Liberty can only be supported by solid and sober institutions, founded upon law as built upon a rock; and the structure solid and sober which sustains it, if Liberty has fled, is but a shapeless and unsightly mass that is no longer worthy of respect as a structure, to be torn apart until it can be better rebuilt as the home of liberty. [Prolonged applause.]
THOMAS C. EWING
OHIO AND THE NORTH-WEST
[Speech of Thomas C. Ewing at the first annual banquet of the New York Southern Society, February 22, 1887. Algernon S. Sullivan, the President of the Society, was in the chair, and announced that General Ewing would respond to the toast "Ohio and the Northwest." General Ewing was greeted with applause and cheers for Ohio.]
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—Ohio and her four sisters of the Northwest are always proud and happy to be reminded of the fact of their kinship to Virginia. It was the valor and the intrepidity of the Old Dominion which, long before the Confederation was formed, wrested that great territory from the Frenchmen and the savages. It was her lofty generosity which gave to the poor young Republic that vast territory out of which has been formed five of our greatest States, and in which dwell millions of our people. It was her humane and unselfish statesmanship which annexed to the gift the condition that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, excepting punishment for crime, should ever exist in that magnificent domain. Thousands of our Revolutionary heroes sleep in Ohio in land given to them as a recognition of their own priceless services, and the beautiful district between the Scioto and the Little Miami is filled with their descendants. Therefore, Mr. President, whenever Virginia sits at the head of the table, Ohio claims a seat as one of the family.
I, too, coming from that great State, and proud of it and its condition, may join in congratulating you, gentlemen, on the establishment of this "Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox, and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the humiliations of reconstruction—I believe that there is to-day a kinder and more cordial fraternity between the North and South than ever existed since the agitation of the slavery question sixty or seventy years ago. This society formed, and meeting here in this great centre of American political and business life, can do much to promote that peace. We need more social intercourse between the Northern and Southern men, and we need, above all, a clearer and manlier understanding of each other, in order that the recollections of the war may cease to check the growing accord between us.
Gentlemen, the North craves a living and lasting peace with the South; it asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes the fact that the proximate cause of the war was the constitutional question of the right of secession—a question which, until it was settled by the war, had neither a right nor wrong side to it. Our forefathers, in framing the Constitution purposely left the question unsettled; to have settled it distinctly in the Constitution would have been to prevent the formation of the union of the Thirteen States. They, therefore, committed that question to the future and the war came on and settled it forever. Now, the Northern people are not so mean, fanatical or foolish as to blame the South because it believed then and believes now that it had the right side of that question. How could we respect the South if it were to say now that it was insincere then, or if it were to pretend that its convictions on a question of constitutional construction had been changed by the cuffs and blows of the war? It is enough that the North and South alike agree that the war settled that question in favor of the Northern construction finally and forever.
The North does ask that the settlement of the war as embodied in the constitutional amendments shall be accepted, and obeyed in the letter and spirit, as good faith and good citizenship require. There have been undoubtedly very many instances of violation of the spirit of the amendments and there will be in the future, but no more than from the very nature of things was to have been expected; and I have no doubt that they will decrease in number as time goes on, and will finally disappear in the breaking-up of the color line in the South; and under the influence of that great sentiment become more familiar and more general every year, in favor of equal political rights to every American citizen. Aside from these questions, there is nothing to perpetuate alienation between the North and South. The new questions will lead to new divisions on other lines; already the representatives of Alabama are getting ready to stand with Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in support of the tariff on the iron industry; the spinners of the Dan and the Saco will stand very soon with the spinners of the Willimantic and the Merrimac in supporting the cotton interests, and now we see the cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the Northwest united in demanding a tariff for revenue only.
Common political interests, the ministry of social and political intercourse, and perhaps higher than all, the pride of a common citizenship are rapidly supplanting sectionalism among our own people and leading us to stand together and work out our common destiny in fraternal reunion. It has often occurred to me, as a cause of thankfulness to Almighty God—and I believe He is guiding this Republic so as to work out the problem of self-government for all mankind—that the tremendous fact of the war has caused so little change in our system of government; constitutional amendments have been so limited by interpretation by the Supreme Court of the United States that they have hardly added anything to the powers of the general Government or impaired the powers of the States. The legislation following the war when Congress seemed to have run mad with the theory that it could legislate outside of the Constitution has to a large extent fallen under the decisions of that high tribunal. One would have supposed that it could have been certain that, considering the fact that the war was waged to extend the extremest proposition of State sovereignty, that the triumph of the Federal theory would have added enormously and permanently to the powers of the general Government and diminished very greatly and permanently the powers of the States. It is well for Republican government that that evil was averted. We have our free State Government, States still stand as the fortresses of American liberty, and our Federal government moves in its orb with scarcely a perturbation to mark the influence of the war upon it.