To what extent the idea of disunion is entertained in some of the Southern States, and what importance is attached to the policy of uniting the whole South in one party as a preliminary step, may be inferred from a speech delivered before the Southern convention lately held in Knoxville, Tenn., by Mr. De Bow, the president of the convention, and the editor of a popular Southern review. I will only refer now to the fate to which the author resigns those who dare to break the ranks of that solid phalanx in which he thinks the South should be combined—that is, to be "held up to public scorn and public punishment as traitors and Tories, more steeped in guilt than those of the Revolution itself."
The honorable Senator from New York further announced to us in exultant tones, that "at last there was a North side of this Chamber, a North side of the Chamber of the House of Representatives, and a North side of the Union, as well as a South side of all these"; and he admonished us that the time was at hand when freedom would assert its influence in the regulation of the domestic and foreign policy of the country.
When was there a time in the history of the government that there was no North side of this Chamber and of the other? When was there a time that there was not a proud array of Northern men in both Chambers, distinguished by their genius and ability, devoted to the interests of the North, and successful in maintaining them?
Though it may be true that Southern men have filled the executive chair for much the larger portion of the time that has elapsed since the organization of the government, yet when, in what instance was it, that a Southerner has been elevated to that high station without the support of a majority of the freemen of the North?
Do you of the North complain that the policy of the government, under the long-continued influence of Southern Presidents, has been injurious or fatal to your interests? Has it paralyzed your industry? Has it crippled your resources? Has it impaired your energies? Has it checked your progress in any one department of human effort? Let your powerful mercantile marine, your ships whitening every sea—the fruit of wise commercial regulations and navigation laws; let your flourishing agriculture, your astonishing progress in manufacturing skill, your great canals, your thousands of miles of railroads, your vast trade, internal and external, your proud cities, and your accumulated millions of moneyed capital, ready to be invested in profitable enterprises in any part of the world, answer that question. Do you complain of a narrow and jealous policy under Southern rule, in extending and opening new fields of enterprise to your hardy sons in the great West, along the line of the great chain of American lakes, even to the head waters of the Father of Rivers, and over the rich and fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the teeming populations—let the hundreds of millions of annual products that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts of the red man—answer that question. That very preponderance of free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that there is at last a North side of this Chamber, has been hastened by the liberal policy of Southern Presidents and Southern statesmen; and has it become the ambition of that Senator to unite and combine all this great, rich, and powerful North in the policy of crippling the resources and repressing the power of the South? Is this to be the one idea which is to mold the policy of the government, when that gentleman and his friends shall control it? If it be, then I appeal to the better feelings and the better judgment of his followers to arrest him in his mad career. Sir, let us have some brief interval of repose at least from this eternal agitation of the slavery question. Let power go into whatever hands it may, let us save the Union!
I have all the confidence other gentlemen can have in the extent to which this Union is intrenched in the hearts of the great mass of the people of the North and South; but when I reflect upon and consider the desperate and dangerous extremes to which ambitious party leaders are often prepared to go, without meaning to do the country any mischief, in the struggle for the imperial power, the crown of the American presidency, I sometimes tremble for its fate.
Two great parties are now dividing the Union on this question. It is evident to every man of sense, who examines it, that practically, in respect to slavery, the result will be the same both to North and South; Kansas will be a free State, no matter what may be the decision on this question. But how that decision may affect the fortunes of those parties, is not certain; and there is the chief difficulty. But the greatest question of all is, How will that decision affect the country as a whole?
Two adverse yet concurrent and mighty forces are driving the vessel of State towards the rocks upon which she must split, unless she receives timely aid—a paradox, yet expressive of a momentous and perhaps a fatal truth.
There is no hope of rescue unless the sober-minded men, both of the North and South, shall, by some sufficient influence, be brought to adopt the wise maxims and sage counsels of the great founders of our government.
TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILROADS (Delivered in the United States Senate,
February 17th, 1858. in Support of the Pacific Railroad Bill)