cause the Legislature cannot compensate un-
der such circumstances.
[The hour for taking the vote having ar-
rived, the hammer fell.]
Mr. DANIEL moved to reconsider the order
that the debate should be closed at 2 o'clock.
Mr. STIRLING. if the Convention will allow
me to proceed for ten minutes by unanimous
consent, I should prefer it to reconsidering the
order.
Mr. DANIEL withdrew his motion.
There being no objection,
Mr. STIRLING proceeded: I believe that the
inauguration of this policy will go very far
to establish the result which I before an-
nounced as the first proposition in my argu-
ment. Just so far as the Southern people
become satisfied that the South is not a unit,
just so far they will grow weak in their re-
sistance. I believe conscientiously that if
the people of the South had been convinced
that the BORDER=0 States would not have fol-
lowed them into this war, they would not
have made it The idea of a confederacy
based upon the States BORDER=0ing upon the
Gulf of Mexico is an impossibility. They
believed that all the slaveholding States would
go with them. If the BORDER=0 States had stood
firm, with their arms in their hands, and told
these people they would not join them, but
would aid in protecting the Union, it would
have had the effect to stay the rebellion; for
the South could not be foolish enough to con-
ceive the idea of a confederacy of the cotton
States. Emancipation in Missouri and Ten-
nessee is carrying the lines of the Govern-
ment down into the very heart of the rebel-
lion. it brings about a condition in which
the continuance of the rebellion becomes an
impossibility.
Look at the influence of voluntary emanci-
pation upon the question of secession. Do
not gentlemen know that in the mountainous
region of the country, from Pennsylvania to
Georgia, along the whole backbone of the
Alleganies, you have a loyal population ?
Why is this? Yon find a loyal population
along that territory, because they are not
slaveholding. And that population alone,
along the mountain region, extending down
into Tennessee, has been that by which this
Government has saved itself. I conceive that if
the people of the South had been united; if
every man in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Maryland, had been identified in feeling,
in sympathy, with South Carolina, they could
not have been conquered, I believe they can
be conquered simply because I believe those
States, by these contemporaneous acts, are as-
serting a purpose which the Southern States
cannot gainsay, and from which they cannot
be drawn. It is simply saying to these people,
we are convinced that the institution of
slavery has produced great evils, and must
lead us into the same if we allow it to con-
tinue. As the great apostle of reform in Eng-
land, Cranmer, treated his own hand, when |
be held over the burning altar the hand with
which he had signed his recantation of Pro-
testantism, and burned it before the rest of
his body, we intend to hold over the con-
suming flame this institution, saying: "By
this we have offended; let this die first."
I believe that such an act would not only
appal the breasts of traitors in the South, but
afford the only hope of reorganizing the
Union party of the South. But not only is
the loyalty of the South principally confined
to the region where slavery does not exist,
but there has not been a man who has been
converted from rebellion to loyalty, but has
come back by the road of the abolition of
slavery. There is not a man who was in
the rebel army, and who has joined the Union
army, who has not come back through the
road of abolition. There is not a single road
by which the Southern people can ever travel
back into sympathy with this Government,
except by the change of those circumstances
which brought about the rebellion.
This is therefore no obsequious sacrifice to
despots in Washington. It is the free choice
of the people of this State. It is because they
believe with Mr. Lincoln that this is the cause
of the rebellion. It is because this flag is
their flag, this Government their Government,
that they do this act to save the Government
from danger, and to transmit it unimpaired
to their posterity.
Mr. MARBURY rose to a personal explanation
in reply to Mr. Berry, of Baltimore county,
in relation to the votes given by himself and
his colleagues upon the resolution of thanks
to the Maryland soldiers, but before con-
cluding, was called to order by
The PRESIDENT, who did not consider the
explanation SUCH as to be a privileged question.
Mr. MARBURY thereupon reserved the privi-
lege of replying until some future oppor-
tunity.
Mr. CLARKE desired to offer an amendment
to the amendment.
The PRESIDENT ruled it out of order, unless
by general consent, or the reconsideration of
the order requiring the vote to be taken at
this time.
The question was stated upon the amend-
ment submitted by Mr. BROWN.
Mr. BERRY, of Prince George's, moved a
reconsideration of the order by which the
Convention determined to take the vote at
two o'clock.
The motion was seconded by Messrs. MAR-
BURY and HARWOOD.
The motion to reconsider was rejected.
The question recurred upon Mr. BROWN'S
amendment, which was read as follows;
"Add to the 23d Article the following:
'and the Legislature shall make provision
from the Treasury of the State for the com-
fortable support and maintenance of the help-
less and paupers hereby emancipated.' "
Mr. BROWN demanded the yeas and nays,
and they were ordered. |
