Speech at the Portland Meeting.
When it became known that Mr. Davis had arrived at the Hall, he was loudly called for. Hon. Joseph Howard, chairman of the meeting, then introduced Mr. Davis, who, on coming forward, was greeted with cheer upon cheer from the vast audience. As soon as the prolonged and enthusiastic applause with which he was welcomed had subsided, Mr. Davis, addressing the audience as fellow citizens and Democratic brethren, said that the invitation with which he had been favored to address them, evinced a purpose to confer together for the common good—for the maintenance of the constitution, the bond of union. He would not be expected to discuss local questions; he would not in this imitate the mischievous agitators who inflame the Northern mind against the Southern States. He came among them, an invalid, advised by his physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of his health; as an American citizen, he had not expected that his right to come here would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rights of the South had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither his coming nor his going would attract attention. But his anticipations had proved erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted above the barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had chosen, without political distinction, to welcome his coming, and by constant acts of generous hospitality to make his sojourn as pleasant as his physical condition would permit.
On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capital consists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, had erroneously judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as a political mission; wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that the scavengers of that party had been employed in the publication of falsehoods, both in relation to himself and his political friends at the South.
So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more than the barking of a cur, which, by its clamor, indicates the inhospitable character of the master who keeps him. If his friends and himself were, as had been falsely charged, Disunionists and Nullifiers, they might naturally have looked for kinder considerations from a party which circulates petitions for a “prompt and peaceful dissolution of the Union” on account of the incompatibility of the sections—from a party, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of the constitution in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, then declares null and void the law which their dereliction made it necessary for Congress to enact. The fealty of himself and friends to the constitution, and their honorable discharge of its obligations was their rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found the highest commendation in their power to bestow.
By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words into extracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his opinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his was the creed on which the people of Maine must vote next Monday.
It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their hands that he should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had not failed to remember the obligation; when republicans had introduced the subject of African slavery he had defended it, and answered pharisaical pretensions by citing the Bible, the constitution of the United States and the good of society in justification of the institutions of the State of which he was a citizen; in this he but exercised the right of a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southern citizen. Was it for this cause that he had been signalized as a slavery propagandists? He admitted in all its length and breadth the right of the people of Maine to decide the question for themselves; he held that it would be an indecent interference, on the part of a citizen of another State, if he should arraign the propriety of the judgment they had rendered, and that there was no rightful power in the federal government or in all the States combined, to set aside the decision which the community had made in relation to their domestic institutions. Should any attempt be made thus to disturb their sovereign right, he would pledge himself in advance, as a State-rights man, with his head, his heart and his hand, if need be, to aid them in the defence of this right of community independence, which the Union was formed to protect, and which it was the duty of every American citizen to preserve and to guard as the peculiar and prominent feature of our government.
Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men to converse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or exclude them? He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of our brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here, to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are the political abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of the character and the purposes of the Democracy of this State.
And now having brushed away the cob-webs which lay in his path, he would proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audience he had the honor to address.
Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may be known, you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and to posterity. The time is at hand when for good or for evil, the questions which have agitated the public mind are to be solved. Is it true as asserted by northern agitators that there is such contrariety between the North and the South that they cannot remain united! Or rather, is it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity in the character of the population, in the products and in the institutions of the several States formed a reason for their union and tended to secure to their posterity the liberty which was the common object of their love, and by cultivating untrammeled intercourse and free trade between the States, to duplicate the comforts of all?
There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness to sever the bond which bound the colonies to the mother country. Recently our people with joyous acclamation have welcomed the connection of the United States with Great Britain, by the Atlantic cable. The one is not inconsistent with the other. When the home government violated the charters of the colonies, and assumed to control the private interests of individuals, the love of political liberty, the determination at whatever hazard to maintain their rights, led our fathers to enter on the trial of revolution. Having achieved the separation, they did what was in their power for the development of commerce. They secured free trade between the States, without surrendering State independence. Their sons, not only free, but beyond the possibility of future interference in their domestic affairs, now seek the closest commercial connection with the country from which their fathers achieved a political separation.