day, and I do not know but that it was the senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale;]-he is always saying something out of the way [laughter] that whenever your friends undertake to change the constitution, party lines will be drawn, the party lash will be applied, you will be declared to be in the wrong, and the army will be sent to put you down. Sent by whom? Has not James Buchanan already announced to you in the message we are now discussing, that you have the right to make the change? Have you ever heard a southern man, in position here or elsewhere, declare that you had not the right to do it? Then why say the party lash will be applied and armies sent to put you down in Kansas? Gentlemen, I am respectful towards my brother senators. I dare say you believe what you say, but you do make the greatest sacrifice of common sense to your candor that I have ever heard from any set of sensible men, when you profess to believe that the President of the nation would deliberately, in the face of his pledge to the contrary, send an army to prevent that very thing being done which he himself declares in his message can be done. If you have the power, exercise it. If you have the votes, put them in the ballot-box; take possession of the government, and God knows you are welcome to it; but so long as I have a tongue to speak or an arm to strike, you shall take possession neither of that government nor of any other through mass meetings held at Lawrence, Topeka, or anywhere else. Do it through the peaceable agency of the ballot-box, and I am content. Attempt it by any other agency, and I will stand by the President in sending an army to crush out your rebellion. We have heard a great deal said in the course of this debate about apprehension of civil war, and bloodshed, and dissolving the Union, and all that. Sir, there is a sovereign remedy for all such apprehended evils. Obey the law, respect the Constitution, fulfil your contracts, and there will be no civil war; there will be no bloodshed; there will be no dissolution of the Union. Fulfil all your obligations to the laws and the Constitution, and to the contracts between the sections of the Union on the subject of slavery, and all other subjects, and I guaranty that your Union will stand for ever. Trample upon these obligations, and soon your Union will pass away as the baseless fabric of a vision." In the future I see the Union standing upon pillars as firm as the eternal rock of ages; but I see it only through those paths which lead to the law, the Constitution, and the fulfilment of obligations. In a different direction I see it a dissolving Union; I see the stars of our galaxy being blotted out, and the sun of our glory running away as it were in rivulets of blood; and all this is seen over the traces of violated laws, prostrate constitutions, disregarded compacts. 66 Let me say, Mr. President, to the senator from Illinois, that on him. rests a fearful responsibility. He is the author of this measure. He has stood by it until he has brought it to its present condition. He sees a whole united South arrayed on the one side, and he has thrown himself into the northern scale. Does he mean to array a whole united North against a whole united South? If this result shall ever be accomplished, it will be done, in my opinion, over laws violated, constitutions trampled under foot, and compacts flagrantly outraged. I will not be responsible for the consequences when this state of things shall be brought about. Let not the senator from Illinois suppose that I have meant to assail him; that I have meant to join in any cry against him. Let him not suppose that I am pursuing him with any of the instincts of a bloodhound. Heaven knows I would to-day much rather embrace him as a friend than regard him for a solitary instant as an enemy. He knows how much I have loved him in the past. He knows with what fidelity I have followed his flag, and with what joy I have witnessed the rising star of his glory. But it is not in the name of these that I would appeal to the honorable senator. We have a country, a common country, a country dear to him and to me; to you, sir; to one and to all of us. That country is in peril. The hearts of stout men begin to quail. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of our people believe that the Union is even now rocking beneath our feet. The senator has it in his power to put a stop to all this agitation. If he will but say to the angry waves, "Peace, be still," calmness will settle on the great deep of public sentiment. Whether he thinks so or not, he is the very life and soul of this agitation. If he stood now where he stood at the passage of this bill, with his Democratic friends, supporting the strong arm of a President who dares to do his duty in defiance of all danger, there would not have been a ripple on the surface, or if there had been, it would have subsided and died away in the great ocean of oblivion where other ripples have gone, and we should almost without an effort introduce Kansas into the Union. Sir, the senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the opposition on this question. If ruin come upon the country, he, more than any other and all other men, will be to blame for it. If freedom shall be lost-if the Union shall fail--if the rights of man shall perish on earth-if desolation shall spread her mantle over this our glorious country-let not the senator ask who is the author of all this, lest expiring Liberty, with a death-rattle in her throat, shall answer to him as Nathan answered David, "Thou art the man." Mr. HALE. I do not intend to occupy the time of the Senate more than a few minutes; but if the honorable senator from Mississippi will give me his ear, as he thinks I am always saying things out of the way, I want to put a question, so that I may be able to keep in the way hereafter. I wish to ask him whether or not, if the constitution of Kansas, or any other state, comes here correct in all its forms, so far as paper and ink are concerned, is it competent for the Senate or Congress to look behind the forms to facts that are not patent upon the papers which are presented? That is the simple question I wish to ask, and I believe it is pertinent to the train of argument in which the senator has been indulging. If a state comes here applying for admission with everything, so far as paper and ink are concerned, so far as is shown on the face of the papers, all correct, and it is contended and admitted that there has been a fraud, is it competent for Congress to look behind and beyond the returns, to that fraud, on the question of admission? Mr. BROWN. Unquestionably, if it is a clear and palpable case of fraud. If one man, for instance, should to-day make out a constitution for Nebraska, or make out a constitution for Oregon, and should present it here, and the charge should be distinctly made, it would be competent to inquire whether it was not a fraud of that sort. Unquestionably it would. Mr. HALE. I do not wish to be left in doubt. The senator says it would be competent to inquire, if the fraud were clear and palpable. A thing that is clear and palpable, exists on the face of the papers. My question is not as to a patent fraud that is palpable on the face of the paper; but where the allegation is that there is fraud behind the paper, and though the figures are well enough. It is said that "figures cannot lie;" but it is forgotten that those who make them can. My question is, whether the paper and figures, being right, yet there being a suggestion that there is a fraud behind-not patent, not palpable-in that case the Senate can go behind it? That is the question. Mr. BROWN. I am not prepared to answer a question which has such latitude as that. I dare say a case could be supposed where I should say they could; but I think they should proceed behind the presentation of the constitution with exceeding caution, and never to the point of inquiring into the validity of an election. I do not think that proper. The convention must necessarily be the judge of the qualification and election of its own members; and, except in a case of very extreme and outrageous fraud, palpable and clear, we ought not to go behind that. I am not prepared to say that, in such a case, you cannot inquire into such an election; but an ordinary inquiry into the validity of an election, I hold is beyond our power. Mr. HALE. I am satisfied. MINNESOTA SENATORS. SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 25, 1858, ON MR. PRESIDENT: I quite concur with the senator from Georgia, that this whole question turns on the point whether Minnesota is a state of the Union. If she is, then it was clearly the right of the senator from Kentucky this morning to move, as he did, to swear in her senators, as much so as it would be the privilege of the senator from Texas to rise to-morrow morning and move to swear in his absent colleague who has not yet taken the oath. It is not technically a question of privilege; it is rather what we call, in parliamentary law, a privileged question. The distinction is not worth drawing here, perhaps, but still there is a distinction. Now, is Minnesota a state of the Union? She is not. I shall vote for the resolution proposed by the senator from Georgia; but I do it in deference to the judgment of other gentlemen, and to get clear of the question now, and not because there is one single shade of a shadow of doubt on my mind on the subject. Minnesota is not a state of the Union. If she is, she must have been made so by the enabling act. There is no pretence that she has become a state in any other way. Who knows? How has it been congressionally ascertained that she has complied with the enabling act? Where is the judgment on that subject? How has it been ascertained that her constitution does not infringe or violate the Constitution of the United States? When was it ascertained and put upon the record that her constitution is republican in its form? All these things may be true, but they have not been ascertained. There is nothing on the record to show that they are true. Where is the evidence, that in fixing her boundaries she has not run into the adjoining states, and cut off a part of Iowa and Wisconsin? Has it been ascertained that that is not true? Suppose, without inquiry, just by virtue of the enabling act, she is now in the Union, and it turns out that her constitution is not republican in form, that her boundaries violate the boundaries of the adjoining states, that she has in other respects violated the Constitution of the United States: then what? Is she out of the Union? Do you break up the Union by turning her out to-morrow as soon as you ascertain that these things are true? If she is in the Union, she is in from the day her constitution was passed by the members of the convention which made it, for you have done nothing to give sanction to it since that. If she is in by virtue of the enabling act, she is in from the very hour when the convention made the constitution; and then I suppose the very instant you find out that her constitution is in violation of the Constitution of the United States, she goes out. That is dissolution. I speak of these matters simply to show what strikes me to be the absurdity of declaring a state in the Union in this sort of informal way. If she cannot be in the Union with a constitution anti-republican; if she cannot be in with boundaries which infringe the boundaries of other states; if she cannot be in because her constitution provides for orders of nobility, stars, and garters, and all that; if she cannot be in for any one of the hundred objections which I could name, then there must be a necessity for ascertaining that these objections do not exist before she is in at all. Who has ascertained it? It is the duty of Congress under the clause of the Constitution, which authorizes it to admit new states, to ascertain all these points. When they have done it, and put that ascertainment in the form of a judgment, on the records, the state is in, and not till then. About this I have no doubt, and I am astonished to find that anybody else has; but still, in deference to the opinion of other gentlemen, and to get clear of the question, I will vote for the resolution of the senator from Georgia. REPRESENTATION OF MINNESOTA. SPEECH IN THE SENATE, MARCH 29, 1858, ON THE REPRESENTATION OF MINNESOTA IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE. I INTEND, Mr. President, to vote for the amendment proposed by the senator from Massachusetts. It commends itself to my judgment as right. The second section of the bill proposes to admit the new state of Minnesota with one representative. To that she is clearly and distinctly entitled. It then goes further, and says that she shall have such additional representatives as the census already taken shall show her to be entitled to. That return shows, technically, that she is entitled to no additional representative; but it shows that she has more than a majority of the quota. If we are to follow the precedents set us in the case of California, and the case of South Carolina, she is entitled to one additional representative. I will mete out to this young sister that justice which has been meted out to other sisters of the confederacy. I am prepared to vote for a representative for her fraction, because it was given to South Carolina, and given to California, and it is fair to presume she is as well entitled to it as either, or both of them. Then it may be inquired why I vote for this amendment, seeing that the census has been taken, and that, according to the returns, there is only population enough to give her one representative, and one for a fraction over a majority of the quota? I do it because leading citizens from this state, leading friends of the state in both Houses of Congress, assert that the census was improperly and imperfectly taken; and say that if there had been a proper and perfect enumeration of the inhabitants, she would have shown herself entitled to three representatives. I know not whether that be so or not; and in the important matter of apportioning representation, I will not guess at the amount of population. I cannot do it, and will not do it; but when we have so much evidence that the state has population enough to entitle her certainly to two, and in all probability to three representatives, and a proposition is brought forward to take a new census, to show whether she is not entitled, by a fair enumeration of her people, to another representative, it is harsh treatment to say that you will refuse the small outlay in money which it will require to re-enumerate her inhabitants. What is there in the proposition? It will perhaps cost you fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, in hard cash, to take a re-enumeration of the inhabitants of this state, and that is all it will cost. Will you weigh that amount of money against injustice charged, and charged, doubtless, conscientiously in the judgment of many, as having been committed against this state? Now, sir, I want a minute more to vindicate myself from any portion of the responsibility, which may seem to be heaped upon me, growing out of the repeated declaration that Texas was admitted here with two representatives without an enumeration of her population, and California without it too. It is true you did introduce Texas with two representatives, but how? She came here as an independent republic, saying, "if you will receive us as we propose, we will come into the Union; but if you will not thus receive us, we will stay outside of the Union." It was no admission of a new state. It was a proposition on the part of an independent republic, upon terms proposed by herself, to come into the Union. If you chose to accept them, well; if you had not, just as well. In the case of California, I know you did introduce a state without an enumeration of the people, and did it wrongfully. I, and others who stood by me at that day in opposing it, predicted that that would afterwards be claimed as a precedent, and that other states would ask admission on the same principle. I was against the admission of California with two representatives. I am against the admission of Minnesota with three representatives. I am for admitting the state, but I repeat to senators now, what I said three weeks ago, that, with my consent, Messrs. Shields and Rice shall not take a seat on this floor, under the late election, friends or no friends. I would not care if they would vote a thousand times over for the admis |