me in personal connection, both family and
social connection, and of both sexes, had
abandoned their allegiance to this govern-
ment, and regarded themselves as foreigners
to it, simply because under the principles of
this institution they had begun to regard
themselves as better than other people, and
because that fixed in their minds a bond of
union between them and the South, and which
no other bond of union could crush out of
them. I found it was a bond of sympathy
based upon an institution, something which
they supposed allied them to the better classes
of this country. I could not mistake that in
their minds, if treason to this government
were not produced by a state of mind hostile
to the very existence of the form of govern-
ment of which they were citizens, they had
come to the conclusion that this government
was too popular in its character, that it did
not recognize sufficiently the distinction be-
tween individuals; and they clung to the in-
stitution of slavery, not from any great moral
or political principle, but because it was the
only thing to which they could cling which
gave them some opportunity to reject these
great popular principles, and to ally them-
selves to something they thought was an en-
tering wedge in that system of government.
I know this by personal contact with these
people.
I do not profess to speak the sentiments of
gentlemen upon this floor; but digressing for
a moment, I would say here, that whatever
has been the producing cause in their minds,
the sentiments I have beard expressed in this
Convention are very different from the senti-
ments I have been accustomed to hear from
the people to whom I refer in Baltimore. One
of the gentlemen from Prince George's said
that if the Convention went to Baltimore he
would find a majority of the people there to
agree with him and those who sympathize
with him. I know those people to whom he
refers. I know that to a great extent they
have abandoned their allegiance to the gov-
ernment, because they have ceased to believe
in the practical existence of republican insti-
tutions; because they believe that under the
present revolution, if successful, some sort of
institution will be developed opposed to free
institutions, which would lift them as a class.
It is this which has made the female portion
of the community the active, unceasing advo-
cates of this rebellion. It is the appellation
of Southern gentlemen and Southern ladies,
which has carried them away in one mass, in
certain classes in society, into conflict with
everything their fathers taught. It is because
they have been accustomed to regard the peo-
ple who do not support themselves by labor
as the higher class, and the people who do
support themselves as below them in every-
thing, because they look with admiration
upon the institutions of the old world; and
many of them who have travelled abroad and |
circulated among the circles of society in Eu-
rope, have come back here, and have sympa-
thized with the principles and institutions of
the rebels to-day, because they prefer the gov-
ernments of the old world to the government
of this American Republic.
In that terrible time in Baltimore, when I
saw the estrangement of friends, the separa-
tion of those with whom I had associated,
because they regarded me as a Yankee, not by
birth but by association, by principle, be-
cause I was hostile to this system, as a traitor
to the city of Baltimore, a traitor to the State
of Maryland, and a foreigner to them; I saw
enough to convince me that practically no
man who did not bow in humble submission
to this new idea would be permitted to live
here in peace, but would be driven from those
limits with ignominy and contempt. I saw
this, and I remember it now; for though
checked by the influence and force of circum-
stances and events, the same feeling still exists
in their hearts as strong as any feeling can
exist in the hearts of any people, misguided
but enthusiastic in the advocacy of their
principles.
I say that the institution of slavery is the
cause of this rebellion. Whether gentlemen say
that the abolitionists or the pro-slavery men
precipitated rebellion, makes no difference.
It is reasoning through a circle. If there
had been no slavery, no such peculiar insti-
tution, there could not by any possibility
have been any abolitionists. You look in
vain among our institutions for any other
that could have produced these results. Peo-
ple of all parts of the country have seen their
favorite parties go down, without the slight-
est attempt to resist by a revolution. It is
this institution alone, this broad, isolated fact
among the institutions of our country, which
has been able to evoke this rebellion. There
is nothing else in the bistory of this country,
either actual in the past or possible in the
future, which could have evoked any such
action.
What has it produced elsewhere? In
States which were divided nearly equally
upon the question of secession, it has pro-
duced a perfect unanimity of sentiment and
action of people diametrically opposed. While
the anti-secessionists believed that secession
was unjustifiable, yet they were so bound
together in their attachment to the institution
of slavery, and so wrought upon by that
common bond of sympathy, that they went
directly in the support of what their own
judgment condemned; and they have bled
and died in a cause which their own judgment
in the beginning told them, and which their
voices expressed, was a cause of injustice.
No other development in the history of this
country has ever produced such a result, or
ever could have divided this' country upon
the battle field. Do you think that the tariff
question as it existed in 1832, without the |
