States; and now we find that South Carolina
and other States are allowed to violate these
laws at pleasure. It would have broken up
the government. We should have had State
against State, and continued anarchy would
have taken the place of the prosperity of
which the gentleman speaks.
Then follow our history up to the year
1850. Did not the same State rights school
of politicians then try to break up the govern-
ment again, and was it not the power that
existed in Clay and Webster that came to the
rescue, aided by the noble Douglas and Foote
and others, who saved the country again and
again by compromises. Then this same
Franklin Pierce rode into power; and be-
cause they could not kill the government, it
recuperated. That was the reason of our
prosperity.
So we went on until these good old men
died; until Clay and Webster and such men
had departed; and then they commenced
with these doctrines again, and again they
tried to break up the government. Was it
for any fault of the government? No, sir;
their great Vice-President Stephens said it
was the best government the sun ever shone
upon; and be went on to describe the state of
affairs; that the South had had the majority
of Presidents, Vice-Presidents, members of
the Supreme Court, foreign Ambassadors,
and officers in every department of the gov-
ernment. Yet because Abraham Lincoln was
elected President of the United States, before
he had even taken his seat, this same South
Carolina Seized upon the pretext to go out of
the Union, and other States followed, upon
the States' rights doctrine. Far from sus-
taining the government, they did all they
could to break up the government, and to
dishonor the power that checked and re-
strained them, until at last they got a poor,
weak, decrepid old granny in the Presidential'
chair, who first connived at their action and
then announced the paradox, that there was
no right of secession, and yet that there was
no power contained in the Constitution by
which a State could be coerced; a paradox
which I did not think any gentleman would
stake his professional reputation here at this
enlightened day in maintaining; but I find
the old poison still in the blood of some of
the men who cannot get rid of it. While the
President announced this new doctrine of the
Constitution in such a way as to show his
sympathy for Southern traitors, tie allowed
them to scatter his navy, to seize upon the
government and to plot treason under his
nose until they had brought about this state
of war and bloodshed which we now see
around us. If General Jackson had been in
the Presidential chair, or Millard Fillmore,
who dared to execute the fugitive slave law
in the very streets of Boston, do you believe
we should have been in this terrible condi-
tion now? No, sir; it is the legitimate re- |
sult of this political heresy, this damning
doctrine of States' rights.
We have thought proper to let gentlemen
expound their theories here, although we be-
lieved that they were long since exploded, as
they seemed to want them to go down to
posterity. We have often been admonished
that posterity will cry "shame" upon us if
we allow our liberties to go, and allow this
usurpation on the part of the National Gov-
ernment. I am willing to meet the responsi-
bility of opposing to the very death such a
dangerous doctrine as this. Posterity will
cry shame upon them who in the midst of
civil war brought upon us by this doctrine,
still stand up in this Convention, allowed to
stand here by the leniency of the central gov-
ernment and nothing else, and proclaim to us
that the people are not with us and that pos-
terity will cry "shame" upon us. We are
willing to take the responsibility, and when
it comes to the vote we will show the gentle-
man by the ratification of the people of Mary-
land that they mean the same thing,
But I will now come to the arguments of
the gentlemen. They do not exactly agree
it seems to me upon this point; which shows
that when they come to these political ab-
stractions and heresies they get muddled and
do not all come out in the same place. Each
one strikes out in a track by himself through
the swamp, and no one knows where to get
out. But I will not reach the helping hand.
to get them out, but wilt leave them where
the" have placed themselves.
One gentleman from Prince George's, (Mr.
Belt,) has declared that the State had all the
sovereignty as colonies, as States, from the
very beginning; that they never ceded any ;
that the general government was the mere
agent for the time being to execute the be-
hests of the sovereignty of the State. That
goes a good deal beyond Calhoun. We have
the Scripture reversed; for the Scripture tells
us that the disciple shall never be above his
Lord, nor the servant above his master,
while they have got above everything.
But the other gentleman, (Mr. dark,) did
not want to go so far; because that doctrine
leads right out into secession, and even be-
yond, if there is such a thing as going
beyond it,—because it is not even a com-
pact, but the relation of principal and
agent merely, and if so, the principal
can withdraw at any time he pleases and
leave the agency out in the cold. Unwilling
to go so far, because afraid of this word se-
cession, and unwilling to come square up to
it they dodge around and say they do not
mean secession—they mean revolution. I
shall show before I am through that Calhoun
said be did not mean secession either. He
never called himself a secessionist, but a rev-
olutionist. Lest I should forget it, I will
now read what Calhoun said upon that point,
contained in the appendix to a speech by |
