DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Massachusetts, in her heart of hearts, loves liberty—loathes slavery. I glory in her sentiments; for the heart of our common humanity is throbbing in sympathy with her opinions. But she is not unmindful of her constitutional duties, of her obligations to the Union and to her sister States. Up to the verge of constitutional power she will go in maintenance of her cherished convictions; but she has not shrunk, and she does not mean to shrink, from the performance of her obligations as a member of this Confederation of constellated States. She has never sought, she does not seek, to encroach, by her own acts or by the action of the Federal Government, upon the constitutional rights of her sister States. Jealous of her own rights, she will respect the rights of others. Claiming the power to control her own domestic policy, she freely accords that power to her sister States. Concealing the rights of others, she demands her own. Loyal to the Union, she demands loyalty in others. Here, and now, I demand of her accusers that they file their bill of specifications, and produce the proofs of their allegations, or forever hold their peace.
In other days, when Adams, Webster, Davis, Everett, Cushing, Choate, Winthrop, Mann, Rantoul, and their associates graced these chambers, Massachusetts was then, as she is now, the object of animadversion and assault. I have sometimes thought, Mr. President, that these continual assaults upon the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were prompted—not by her faults, but by her virtues rather—not by the sense of justice, but by the spirit of envy and jealousy and uncharitableness. Unawed, however, by censure or menace, she continues in her course, upward and onward, to the accomplishment of her high destinies. She is but a speck, a mere patch on the surface of America, hardly more than one four-hundredth part of the territory of the Republic, with a rugged soil and still more rugged clime. But on that little spot of the globe is a Common wealth where common consent is recognized as the only just basis of fundamental law, and personal freedom is secured in its completest individuality. In that Commonwealth are one and a quarter million of freemen, with skilled hand and cultivated brain,—with mechanic arts and manufactures on every streamlet, and commerce on the waves of all the seas—with institutions of moral and mental culture open to all, and art, science, and literature illustrated by glorious names—with benevolent institutions for the sons and daughters of misfortune and poverty, and charities for humanity the wide world over, The heart, the soul, the reason of Massachusetts send up unceasing aspirations for the unity, indivisibility, and perpetuity of the North American Republic; but if it shall be rent, torn, dissevered, she will not lose her faith in God and humanity, she will not go down with the falling fortunes of her country without making a struggle to preserve and perpetuate free institutions. So long as the ocean shall roll at her feet, so long as God shall send her health-giving breezes and sunshine and rain, she will endeavor to illustrate, in the future as in the past, the daily beauty of freedom secured and protected by law. H. Wilson.
CCXCIV.
EMANCIPATION.
Shall these once slaves but now freemen be remanded back to bondage? No: "personal property once forfeited is always forfeited." No: slaves once legally free are always free. No, no; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the altar of our God! The "chosen curses," and the "hidden thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition—a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, give up to the enemy your proudest national memorials—the sword of Washington, the staff of Franklin, that time-worn but immortal parchment which just authoritatively published your Independence to the world—give up to him the blood-stained flags and trophies which, upon the bristling crest of battle, our heroic defenders have wrenched from his desperate grasp; give up to him this Capitol itself and throw at his feet the President's head, before you give up the most abject of these bondsmen disenthralled; for in surrendering them you will squander one of those priceless moments, big with the future, worth more than a whole generation of either bond or free, the rare and pregnant occasion placed in your hand by the fortune of war of wiping forever African slavery from the American continent.
If this deliverance is ever vouchsafed, then shall we be purged forever of the sole source of our weakness and dissension in the past; then will pass away forever the sole cloud that threatens the glory of our future; then will the American Union be transfigured into a more erect and shining presence, and tread with firm footsteps a loftier plane, and cherish nobler theories, and carry its head nearer the stars; then will it be no profanation to wed its redeemed and unpolluted name to that of immortal Liberty; then Liberty and Union will go on, hand in hand, and, under a holier inspiration and with more benign and blessed auspices, will revive their grand mission of peacefully acquiring and peacefully incorporating contiguous territories, and peacefully assimilating their inhabitants; then from the Orient to the Occident, from the flowery shores of the great Southern Gulf to the frozen barriers of the great Northern Bay, will they unite in spreading a civilization, not intertwined with slavery, but purged of its contamination, a civilization which means universal emancipation, universal enfranchisement, universal brotherhood.
Despair not, then, soldiers, statesmen, citizens, women, we are fighting energetically for a nation's life. The cloud which now shuts down before your vision will yet disclose its silver lining. Peace shall be born from war, and out of chaos order shall yet emerge. We shall dwell together in harmony, and but one nation shall inhabit our sea-girt borders. We seem sailing along the land, hearing the ripple that breaks upon the shore, where our recreated and regenerated Republic, after it has passed through this fiery furnace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanently installed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green, trade in its marts, live in its palaces worship in its temples, and legislate in its Capitol. H. C. Deming.