bitious leaders; when it degenerates into cliques and personal organizations, and undertakes to force objectionable candidates upon a portion of our country because it holds the power, that moment it is no longer worthy of the name of Democracy. The name of Democracy then, instead of rallying the mighty masses of the country, and instead of stirring up generous hearts and interests, causing them to thrill with joy, will be a byword, a reproach, a hissing, and a shame. It is significant as a name, and honorable because the principles, and associations, and memories that cluster around it are generous, noble, and suggestive of the great emancipation of the masses of the earth from tyrannous corporations and privileged classes; but whenever it fails to assert its dignity and its power, and to regard alike the whole country, and degenerates into sections and cliques, it will only be remembered to be despised, and will be ten times more mischievous than the Republican party, which we war against. I know this will be a great struggle. I know the efforts that will be made to crush those who interpose in behalf of principle in this crisis; but I say to them, Go on! Maintain the right! Here is a great battle of principle to be fought. "The sunshine patriot and the summer soldier may shrink from the crisis in a time like this; but he who stands up now will deserve the respect and receive the love and thanks of every man and woman."

SPEECH

DELIVERED AT A UNION MEETING HELD IN PINE STREET, NEW

YORK, December, 1860.

[The meeting at which this speech was made was called to consider the threatening aspect of affairs in the Southern portion of the Union, and was composed of leading and influential citizens of the city and State. It was one of the many vain attempts made at that stage of the national crisis to devise some means of averting the impending disasters.]

I CAME here, Mr. Chairman, without intending to take part in this meeting, because invited here; for, although I have little faith in anything that can be done at this moment, I would not stay away from a meeting called as this has been, and looking to such great and beneficent objects. I would not stay away if there was the least hope that anything could be accomplished. I have nothing new to say upon this subject; nothing more than I have said before, through a long course of years. I have seen the seed planted; I have seen the sprout shoot up in rank, luxuriant growth and overshadow the whole land; and it has finally produced its crop of terrible and poisonous fruit. We are upon perilous times, and it becomes the duty of every patriot, every individual who loves his country, to put forth every energy within his power for the purpose of averting not merely the danger that threatens, but the danger that is upon us.

In other days I had the honor to be associated with that somewhat eccentric, but pure and elevated statesman, Calhoun; he has gone to his rest and his reward; and Henry Clay-who looked upon this Union with a solicitude scarcely less anxious than that the Saviour of men bestowed upon Jerusalem he is not here now to take part in the affairs of the day; and if this Union is to be dissolved, as I religiously fear,

heaven, in mercy, has granted the prayer of the immortal Webster, that when his eyes last beheld the sun in heaven, it might not shine upon the fragments of a dissevered Union. From New York, and from most of the Northern States, every individual who thought as I did in former times of peril has retired to private life, and their names have been supplied and their seats filled by those of diametrically opposite opinions.

"But more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,

Than Cæsar, with the Senate at his heels."

This union of States did not repose at other times and does not repose to-day solely upon paper laws and paper Constitutions. It was founded in mutual friendship and regard and common interests, and these fraternal feelings and common motives are necessary for its continuance. They form its lifeprinciple, and when they cease to exist, what remains is but a body without the animating spirit; a shadow without the substance; a delusion and a mockery. All the paper laws we have ever enacted or can pass in the future; all the force and strength and power of the Constitution; the mandates of the National Legislature; the adjudication of the federal courts; the authority of the Executive, with the assistance of the army and navy, are not worth a single rush to compel a State to discharge its duties and fulfil its relations faithfully as a State of the Union when it elects to do otherwise. The federal government has no power over a State as such, except to admit it to the Union. If it refuses to send Senators and Representatives to Congress, no earthly power can compel it to do so. Whatever may be its duty, its full allegiance as a State can only be secured to the federal Constitution because it chooses to fulfil its obligations to the federal head and the sisterhood of States according to the requirements of the Constitution. The authority which the federal government may exercise over States, is the assertion of its own peculiar, and, for many purposes, paramount jurisdiction over the territory and people, and not over the State as a political organization. Should a State resist the lawful authority of the gov ernment of the Union, and arm its people or any portion of them against it, it would be not only the right but the duty

of the government to take armed possession of its territory, bring to condign punishment every transgressor, and subjugate every disloyal element. To this extent and in this sense, upon occasion of revolt and resistance, the territory of a State might be seized and its disloyal people punished and subjugated, but in no other; and in no other manner can a State defying the federal Constitution be punished. But what heart does not revolt at such a prospect and such a remedy?

The act to which my friend who has just preceded me alluded, which was called, in common parlance, the nine months law, permitted our Southern brethren who visited the State of New York to bring with them their servants and remain for nine months without the relation between them being affected by our laws on the subject, applicable to our own citizens. By an exercise of State comity they received, for this limited time, to a partial extent, the same protection as in the State from whence they came. In 1840 that act was repealed. 1 was then a member of the Senate of this State, and although never dreaming that I should be upon the national boards of legislation-knowing little of this great question compared with what I know now-I resisted the repeal of that law to the best of my ability as long as I could by arguments, and finally, when driven to the wall, my blood coursing more rapidly then than now, I resisted it factiously, and kept the ma jority waiting nearly a whole night. I received the rewards of approbation from patriotic men for my exertions on the one side, and my full basket of anonymous letters of abuse on the other. But I scorn to speak of my personal action. I believe that was the first source of trouble between the North and South.

It is not an amendment of the constitution that is wanted; the laws are well enough-the federal laws and constitution, but it is their execution according to the spirit in which they were enacted that is called for and demanded on the part of the South. They insist upon the great principle of the equality of the States, and in that they are right, upon every consideration that can influence men, communities, and States. The constitution makes them equal-the law makes them equalthey are equal in the sight of honest men, and are equals in the sight of God, and woe be to him who undertakes to degrade

and trample them down. They see and feel the advancing numbers and power of the North; and that now in the national Legislature they are in the minority. They see that in a few years there will be a majority of two-thirds against them, not only in the States, but of representatives of both branches of Congress, and they fear that the sentiment of the entire free States will sweep their institutions away. And hence it is that they take alarm; hence it is determined now, while they have some power and some strength, unless they can have additional guaranties to protect and sustain them, to secede from the Union. They are forewarned and intend to be forearmed, and unless they can find safety, security, equality, and repose in the Union, they intend to seek it outside, whatever fate may await them. I know there are those amongst us who say that the South do not intend to secede; they say this is an unnecessary alarm; that they can be coerced and driven back in their position. All that is necessary is firmness. But the South have seen for years these little rivulets of opposition gathering from the hills and forcing down through the gorges, until they form the black and bitter waters of one great sea of abolition, which threatens to overwhelm and engulf them.

I have already remarked that this Union was formed as a union of good feeling; a fraternal union of equals, of goodfellowship; and he who supposes that these States can be continued in the bonds of union by coercion; that they can be fought, defeated, and subdued, into equal and faithful members, should go home to his domestic hearth and there breed jealousies, distrust, and animosity between himself and the partner of his bosom; she who pledged herself to love, honor, and obey him; who is the mother of his children; who has attended him through the vicissitudes of life and the bereavements which have awaited them; and after he has created disturbance and disagreement there, let him then attempt to chastise her to make her love and honor him more. And when he has succeeded, let him try to chastise a State until it shall become a more faithful member of the Union. Will the children of a common father, who sit down at the family table as equals, consent to be degraded by being driven under a system of domestic inequality to submission? Let those who believe that this evil can be averted, and the Union preserved by force, attempt that