George E. Badger. By Wm. A. Graham
My acquaintance with Mr. Badger commenced in the latter part of the summer of 1825. He had already completed his service as a judge, which office he resigned at the close of the spring circuit of that year; had contested the palm of forensic eloquence and professional learning with Seawell and Gaston, with a wide increase of reputation, at the recent term of the Supreme Court, and was returned to the practice in Orange, where he had once resided, in generous competition with Murphy, Nash, Yancey, Mangum, Hawks, Haywood, and others—Mr. Ruffin, hitherto the leader at this bar, having been appointed his successor on the bench of the Superior Court.
He was then a little turned of thirty years of age. One half of his time since his majority had been passed upon the bench, yet his fame as a lawyer was fully established; and though he doubtless afterwards added vastly to his stores of erudition, yet in quickness of perception, readiness of comprehension, clear and forcible reasoning, elegant and imposing diction, in all that constitutes an orator and advocate, he had attained an eminence hardly surpassed at any period of his life. From that time and before it, I know not how long, till the day he was stricken by the disease which terminated his life, in North Carolina, at least, his name was on every tongue. He was not only marked and distinguished, but an eminent man. So bright and shining a character could not but attract general observation; and though
“Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fixed forever, to detract or praise”;
and while, with gay and hilarious nature, frank but somewhat eccentrical manners and unequaled powers of conversation, united with some infirmity of temper, his expressions and conduct in the earlier half of his life were often the subject of severe criticism; yet in the long period of from forty to fifty years, in which he moved “in the high places of the world,” no one denied him the gifts of most extraordinary talents and unswerving integrity and truthfulness. Even in the particular in which complaint had been made—an imputed hauteur and exclusiveness—his disposition was either mellowed by time, or, what is more probable, his character came to be better appreciated from being better understood; and for years before the sad eclipse which obscured his usefulness no man enjoyed more of the general confidence and favor of the people, as none had possessed in a higher degree their admiration.
Transferred to the more extended field of jurisprudence administered in the courts of the United States, and afterwards to the Senate of the nation, he took rank with the first advocates, jurisprudents, and debaters of the Union; and the purity of his morals, the elevation of his character, his readiness and accomplishments as a conversationalist, the gayety and vivacity of his manners, rendered him a general favorite with old and young, the grave and gay, in the brilliant society of the metropolis.
George Edmund Badger was born in New Bern, North Carolina, on the 17th of April, 1795. His father, Thomas Badger, Esq., the son of Edmund and Lucretia Badger, was a native of Connecticut, and his birth is recorded to have taken place at Windham, in that State, on the 27th of June, 1766. Having received a good education, he came early in manhood to New Bern, and thence to Spring Hill, in the county of Lenoir, where for some time he taught school, but was then probably a student of the law, and was in due time admitted to the practice in this State. Fixing his residence in New Bern, he early rose to distinction as a practitioner, and appears in the published reports as one of the leading counsellors in the courts of that riding, and in the Supreme Court of the State, from 1792 till his death, which occurred from yellow fever, while in attendance on a court at Washington, in Beaufort county, on the 10th of October, 1799.
The traditions of the profession and of intelligent persons of his acquaintance represent him as a man of determined character and great intellectual and professional ability, and leave the question in doubt whether at the same period of life he was more than equaled by his son. The late Peter Browne, himself one of the first lawyers and men of letters of his time in North Carolina, a contemporary at the bar of the senior Badger, spoke of him, before the entrance of his son into public life, as one of the ablest men he had ever known, and especially as possessing a power to fascinate and control masses of men in the most remarkable degree—a power, he added, which the son might exert with similar effect, if he would.
His mother, by name Lydia Cogdell, was the daughter of Colonel Richard Cogdell, of New Bern, a gentleman of much consideration under the provincial rule in North Carolina, and an active and bold leader in the movement of the Revolution. As early as August, 1775, his name appears second on the list of the committee of safety for New Bern district, appointed by the first Congress of the province (that of Alexander Gaston being at the head). Lydia Cogdell was a person of singular vigor of mind and character, well fitted to encounter the cares and trials of her early widowhood. Her husband had experienced that which has been said to be the common lot of the profession in this country, “to work hard, live well and die poor,” and left her with but little fortune to rear three children, of whom George was the eldest and the only son.
According to her narrative, he manifested no fondness for books, and made little progress in learning till about seven years of age. At that period she placed in his hands Goldsmith’s Animated Nature. He was delighted with its perusal, and she never found it necessary to stimulate his thirst for knowledge afterwards. His preparatory course was taken in his native town of New Bern, and at the age of fifteen he entered Yale College. There he passed through the studies of the freshman and the sophomore classes, when his education, so far as it depended on schools, was brought to a close. A relative, a man of fortune, at the North, who had hitherto furnished the means for his college expenses (his own patrimony being wholly insufficient), and from whose bounty he had hoped to pass on to graduation, suddenly withdrew his support and left him to his own exertions. Of the motives of this unexpected arrest in his college career, on which so much might have depended, it is useless, now at least, to speculate or inquire. But it will be a source of gratification to his friends to be assured that it was attributable to no demerit in our student. True, his contemporaries at Yale differ widely in their estimation of his capacities while there. The Northern students, who belonged to a different society, regarded him as a frolicsome youth, averse to mathematics, and fond of novel-reading, who gave no indications of superior endowments. On the other hand, a college classmate (Thomas P. Devereux, Esq., of Halifax) and member of the same society, who knew him intimately throughout life, and was five and twenty years associated with him at the bar, affirms that “he was beyond dispute the first boy of his class, composed of seventy individuals, many of them afterwards distinguished men.” He was not, says this friend, “a hard student of the prescribed course. Perhaps I ought to add that he was remiss in his college duties, but he was eager for information to a most wonderful degree, and among his fellow-students he exhibited the same intellectual superiority we have seen him so steadily maintain among men.” To the same source I am indebted for the following observations concerning his elocution, which I repeat for the advantage and encouragement of the young. “I think,” he remarks, “that the thousands who listened to the fluency with which Mr. Badger spoke, the clearness of his enunciation, the exact accuracy of his sentences and the carefulness of their formation—the right words always in the right places—will be surprised to learn that in his youthful attempts in debate he was almost a stammerer. I have heard him say he owed exemption from downright stuttering to his father, whom he remembered with affection, though under five years of age at the time of his decease, who would not permit him to speak while he hesitated in the least, but required him to stand by his side perfectly silent, until he had collected himself and arranged his thoughts. He, himself, often asserted that any one could speak fluently who thought clearly and did not lose his presence of mind.”
He made known to President Dwight the reception of the letter announcing the withdrawal of the patronage by which he had been thus far supported, and the res angusta domi which caused him to bid adieu to Yale when reaching the portion of her curriculum by which his expanding mind would have been most profited, and left with the regrets and kind wishes of that venerable divine and instructor. In after years when he had established a character, his alma mater honored herself by volunteering a degree to her barely risen junior, and enrolling his name among her sons with whom he should have graduated in 1813, as, at a later period, she acknowledged his still higher advancement in liberal learning, by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws.
He appears to have indulged in no unavailing grief at the freak of fortune which blasted his hopes of a collegiate education, but returning home, though but little over seventeen years of age, betook himself at once to the study of the law. His legal preceptor was his maternal cousin, Hon. John Stanly, of New Bern, who as an advocate, a statesman, a parliamentarian, a wit and adept in conversation, is one of the historical characters of North Carolina; and, who, viewing him as I did, from the gallery of the House of Commons in my boyhood, impressed me as an orator of more graceful and elegant manner and action, according to my conception of the Ciceronian standard, than any public speaker it has ever been my fortune to hear.
Mr. Badger was granted a license to practice law in the County Courts in the summer of 1814, and, according to the usual probation, in the Superior Courts in 1815; the Judges of the Supreme Court consenting to relax the ordinary rule and overlook his nonage, by reason of the narrowness of his fortune and the dependence of his mother and sisters upon his exertions for their support. The war with England raging in the former year, and an invasion of the State being threatened by the British forces under Admiral Cockburn, then hovering on our coasts, Governor Hawkins called out the militia, and himself took the field, in an expedition for the defense of New Bern and Beaufort. In this expedition Mr. Badger served as aid-de-camp to General Calvin Jones, of Wake, with rank of major; but the alarm soon ceasing, with the retirement of the enemy the soldier was again resolved into the youthful barrister. A vacancy occurring in the office of solicitor to prosecute the pleas of the State in that riding, about this time, he was introduced to public notice by the temporary appointment from the judge, and made one circuit in that capacity.
In 1816, the year of his majority, he was returned a member of the House of Commons from the town of New Bern; and whatever advantages he may have lost by his retirement from college (and they were doubtless many and important), it may well be questioned whether any of the more fortunate youths he had left behind in the classic shades of Yale were, by this time, better fitted to play a distinguished part in a deliberative assembly or a court of justice. Profiting by the instruction, the conversation, the intercourse, and the example of that accomplished gentleman, Mr. Stanly, and his compeers, Gaston, Edward Graham, Moses Mordecai, and others, whom he met at the bar or in society, but above all by his own profound study, he not only gained great attainments in the law, but (what is now I fear becoming rare), a familiar acquaintance with the classic authors of English literature, and with the arts of rhetoric and composition. He wrote and spoke our language with a readiness, force, precision, and propriety, the more remarkable because equally as conspicuous in jocose and trifling conversation (in which he freely indulged) as in public address. As a critic, whether under the inspiration of a “good or bad natured muse,” he has had few peers among the judges of “English undefiled.” His appearance in the Legislature was the advent of a new star above the horizon, somewhat erratic and peculiar in its orbit, but effulgent even in its irregularities, and shining with a splendor not unworthy of the oldest and greatest lights of the firmament.
Tradition furnishes anecdotes of many encounters, during the session, of gladiatorial skill, in which his love of pleasantry and the gaudia certaminis involved him with the late Attorney-General Drew, a son of genius and of Erin, and others, with various success: but it assures us that this, his first and last session in the General Assembly, closed with a profound impression and universal acknowledgment of his genius, culture, and high promise for the future.
The Hon. Thomas Ruffin, the speaker of the House of Commons, who had been first appointed a judge of the Superior Court during this session, discovering in Mr. Badger a congenial spirit, alike emulous with himself of liberal culture and professional distinction, invited him to take his briefs and pursue the practice in Orange. The acceptance of this proposition carried him to Hillsborough as his place of residence for the next two or three years, during which, having married the daughter of Hon. James Turner, of Warren, he transferred his home to Warrenton; thence he moved to Louisburg, where he continued to reside until his retirement from the bench in 1825, when he removed to Raleigh, and there abode during the residue of his life.
How well he maintained his professional character in the new field of his practice is observed in the fact that, with but little of what is known as personal popularity, he was elected a judge of the Superior Court by the Legislature in its session of 1820, at the age of twenty-five. In this office he rode the circuits four years with admitted ability, candor and impartiality, evading no question and no duty; but he was sometimes thought to err from quickness of temper and too great readiness to assume responsibility. His courtesy to the profession won him general esteem. The people, though sometimes murmuring at the severity of a sentence or a supposed arbitrary or whimsical order, regarded with equal wonder the promptness and force with which he discussed questions of law with the veterans of the bar, and the intelligent, amusing and instructive conversation with which he habitually entertained his acquaintances and associates.
I mention a single case in his administration of the law as illustrative both of the firm and impartial hand with which he dealt out justice and the jealous care with which the judiciary of North Carolina has ever protected and maintained the rights of the weak against the strong and influential. A citizen of great fortune, and advanced age, who had represented his county in earlier years in both Houses of the Legislature, having also numerous and influential connections, charged a free-negro with larceny of his property, had him brought by warrant before a justice of the peace, prevailed on the justice to try and convict him of the offense charged, and to sentence him to punishment by stripes, which were inflicted—a proceeding allowable by law, provided the offender had been a slave. But here the culprit was a freeman, and by the Constitution entitled to public trial in open court before a jury of the country. The prosecutor, with the justice and constable, was arraigned before the Superior Court for this violation of law, and their guilt being established, Judge Badger, who happened to preside at this term, was strongly inclined to imprison the principal defendant, and was only deterred by reason of his (said defendant’s) age and state of health; but, announcing that this was omitted from that cause only, sentenced him to a fine of twelve hundred dollars, the justice of the peace to fifty, and the constable to ten dollars, the differences being made on account of their several grades of intelligence and consequent criminality, as well as of ability to pay.
From the time of his return to the bar and location at Raleigh, until the access of disease which suddenly, and, as it proved, finally arrested his course, he devoted his time to the practice of his profession, with the exception of a few months, occasioned by his appointment by Harrison and his continuation by Tyler as Secretary of the Navy, and such further interruption as was produced by his occupation of a seat in the Senate of the United States from 1846 to 1855. During his forensic career he was, at different times, proposed by executive nomination for the bench of the Supreme Court, both of his own State and of the United States; but the spirit of party exacted a denial of his confirmation, though no man doubted his eminent qualification.
If it be true, as remarked by Pinkney, in one of his familiar letters, published by Wheaton, that “the bar is not a place to acquire or preserve a false or a fraudulent reputation for talents,” it was eminently so in his case. He had an intrepid and self-reliant mind, which, disdaining artifice, timidity or caution, struck out into the open field of controversy with the daring of conscious power, and shunned no adversary not clad in the panoply of truth; was as ready to challenge the authority of Mansfield or Denman, Rosyln or Eldon, if found deflecting from the paths of principle or precedent, as that of meaner names. If, from want of opportunity or inclination, he had failed to master the mathematics of numbers, he made himself proficient in the mathematics of life (as our law, from the exactness of rule at which it aims, has been not inaptly denominated), and by a rigorous logic was prompt to expose whatever could not bear the test of reason. Yet, it was a logic free from the pedantry of the schools, apparently not derived from books, and accompanied by a rapidity of mental action, which gave to it the appearance of intuition. Whether in analysis or synthetical reasoning, in dealing with facts before juries or the most intricate questions of law before courts, these faculties were equally conspicuous, and attended, when occasion called for their use, with powers of humor, sarcasm, and ridicule hardly inferior to those of ratiocination. Added to all this, there was a lucidness of arrangement, an exact grammatical accuracy in every sentence, a forcible and graceful style which, independent of a clear and distinct enunciation, a melodious voice and engaging manner, imparted even to his extemporaneous arguments the charms of polished composition.
On one occasion, in a case of indictment for blasphemy, the question had been raised whether the Christian religion was a part of the common law, with a suggestion that if it was, it might be altered by statute, Mr. Badger volunteered an argument for the cause of religion and sound morality. It so happened that, as he opened his case, a venerable citizen of the State, of great intelligence, entered the court-room to speak a word to the reporter, expecting immediately to retire. He was, however, so fascinated with the manner of the speaker, the splendor of his diction, the copiousness of his theological and legal learning, the force and clearness of his arguments and the precision with which they were stated, that he sat down and heard him to the close, observing, as he withdrew, “what folly ever to have made him a judge, he ought to have been a bishop.”
Literature, whose office it is to preserve the results of learning, knowledge, and fancy, has made so little progress among us that there has not been much effort to save from oblivion the discussions at the bar or in the deliberative assemblies of the State—the chief theatres of public intellectual exertion besides the pulpit. Had Mr. Badger been studious of posthumous fame and bestowed half the time in reporting his speeches in the more important of his causes on the circuit, which Cicero recommended and practiced in the preparation of his orations, the result would have been a most interesting contribution to American rhetorical literature. There are occasions enough within the recollection of many, who were present, in Wake, Orange, Granville, Halifax, and elsewhere, when his utterances, even if printed as delivered, would have formed a volume of no less interest than the speeches of Wirt or Emmet, Erskine or Curran, as well as afforded insight into events, crimes, transactions of business, and the state of society of our times, such as the muse of history derives from the records of courts of justice.
Two causes in the Circuit Court of the United States, in the days of Chief Justice Marshall, are especially remembered as being the themes of his most admired arguments, and in which he overcame the preconceived opinions of the great Judge, though impressed and supported by the acknowledged abilities, learning and persuasiveness of Gaston. These were the cases of Whitaker vs. Freeman, an action for libel in twenty-five different counts, and Lattimer vs. Poteat, one of a series of cases in ejectment, to recover immense bodies of land in the western counties, claimed by the citizens of Northern States under purchases from speculators who, it was alleged, had made their entries and procured grants before the extinction of the title of the Cherokee Indians, in violation of law; the defendants claiming under grants from the State made after the admitted cession of the Indian title; and Mr. Badger was retained by the State to defend their interests. This latter case, involving the relations of North Carolina while a separate sovereignty, and afterwards of the United States with the Cherokee Indians, as regulated by sundry treaties, the location of several lines of partition between them and the whites, but removed further and further west as the population of the superior race increased and emigration advanced, surveys partially or wholly made to establish these lines through a mountainous, and in many parts, an impervious country, imputed frauds in transgressing those lines and entries without actual survey, was of exceeding volume and complication in its facts, and occupied a week in the trial. The argument, running through four days, was said to be the most elaborate on both sides ever made in the State in a jury trial. It resulted in a verdict and judgment for the defendants, which was afterwards affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. After the trial, Judge Marshall, in the simplicity and candor of his great character, observed to the then Governor of the State, “At the close of Mr. Gaston’s opening argument, I thought he had as good a case as I ever saw put to a jury, but Mr. Badger had not spoken two hours before he satisfied me that no one of his [Gaston’s] positions could be maintained.”
To this instance of laudatus a laudato viro I deem it not improper to add a few others from sources only less eminent: Chief Justice Henderson declared in my presence that “To take up a string of cases, run through them, extract the principle contained in each, and discriminate the points in which they differed from each other, or from the case in hand, I have never seen a man equal to George Badger.”
Judge Seawell remarked of him: “Badger is an elementary man,” and, continuing in his peculiar and racy style, “he goes to first principles; he finds the corners of his survey and then runs out the boundaries, while others hunt along the lines. The difference between him and myself is, that when I take up a book I read slowly, pausing at the end of each sentence, and when I have reached the bottom of the page I must stop and go back to see whether I fully comprehend the author’s meaning, while he reads it off like a novel, and by the time he gets to the bottom of the page or the end of the treatise he has in his mind not only all that the author has taught, but a great deal that the author never knew.”
Chief Justice Ruffin, yet surviving in honorable retirement from the labors of the profession, whose early appreciation of the faculties of Mr. Badger we have already noticed, and before whom as a Judge of the Supreme Court, he was in full practice for twenty-three years, affirmed to me, since the death of Mr. Badger, that in dialectic skill and argument he excelled any individual with whom he had ever been acquainted, not even excepting Chief Justice Marshall himself, for that he possessed the faculty of imagination and the capacity for illustration which Judge Marshall had not.
To his hospitality and kind intercourse with gentlemen of the profession, his liberality and assistance to its junior members (whom his gracious demeanor and familiar manners won, no less than his spirited and intelligent conversation entertained and improved), to his unselfish and genial nature, and an integrity on which no temptation ever brought a stain, the occasion permits time only to allude before closing our view of his professional life. Had he been called to the office of Attorney-General of the United States by General Jackson at the period of his first election (of which Mr. Badger had been an ardent and efficient advocate), as many of his friends entertained expectation, and had continued from that time his practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, it is hazarding but little to say that his fame would have equaled that of any advocate in the history of American jurisprudence.
Of Mr. Badger’s brief service at the head of the Navy Department—excepting his recommendation of the establishment of a home squadron to patrol the Gulf of Mexico and West Indian seas, as a protection against piracy or any sudden hostile demonstration on our coasts (a measure since adopted)—there is no circumstance demanding especial notice. He had accepted the appointment at the request of President Harrison with reluctance, retained it by the expressed desire of his successor, and resigned it as soon as the breach between Mr. Tyler and the party that elected him was found to be irreparable.
Equally unsought and unexpected was his election to the Senate of the United States when absent from the seat of government on a professional errand beyond the sphere of his usual practice. He entered the Senate in the first year of the war with Mexico and held his seat throughout the struggle which ensued over the introduction of slavery into the Territories acquired by the treaty of peace, a struggle which was then threatening the dissolution of the Union; he held his seat during the compromise measures of 1850, under the leadership of Clay; the election of General Taylor; the succession of Fillmore; the election of Pierce and the first half of his term, including the organization of territorial government in Kansas and Nebraska, a period of more fierce, convulsive and (as the sequel has proved) fatal party agitation than any in American history except the years that have succeeded it. Even now, after the dreadful chastening that all have received from recent calamity, it is difficult to recur to it without reviving passions inconsistent with the solemnities of the hour and the charities inspired by common suffering.
In this struggle it was maintained on the one hand that inasmuch as these acquisitions of territory had been made by the common contribution of men and means from all the States, the citizens of any State were at liberty to emigrate and settle upon them, and to carry any property they might possess, including slaves; that this was the case by virtue of the operation of the Constitution over the new territory proprio vigore. It was further declared that Congress had no authority to legislate in contravention of this right; and, in the progress of the dispute, this latter position, was extended into the assumption that it was the duty of Congress to enact laws to ensure it, and that a failure in this was a breach of Constitutional duty so gross as to justify the injured States in withdrawing from the Union, a power which, it was declared, every State held in reservation, and might exercise at pleasure, the Constitution being but a compact having no sanctions for its perpetuation. On the other hand, there had been for years at the North a party organization, not numerous at first, but which at this period had swollen into a formidable power, whose avowed object was the extinction of slavery; which had denounced the Constitution, so far as it upheld or tolerated it, as a covenant with the infernal powers; had absolved themselves from its maintenance in this particular, and avowed their preference for a disruption of the Union unless slavery should be abolished in the Territories and States as well. More moderate men in that section, while not agreeing with these extremists, denied emphatically either that the Constitution gave to slavery a footing in the Territories or bound Congress to maintain, or not interfere with, its existence there; and that in the exercise of a legislative discretion they might encourage, tolerate or forbid it; the great majority favoring its prohibition in the Territories, while they held themselves bound to non-interference in the States.
In this conflict a third party arose, which affirmed that Congress had no power over the question in the Territories; that the people who settled in those distant regions were entitled (not only when applying for admission into the Union as a State, but whenever organized into a Territory, or at any time thereafter) to determine on the establishment or rejection of slavery as well as all other questions of domestic policy; and by consequence, that the whole history of the Government in the regulation of its Territories had been an error.
Either of the contending parties was accustomed to tolerate very considerable aberrations, and even heresies against its creed, to acquire or preserve party ascendancy, or to achieve success in a Presidential election; to which latter object no concessions and no sacrifices were deemed excessive. And the flame on the main topic was probably fanned by many, on both sides, with a view to the marshalling of forces for this quadrennial contest for power and patronage. Be this as it may, never were themes presented for sectional parties so well adapted to deepen and widen the opened breach between them, or pressed with more intensity or zeal. In the ardor of the contest, old landmarks were discarded and old friends repudiated, if not found in accordance with new positions assumed in its progress. William Pinkney, the great champion of Southern interests, at the period of the Missouri question, was pronounced an abolitionist on the floor of the Senate by the highest Southern authority, and the doors of Faneuil Hall were closed against Daniel Webster by the authorities of Boston, for words of truth, soberness, and conciliation, spoken in the Senate; and this while Clay (once so much deferred to by them as a party leader) sat by, admiring and encouraging every sentence Webster uttered.
Between these excited parties, Mr. Badger stood approved by neither. As far back as the Mexican war, perceiving, as he thought, the dangers to flow from the adjustment of the interests of slavery, provided conquests should be made and new territories acquired, he had repeatedly endeavored to bring the war to a close and to bar out those dangers to the Union, by abstaining from the acquisition of new domains, while the fierce contestants were both eager for extensive conquests—the one with the flattering, but delusive, hope of expanding the area of slavery, the other with the settled purpose to apply to all such conquests the Wilmot Proviso and to exclude slavery.
When peace came with those splendid acquisitions of territory, so gratifying to the national pride, he was not disappointed in discovering in them an apple of discord which was to prove fatal to tranquillity at home. In the contention which was thus inaugurated, he steadily supported the rights of his own section, maintaining the justice and expediency of opening the Territories to all emigrants, without restriction as to any species of property. In an argument, replete with scriptural learning, he defended the servitude existing in the South, under the name of slavery, as not inconsistent with the divine law, more than justified by Jewish precedents, and not forbidden by the benignant teachings of the Saviour of the world, who found in the Roman Empire, at His coming, and left without condemnation, a system of far greater severity. He reminded Northern Senators of the responsibility of their ancestors for the introduction and establishment of slavery in this country—ours being but purchasers from them, at second hand, for a consideration vastly greater than they had paid; the profits being the foundation of much of their wealth, which their consciences did not forbid them to retain. He brought home to their sense of duty and of honor the obligation to maintain the Constitution, so long as it remained the Constitution, in all its parts, as well those which, as individuals, they disapproved as those to which they assented. If any representative of the South urged any or all of these considerations in favor of the rights of his section, with more earnestness and ability than Mr. Badger, it is some one whose argument has not fallen under my observation. But he refused to go further. He refused to argue that Congress had no constitutional power to legislate on the subject of slavery in the Territories. He discussed the question with boldness, and adduced a decision of the Supreme Court, announced in an opinion of Judge Marshall, to the effect that the power did exist; and therefore, he addressed his appeals to the legislative discretion of Congress. For this he incurred the disapprobation of the extreme advocates of Southern interests. But his opinion on the question had been deliberately formed, and though he maintained that the exclusion of the Southern emigrant with his peculiar property from these Territories would be an unjust exercise and abuse of power, he declined to make what he believed to be a false issue, in pronouncing it unconstitutional. He dealt with the whole subject in the interest of peace, in subordination to the Constitution, in the hope of allaying excitement, and with an earnest desire for continued Union. He therefore gladly co-operated with his old political associates, Clay, Webster, Pearce of Maryland, Bell, Mangum, Berrien, Dawson, as well as his Democratic opponents, Cass, Douglas, Dickinson, Foote and other compatriots of both parties, in the well-remembered measures of the Compromise of 1850, which calmed the waves of agitation, and promised a lasting repose from this disturbing element—an effect which was fully realized, with an occasional exception of resistance to the law providing for the surrender of fugitive slaves—until the unfortunate revival of the quarrel by the repeal, in 1854 (in the law for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska) of the provision of the Missouri Compromise, by which slavery was restricted from extending north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri. His participation in this measure of repeal, Mr. Badger regarded as the most serious error of his public life. He lived to see consequences flow from it which he had not contemplated, and publicly expressed his regret that he had given it his support. Not on the ground of any breach of faith, for, as he amply demonstrated in his speech on the passage of the measure, the Representatives of the North in Congress had, in the Oregon Territorial bill, as well as in other instances, demonstrated that they attached to it no sanctity. Yet many good men among their constituents did—and politicians who had, since the settlement of 1850, found “their occupation gone,” eagerly welcomed this new theme for agitation. The experience of climate, labor, and production, had shown that African slavery could not be attended with profit north of this parallel, and the repeal was regarded as a flout, defiance, and aggression which provoked the resentment of thousands who had never before co-operated with that extreme faction which conspired the destruction of slavery in despite of the Constitution. Followed up as this measure was by the impotent attempt to enforce protection to the institution in Kansas, where it neither did, nor could exist without unreasonable aid (which attempt was made after Mr. Badger left the Senate, and in which there is no reason to believe he would have concurred), it aroused an opposition, which, when embodied in the organization of party, was irresistible. He was no propagandist of slavery, though all the affections of his home and heart seconded the efforts of his great mind in defending it as an institution of the country recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. He was too sagacious to believe it could be benefited in any way by provoking the shock of civil war, and too truthful and patriotic to trifle with it as a means of rallying parties or subserving any of the interests of faction. In voting for the repeal of the Missouri restriction, he looked upon it as having been overvalued in its practical importance at first, abandoned by the North as effete, if not disregarded from the beginning, and its removal out of the way as but conforming the system of territorial law to that part of the Compromise of 1850 pertaining to the Territories, which left the adoption or rejection of slavery to be decided by the inhabitants when framing a constitution, preparatory to their admission as a State of the Union; not anticipating the recoil in public sentiment, which was the first step in the overthrow of slavery itself.
I have been thus tedious in the review of the history of this period because it was upon topics arising out of this great subject of controversy, ever uppermost in the public mind, that Mr. Badger made his most frequent and probably most elaborate efforts in the Senate, and for the further reason that in the heated atmosphere of the time his opinions as expressed and the moderation of his course were, by some, supposed to imply indifference to the interests of his section. Time and disaster are not unfrequently necessary to vindicate true wisdom.
He was as averse to the details of revenue and finance as Charles James Fox, and could probably have united with that statesman in the declaration that he had never read a treatise on political economy. But on all subjects pertaining to general policy, or to the history, jurisprudence, or Constitution of the country, he commanded a deference yielded to scarcely any other individual, after the withdrawal of Mr. Webster; and as a speaker and writer of English, according to the testimony of Judge Butler, of South Carolina, he had no peer in the Senate, save Webster.
He delighted in repeating the rule for the construction of the Constitution, which he had heard enunciated by Judge Marshall in the Circuit Court for North Carolina. “The Constitution of the United States,” said he, “is to be construed not strictly, not loosely, but honestly. The powers granted should be freely exercised to effect the objects of the grant, while there should be a careful abstinence from the assumption of any not granted, but reserved.” With this simple rule for his guide, with an innate love of truth and wonderful perspicacity in its discernment, with an ethics which permitted no paltering in deference to the authority or suggestion of faction, his arguments on constitutional questions were models of moral demonstration. Such was the confidence reposed in his accuracy and candor on questions of this nature, that his opinions were sought, for practical guidance, alike by friends and opponents. And such was the personal favor and kindness entertained towards him by all his associates that at the expiration of his term the rare compliment was paid him of expressing regret at his departure by an unanimous vote of the Senate.
After ceasing to be a Senator he held, until the commencement of the late calamitous war, the place of one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. In his professional visits to Washington, until the interruption of intercourse by that dire event, and in all his correspondence with public men, he never departed from that course of moderation and peace on the exciting subject of the times which had characterized him as a Senator, joined heartily in the movement of his old Whig friends for the organization of a Constitutional Union party to abate the violence of faction which was too surely tending to disunion, and to make an appeal to the people to rescue the country from the impending peril. The result of this movement was the nomination of Bell and Everett for the first offices of the government; and Mr. Badger accepted the nomination for Elector on this ticket, and visited various parts of North Carolina, addressing the people in its support. In these addresses, with the frankness which belonged to his nature, he freely admitted that there was a strong probability of the election of Mr. Lincoln, not merely from a division of votes among three other candidates, but from the strength of his party in the Northern States, founded on the principle of opposition to slavery; and he charged, that in that event, it was the design of a large portion of the supporters of Mr. Breckinridge to attempt to destroy the Union by the secession of the Southern States, and that there was reason to believe his defeat and the election of Mr. Lincoln were desired by this latter class, because of the opportunity it would afford for a dissolution of the Union, a purpose which they had long cherished. While, therefore, he advocated the election of Mr. Bell, he conjured the people, no matter who might be elected, to acquiesce in the decision and give no countenance to secession. Although, with the exception of a small faction, the people were averse to disunion, the majority were persuaded that this was an overstatement of the case, and cast their votes for Mr. Breckinridge, as they usually did for the party nominee.
When the election was past, and the proceedings which immediately followed in other States verified Mr. Badger’s anticipations, the people began to turn to him, and those of like opinions, for guidance in the future. And, to persons in distant parts of the Union, it is, no doubt, a matter of mystery how he, with all his antecedents in favor of Union, became involved in war against the Government of the United States. The case of Mr. Badger, in this particular, is the case of at least three-fourths of the people of the State (for they relied upon his counsels for their action quite as much as upon those of any other individual) and requires a word of explanation. Notwithstanding the long and acrimonious disputations which had been carried on in Congress and at the hustings, and the sentiments declared in opposition to slavery by Mr. Lincoln and his supporters, Mr. Badger maintained that his election afforded no sufficient cause for a resort to revolution—as to the right, claimed, of a State to secede, he had never for a moment believed in it or given it the least countenance—that the accession of such a party to power would require increased vigilance over the rights and interests of the South; but that the majority in Congress was not lost to us, if the members from all the Southern States would remain and be faithful, and that the judiciary was open to any just complaint, even if the Executive should attempt aggression. After every State south of North Carolina to the confines of Mexico had adopted ordinances of secession, the people of this State rejected a proposition to call a convention to consider the question.
But when Virginia, our neighbor on the northern frontier, also withdrew, and Tennessee on the west had taken measures for the same object, when war had been actually begun, no matter by whose rashness or folly, and the only alternatives presented were in the choice of the side we should espouse, considerations of national or State interest, safety and necessity (such as are not unfrequently forced upon the decision of neutrals by the conduct of belligerents not connected under the same government) at once occurred, and were obliged to be weighed with the obligations of constitutional duty. Our borders were surrounded on all sides, except that washed by the ocean, by seceded States. Our youth must go forth to battle with or against these States. The Union we had so long and so sincerely cherished, was a Union in its integrity; and next to that, and as a part of it, was a Union with neighboring States, in which were our kindred and most intimate friends, and identical institutions. Slavery, whatever may be thought of it elsewhere or now, constituted more than one-half of our individual and public wealth. It had paid our taxes, built our railroads, reared our seminaries of education and charity, and was intimately connected with the order and repose of our society. Withal, in the acrimony of a long quarrel, its maintenance had become a point of honor. In the actual posture of affairs, which promised to continue while the war lasted, instead of fifteen States in which slavery existed, whose Representatives were to maintain a common interest in the halls of Congress, there were to be but three, or at most, four, and all these, except our own, with a minor interest in the system. A civil war which threatened to be sanguinary and protracted, kindled avowedly for the protection of slavery, was not likely to end in the defeat of the insurgent States without the destruction of the institution in them, and after no long time, in the adhering States, also. Though far from approving the course of the recusant States, victory on the side of those who held the reins of government could not inure in benefit, nor without serious disaster, to us.
These ties of blood, vicinity, institutions and interests, the desire to avoid internecine strife among our own people (which must have been immediately precipitated by a zealous minority, with the local government, legislative and executive, in their hands) impelled Mr. Badger, and those who acted with him, to decline to take up arms against their own section in favor of the distant authority of the national government, and as a consequence to unite with those whose action they had deprecated and endeavored to prevent, and with whom they had had little sympathy or cooperation in the politics of the past. The support of the undertaking, if concurred in by all the slaveholding States, which was confidently represented to be certain, appeared to afford hope of a safer and better future than its suppression by force. The determination of the question, as I know, occasioned him pain and embarrassment, but when made it was firmly maintained. He accepted a seat in the Convention which passed the ordinance declaring the separation of the State from the Federal Union, and gave to this ordinance his sanction; not, however, without a distinct declaration of his disbelief in the doctrine of secession as a constitutional right. He also sustained measures for the prosecution of a vigorous war, as, in his conception, the surest and shortest way to peace, but was ever vigilant of the dignity and just rights of the State, the encroachments of the military authority, the jurisdiction of the civil tribunals and the protection and liberty of the citizens. He sought no patronage or favor for himself or his family. His sons served in the ranks of the army and bore their part in the perils and adventures of war.
While it yet raged, he was stricken by the hand of disease, which partially obscured his faculties and withdrew him from public view. He survived, however, until after the return of peace, and in the twilight of mind, with which he was yet favored, rejoiced in the deliverance of the country from the calamities of war, and very sincerely acquiesced in a return to his allegiance to the Government of the United States.
These observations on the professional and public life of the subject of our sketch have been so prolonged that the occasion will permit but a few further remarks upon his general attainments, his intellectual and moral character and usefulness as a citizen. It was the remark of Lord Bacon that “Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” Mr. Badger’s reading was confined, with the exception of the dead languages, which he had acquired in his youthful studies, to the literature of our own language. With the most approved authors in this he had a familiar acquaintance, and, as already remarked, excelled in the accomplishments of a critic. The field of learning, which next to jurisprudence he most affected, and perhaps even preferred to that, was moral science. Upon the sublime truths of this science, in the conversations with his friends, his remarks and illustrations were often not unworthy of Alexander or Wayland, Butler or Whately. “In it,” says one of the most intimate of his friends and contemporaries, “the rapidity of his perception and accuracy of his deductions were marvelous. Place before his mind any proposition of moral science, and instantly he carried it out, either to exact truth, most beautifully enunciated, or reduced it to an absurdity.” To his acquisitions in the kindred topic of didactic divinity, or theology as a science, only a professional theologian can do justice. An earnest member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, though but a layman, he ventured on more than one occasion to discuss matters of discipline and doctrine in the character of a pamphleteer, in opposition to clergymen of note, and in a memorable instance with the head of the diocese himself with such signal success that, although the Bishop ultimately united himself with the Romish Church, whither Mr. Badger charged that he was tending, not another member of his denomination left its communion.
He was averse to the labor of writing, and beyond an address before the Literary Societies of the University, the reports, by his own hand, of some of his speeches in Congress, and other pamphlets on subjects political or religious, has left few written performances. But he had the accuracy in thought and speech of a practiced writer.
In conversation he realized in the fullest sense Bacon’s idea of readiness, and shone with a lustre rarely equaled. The activity and playfulness of his thoughts and the gayety of his disposition inclined him to paradox and repartee to such a degree that his conversation was oftentimes but amusing levity. But in a moment it rose to the profoundest reflection and most fascinating eloquence. His knowledge was ever at instantaneous command, as it was far more the result of his own meditations than of acquisition from others, and fancy lent her aid in giving a grandeur to his conceptions on all the subjects of his grave discourse. After all the public displays in which he enchained the attention of judges, jurors, senators, and promiscuous assemblies with equal admiration and delight, it is a matter for doubt, among those who knew him well, whether his brightest thoughts and most felicitous utterances, the versatility of his genius, and the vast range of his contemplations were not oftener witnessed in his boon and social hours, in the converse of friends, around his own hospitable board, or at the village inn, or on a public highway—all without pedantry or apparent effort, “as if he stooped to touch the loftiest thought”—than in these elaborate and studied exhibitions. He affected no mystery, and wore no mask, and stood ready in familiar colloquy to make good, by new and apt illustrations, any sentiment advanced in formal argument, or to abandon it as untenable if satisfied of error.
His reverence for truth, to which allusion has been already made in the course of these observations, was even above his intellectual powers, his most striking characteristic. He was accustomed to speak of it “as the most distinguished attribute of God himself, and the love of it as giving to one moral being an eminence above another.” To its discovery he delighted to apply the powers of his remarkable intellect, to its influence he was ready to surrender his most cherished convictions whenever found to be erroneous.
The fruits of this were seen in the crowning virtues of his character: he was a Christian of humble and intelligent piety without intolerance toward others, a lawyer without chicanery or artifice, a statesman without being a factionist, a party man above the low arts of the demagogue, a gentleman and citizen enlightened, social, charitable, liberal, impressing his character upon the manners and morals of his times, ready to render aid in every good and noble work, and prompt to resist and repel any evil influence, no matter by what array of numbers, power or vitiated public opinion supported. I have known no man to whose moral courage may be more fitly applied the ideal of the Latin poet, as rendered in free translation:
“The man whose mind on virtue bent,
Pursues some greatly good intent
With undiverted aim,
Serene beholds the angry crowd,
Nor can their clamors fierce and loud
His stubborn honor tame.
Not the proud tyrant’s fiercest threat,
Nor storms, that from their dark retreat
The rolling surges wake;
Not Jove’s dread bolt that shakes the pole,
The firmer purpose of his soul
With all its power can shake.”
In the latter years of his life, actuated by a desire to be useful in his day and generation, wherever opportunity and his ability might allow, he accepted the office of justice of the peace, an office which, to the honor of those who have filled it in North Carolina from the first organization of civil government until now, has ever been performed without pecuniary reward, and took considerable interest in administering justice in the County Courts of Wake, giving to this inferior tribunal the dignity and value of a Superior Court, to the great satisfaction of the bar and the public.
He was thrice married; first, as before mentioned, to the daughter of Governor Turner; second, to the daughter of Colonel William Polk, and third, to Mrs. Delia Williams, daughter of Sherwood Haywood, Esq., in each instance forming an alliance with an old family of the State, distinguished by public service and great personal worth from an early period. The last named lady, the worthy companion of his life for thirty years, who survives him as his widow, receives in her bereavement the condolence and sympathy, not merely of this community and State, but that of those in distant lands and in other States of the Union whom, not the lapse of years nor the excitement of intervening events, nor the fiery gulf of civil war shall separate from a friendship accorded to her and her departed husband, as representatives of the personal character, the society and domestic virtues of their native State in better days of the republic. By the two latter marriages he left numerous descendants.
While taking his accustomed walk at an early hour in the morning of January 5, 1863, he was prostrated by a paralytic stroke, near the mineral spring in the environs of the city of Raleigh, and although retaining his self-possession and ability to converse until assistance was kindly furnished, on the way home his mind wandered, and before reaching his residence his faculty of continuous speech deserted him, never again to return. His mental powers after a brief interval rallied, insomuch that he took pleasure in reading and in listening to the conversations of friends, whose visits afforded him much satisfaction; and, with assistance, he could walk for exercise in the open air; but was never afterwards able to command language, except for brief sentences, failing often in these to convey his full meaning. In this condition he lingered until the 11th of May, 1866, when, after a few days’ illness from renewed attacks of the same nature, he expired, having recently completed his seventy-first year.
My task is done. I have endeavored but “to hold the mirror up to nature.” If the image reflected appears, in any of its features, magnified, it was not so intended. Yet the memory of a friendship, dating back to kind offices and notice in my student-life, extending through all my active manhood, may not have been without its influence in giving color to the picture. But the character in our contemplation was of no ordinary proportions. At the bar of the State he wore the mantle of Gaston and Archibald Henderson for a much longer period than either, worthily and well, with no diminution of its honors. In the highest court of the Union he was the acknowledged compeer of Webster, Crittenden, Ewing, Johnson, Berrien, Walker and Cushing. That he did not sit in the highest seat of justice in the State and nation, as proposed successively by the Executive of each, is imputable to no deficiency or unworthiness for the station, his adversaries being judges. In the Senate, when Clay, Webster, and Calhoun still remained there, not to name others of scarcely inferior repute, he was among the foremost, upholding the rights of his own State and section with manliness and ability, but with candor, moderation, and true wisdom, which sought to harmonize conflicting elements and avert the calamities of civil strife. In morals he was inflexible, without stain or suspicion of vice; in manners and social intercourse, genial, frank, hospitable, with colloquial powers to instruct, amuse, and fascinate alike, and “with a heart open as day to melting charity.” The fame of such a man is a source of natural and just pride to the people of the State. This sentiment is that which the poet describes in the Englishman, when he sings
“It is enough to satisfy the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe’s great name compatriot with his own.”
How much he will be missed as a member of the community, as the friend of order and law, religion and morality, as a professional man, counsellor, and advocate of unrivalled ability and reputation, as an intellectual and cultivated man, with armor bright and powers ever at his command, presenting a model for the emulation of our ingenuous youth, as a public character, as adviser and true friend, but no flatterer of the people, and an unflinching supporter of their rights, wherever truth and duty might lead, time and experience may demonstrate. There is no public aspect, however, in which his loss is so much to be deplored as in the relation he bore to the past, and his probable efficiency in solving the problem of the day. Who so capable of interpreting the Constitution which forms our government, and the alleged laws of war by which it is claimed to be suspended or superseded, as that gifted mind and sincere nature, so trusted on these topics in former years, and so thoroughly imbued with the spirit and teachings of Marshall? Who so deserving to be heard on the best means of pacification and reestablishment of order and right among thirty-five millions of freemen as he who, by his temperance, calmness, and intelligent constitutional opinions, in the commencement of our national difficulties, incurred the censure of many in our own section of country, without receiving the approbation of their adversaries? Who so fitted for the exposure and correction of error, of allaying the ignoble passions of hatred and revenge, and rekindling the national affections inspired by a common and honorable history? Who so skillful to remove the scales from the eyes that will not see, and who so wise and brave to rebuke the age of faction, threatening to realize the assertion of Mr. Fox, in his history of James II., that “the most dangerous of all revolutions is a restoration?”
To that good Being, in whose hands are the destinies of nations and individuals, by whose divine agency crooked paths are often made straight and issue granted out of all troubles, in ways not visible to human eyes, let us unite in commending every interest of our beloved country.
The foregoing sketch, in the form of an address on the life and character of George E. Badger, was delivered in Raleigh, July 19, 1866, at the request of the Wake county bar. Though much of it is not strictly biographical, it is interesting on account of its distinguished author, as well as for giving us a view of the times and events discussed.
The address delivered by Mr. Badger at the State University in June, 1833, before the two Literary Societies, is said, by those who heard him on other occasions, not to afford a fair illustration of his great powers as a speaker. He was in fact never a florid orator, powerful to move the passions above reason, but his mind was so clear, his manner so unhesitating, his knowledge so great, his flow of language so easy, his memory so accurate, and his presence so commanding that he was bound to make a powerful impression whenever he spoke to men in public or in private.
He was not greatest as a statesman—he had his run in the technical learning of the law too long—statesmen must be early and specially trained and educated in the business of statecraft.
He was too reserved, austere at times, and perhaps sensitive, ever to win the affections of men in the same proportion that his great talents commanded their respect and admiration.
His short tribute to Judge Gaston, hereto subjoined, is valuable for the purpose for which it was uttered, and as a fair sample of his style, showing his choice of words, in easy command, when occasion called them forth. Judge Gaston died in January, 1844, and, at the meeting held in honor of his memory, Mr. Badger said: “This meeting of the members of the bar of the Supreme Court has learned with profound grief the melancholy and totally unexpected bereavement which the Court and the country have sustained in the death of the Hon. William Gaston. Struck down suddenly by the hand of God, in the midst of his judicial labors, dying as he had lived in the enlightened and devoted service of his country, endued by learning and adorned by eloquence with their choicest gifts, enobled by that pure integrity and firm and undeviating pursuit of right which only an ardent and animating religious faith can bestow and adequately sustain, and endeared to the hearts of all that knew him by those virtues which diffuse over the social circle all that is cheerful, refined, and benevolent, he has left behind him a rare and happy memory, dear alike to his brethren, his friends, and his country.”
Governor Graham undertakes to set forth Mr. Badger’s reasons for finally favoring the secession of North Carolina from the Union, but the reader will see from the subjoined resolutions that it is best to allow Mr. Badger to speak for himself. He and the people of North Carolina then assumed as axiomatic that Lincoln’s call for troops to invade the South was utterly without warrant of law. Strong as was the language of the resolutions, it was not strong enough to express the indignation of the people at Lincoln’s usurping the authority to begin the war on his sole responsibility. Not mainly because the institution of slavery was threatened, nor yet because we were wedged between seceding States, but because the people, as one man, believed that the most vital powers of a government of three departments had been violently seized by the Executive, that the seizure was supported by a conspiracy of States, and that the Constitution and the Union of the fathers were already outraged and dismembered.
The resolutions above alluded to, and a part of the speech delivered in the United States Senate, March 19, 1850, instructive in themselves, are given also as specimens of Mr. Badger’s style.
Ordinance of Secession
PROPOSED BY GEO. E. BADGER.
“Whereas, Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, were chosen President and Vice-President of the United States by a party in fact and avowedly entirely sectional in its organization, and hostile in its declared principles to the institutions of the Southern States of the Union, and thereupon certain Southern States did separate themselves from the Union, and form another and independent government, under the name of ‘The Confederate States of America’; and
“Whereas, the people of North Carolina, though justly aggrieved by the evident tendency of this election and of these principles, did, nevertheless, abstain from adopting any such measures of separation, and, on the contrary, influenced by an ardent attachment to the Union and Constitution, which their fathers had transmitted to them, did remain in the said Union, loyally discharging all their duties under the Constitution, in the hope that what was threatening in public affairs might yield to the united efforts of patriotic men from every part of the nation, and by their efforts such guarantees for the security of our rights might be obtained as should restore confidence, renew alienated ties, and finally reunite all the States in a common bond of fraternal union; meantime, cheerfully and faithfully exerting whatever influence they possessed for the accomplishment of this most desirable end; and
“Whereas, things being in this condition, and the people of this State indulging this hope, the said Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States did, on the fifteenth day of April, by his proclamation, call upon the States of the Union to furnish large bodies of troops to enable him, under the false pretense of executing the laws, to march an army into the seceded States with a view to their subjugation, under an arbitrary and military authority, there being no law of Congress authorizing such calling out of troops, and no constitutional right to use them, if called out, for the purpose intended by him; and
“Whereas, this call for troops has been answered throughout the Northern, Northwestern, and Middle non-slaveholding States with enthusiastic readiness, and it is evident, from the tone of the entire press of those States and the open avowal of their public men, that it is the fixed purpose of the governments and people of those States to wage a cruel war against the seceded States, to destroy utterly the fairest portion of this continent, and reduce its inhabitants to absolute subjection and abject slavery; and
“Whereas, in aid of these detestable plans and wicked measures, the said Lincoln, without any shadow of rightful authority, and in plain violation of the Constitution of the United States, has, by other proclamations, declared the ports of North Carolina, as well as all the other Atlantic and Gulf States under blockade, thus seeking to cut off our trade with all parts of the world; and
“Whereas, since his accession to power, the whole conduct of said Lincoln has been marked by a succession of false, disingenuous and treacherous acts and declarations, proving incontestably that he is, at least in his dealings with Southern States and Southern men, devoid of faith and honor; and
“Whereas, he is now governing by military rule alone, enlarging by new enlistments of men both the military and naval force, without any authority of law, having set aside all constitutional and legal restraints, and made all constitutional and legal rights dependent upon his mere pleasure and that of his military subordinates; and
“Whereas, in all his unconstitutional, illegal and oppressive acts, in all his wicked and diabolical purposes, and in his present position of usurper and military dictator, he has been and is encouraged and supported by the great body of the people of the non-slaveholding States;
“Therefore, this convention, now here assembled in the name and with the sovereign power of the people of North Carolina, doth, for the reasons aforesaid, and others, and in order to preserve the undoubted rights and liberties of the said people, hereby declare all connection of government between this State and the United States of America dissolved and abrogated, and this State to be a free, sovereign, and independent State, owing no subordination, obedience, support or other duty to the said United States, their Constitution or authorities, anything in her ratification of said Constitution or of any amendment or amendments thereto to the contrary notwithstanding; and having full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do, and appealing to the Supreme Governor of the world for the justice of our cause, and beseeching Him for his gracious help and blessing, we will, to the uttermost of our power and to the last extremity, maintain, defend, and uphold this declaration.”
Speech on Slavery and the Union
BY GEORGE E. BADGER.
I concur entirely in what has so often been said on this floor that there can be no peaceable separation of this Union. From the very nature of the case, from the character of our institutions, from the character of our country, from the nature of the government itself, it is, in my judgment, impossible that there can be a peaceable separation of this Union. But if there could be, I agree entirely with the honorable Senator from Kentucky, that the state of peace in which we should separate must be speedily ended, must terminate in intestine conflicts, in wars, which, from the nature of the case, could know no amicable termination, no permanent peace but, until the superiority of the one or the other side in the conflict should be completely established, would admit of nothing but hollow truces, in which each might breathe from past exertions, and make preparations for future conflicts.
Sir, the idea of a separation of these States into distinct confederacies was thought of, and considered, and spoken of before the adoption of this Constitution. At the time that the question was before the American people, whether the Constitution proposed by the Convention should be adopted, it was then spoken of. It is probable—yea, certain—consequences were referred to by the writers of that admirable series of papers denominated the “Federalist”; and I beg the indulgence of the Senate while I read a very brief extract, conveying the views of those eminent men:
“If these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, a man must be far gone in utopian speculation who can seriously doubt that the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests, as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.”
If this was a just view of the probable—the certain—results of a separation of these States at that time, and under the then existing circumstances, I pray you, sir, upon what, at the present day, can we found a better hope? Then the States were fresh from the conflict of the Revolutionary war. Then, not only had they a lively remembrance of the contest in which they had fought and in which they had gathered victory and honor together, but the leading men of that time were those choice spirits who had carried them through that recent conflict, who had established the independence of the country, and who exercised an influence in public affairs proportioned to their patriotism, their valor and their wisdom. Then they might have separated without the same causes of hostility and alienation which must exist in any separation of these States at the present day. If we separate now, we do it with feelings of mutual distrust and bitterness. We divide, not by common consent, as partners who can no longer carry on their joint business with mutual profit, each to pursue, for his own separate advantage, that course of business in which he thinks he can best succeed, but we part with the feelings of those who consider themselves mutually wronged. A sense of injustice and oppression rankles in the hearts of one portion of the new confederacies, and a sense in the other of defiance and indignity.
Under such circumstances, “what can ensue” (to borrow the language of the great English moralist) “but a continual exacerbation of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant reciprocation of mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap and eagerness to destroy?”
The question has been asked, What can the States do, supposing them to be divided—separated into distinct subdivisions or independent sovereignties? Allow me to answer that question in the words of one of the most eminent men whom my State has ever produced: a man of clear and comprehensive intellect, of a sound heart and enlarged and ardent patriotism, who shed a glory around his native State, and whose name is held in just veneration by every one who acknowledges himself a North Carolinian. At another period of our history the same question was asked. In the years 1831 and 1832 it had become an inquiry, a subject of disquisition in my State, and the late Judge Gaston, in an address delivered in 1832 before the Literary Societies of the University, thus treats of the subject:
“Threats of resistance, secession, separation, have become common as household words in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized with, and the public mind will soon become accustomed to, the detestable suggestion of disunion. Calculations and conjectures—what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East?—sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations—all tend to the same fatal end. What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the disjecta membra—the sundered, bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life, and strength, and vigor. They can furnish to the philosophic historian another melancholy and striking instance of the political axiom, that all republican confederacies have an inherent and unavoidable tendency to dissolution. They will present fields and occasions for border wars, for leagues and counter leagues, for the intrigues of petty statesmen and the struggles of military chiefs, for confiscations, insurrections, and deeds of darkest hue. They will gladden the hearts of those who have proclaimed that men are not fit to govern themselves, and shed a disastrous eclipse on the hopes of rational freedom throughout the world. Solon, in his code, proposed no punishment for parricide, treating it as an impossible crime. Such, with us, ought to be the crime of political parricide—the dismemberment of our ‘fatherland.’”
To me, sir, these sentiments convey a just representation of what will be the future and unavoidable result of a separation of the people of this great country into distinct and independent confederacies. And when I look at the prospect before us it is one so dark, filled with such horrid forms of dread and evil, that I willingly close my eyes upon it, and desire to believe that it is impossible it should ever be realized. * * * * * * * *
Nor, Mr. President, must I forget that, in considering the effect which this proviso [the Wilmot Proviso] is likely to have upon the condition of the Southern mind, we must look to what has been said by Northern gentlemen in connection with this subject. Permit me to call the attention of the Senate to a very brief extract from a speech delivered in the other end of the Capitol:
“In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that, under a full sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better anything that God in His providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.”
Several Senators. Whose speech is that?
A Senator. Mr. Mann’s.
Mr. Badger. We have heard much, Mr. President, of the violence of Southern declamation. I have most carefully avoided reading the speeches of Southern gentlemen who were supposed to be liable to that charge. I happened, however, in the early part of this session, and before the other house was organized, to be in that body when there were some bursts of feeling and denunciation from Southern gentlemen, which I heard with pain, mortification, almost with anguish of mind. But, sir, these were bursts of feeling; these were passionate and excited declarations; these had everything to plead for them as being spontaneous and fiery ebullitions of men burning at the moment under a sense of wrong. And where, among these, will you find anything equal to the cool, calm, deliberate announcement of the philosophic mind that delivered in the other house the passage which I have read: “Better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better anything that God in His providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery?” In other words, it is the deliberate, settled, fixed opinion of the honorable gentleman who made that speech, that rather than the extension of the bounds of slavery one foot—yes, sir, there is no qualification, one foot—he would prefer a disunion of these States, he would prefer all the horrors of civil war, all the monstrous, untold, and almost inconceivable atrocities of a servile war, he would pile the earth with dead, he would light up heaven with midnight conflagrations; all this—yea, and more—all the vials of wrath which God in His providence might see fit to pour down on us he would suffer, rather than permit, not one man who is now free to be made a slave—that would be extravagant enough—but rather than permit one man who now stands upon the soil of North Carolina a slave, to stand a slave upon the soil of New Mexico!
Yes, sir, here is a sacrifice of life and happiness, and of all that is dear to the black and white races together, to a mere idealism—a sacrifice proposed by a gentleman who claims to be a philosopher, and to speak the language of calm deliberation, a sacrifice of our glorious Union proposed by a patriot, not rather than freemen should be made slaves, not rather than the condition of even one human being should be made worse than it now is, but rather than one man shall remove from one spot of the earth to another without an improvement of his condition, without passing from slavery to freedom! Sir, after that announcement thus made, which I beg to say, sir, I did not seek—for the speech I have never read—the extract I found in one of the newspapers of the day—after that announcement, talk not of Southern violence, talk not of Southern egotism, talk not of our disposition to sacrifice to our peculiar notions and our peculiar relations the peace and happiness, the growing prosperity, and the mutual concord of this great Union. Now, sir, if that announcement goes abroad into the Southern country, attended by this wanton application of the Wilmot Proviso, an irritating commentary upon that patriotic announcement, what can be expected? What but the deepest emotions of indignation in the bosoms of those born and brought up where slavery exists, and taking totally different views of the institution from those which are taken by the honorable gentleman who has placed himself in this cool and deliberate, humane, and philosophical position!
Sir, we know, with regard to two or more of the Southern States, emphatic pledges have been given, through their Legislatures, that some mode of resistance to this proviso will be adopted. Now, what is to be the result of the Nashville Convention which has been called for June next, should that body assemble and find matters in their present condition? If no bill shall have passed to do us justice by affording, as far as the law can afford it, the effectual restoration of fugitive slaves; if a bill shall have passed, or be likely to pass, with the insult of the Wilmot Proviso causelessly and wantonly inserted in it, after the announcement made in the extract of the speech which I have just read, and after that made by the Senator from New York that so far from there being an obligation to restore to us our fugitive slaves, the duty of hospitality requires that they shall be received, kept and retained from us and that the constitutional law which requires their restoration to us is contrary to the law of God, and not binding in conscience; and, still more, after the settled policy is fully realized that those who visit our shores, coming under the protection of the American flag within our jurisdiction, and, in violation of our laws, seduce our slaves from us, and carry them to the North, shall not be surrendered up as fugitives from justice, because the same high and overruling law which puts the Constitution down, and makes it a nullity, has converted what we call a crime into a high and meritorious act of duty, what will be the result of this convention, meeting under such circumstances, what may be, what probably will be, the consequence? I say it not because I wish it, I do not wish it; the conviction has been forced upon my mind by evidence reluctantly received; and therefore I wish my friends around me to give, for that reason, the more credit to what I say—if that convention shall meet under such circumstances, in my judgment the Union is from that day dissolved. I do not say that dissolution will follow instantly; I do not say but that a connection, an external Union, may not be maintained, and linger on for a few years longer: but the meeting of that convention will be to our institutions, in the language of Napoleon, “the beginning of the end”; it will be the initiative step in such a course of measures, North and South, as will result in convulsing us so far that the ills to which we fly, cannot, in our judgment, exceed those we bear; and thus will be put upon the people of the South the necessity, the painful, hard necessity, of a dissolution, a final separation. Now, sir, why do I take this view? In the first place, the meeting of the Nashville Convention is, upon its face, a step towards a separate and distinct organization of the Southern States. The very movement separates them for a time, in purposes and intent, from the great mass of the population of the country. They meet there for what purpose? To consider, to deliberate, to debate—what? What course of action shall, by mutual agreement, be taken by the States whom this convention will represent, what manner of resistance, what mode of redress? Now, sir, in all matters of this kind, in all revolutions, in all dissolutions of the ties which bind us together, the first step is the great difficulty. It is so even in social and private life; it is so in the married state. The first wanton and public outrage on the part of one towards the other of the parties is easily followed by such steps as end in total and thorough estrangement. Well, then, suppose no measures are proposed which look to a separation of the Union, as I have no reason to suppose that any will be proposed looking to that as an object, I fully believe that that convention in Mississippi which terminated its session in the call for this convention was influenced by high and patriotic motives, seeking to preserve and not to destroy the Union. If I wanted anything to satisfy me of that (besides other reasons which I have), the very fact that the convention was presided over by the venerable and venerated Chief Justice Sharkey, a most learned jurist and patriotic gentleman, would be sufficient for me. But when we have ascertained what people design by any particular movement, we are far, very far, from having ascertained what they may accomplish by it. Now, suppose this meeting should resolve that, by a common concurrence of the States represented, laws should be passed, police regulations be adopted, in those States, of the most irritating and offensive kind towards the Northern portion of the Union: such a course will not appear surprising, if we bear in mind the fact that slaves are constantly taken from our ports by vessels that visit them for the purpose of commerce; that, thus taken, they are withheld from us, and their seducers are neither discountenanced at home, nor restored to us for punishment; and that a flagrant wrong on one side naturally provokes to measures at once of protection and retaliation from the other. But, Mr. President, the moment these States, by mutual compact and agreement, have come to a resolution to adopt a particular course of measures upon this subject, they have left the platform of the Constitution; they are no longer upon it, because the Constitution expressly forbids a State to enter into any compact or agreement with another State without the consent of Congress. When this first step is taken, the process is easy and need not be traced to a final dissolution of our present Union: and, therefore, in the event of the meeting of this convention, with the slavery question in the situation I have mentioned, I have, I repeat, gloomy apprehensions of what may be, and most probably will be the result upon the destinies of our country. Force, Mr. President, cannot keep the States of this Union together, cannot preserve the constitutional Union. I distinctly admit what has been said by the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster], that no State has a right to secede from this Union. I distinctly admit that the Constitution, looking to perpetuity, makes no provision directly or indirectly, for the separation of its parts. But, in point of fact, from the very nature of our institutions, the States cannot be kept in union by force. The majority, or the most powerful portion, may conquer and reduce to subjection the other; but when this is done, the States are not in union, the constitutional connection is not restored. It is but the spectacle of a conquered people submitting to superior power; and no ties of affection, no cooperation in a common government, no American Union can reasonably be hoped between the conquerors and the conquered. Believe me, sir, if ever the unhappy hour should arrive when American blood is shed in a contest between the States—some desiring to secede, and the others endeavoring to compel them by force of arms to remain in the Union—whenever that hour comes, our connection is immediately broken, to all beneficial purposes, for the happiness or prosperity of the country.
Now, Mr. President, with regard to my own State. Should this proviso be adopted, and should satisfaction not be given in the other particulars which I have mentioned, will North Carolina join in resisting, in any mode, the action of this government? Will she unite in measures for secession, for revolution, or for retaliatory legislation? I am so far, sir, from undertaking to speak upon this subject for the South, which I wish to be understood now and always as disavowing, that I do not feel myself even empowered to speak what will be the judgment and conduct of my own State. As was well said the other day by my friend and colleague [Mr. Mangum], in presenting some resolutions to the Senate, disunion is a question which we cannot discuss here as one for Senatorial action. We are sent here to represent the State under the Constitution, and to discharge ordinary legislative and executive duties, which presuppose the Constitution to be entire and in full force. We of course have no delegated authority to speak the views of North Carolina upon any such question as that which I have just stated. Last year the Legislature of my State passed a series of resolutions, in which, after expressing in very strong and decided terms the sense felt by the people of that State of the wrong of the Wilmot Proviso, and other kindred measures, they nevertheless adopted an extract from the Farewell Address of Washington, embodying the sentiment that we were not to look upon the Union as in any event to be abandoned. Making all proper modifications of that large and most comprehensive expression, “in any event,” it could have no less interpretation than this, that none of the events alluded to by the preceding resolutions would furnish ground for the abandonment of the Union. Since that time this matter has been much discussed in North Carolina; primary meetings have been held; different resolutions have been passed by those meetings, some discountenancing and declining to be represented in the Nashville Convention, others approving the call, and resolving to send delegates; and one meeting, with a somewhat singular inconsistency, while protesting against a government of unlimited powers, solemnly pledged itself to adhere to, abide by, and support whatever the Nashville Convention shall determine. I hope, sir, that North Carolina will not concur on account of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso, in any measures for the dissolution of the Union or resistance to the Government. My own opinion is that it would furnish no sufficient ground for such a procedure. I say that here; I shall say it at home when the proper time arrives, if a time shall ever arrive when it shall be necessary to say it. But this I say, also, that I shall feel, if such an event as the adoption of the proviso should happen, that a serious indignity has been offered to us; not, perhaps, designed—I will not charge any with a deliberate design to insult—but yet an indignity, because such must be the wanton adoption of an objectionable and useless measure, after distinct notice that it will be considered in that light. And rely upon it, sir, that whatever may be the result in regard to any external action of the people of the Southern States, if something satisfactory is not done respecting fugitive slaves, and if the application of this Wilmot Proviso is insisted upon, there will be left in the hearts of our people a rankling sense of injustice and offense. They will have less of hope in the future operation of the Constitution. They will feel, to a certain extent, a painful conviction that the large majority of the inhabitants of the free States have not that sympathy with their feelings and regard for their rights, that justice and moderation in the exercise of the known powers, and that abstinence from the needless exercise of doubtful and questionable ones which are so essential to keep the mind of the country united; and, unless our minds are united, the forced association of reluctant communities, who stay together, not to obtain good from their connection, but to avoid evils of separation, does not deserve the name of Union.
Mr. President, I am sorry that I have occupied the Senate so long. I will endeavor to draw the few remaining remarks I have to make to a speedy close. I have submitted with entire frankness the views which I entertain. I believe, conscientiously believe, that there is in the Northern States of the Union a sincere attachment to the Constitution, a firm adherence to the compromises of the Constitution, and a just consideration for the rights and feelings of their Southern brethren. And I have a strong hope, an abiding confidence, that these sentiments will, on every proper occasion, be manifested by the great body of inhabitants in the free States. If I thought otherwise, I should be without hope, and should be inclined to consider my birth an event to be deplored, as imposing upon me the necessity of witnessing the utter destruction of my country. But, sir, let a proper bill for the recapture of fugitive slaves be passed, let this Wilmot Proviso be dropped (and, if possible, sink into insignificancy and oblivion), and I will be willing to deal with every question before the Senate in the utmost liberality of compromise. Yes, sir, I have no objections to compromise. The Union sprung out of compromise. The Union is supported by legislative compromise, a compromise incorporated in the fundamental law, the Constitution. Springing out of compromise, this Union can only be preserved and made to promote the great and good ends designed by and hoped from it, by our carrying on the government habitually in the spirit of compromise. In that view, sir, I am willing to withdraw all objection to the admission of California, with or without an alteration of her limits as settled by her constitution. And when I say that, Mr. President, permit me to say that I make a great sacrifice. Sir, I occupy the same position with regard to California now as I did at the last session. The honorable Senator from Mississippi, now in his seat [Mr. Davis], knows that I was with him upon a committee charged with the subject of admitting those Territories as States. I announced to him at once that I was totally and absolutely opposed to their admission in any form, and with any subdivision of territory. I have heard nothing to remove the objections I then entertained; but, in the manner of the organization of the government there, I find additional objections, strong in themselves, and giving additional force to those which I had before. And if I could believe that the views expressed by the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], the other day, upon this subject, are the views entertained by the people of California, or by the gentlemen who are sent here to represent them, my objections would rise almost to an insurmountable repugnance, to a perpetual opposition; for that Senator has not hesitated to tell us, in substance, that we have no choice about admitting California; that she is a State, and a State she will continue, irrespective of any act of Congress; that she comes here and demands admission into this Union, and, if not admitted here, our authority will be cast aside, and she will be an independent republic upon the Pacific. But, sir, I cannot believe, and do not believe, that such an insolent dictation to us is designed by the people of California. And I personally know the two gentlemen whom she has selected as Senators, and am sure they would be the first to disown and renounce the position assumed by their patron upon this floor.
The honorable Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], seems to consider the admission of California as a matter beyond all price and all value, to be attained at every hazard and every sacrifice, and therefore, notwithstanding the opinion he has expressed with regard to slavery, though he considers it a high, hospitable duty to entertain the fugitive slaves from the South, and to keep them from their masters, though he has a holy horror of the extension of slavery into the Territories now free, and considers every obligation imposed by the Constitution in reference to slavery overborne and annulled by the supreme law of God—he tells us, that so all-important is the admission of California, under the circumstances, that he would have voted for her admission with an express recognition by her constitution of the right to carry slaves into her territory. An allusion to this subject seems to have a strange effect upon the Senator from New York. He is carried back at once to the last session, when certain measures were pending here for the purpose of organizing some temporary government for California and New Mexico; and alluding to the gentleman who is now the source of power and patronage in this Government, he thus expresses himself:
“May this republic never have a President commit a more serious or more dangerous usurpation of power than the act of the present eminent Chief Magistrate, in endeavoring to induce the legislative authorities to relieve him from the exercise of military power, by establishing civil institutions, regulated by law, in a distant province. Rome would have been standing this day if she had had such generals and such tribunes.”
Yes, sir, if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary Taylor for commander of her armies; if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary Taylor for a tribune, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns, Attila, and all his hordes, would have poured upon the empire in vain—they would have been repelled, overcome upon the embattled plain, and driven back to their fastnesses in the North, and Rome would stand this day proud mistress of the world! Now, sir, whether the President of the United States can swallow such an adulation as this, I will not undertake to decide; but such is my estimate of his intelligence and his merit, of his modesty—a just modesty, which usually accompanies true merit—that I believe he has no powers of deglutition sufficient to get it down.
I have said, Mr. President, that I should make a great sacrifice in my vote for the admission of California; yet I will make the sacrifice, not grudgingly, but cheerfully; and, as said by the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass], the other day, if asked “What would I do to restore harmony to the country, and make this still a united and happy people,” I would answer like him, “I scarcely know what I would not do to accomplish such an end.”
Mr. President, I feel the importance of this great subject, and my utter want of power to treat it as it deserves. I wish to excite or to irritate the angry feelings of no section of this country; I am conscious, in my own bosom, of no sentiment towards any portion of my countrymen, except one of respect and cordial attachment. But I may be permitted to except from this general declaration those mischievous associations in the Northern part of the United States, which, to our injury, and to the great and permanent injury of the unfortunate slaves among us, have been, with an unholy pertinacity, agitating the subject of this domestic institution of ours for the last fifteen years. Towards them, even, I trust I have no feeling of hatred. For every portion of the American people, I care not whether in the East or West, the North or South, I have the heart and hand of a brother. There is no gentleman upon this floor, among my immediate associates around me, no gentleman upon the other side of the chamber, for whom I have not always manifested a proper personal consideration and kindness; but I wish to make our Northern friends aware of the danger to which we are exposed. My own views have never been extreme, my position has ever been moderate; and I trust some credit will be given me when I declare my deliberate judgment, that consequences the most serious, even the most calamitous, may follow a particular disposition of this subject by the present Congress. If it should be believed throughout the Southern country that sentiments which we have heard here uttered, are the sentiments of the whole body of the North, every desire to remain together would sink in Southern hearts. We would be together, then, not for love or affection, not from the hope of happiness or improvement; and if we would remain united at all, it would be solely from dread of the greater and darker calamities that might follow our separation. If this subject is met in a proper spirit, it can be easily settled and adjusted. So far as I am concerned, I am willing to meet upon any reasonable ground. I am willing to yield much that I wish, to do much for which I have a strong and serious repugnance.
I call upon every conservative gentleman in this body, every one from a free State who desires to perpetuate the institutions of his country in their true spirit and character, who wishes not to convert our Union into an association of discordant and discontented parts, held together by dread or force, but to preserve us one people, united in heart and affection, I call upon him to meet us upon the ground of kindness, compromise, and conciliation. I say to him, drop this odious proviso, a measure powerful for evil and impotent for good; let it not have an immortality of mischief; give us security for the restoration of our fugitive slaves; admit California as you wish, and if you choose to abolish in the District of Columbia this foreign slave-trade, this conversion of the seat of government into a general mart for the slavedealers of the surrounding States, I say abolish it. My colleague [Mr. Mangum] and myself both stand ready to vote for it. Permit me, sir, to say to our Northern friends, that if they suppose Southern gentlemen to be wedded to any of the adventitious evils or abuses of slavery, to be unwilling to correct excesses, or disposed to support cruelty or to patronize inhumanity, they do us great injustice. Upon the rights of property we stand—these we consider sacred—and from our support of them we cannot be moved. But, saving these, make what regulations of police the occasion may require, and I will not only submit, but will give them my hearty concurrence and approbation.
Mr. President, it cannot be—I will not believe it—nothing but demonstration, nothing but the accomplished fact shall satisfy me, that we have so degenerated from our sires of the Revolution as not to be able harmoniously to adjust the questions before us. It cannot be that the true spirit of concession and compromise has fled; that idealisms have taken the place of constitutional obligations and kindly feelings; that fanaticism has dethroned reason, and the Union, the work of our noble fathers, just as it has well commenced its onward progress to a future of real glory and power, is to be broken to pieces by the rude hands of agitation, by cabals abroad or intrigues at home, contrary to the general sentiment and earnest wish of the great mass of the people. Sir, we have had offerings made here for the preservation of this Union from every quarter of this chamber. Often and nobly have they been made by the distinguished Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass]; firm, steady, constant, and true in this cause has my friend from New York, on the other side of the chamber [Mr. Dickinson], at all times been. The distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Clay], in his late earnest and patriotic efforts, has added another laurel to the immortal chaplet that binds his brow; and but a few days since, the great expounder of the Constitution [Mr. Webster], that man of mighty mental and moral power, closed the list of great names engaged in this holy cause, in a speech so clear in expression, so comprehensive in patriotism, so noble in self-devotion, that could we doubt the success of these united efforts for harmony and conciliation, we must needs believe that, for some inexpiable crime, God has visited us with judicial blindness, preparatory to the outpouring of his indignation upon our country. Sir, I will not believe this, I do not, I will not despair of a cause so good. On the contrary I trust that we shall yet come together on a common basis of harmonious cooperation, and find ourselves able to adopt, as the expression not only of a patriotic wish, but of an assured and confident hope, the sentiment made immortal by the great Senator from Massachusetts, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”