What are we to expect now, when the power, direct and indirect, of this great Government is to be used in the most effective manner against us? A power which claims that we shall not exercise the rights of States even, a power which seeks to coerce us, when we propose to protect ourselves against this lowering and impending danger. You of the North are descended from men who honored the scaffold for the very rights we now seek to exercise. So are we. You would deserve to be spurned by the maids and matrons among you, if you refused to protect yourselves against the dangers thus drawing around you. Can you expect less of us?
Do you tell me that this is an artificial crisis? Would seven States have abandoned all the grand interest they possessed in a glorious and happy Confederacy like ours, but for more serious and vital interests, the interests of safety, security, and honor? Think well of these things, gentlemen!
I have hastily endeavored to show you where I conceive we of the South stand. The feelings which I express are entertained likewise by the border States, by all the citizens of the South, by every householder of my State in a greater or less degree.
The State to which I refer, Virginia, is now met in solemn convocation to consider whether she shall remain in the Union or go out of it; and with the most earnest desire to secure to herself a longer connection with the American Union, a Union of so much honor and pride, and with an equally earnest desire to bring back the wandering States of the South which have already left us, she, my own, my native State, comes here to ask for these guarantees. In my deliberate judgment, the Union and the Constitution, as they now stand, are unsafe for the people of the South, unsafe without other guarantees which will give them actual power instead of mere paper rights. Her stake in this controversy is too deep. In my judgment she has asked too little; I think fuller and greater guarantees ought to be required, and that this Convention should not stand upon ceremony, but in a free and liberal spirit of concession should yield to us all that we ask. Be assured we shall ask none but adequate guarantees.
But I am told that Virginia is content with the Crittenden Resolutions—I say this because I am instructed to say so—that is, if we are to treat these resolutions, not as the principles of the man who offers them, but as the principles of the great party just come into power.
Gentlemen, remember that we of the South are already stripped of one-half our sister States; our system is dislocated; the Union is disrupted.
How can you expect now to retain Virginia, to retain the border States, when they stand in the face of such a great, such an immense party? How can you expect Virginia to remain in the Union without these added guarantees?
I told you I would make no appeals to your pity. If we are not entitled to the guarantees we ask, according to the principles of sound philosophy, of right and justice, then we do not ask them at all.
Mr. BOUTWELL:—I have not been at all clear in my own mind as to when, and to what extent, Massachusetts should raise her voice in this Convention. She heard the voice of Virginia, expressed through her resolutions in this crisis of our country's history. Massachusetts hesitated, not because she was unwilling to respond to the call of Virginia, but because she thought her honor touched by the manner of that call and the circumstances attending it. She had taken part in the election of the sixth of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the Government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen, was based upon a Constitution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that Government—seceded is the word used; had gone out from this great Confederacy, and were defying the Constitution and the Union.
Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day, but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated I say; she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. I know Massachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns. I have seen and conversed with her men and her women, and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.