucky was voted for by every member of the House of Representatives present except Potter of Wisconsin and Burnet of Kentucky, the former an abolitionist and the latter a secessionist now a member of the rebel Congress. The resolution is as follows:

That this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights and established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired, and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

I voted for this resolution. I approved of it then; I approve of it now. It was in harmony with the tone of all the messages which had been sent to Congress by the President of the United States up to that time, and was approved by him. Afterwards and during the last session of Congress I voted for all those measures which were calculated to suppress the insurrection, increase the energies and strengthen the arm of the Government. If reëlected, I shall continue to do so-firmly convinced as I am that there is no hope for the success of free government on this continent if the experiment we are now making fails. The paramount object is to save this Government and the Constitution of the United States. For these grand and beneficent objects, and for these alone, ought this war to be prosecuted; and as these objects justify the assumption of arms, whatever stands in the way of reaching these objects ought to give place for without govern

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ment and nationality all else would be worthless to ourselves and our posterity.

In a speech delivered by me in Congress, on the 24th day of April last, which was extensively circulated, I used the following language:

My motto is, "Save the nation at any cost"; but believing as I do that the Constitution affords us the amplest power to do this, I am utterly opposed to its violation. Let it not be said, either, that I am governed by any purpose to shield and protect any interest which comes in contact with the safety of the Republic and the integrity of the Union. In regard to African slavery, I value far higher the permanency of the Government and the preservation of the Constitution for these are essential to our own liberties — than I do any question connected with the freedom or slavery of this inferior race of men.

These are my opinions to-day; and it lies in my way to examine in their light the recent proclamation of the President of the United States looking to the emancipation of slaves in certain revolted districts to be hereafter specified, on the contingency of their persevering in the rebellion. The proclamation proceeds upon the principle that to suppress the insurrection by withdrawing that which feeds it is strictly within the war power, and therefore constitutional. Without discussing the abstract proposition, I apprehend that the conduct of a statesman should be controlled by the practical elements which are involved in questions of public policy. I cannot agree with Mr. Lincoln in the expediency or necessity of so extreme a measure as this. Neither do I believe that it will be justified by the results. I do not think it will strengthen the Government. It is calculated to create distrust and division in the ranks of the great Union army. It is sure to intensify the feeling of opposition in the revolted States. If carried out it will do injustice to the great body of Union men in that quarter who are ready to rise and strike a blow for the Government when the day of their deliverance shall come. It may lead to servile insurrection, to scenes of cruelty and horror, involving the innocent with the guilty, the strong with the defenseless in indiscriminate ruin. Its action would be at war with the spirit of the age in which we live, and with those noble principles of enlightened civilization which form the corner-stone of our beautiful fabric of government. Let us shun these extreme policies. Our Government is yet strong in all the elements and material of war, and with an abounding patriotism in the hearts of the people all over the country, North and South, is amply able to overthrow this wicked attempt on the national life.

It may be said, however, in justice to the President, that by staying the execution of the proclamation for three full months he has demonstrated his willingness to preserve the country without the destruction of slavery and has fairly thrown the responsibility of saving the institution on those who

are in arms against their country. A simple return to duty, before the first of January, will render the proclamation inoperative. I dismiss this topic with an additional suggestion which I commend to the attention of the American people. The force of the proclamation as a war measure will be spent during the war. When the civil power shall be restored by the success of patriotic arms, the status of the "contraband" will be purely a judicial question to be determined by the Constitution and the laws. The word "forever" in the proclamation is breath and nothing more.

And now, fellow-citizens, if you choose to make me your representative in the Thirty-eighth Congress I shall continue as heretofore to labor for the promotion of the best interests of the people of the State of Missouri. No public measure calculated to advance these will fail to receive my earnest and unqualified support. Long identified with the people of the State, and knowing no other home, I feel that your interest is my interest; and for weal or for woe I mean to share with you a common destiny.

In the councils of the nation I shall coöperate with, and be guided by, the enlightened views and patriotic purposes of such men as the noble Crittenden of Kentucky, and that far-seeing Republican statesman, Judge Thomas of Massachusetts-feeling as I do, that with such experienced counsellors by my side, and in the light of their patriotic example, I cannot greatly err in the service of my country in this its hour of agony, of peril, and of gloom. No man may question my devotion to the Federal Union. It is the political divinity which I have worshipped from my infancy, and my heart sickens within me to see the demon of Disunion, the abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place. If

Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell,

how must the heart of Liberty and Humanity be wrung when the funeralpall shall be spread OVER THE GREAT REPUBLIC ? But my eye pierces the gloom!

Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great;
Humanity with all its cares,

With all its hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate.

Let us be true to our God-appointed mission! Let the men of this generation prove themselves equal to the emergency by vindicating the integrity of our country, by preserving and handing down to our posterity the priceless inheritance of popular government bequeathed to us by patriotic sires. Your fellow citizen,

COLUMBIA, October 27, 1862.

JAMES S. Rollins.

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