No, sir; they never did; and if they had, the
time never would have come when oppression
would have been acknowledged to exist by
those who committed the oppression.
I will give you the programme of my po-
litical faith, and while I condemn, as I do
most certainly, the action of South Carolina
in leaving this Union, not only in virtue of
any claim under the Constitution which I ut-
terly reject, while I pronounce judgment
against that action a revolutionary right,
I am bound to affirm what I do think. I
have not a doubt about the regularly and
gradually increasing outrages upon the South
by the North. I am not quoting books of
history, but giving my own opinion, which
may be worth very little. I believe that the
spirit which has led to these outrages, origi-
nated with such men as Wendell Phillips and
Garrison. I believe our property was con-
tinually growing less and less secure. I be-
lieve that increasing majorities in the two
Houses of Congress would have encouraged,
cultivated, continued to increase those acts
which I call oppression. I believe if South
Carolina had remained, had submitted to the
injury—vastly less than many of her neigh-
bors, our own State among them, were expe-
riencing—if she had remained and had not
taken a step altogether wrong, altogether .to
be censured, if she had remained until these
Northern aggressions had assumed an attitude
and magnitude which, in the language of
Mr. Jefferson, made the injuries inflicted upon
them no longer tolerable, every slave State in
the Union, would have united in the expres-
sion of the opinion that the time had come
when separation was necessary for the peace
both of the South and the North, that it was
no longer possible for the slave States and
free State's to continue together. I believe,
further, in my soul I believe that when that
period arrived, when that Union of all the
slaveholding States had thus culminated in a
unanimous declaration of their wish, their
purpose, no longer to continue in this Union,
the answer of the North would have .been—
let us separate in peace. I believe there would
have been no considerable objection. Prior
to the attack upon Sumter, but after the de-
claration made by South Carolina of its in-
tention to secede, I was in the North, and I
saw some men who are now as rabid as any
men can be, with virus enough to inoculate
any community—I heard these same men
saying: " Let them go." I doubt whether
there is a gentleman here who can say that
be had a notion that there would be any re-
spectable opposition on the part of the North
to the sentiment that South Carolina should
be permitted to go, until after the attack upon
Fort Sumter had inflamed the whole North-
ern mind.
(The hour of one o'clock having arrived,
the hammer fell.)
On motion of Mr. STIRLING, |
Leave was granted to Mr. Chambers to pro-
ceed—ayes 47, noes not counted.
Mr. CHAMBERS proceeded: I have given my
opinion of the obligation upon the people of the
United States to observe the mandates of the
Constitution. What they are, and who is to
judge of them. I say that the Supreme Court
of the United States is the arbiter. But I
am a little of a Jackson man in that particu-
lar. General Jackson thought that this doc-
trine led to a very ridiculous conclusion. He
said that every man must judge of the Con-
stitution for himself, as he certainly took the
liberty to do—no doubt about that—so he did
about everything else. I cannot go so far as
some gentlemen do, that when laws are
passed, manifestly in violation of the Consti-
tution of the United States, you are bound to
maintain them until the court decides the
question. But what is meant here? Do you
mean to make no resistance, or to yield obe-
dience? if you do not merely mean non-re-
sistance, I dissent from it. The government
orders certain soldiers to seize upon certain
persons or property, and the order is uncon-
stitutional, Marshal Murray seizes upon a
man and incarcerates him; and the man turns
round and sues him. That is not obedience
to the law. That is not allegiance to the
sovereign. Marshal Murray has been sued
and a jury of New York punish him and
mulct him in the sum of $90,000. There was
a similar case in Pennsylvania, The indivi-
dual did not choose to submit, but tried the
question of legality before a jury, in one of
the western counties of Pennsylvania, and
they gave him a verdict, of $60,000. That I
say is resistance to the government; for I
take it for granted that those respectable gen-
tlemen who wear the insignia of major-generals
would not act without orders from the
government. There are many such cases of
resistance.
I say that any man if siezed under an act
of Congress, professing to be paused by virtue
of some power vested in that Congress by the
Constitution of the United States, has not
only a right, but that it is his duty as a good
citizen, to be perfectly satisfied from the best
light he can obtain, and to consult the best
counsel—of course I always advise that—
and if he comes to the conclusion that there
is an unconstitutional exercise of power on
the part of Congress, it is his duty to test
that question, and to carry it to the Supreme
Court of the United States. In such a case,
I should certainly advise a man to sue, not in
the Supreme Court of the United States, but
to appeal to the ordinary judicial power of
the State of Maryland, which now proposes
I think very unnecessarily, to commend itself
to the favorable notice of the General Gov-
ernment by voluntarily tendering its allegi-
ance to that Government alias the President.
I had something to say in regard to the
present condition of the country, but I for- |
