Before we enter upon a career of force, let us exhaust every effort at peace. Let us seek to excite love in others by the signs of love in ourselves. Let there be no needless provocation and strife. Let every reasonable attempt at compromise be considered. Otherwise we have a terrible alternative. War, in this age and in this country, sir, should be the ultima ratio. Indeed, it may well be questioned whether there is any reason in it for war. What a war! Endless in its hate, without truce and without mercy. If it ended ever, it would only be after a fearful struggle; and then with a heritage of hate which would forever forbid harmony. * * *
Small States and great States; new States and old States; slave States and free States; Atlantic States and Pacific States; gold and silver States; iron and copper States; grain States and lumber States; river States and lake States;—all having varied interests and advantages, would seek superiority in armed strength. Pride, animosity, and glory would inspire every movement. God shield our country from such a fulfilment of the prophecy of the revered founders of the Union! Our struggle would be no short, sharp struggle. Law, and even religion herself, would become false to their divine purpose. Their voice would no longer be the voice of God, but of his enemy. Poverty, ignorance, oppression, and its hand-maid, cowardice, breaking out into merciless cruelty; slaves false; freemen slaves, and society itself poisoned at the cradle and dishonored at the grave;—its life, now so full of blessings, would be gone with the life of a fraternal and united Statehood. What sacrifice is too great to prevent such a calamity? Is such a picture overdrawn? Already its outlines appear. What means the inaugural of Governor Pickens, when he says: "From the position we may occupy toward the Northern States, as well as from our own internal structure of society, the government may, from necessity, become strongly military in its organization"? What mean the minute-men of Governor Wise? What the Southern boast that they have a rifle or shot-gun to each family?
What means the Pittsburgh mob? What this alacrity to save Forts Moultrie and Pinckney? What means the boast of the Southern men of being the best-armed people in the world, not counting the two hundred thousand stand of United States arms stored in Southern arsenals? Already Georgia has her arsenals, with eighty thousand muskets. What mean these lavish grants of money by Southern Legislatures to buy more arms? What mean these rumors of arms and force on the Mississippi? These few facts have already verified the prophecy of Madison as to a disunited Republic.
Mr. Speaker, he alone is just to his country, he alone has a mind unwarped by section, and a memory unparalyzed by fear, who warns against precipitancy. He who could hurry this nation to the rash wager of battle is not fit to hold the seat of legislation. What can justify the breaking up of our institutions into belligerent fractions? Better this marble Capitol were levelled to the dust; better were this Congress struck dead in its deliberations; better an immolation of every ambition and passion which here have met to shake the foundations of society than the hazard of these consequences! * * * I appeal to Southern men,who contemplate a step so fraught with hazard and strife, to pause. Clouds are about us! There is lightning in their frown! Cannot we direct it harmlessly to the earth? The morning and evening prayer of the people I speak for in such weakness rises in strength to that Supreme Ruler who, in noticing the fall of a sparrow, cannot disregard the fall of a nation, that our States may continue to be as they have been—one; one in the unreserve of a mingled national being; one as the thought of God is one!
JEFFERSON DAVIS,
OF MISSISSIPPI. (BORN 1808, DIED 1889.)
ON WITHDRAWAL FROM THE UNION; SECESSIONIST OPINION; UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 21, 1861.