How is it, or why is it, that we should do nothing? Why should we break up and go home? Have not all the States asked us to come here and do this work? Why did their legislatures take the trouble to send us here? All this circumlocution might have better been done at home.
Will a Convention answer the purpose, when another Confederacy has been formed in our very midst? It would be two years at least before any thing could be accomplished by a Convention, and then it would be too late. We all know how delegates to such a Convention are elected. We all know how much time would be consumed before the Convention could meet. I say we cannot bear the delay. I ask the gentleman (Mr. Baldwin) of Connecticut whether he thinks it would be safe to delay.
Mr. BALDWIN:—I think it is always safe to follow the Constitution. I think we can follow the example of Kentucky.
Mr. CLAY:—I would suggest to the gentleman from Connecticut that the representatives of Kentucky are here to speak for her.
Mr. BRONSON:—Kentucky has sent delegates to this Convention since she passed the resolutions to which the gentleman refers. I think we cannot stand upon the ground taken in these resolutions. I do not believe Kentucky herself would be satisfied with them now.
It is strange to see gentlemen so cool and apathetic under such circumstances. Is no one alarmed for the safety of the old flag about which so much is said? Can the Border States stay with us when their brethren are gone? If the action of the North in relation to slavery is such as to drive out South Carolina, can Delaware and the other Border States remain? For one, I do not wish to put this Constitution into the hands of a General Convention. Who can tell what such a convention would do with the Constitution; what it would do with the decisions of the Supreme Court, under which so many of the vexatious questions have been settled? It would be worse than attempting to settle our differences in a town meeting. I would hesitate long before I would submit such questions to a convention. Before they could be settled in that way, the Union would be gone forever. The process would be too slow. I have nothing to gain in this matter. My only wish is to spend my few remaining days in the United States, and to transmit the blessings of our Government to my children.
Some of the Republican members here subordinate their platform to their country. I commend them for it; these are noble sentiments. Men should abandon platforms when they tend to destroy the country. I concur in the sentiments of the gentleman from Illinois, uttered this morning. They also are noble sentiments.
I venerate our Constitution. When made, it was equal to any ever framed. Nothing short of Almighty Wisdom could have framed a better. But was it given to human wisdom, to Washington and Madison, to foresee all the events of the future? The Constitution has held us together for three-fourths of a century; that is a wonder in itself; but its makers did not foresee this day—a day when Freedom itself was in danger of perishing.
Why this hesitation about amending the Constitution? New York accepted it reluctantly, and only ratified it upon the assurance that it should be amended as she proposed. It is not so holy a thing now, that it may not be amended. Washington, you must remember, signed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, as well as the Constitution.
We are told by gentlemen from New York and Connecticut (Mr. Noyes and Mr. Baldwin), that the action proposed here is unconstitutional. It does not become these gentlemen to raise this objection. There was never an amendment of the State Constitutions, in either of the States they represent, adopted, that was not brought before the people in substantially the same way.