A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention. L. E. Chittenden
has addressed New York as though she supposed the delegation from that State to be united in its opinions, and its action. Let me set the gentleman himself and the Conference right on that point at the commencement. The members composing that delegation do not agree; very far from it. The vote of that delegation hitherto has been determined by a majority only; a majority reduced to the very smallest point possible now, since the delegation is full. It may be said that New York voted at the last Presidential election against us by a majority of fifty thousand; but let me assure you that if the noble propositions of the majority of your committee, which I read for the first time yesterday, could be submitted to them, the people of New York would adopt them by even a larger majority.
These are noble propositions; they are worthy the eminent and patriotic committee from which they have emanated. They present a fair and equitable basis for the adjustment of our difficulties; they are a shield and a sure defence against the dangers which threaten us. They are such as the people expect and such as they want. They know that the politicians who have brought the country to the verge of ruin can be trusted no longer. The time has come when they must act for themselves. Be assured, gentlemen, they will do so.
I wish to say a few words about the last election in New York, for it has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood. How did we go into that canvass? Upon what principles was it conducted? What representations were made? I am one of the men who have struggled to meet and oppose this Republican party from the outset—to avert, if possible, the adoption of its pernicious principles by the people of New York. I took my stand upon the Compromise of 1850, and separated myself politically from all men who could not stand with me on that platform. We struggled on until that Compromise was adopted by the Baltimore Convention.
The Kansas bill was introduced at a most fatal hour. It was distasteful to the whole country; satisfactory nowhere. In due time the Charleston Convention was assembled, and the Democratic party was broken up forever.
What next? Next came the Chicago Convention. It may have been conducted with dignity, and it nominated a candidate. I differ widely from that candidate in my principles and my policy. And yet I believe in him although I opposed his election. I would trust his Kentucky blood to the end, if all else failed. I think he is honest. I have no idea that he will permit the policy of his administration to be controlled by the hotheaded zealots who have been so conspicuous in the last canvass. I expect to see him call to his council board, cool, dispassionate, and conservative men; not men who are driven to the verge of insanity upon this question of slavery.
What next? The Baltimore Convention was held. The tragedy was consummated; the contest was ended. The mere scuffle to secure the control of the Convention which ended in its division, has brought the country into all its present difficulties. If that Convention had presented to the people a good conservative Democrat, there were seventy-five thousand good old line Whigs who would have buckled on their armor and would have won the battle for him.
When the Southern papers began to threaten disunion because Lincoln did not suit the South, I was not one who abused or denounced them. I knew the temper of some of the politicians in the free States. I knew the action of the South was not impulsive. I knew there was a reason for it. They said their capital was to be rendered worthless—their property to be destroyed, and their country made desolate. God forbid that I should chide them for thinking so!
The Northern mind is in some respects very different from the Southern. It is not started by slight scratches, but strike the rowel deep, and there is a purpose in it that nothing can conquer or restrain. The people of the North will carry that purpose into execution, with a power as fierce as that of the maddest chivalry of South Carolina. The rowel was struck deep and the consequences were not considered.
Subjects have been introduced into this discussion which I should have been glad to have avoided, which it would have been better every way to have avoided. The gentleman from Virginia has referred to the John Brown invasion. That is one of those subjects. He spoke of the feeling at the North regarding insurrections. I assure you that the North regarded the invader in that case as a foe in your homes—uncurbed and unrestrained—a terrible enemy. I would say to the gentleman from Virginia, that although too many instances among extreme men may have been found of attempts to justify that invasion, such was not the general feeling at the North. Those instances were rare exceptions; and because they were so few and so exceptional, acquired a degree of notoriety and received a degree of attention to which they were never entitled. Such instances as these have always served to prejudice the South improperly against the North. Men are too much given to forming opinions of us from the intemperate acts of a few meddling men.
How do we stand at the present moment in this respect. You will find a few men among us, even now, rash enough to say, "Let these Southern slaveholders go. The 'nigger' will rise upon them and cut their throats!" The action of such men, I admit, gives some color and justification to your charges and prejudices against the whole Northern people.
I agree with you, gentlemen, that this is now a question of peace or war. I believe it to be so from my very soul. The North has been much to blame in bringing it upon us. What has been the language used at the North? Men have used such expressions as this, "The South secede? Why, you can't kick out the South." And men who knew no better believed the statement to be true. I appeal to northern men to say whether this has not been so. I myself thought four States would go, but I believed secession would stop there. We had more to hope from Louisiana than from any other Gulf State. She has gone, and has now taken up a most offensive and threatening position. Virginia to-day is in more danger of immediate secession than Louisiana was a few short months ago.
My friend from New Jersey says that if this Convention does not prevent it, there must be war. I agree with him. War! what a fearful alternative to contemplate? War is a fearful calamity at best, sometimes necessary I admit, but always terrible. It cannot come to this country without a fearful expenditure of blood and treasure. It will leave us, if it leaves us a nation at all, with an awful legacy of widows' tears—of the blighted hopes of orphans—with a catalogue of suffering, misery, and woe, too long to be enumerated and too painful to be contemplated. For God's sake! let such a fate be averted at any cost, from the country. If it comes at all, it will be such a war as the world never saw. War is commonly, and almost universally, between nations foreign to each other—whose individuals are strangers to each other, and whose interests are widely separated. But we are a nation of brothers, of a common ancestry, and bound together by a thousand memories of the past—a thousand ties of interest and blood. It will be a war between brothers—between you who come to us in summer, and we who visit you in winter. It will be a war between those who have been connected in business—associated in pleasures, and who have met as brothers in the halls of legislation and the marts of commerce. Save us from such a war! Let not the mad anger of such a people be aroused. And, gentlemen, if war comes it must be long and terrible. You will see both parties rise in their majesty at both ends of the line. They will slough off every other consideration and devote themselves, with terrible energy, to the work of death. Oh ye! who bring such a calamity as this upon this once happy country! Pause, gentlemen, before you do it, and think of the fearful accountability that awaits you in time and in eternity.
But I am here to answer for the State of New York; the Empire State and the people of the Empire State. I have never been classed with the rash men of that State who have aided in bringing about this condition of things. I will not be classed with those who now thrust themselves between the Empire State and those glorious propositions of your committee. They are in the smallest possible majority even in our delegation. All I ask is, that we may have the judgment of the people upon these propositions, and I will be answerable for the rest; and these gentlemen who rely upon the fifty thousand (50,000) majority of last November, will have a fearful waiting for of judgment. Fifty thousand majority! Who does not know how that majority was made up? It was not a majority upon the question of slavery at all. It came in this wise: The opposite party was divided and distracted. The Republican party united all sorts of discordant elements; men voted for Mr. Lincoln from a great variety of motives. Some, because they wanted the Homestead law; some because they wanted a change in the Tariff; and, gentlemen, let me assure you, there were more men who voted for Mr. Lincoln—solely on account of the Tariff—than would have made up this fifty thousand majority.