Mr. LANDRUM. I shall have to pass over a number of points which I should have liked to touch on, and will only make this remark: that having all the time a majority in the House of Representatives, and having secured an ultimate preponderance in the Senate, you passed the tariff bills of 1824 and 1828, in which the southern section, now securely in the minority, were to be made tributary to promote and pamper the industry of the North. Then came the opposition to the annexation of Texas, because it was a slave State. Then came the Wilmot proviso for Oregon, and for the territory acquired from Mexico. Then followed the struggle of 1856, when you boldly inscribed on your banner, “No more slave States to be admitted into the Union.” At all events, you insisted on “prohibition to slavery in the Territories,” and announced that our system of labor was a “twin relic of barbarism” with polygamy. Then followed the enunciation, in the platform of a great popular party, which struggled almost successfully for the government of the country, that the whole people of the South who owned slaves were living in that state of pollution and degradation which characterizes the polygamist.
Yet we are told that we are the cause of all the trouble, because we do not join in the hue-and-cry. Now, sir, what is the state of parties? The greatest man, perhaps, of the Republican party—certainly the greatest in influence, and the one whose prospects are first for the Presidency—has declared that the three billions of property which we own must be destroyed, stating that “you and I must do it,” meaning that it must be done by the present generation. Then follows the resolution of the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Blake,] voted for by sixty members of the House, declaring that slavery ought to be abolished wherever the Government has the power to do it.
The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry] will recollect his declaration that some of us may live to see the day when this Confederacy may consist of fifty sovereignties; and when that day comes, it will be their duty, according to the principles of the Republican party, to change the Constitution and to abolish slavery. And yet gentlemen seem to wonder that the people of the South are talking about new guards for their safety. Sir, the maxim laid down by Jefferson, that governments should not be abolished for light or transient causes, is most true; but no less true is the maxim that a people are always disposed to endure evils so long as they are endurable, rather than right themselves by abolishing the forms of which they are accustomed. Sir, what may be the action of Louisiana, in any contingency that may arise, it is not for me to state.
I believe that the people of my State have too much at stake to attempt to change their present institutions, or to make any new arrangement for light or transient causes. We have an immense wealth, a vast commerce, a city trading with all the States of the Union, whose forests of masts, from which float the flags of all nations, denote that her commerce is coextensive with the globe. The levee of her commercial emporium literally trembles, in a frontage of nine miles, beneath the superincumbent masses of merchandise. Reluctantly, most reluctantly, would that people take any steps which by possibility could involve us in civil war and commotion; and great, indeed, must have been their apprehension when they adopted, in convention, March 15, 1860, the following resolution:
“That, in case of the election of a President on the avowed principles of the Black Republican party, we concur in the opinion that Louisiana should meet in council her sister slaveholding States, to consult as to the means of future protection.”
I have no idea that I am mistaken, when I state that no action will be taken under that resolution, except on the most mature deliberation. But, sir, whenever the people of Louisiana believe that their institutions are in danger, and that it is the deliberate purpose of those who may get control of the Government to spread over them that dark and benighted pall which hangs like an incubus over the Central and South American republics and the West India Islands that have emancipated their slaves, I tell you they will act, and act effectually, too, for their protection and security. And whatever course the majority of her people may choose to take, her sons will sustain it with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Thos. McGill, Print.