Mr. CLARKE. With Governor Hicks' per-
mission.
The PRESIDENT, The gentleman must not
interrupt the speaker in this manner.
Mr. CUSHING. Without Governor Hicks'
permission. I never have thought, nor do I
now think, that Governor Hicks acted up to
the full measure of his duty at that time,
But while I think he failed essentially in that
strong manliness that should have led him to
have stood up boldly against men who were
then attempting the controversion and the
subversion of the laws and the suprem-
acy of the United States, still I believe
that but for the partial resistance of the
Governor, they would have succeeded,
and gladly succeeded, in sweeping our
State into the vortex of secession. Their
failure to do this, I do hold, was due to the
partial resistance of Governor Hicks, aided
by the knowledge that hundreds and thou
sands at the North had arisen at the first shot
fired at Fort Sumter, teaching us that we
dare not put ourselves in the way of such an
avalanche. And when a few days alter the
outbreak at Baltimore, when the people came
to decide upon the members to be sent to the
State Legislature, then about to assemble, the
vote of the minority in that election was so
terribly potent, and revealed within that
community so strong an opposition to the
views that those representatives entertained,
that per force they had to pause.
Now, if we had had a Governor of the
principles entertained by a certain ex-Gov-
ernor, who professed to be the exponent of
the opinions of the democratic party—I refer
to Enoch Louis Lowe—I would ask the gen-
tleman if he thinks that, with that man in
the gubernatorial chair, Maryland to-day
would halve been in the Union? And dees
not the gentleman believe that, had that in-
dividual been in the executive chair of this
State, the flood of civil war would have
swept over the plains of Maryland? He
would have been a proper Governor to con-
trast with Governor Hicks, as a man repre-
senting diametrically opposite views upon
the fundamental question of the supremacy
of the Federal Government—which is the
question at issue before this Convention. I
say that Enoch Louis Lowe would have been
the proper representative of principles oppo-
site to these maintained by Governor Hicks;
and I cite those two men as representatives
of opposite views, the one in contra-distinc-
tion to the other. And I ask gentlemen—
who with me lived in a portion of this com-
munity when a man dared not, in the streets
of the city where he lived, say that he stood
up for the Union of these United States, because
he would be mobbed; when, for the
same reason, he dare not visit the graves of
his fathers and say, " I hold to that which
you taught me as my duty;" when every
right which had been secured by us from the |
glorious past was scorned and scouted by an
outrageous mob—I ask those gentlemen to
tell me if they believe, with Enoch Louis Lowe
in control of the destinies of this State, this
civil war would have been averted?
The gentleman has told us that the cause of
the war was a coterie of Governors of North-
ern States and so-called Union men in the
BORDER=0 States. The cause of the war? As to
that let history speak. Why, sir, the cause
of this war can be found as far buck at least
as the day when Thomas Jefferson said—I
quote not the words exactly, but I give his
idea—" I tremble when I remember that God
is just; and if ever a conflict shall arise on
the subject of this dark blot upon our national
escutcheon, I fear we cannot count upon
having the aid of the Almighty with us; be-
cause, having began with the proud and gen-
eral position that immortal souls were created
alike by their Creator, we now deny to these,
slaves even the knowledge of the God who
made them, I fear that Omnipotence will be
against us." The cause of the war? Why
sir, we can go back for more than thirty
years and find that the people of this country,
or at least the portion where this civil war
is now raging most fiercely, have been in-
structed by a man who was instigated by all
that was fiendish, so fair as the interests of
this country were concerned, and gifted with
all the subtlety that the father of lies could
give him; who for thirty years wielded the
minds of one portion of our country as a
strong man would wield the actions of a
child, who instructed them year after year
that unless slavery could control the whole
power of this Government, unless the exten-
sion of slavery was to be without limit, then
this Government had better be destroyed, for
he, like his disciples, would rather rule in
hell than serve in heaven. They could not
bear that the embrowned and hardened hand
of labor should rule them. They could not
hear that the voice of labor, speaking through
the people of the North, should be as power-
ful as that which they desired to exert. They
could not bear that their claim of right to the
offices of the Government, that their almost
hereditary Tight of legislation upon all that
concerned their respective States should give
way before the broad light of the intelligence
of the North, and what have they done?
Through the mouth of their present leader—
Mr. Jefferson Davis—they have trumped up
the cry that the North having sold their slaves
South, and having got rid of their slave
property at high prices when it had ceased to
be valuable, is bound by the terms of the
contract, and by the good faith of a vendor,
to hold to the original compact, which they
had refused to do.
But does the gentleman remember that a
stronger man than Jefferson Davis, a man
especially selected by the Secessionists so that
if in the Providence of God it should so hap- |
