the rights of the slave States guaranteed to
them. That was the express ground; the
preservation of the Union.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. They hitched off some-
what, after a little, into State rights. But it
began with SOUTHERN rights. Now, what
did that mean? Not national rights; not
State rights; but Southern rights. Now,
what are Southern rights as distinguished
from Northern rights, but the right to hold
slaves? Is it anything else? As late as the
19th of April, 1861, when a certain ticket
was elected in Baltimore, to send members to
the Legislature at Frederick, it was brought
out as a "Southern rights ticket," But let
us read the authorities. What said Alexan-
der H. Stephens, in his great speech, in Sa-
vannah, in March, 1861?
" The question of African slavery, as it ex-
ists among us, was the immediate cause of
the late rupture, and present rebellion. * *
Our new government is founded, its corner-
stone rests upon the great truth that slavery
is the negroes' natural and normal condition.
This is the chief stone of the corner in our
new edifice."—1 Reb. Rec. Doc. 45, 46.
And Mr. Spratt—L. W. Spratt, of South
Carolina, who has furnished to this rebellion
more brains than any other two men who
have had anything to do with it—what said
he in his letter of February 13, 1861 ?
" The contest is not between the North and
South as geographical sections merely, there
can be no contest; nor between the people
of the North and the people of the South, for
our relations have been pleasant, and on neu-
tral grounds there is still nothing to estrange
us. * * But the real contest is between the
two forms of society which have become established,
the one at the North and the other at
the South. The one embodies in its politi-
cal structure the principle that equality is the
right of man; the other that it is the right
of equals only. In the one there is hireling
labor; in the other slave labor. * * Slavery
was within its grasp, (' the grasp of the gov-
ernment,') and forced to the option of ex-
tinction in the Union, or of independence out,
it dares to strike, and it asserts its claim to
nationality, and its right to recognition among
the leading social systems of the world
Such being the nature of the contest, the
Union has been disrupted in the effort of slave
society to emancipate itself.
Why is it that they sang paeans to " Mary-
land, my Maryland," but because we had one
institution in common with them? I say
then, as I said before, slavery is too costly a
luxury. I has cost us a debt of $1,700,000,-
000 within the last three years. It has cost
us more desolated hearthstones, more pre-
cious lives—sir, they cannot be estimated.
What passes in your streets every day, as
the Blow funeral march moves along to yon-
der resting-place? Day before yesterday four
were carried there; yesterday there were |
eight. How many to-day? How many to-
morrow? And this is but me little place.
Look where in their gory beds sleep the thou-
sands and tens of thousands. And this is the
result, says Mr. Spratt, of the effort of slave
society to emancipate itself.
From these considerations—not to detain
the Convention longer—I believe it to be the
interest of Maryland to extinguish slavery here
at the earliest practicable day. I shall, there-
fore, vote for this article. I believe it right,
and therefore I vote for it. And believing it
right, I will say with Luther of old—" Here
I stand, God help me. I can do nothing else."
Mr. SANDS. Mr President, if it is not too
late, I will go on now.
Mr. MILLER. Will the gentleman from
Howard (Mr. Sands) allow me a few mo-
ments to put myself right in regard to a his-
torical question ?
Mr. SANDS. There will be time enough
for the gentleman to-morrow, I have but
little time now to say what I have to say.
Mr. President, I have but little lime to
waste in a war of words, else I should pay
my respects to several members of this Con-
vention. But I must do it in one individual
case. That of my friend 'from Prince George's
(Mr. Clarke,) because the scene of to-night
reminds me so strongly of that of last night,
when in the opening part of his speech he
gave me the treat of transporting me, at least
in imagination, from this hall and this time,
back to that splendid epoch in English litera-
ture, which characterized the close of the
last century and the opening of the present.
He made me believe for a time that I was ab-
solutely transplanted or transported from
Annapolis to London, and that, I was in one
of its halls listening to one of Campbell's
very eloquent lectures on poetry. Somehow
or other—perhaps it was because I was trans-
ported in imagination to London—somehow
or other London bridge, and one of London's
poets came up in my mind, and I could not
help mentally repeating some lines from Tom
Hood:
"One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath;
Rashly importunate,
Gone to his [political] death," [Laughter.]
I had proposed treating my friend to a
little poetry myself, but as my time is short
I will content myself with a single line :
Drum wolle nur, was edel, thu' nur was
rechte.
Now that poetry may be amusing, but I
tell you it is very appropriate, it is a line
from a long string of advice, good advice,
too, which an old Viking gave to his son,
when he was about leaving this world, in re-
gard to the treatment he should give his ser-
vants, Translated it reads thus : |
