In the consideration of this resolution a debate ensued on the state of the Union, and the resolution was adopted December 18th. The committee appointed by the Vice-President, Mr. Breckinridge, was Mr. Powell of Kentucky, the mover, Mr. Hunter of Virginia, Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky, Mr. Seward of New York, Mr. Toombs of Georgia, Mr. Douglas of Illinois, Mr. Collamer of Vermont, Mr. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Mr. Wade of Ohio, Mr. Bigler of Pennsylvania, Mr. Rice of Minnesota, Mr. Doolittle of Wisconsin, and Mr. Grimes of Iowa. December 31st, Mr. Powell reported to the Senate “that the Committee have not been able to agree upon any general plan of adjustment.” In the propositions offered in committee by Mr. Douglas we first meet that for the disfranchisement of the colored race, even where already voters, which was part of the Crittenden Compromise in its final form.[129]
Immediately after the first reading of Mr. Powell’s resolution for the appointment of a committee Mr. Sumner spoke as follows.
MR. PRESIDENT,—I have no desire to make a speech at this time, nor to take any part in the discussion that has commenced. I can bear yet a little longer the misrepresentations in the President’s Message, and I believe the North can bear them yet a little longer. The time will come, perhaps, when I shall deem it my duty to set forth those things in the light of reason and of history; meanwhile I content myself with simply offering to the Senate testimony of direct and most authoritative bearing upon the present state of the Union. If I may adopt the language of the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Jefferson Davis], it will help us to make the diagnosis of the present disease in the body politic.
I hold in my hand an unpublished autograph letter, written by General Jackson while President of the United States, and addressed to a clergyman in a slaveholding State. Omitting certain sentences which are of a purely private nature, the letter is as follows.
“[Private.]
“Washington, May 1, 1833.
“My dear Sir,— … I have had a laborious task here, but Nullification is dead; and its actors and courtiers will only be remembered by the people to be execrated for their wicked designs to sever and destroy the only good government on the globe, and that prosperity and happiness we enjoy over every other portion of the world. Haman’s gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men, who would involve their country in civil war, and all the evils in its train, that they might reign and ride on its whirlwinds and direct the storm. The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom. Take care of your Nullifiers; you have them among you; let them meet with the indignant frowns of every man who loves his country. The Tariff, it is now”—
and he underscores, or italicizes, the word “now”—
“known, was a mere pretext. Its burden was on your coarse woollens. By the law of July, 1832, coarse woollen was reduced to five per cent for the benefit of the South. Mr. Clay’s bill takes it up and classes it with woollens at fifty per cent, reduces it gradually down to twenty per cent, and there it is to remain, and Mr. Calhoun and all the Nullifiers agree to the principle. The cash duties and home valuation will be equal to fifteen per cent more, and after the year 1842 you pay on coarse woollens thirty-five per cent. If this is not protection, I cannot understand; therefore the Tariff was only the pretext, and Disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the Negro or Slavery Question.