A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention. L. E. Chittenden
among your people, in the very light of day, these efforts were carried on for the destruction of your sister States. There has not been an effort of the law nor an exertion of public opinion to put them down.
These efforts culminated in the actual invasion of my own old honored State, and your people thought they were doing GOD service in signing a petition to our authorities for mercy to John Brown and his ruffian invaders of our soil. And when these men met the just reward of their crime, there was, throughout the North, in your meetings and your public prints, expressions of sympathy for these robbers and murderers. They were looked upon as the victims of oppression, as martyrs to a holy and righteous cause. Gentlemen, consider these things, and tell me, is there not to-day reason for suspicion; on the part of the South for grave apprehension?
But the half is yet to be told; I have looked only at the moral aspect of the question. Dangerous enough hitherto, it becomes far more dangerous when it culminates on the arena of politics, and asks, with the powerful aid of a majority, the interference and the aid of the Government.
As soon as it became the party of one idea it began to draw to it, first the support of one, then another political party. It went on securing the assistance of one after another until it demoralized, until it brought each to ruin. It destroyed the grand old Whig party. Fanatic enough before, when it had brought that party to its grave, it thrust upon the arena of politics this question of slavery in the territories. Then for the first time it raised the cry of "Free Soil," and brought to its support the hearts of a majority of the people of the northern States.
The people of the North and Northwest have long been noted for their acquisitive disposition, especially for the acquisition of lands. This has been manifested in every form. Carried into effect it has made them powerful, until, not long since, they thought they might get entire dominion at no distant day. Then arose in their hearts a desire greater than the greed of land—the greed of office and power. They then saw that perhaps the North alone might control the national government, and with it the South. Then, too, the great class of protected interests at the North—always greater at the North than at the South—joined with them. All these protected classes, whose advantages had been diverted from other classes to which they belonged, joined with landseekers to secure power. Influence after influence of this sort combined, until it produced your great Republican party; in other words, your great Sectional party, which has at length come to majority and power.
I do not wish to dwell upon the principles of that party, or to discuss them; I simply assert that their principles involve all the sentiments of abolitionism. They may be summed up in this: you determine to oppose the admission of slave States in the future.
You say that the whole power of the country, the whole power of the administration, shall be used in future for the final extinction of slavery.
This, now, is the ruling idea of your great sectional party. It is simply the rule of one portion of the country over another. There is no difference between attacking slavery in the States and keeping it out of the territories. It is only drawing a parallel around the citadel at a more remote point.
Now, see how the South is placed. The South has forborne as long as it can, just as long as party organization existed, and as long as the South could keep it in existence. It was only when we saw that the whole united Government was to be turned against us, that we began to think of taking the subject into our own hands.
What are we to expect now, when the power, direct and indirect, of this great Government is to be used in the most effective manner against us? A power which claims that we shall not exercise the rights of States even, a power which seeks to coerce us, when we propose to protect ourselves against this lowering and impending danger. You of the North are descended from men who honored the scaffold for the very rights we now seek to exercise. So are we. You would deserve to be spurned by the maids and matrons among you, if you refused to protect yourselves against the dangers thus drawing around you. Can you expect less of us?
Do you tell me that this is an artificial crisis? Would seven States have abandoned all the grand interest they possessed in a glorious and happy Confederacy like ours, but for more serious and vital interests, the interests of safety, security, and honor? Think well of these things, gentlemen!
I have hastily endeavored to show you where I conceive we of the South stand. The feelings which I express are entertained likewise by the border States, by all the citizens of the South, by every householder of my State in a greater or less degree.
The State to which I refer, Virginia, is now met in solemn convocation to consider whether she shall remain in the Union or go out of it; and with the most earnest desire to secure to herself a longer connection with the American Union, a Union of so much honor and pride, and with an equally earnest desire to bring back the wandering States of the South which have already left us, she, my own, my native State, comes here to ask for these guarantees. In my deliberate judgment, the Union and the Constitution, as they now stand, are unsafe for the people of the South, unsafe without other guarantees which will give them actual power instead of mere paper rights. Her stake in this controversy is too deep. In my judgment she has asked too little; I think fuller and greater guarantees ought to be required, and that this Convention should not stand upon ceremony, but in a free and liberal spirit of concession should yield to us all that we ask. Be assured we shall ask none but adequate guarantees.
But I am told that Virginia is content with the Crittenden Resolutions—I say this because I am instructed to say so—that is, if we are to treat these resolutions, not as the principles of the man who offers them, but as the principles of the great party just come into power.
Gentlemen, remember that we of the South are already stripped of one-half our sister States; our system is dislocated; the Union is disrupted.
How can you expect now to retain Virginia, to retain the border States, when they stand in the face of such a great, such an immense party? How can you expect Virginia to remain in the Union without these added guarantees?
I told you I would make no appeals to your pity. If we are not entitled to the guarantees we ask, according to the principles of sound philosophy, of right and justice, then we do not ask them at all.
Mr. BOUTWELL:—I have not been at all clear in my own mind as to when, and to what extent, Massachusetts should raise her voice in this Convention. She heard the voice of Virginia, expressed through her resolutions in this crisis of our country's history. Massachusetts hesitated, not because she was unwilling to respond to the call of Virginia, but because she thought her honor touched by the manner of that call and the circumstances attending it. She had taken part in the election of the sixth of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the Government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen, was based upon a Constitution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that Government—seceded is the word used; had gone out from this great Confederacy, and were defying the Constitution and the Union.
Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day, but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated I say; she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. I know Massachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns. I have seen and conversed with her men and her women, and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.
Massachusetts has made war upon slavery wherever she had the right to do it; but much as she abhors the institution, she would sacrifice everything rather than assail it where she has not the right to assail it.
Can it be denied, gentlemen, that we have elected a President in a legal and constitutional way? It cannot; and yet you tell us in tones that cannot be misunderstood, that as a precedent condition of his inauguration we must give you these guarantees.
Massachusetts hesitated, not because her blood was not stirred, but because she insisted that the Government and the inauguration should go on, in the same manner they would have done had Mr. Lincoln been defeated. She felt that she