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its poisonous roots have sunk deeper in the soil of liberty, or its upas branches spread wider. You may this day organize every inch of territory held by the United States, and engraft upon it the restriction; to-morrow the leaders in this same interest will clamor on as they have already commenced for abolition in the District of Columbia; and, this being accomplished, they will openly and directly assail the rights of sovereign States, which they have heretofore done by indirection, and their innocent dupes will be borne along with them. Who ever knew the ferocity of a tiger tamed by a taste of blood, or a fanatic or a demagogue or a hypocrite satisfied by yielding to his demand? And, although there are many who have no intention of proceeding to such extremities, they will be subject to the laws which control such questions, and be swept along with the general current. But a few years since this disturbing spirit of political abolitionism reared its hydra-head in the halls of our National Legislature, but it was met by manly resistance. and put down. Again, restless as the unclean spirit of old, it returns with others more wicked than itself to render, unless speedily put to flight, our last state worse than the first.

My colleague has told us, in conclusion, as he has often before, what New York will do concerning this question-that she will not consent to the extension of slavery, and that by no act of hers can it be done. While I acknowledge his right to his opinions and speculations upon the subject of what will be the course of New York, I shall claim at least an equal privilege of expressing my own of what she will not do also. The gift of prophecy is not mine, and I can only judge of the future by the past and the present, and the general laws which control human agencies; and, however much the reverse may be desired by designing politicians, in my judgment New York, though occasionally swayed from her great purposes by the mutations of political parties and the efforts of combined factions, will content herself with that which belongs to her, and treat with becoming respect the rights of her sister States. She has abundant elements within herself to employ her choicest energies, and she will devote them to the still higher improvement of her own internal condition, and to elevate yet more her three millions of happy people. Though the sun of her political prosperity may occasionally pass beneath a cloud, the obscuration will be but momentary, and the eclipse not total. She will soon

shine forth in her meridian splendor, diffusing among her sister States, from her lofty eminence, her genial influences of light, hope, and joy-the proudest star in the constellation of political glory. She will leave all puerile sectional agitations to the machinations of those who traffic in the disturbance of the public peace. Her sons will stand again, as they stood in the dark days of our Revolutionary struggle, in the second war of independence, and again in the war with a neighboring nation, by the side of the brave spirits of the South, as when they shed their choicest blood in defence of her own frontier; and, as then, she will scorn to inquire whether their domestic policy is more or less wise than her own. She will stand by the principles of non-interference and the Constitution, and will spurn all attempts at sectional policy and disunion. She will blot no stars from the constellation. Her pride will reach throughout the Union, and her Republic be ocean-bound.

What motive have I to disregard her wishes, or disobey her mandate? What have I to ask of the South but the merest justice? What else can she have in store for me? Whatever I have of public character or station, is the generous gift of my own great State. From early childhood I have been nursed in her lap, and in manhood she led me from humble private avocations, through various honors, to the highest station her sovereignty could confer. There, next to Heaven, are my choicest offerings due; there shall my first vows be paid. My destiny is in her keeping; there my best affections cluster; there arise my liveliest aspirations; there all my hopes are concentred; there have I lived; there repose the remains of my beloved dead, and when it shall please Heaven to call me hence, I would rest from the agitations of life in her peaceful bosom. Her very name is dear to me. Her character and her institutions dearer still. Her political escutcheon is yet unstained and spotless. Although she has nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against her, her degradation has not been completed. The cup which has been drugged for her humiliation, by a paricidal hand, in mercy was permitted to pass, and she has not been left to sanction by her own sovereign voice the attempt to desecrate the Presidential office by pandering to the bad passions of sectionalism. That she may long be spared from this base infliction, I invoke the universal prayer of our common country.

SPEECH

DELIVERED AT A DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION, HELD AT ROME, N. Y., ON THE 15TH, 16TH, AND 17TH DAYS OF AUGUST, 1849.

[The Rome Convention of 1849 added a conspicuous chapter to the history of the "Free Soil" schism in the State. The division commenced in 1847, and culminated in 1848 in the defeat of the Democratic candidates, State and national. Soon after, the subject of reunion, for the sake of party success, began to be agitated, and in 1849 separate conventions of the Democrats and of the Free Soil, Free, or Radical Democrats, as they were variously designated, were called, and held at Rome, for the purpose of arranging a plan of union. Both were numerously attended. Governor Marcy presided over the Democratic convention, and among its members were Chancellor Walworth, Chief-Justice Beardsley, Thomas A. Osborn of Chautauque, Robert Monell of Chenango, Joseph D. Monell of Columbia, Samuel S. Bowne of Monroe, Thomas B. Mitchell of Montgomery, Francis B. Cutting and Lorenzo B. Shepard of New York, Nathan Dayton of Niagara, Thomas G: Alvord and Samuel L. Edwards of Onondaga, Levi S. Chatfield of Otsego, Samuel Birdsall of Seneca, Aaron Ward of Westchester, and many others of the leading and influential Democrats of the State. The president of the Free Soil Convention was Hon. Wm. B. Taylor of Onondaga, and among its leading members were Dudley Burwell of Albany, Martin Grover of Alleghany, John P. Beekman of Columbia, Stephen C. Johnson of Delaware, Arphaxad Loomis of Herkimer, B. F. Angell of Livingston, James W. Nye of Madison, John Van Buren and John Cochrane of New York, Robert Campbell of Steuben, Henry B. Stanton of Seneca, John Van Buren of Ulster, Preston King of St. Lawrence, E. Van Buren of Yates, &c. Martin Van Buren was elected a delegate from Columbia, but did not attend. The sitting continued three days, and various negotiations between the conventions took place, but were not successfully concluded; the Free Soil Convention insisting on the Wilmot Proviso, or its equivalent, and the duty of Congress to put it in force, as the basis of union. The Democratic Convention, in response, passed resolutions, moved by Mr.

Chatfield of Otsego, declaring the Democratic party to be opposed to the extension of slavery to the free territory of the United States, but that it did not regard the slavery question or any opinion in relation thereto as a test of political faith or rule of party action. That the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories, and the particular modes of legislation thereunder, were among Democrats controverted questions, and it conceded to every one in relation thereto the undisputed right of opinion. The Free Soil Convention declined to accept this as satisfactory; re-affirmed their declaration as to the power and duty of Congress touching slavery in the Territories, but proposed, by resolutions moved by John Van Buren of New York, that, letting the disagreement stand unreconciled, the two conventions should go into a joint meeting, form a single organization for the Democratic party of the State, and recommend to the electors a single State ticket. The Democratic Convention declined by a unanimous vote to accept the proposition, and the conventions adjourned.

The speech of Mr. Dickinson, stating his position and what he conceived to be the position and policy of the Democratic party, and in opposition to any union except such as should be made upon principle, was made on the third day of the sitting, and pending the resolutions of Mr. Chatfield.]

Mr. PRESIDENT: It is now thirteen years since I have met with my Democratic friends in State convention. I have come here now from the county which I have the honor to represent, to give expression to the sentiments of my constituents there, with no expectation or desire to influence the opinions of others, but simply to commune with my fellow-Democrats here on the subject that agitates the country. I believe it is due to myself, that it is due to the convention, and to our common constituents, that I should speak my sentiments plainly on this subject. I shall not detain the convention longer than is necessary. I am not peculiarly sensitive to misrepresentation; but I think it proper that I should state clearly and explicitly the position I occupy and the reasons which govern me. They are satisfactory to myself, if not to others; but I believe they will be in the main satisfactory to all true Democrats.

For present purposes, I waive everything that transpired prior to '47. Up to that time there had been no creation of parties on the slavery question. No sectional organization had taken place; but every one entertained and enjoyed his own opinion on the subject, in its moral as well as constitution:l

bearings. The opinion, I believe, in Congress and out of it, by those who admitted the power of Congress to legislate over it, was that the power, whatever it was, if any existed, was derived more from the course of legislation than from any constitutional delegation of it. For myself I do not believe that federal legislation can be usefully employed in that direction. Still in times of difficulty it has, by a kind of common consent, been settled, and I think that sovereign States could meet now as they have met heretofore, and, acting with good faith and kind feeling, and in the spirit in which the Constitution was framed, place the question, by conventional arrangement, upon some just and equitable ground, satisfactory under the circumstances to all the members of the Confederacy.

When in 1847 a sectional organization was formed-I mean an organization on this question-for the first time in the history of our politics, I saw that all hope of a conventional adjustment was at an end. From that time I have looked upon it as fraught with danger to the stability of the Union, and have strenuously maintained a position of non-interference with the question. I have held that position up to the present time, for reasons which I will state, and which I deem conclusive.

My friends on all hands agree that nothing can be more deleterious to free institutions than the creation of sectional or geographical parties, though we may differ honestly as to the manner by which we can most successfully oppose their formation. I know it has been said-many here have no doubt heard the charge often made, if not here, at least elsewhere in the State-that I am in favor of the extension of slavery. My opinions and they are matured opinions, deliberately formedthey are a part of my constitutional inheritance-as well as every thought and feeling and impulse of my heart, every verse and chapter of my political creed, every syllable of my political education, teach me that our political institutions are founded in equality; and I repudiate as one of the foulest calumnies, that I am in favor of slavery in any form. I look on Democratic institutions as having gone out into the earth on a great mission of light, disseminating knowledge, carrying the glad tidings of freedom and good will to men, and second only in their fertiliz ing influences to the benign spirit of the Christian religion itself. I believe that the work of extending freedom to all man

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