and patriotic efforts have signalized the times in which they lived, have not been lost. Have the labors of Calhoun been forgotten, when he declared a few years ago for the secession of South Carolina? and that secession would be the consummation of their liberties?" The review I have taken of the causes assigned for secession, reduces them to three only, which have foundation in fact-the election of a President by a sectional vote, the Personal Liberty laws of four States, and the exclusion of the South from the common territory. As to the first, nothing more need be said: it was produced by the act of the South itself; let not the South complain. As to the second, it is too insignificant as a justification of rebellion, to deserve a moment's notice. Concerning the last, it is as clear to me as the sunlight around us, that it is a shallow subterfage, and that the South, in reality, cared nothing about the Territories. If the right to take their slaves there was of such value, as, when interfered with, to justify them to their own consciences in revolutionary violence, can they tell-can any man tell-why they should take a step which would inevitably exclude slavery from the Territories forever? Did they believe that an institution could be planted there by war, which they could not carry there in time of peace? Did they hope that, with sword in hand, they could wrest from the Government a vast domain, from which the people of the North should be shut out, except upon such terms as the South might, as an independent power, prescribe? Did they suppose that fear would grant what justice and equity refused? Did they imagine that after seceding from the Union, and thereby renouncing all rights flowing from the Union, they could obtain more easy access to the Territories? No: they knew that secession from the Union was secession from the common property of the Union, as well as from its Constitution. It is, therefore, manifest, that they did not secede because the Territories were closed, or were threatened to be closed against them; for, by seceding, they barred and bolted the gates of the Territories against themselves forever. THE DUTY OF MISSOURI. My friends, time does not permit my following any further this doubling trail of perfidy and treason. I have endeavored honestly to expose it to your view, for it is the trail Missouri has been urged by her now fugitive Governor to follow, and Missourians, when they take it up, should understand well what they are after, and where they are to be led. Let him who is willing to make Missouri the unwelcome appendage of a Confederacy founded on the principles and erected by the means I have exhibited to you, take her into that position when he can. Í rejoice to believe that there yet remains in our State enough of virtue, honor, and patriotism, to make the time far distant when it can be done. I will not discuss the question whether Missouri-to use a common expression-ought to "go North," or "go South." Missouri has no going to do. Her duty is to stand loyal to the Union and the Constitution. The National Government has put no wrong on her, and she has no occasion to wrong herself by an attempt to change her relations to it. But if, in an evil hour, she should be betrayed into the contagious revolt, which has drawn into its vortex other States that had no part in the original treason of the cotton States, let the participants in any such movement understand that the Government which never before made its arm really felt, will be felt then, and that to their discomfiture. CONCLUDING REMARKS. A few words more, and I have done. We are in the midst of an unnatural and consuming civil war. Some four hundred thousand men are under arms, and we know not at what moment the land may tremble under the shock of contending hosts. It is a sight to make the world weep. The cause of humanity, the claims of freedom, the spirit of Christianity, all demand that this terrible conflict should be stayed. But, from the depths of a troubled spirit, I ask, how can it be? A part of the nation rebels-declares its revolt irreconcilable— announces that it asks no compromise or reconstruction, will consider none, even though permitted to name its own terms-defies the power of the Nation-wages war upon the National Government, and cries out, "ALL WE ASK IS TO BE LET ALONE!" How can they be let alone, without destroying the Union and the Constitution? If any man will tell me that, I will say, Let them alone. With unequalled skill in raising false issues, the secessionists in our midst labor to fan the flame of rebellion here, by impressing upon the minds of all within the reach of their influence, that the controversy of the revolted States is with "ABE LINCOLN;" when those States are in arms against the supreme constitutional authority of the Nation. They seek by every contrivance to excite odium against the Government, because "ABE LINCOLN" is, in accordance with the Constitution, at the head of it: a very sufficient reason for changing the Administration, at the proper time, by the votes of the people, but not the least justification or apology for rebellion. They stigmatize every man as a Black Republican or an Abolitionist, who adheres to the Constitutional Government of his country, in its efforts to protect itself from subversion. They are convulsed with holy horror at the exercise of alleged unauthorized powers by "ABE LINCOLN," to preserve and defend the Constitution, and in the next breath they declare that we have no Constitution. They hypocritically profess a deep concern and sacred regard for that great charter of our liberties, and at the same moment show themselves ready to aid in the fiendish work of its utter destruction. "ABE LINCOLN," fulfilling his sworn Doc. 64. SPEECH OF JOSEPH SEGAR, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES OF VIRGINIA, MARCH 30, 1861. "Whereas, It has come to the knowledge of the Legislature that a large number of heavy guns, manufactured at Bellona foundry, near the capital of Virginia, under an order of the Ordnance Department at Washington, D. C., have been ordered to Fortress Monroe, where they can only be needed for the purpose of intimidation and menace to Virginia at present, and of actual hostilities in a certain contingency that may change her future relations to the Federal Government and the non-slaveholding tyranny it represents: duty to protect the Constitution, is to them a declaration-"LIBERTY AND UNION, ONE AND demon of darkness; "JEFF. DAVIS," striking INSEPARABLE, NOW AND FOREVER!" Union deadly blows at that Constitution, which he has gave us liberty, disunion will take it away. time and again sworn to support, is an angel of He who strikes at the Union, strikes at the light. They profess immaculate loyalty with heart of the Nation. Shall not the Nation detheir tongues, but they are in their hearts as trai- fend its life? And when the children of the torous as Benedict Arnold. They denounce in un- Union come to its rescue, shall they be demeasured terms the military preparations of the nounced? And if denounced, will they quail Government to meet this rebellion, and exalt before the mere breath of the Union's foes? the insurgents as patriots, armed to defend For one, I shrink not from any words of man, their families and their firesides; when not a save those which would justly impute to me soldier would have been added to the regular disloyalty to the Union and the Constitution. army, or a regiment marched southward, but My country is all to me; but it is no country for a revolt aiming at the entire demolition of without the Constitution which has exalted and the Constitution, and the seizure of the Gov- glorified it. For the preservation of that Conernment by armed usurpation. All these are stitution I shall not cease to struggle, and my but the artful shifts of treason, to sustain its life-long prayer will be, GOD SAVE THE AMERICAN desperate cause. I despise and reject the UNION! whole brood of them. I STAND BY THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES; and when it is threatened with destruction, I no more stop to inquire who is President, than, if the police of my city were engaged in quelling a riot, I would higgle about who is Chief of Police. The question is: Where is the constitutional authority? To that I am bound to render obedience and support, without constituting myself the judge | as to whether, in a dire extremity, it restrains itself precisely within legally defined limits, when to do so might leave it at the mercy of foes armed for its subjugation. He who arms himself to subvert that authority, is, by the law of God and man, a rebel and a traitor, no matter who holds office; and if any man can find any other way to deal with him than with the weapons he himself has chosen, let him point it out;-I know of none. Before God, I take no pleasure in the necessity which demands such a resort. All my instincts and principles are against bloodshed; but no rebellion ever was put down without it; and this can hardly expect to be an exception. Upon its instigators must rest all the awful consequences of their appeal to arms. They have challenged the combat, and it lies not in their mouths, or in those of their aiders and abettors here, to complain that the Government defends itself, by extraordinary, or even unconstitutional means. Had such an attack been made upon it by a foreign foe without being repelled, the Nation would have stood disgraced before the world forever: if this rebellious assault be not resisted by all the power of the loyal portion of the Nation, shall we meet any other fate? It is, then, no spirit of malice or vindictiveness which justifies the Government in self-protection by arms. The simple alternative is, government or anarchy. The latter would destroy our freedom, perhaps forever, and blight us with a perpetual curse. We are lost, if our Constitution is overthrown. Thenceforward we may bid farewell to liberty. Never were truer or greater words uttered by an American statesman, than when Daniel Webster closed his great speech in defence of the Constitution, nearly thirty years ago, with that sublime Be it Resolved by the General Assembly, That the Governor of this Commonwealth be authorized, and he is hereby directed, to order out the public guard, and to call out such of the militia as may be necessary to arrest the contemplated removal of the guns aforesaid, and that he be further instructed to employ all needful force to resist every and any attempt to remove the same beyond the reach and the control of the government of the State." The foregoing resolution, and others of like tenor, being under consideration, Mr. Segar said: I call you to witness, Mr. Speaker, that hitherto I have been strictly silent as to the great questions of federal import that have been discussed off and on during the session; but the extraordinary resolutions which have been sent us from the Senate, forbid my longer silence. They direct the Governor to seize and hold, by military force, the property of the United States, and I cannot sustain them. I would-so help me, God!-sooner die in my seat than cast my vote for them. I maintain, first, that there is no adequate cause for the intense excitement which has sprung from this matter, and, of course, no necessity for the adoption of the resolutions; secondly, that we have no moral nor legal right to pass them; thirdly, that the seizure will be an act of war; and, finally, that the great alarm pervading the country, and the revolutionary action of the secession party in this State and of the States actually seceded, find no just warrant in the facts of the case. All this stir about the removal of the guns from Bellona arsenal, it seems to me, is wholly uncalled for. It scarcely rises to the dignity of a "tempest in a teapot." What are the facts? In 1857, the Government, through Secretary Floyd, contracted with Dr. Archer for sundry cannon, to be delivered in Richmond. The very date of the contract exonerates the Government from all sinister purpose in reference to the guns. The guns having been made, the contractor wanted his money, and applied for payment. To his application it was replied, that on full compliance with his contract, by the delivery of the guns in Richmond, the money would be paid; and the head of the Ordnance Department accordingly advised Dr. Archer to deliver the guns to Colquitt & Co., in Richmond, to be by them re-shipped to Fortress Monroe, the chief depository in Virginia for national arms and munitions of war. So the first movement of the guns had its origin in a simple act of indebtedness of the Government to a citizen of Virginia, in need of, and demanding his money. In such a movement no hostile intention can be detected. It was but the doing of an ordinary act in the ordinary routine of the business of a bureau of the War Office; and it was done on the responsibility of the head of the bureau, without any consultation with, or any regular military order from, the head of the War Department-which at once negatives the idea of any inconsistency between the statement of the officer of the Ordnance Department and that of the Secretary of War, and fully relieves the latter functionary of the charges of duplicity and falsehood so vehemently pressed by the gentleman from Madison (General Kemper) and others, who seem resolved to find in this insignificant affair something monstrous and unendurable. The following letters-which I will read to the House-explain clearly the whole transaction, and will remove all ground for panic. First, a letter from Col. Craig, Chief of the Ordnance Bureau, to Dr. Archer, of date the 22d of March, which is as follows:-" You will please forward to Richmond the cannon at your foundry which has been inspected by the United States, with as little delay as possible; and as on as they are shipped from that place, the amount due on the inspection will be paid." Secondly, a letter from Captain Kingsbury, of the Ordnance Department, dated March 28th, and addressed to my friend Mr. A. M. Barbour, a member of the convention, which is in these words:"Col. Craig wishes me to say that Dr. Archer will be directed to-day not to remove the guns at present. The movement has been commenced, in order that the citizens of Virginia might receive their dues from the United States; and as the contract was completed, it seemed a fitting time to send forward the guns." The Secretary of War, as stated by him in letters to myself, and another member of the House, (Col. M'Cue,) made no order in the premises, but whatever was done, was the independent action of the Ordnance Bureau, in its ordinary course of business, and that action was nothing more nor less than the taking of proper steps, by the proper bureau, to liquidate a debt due by the Government to a citizen-a transaction of daily occurrence in the business operations of the various bureaus in the several chief departments of the Government. Gentlemen evidently confound the action of Col. Craig and that of the Secretary of War, supposing that the Ordnance Division does no official act without an express order from the Secretary, and this confusion of ideas has doubtless led to the harsh aspersions which have been applied in this debate to the latter. Thus far, then, the facts offer no ground for the supposition that the Government designed to employ the guns against Virginia, or for menace, or for any improper use. And it is conclusive against any unfriendly or warlike intent, that the Ordnance Department, on being apprised that the removal of the guns had provoked excitement, forthwith notified Dr. Archer not to move them at all. What cause, then, is there for the panic that sounds its busy din in this hall, and in the streets of this city? or for the passage of these harsh and illegal resolutions? Besides, Gen. Scott has said that there is no need for the guns at Fortress Monroe, there being a large number of supernumerary guns already there. The simple truth is, that the guns were to be sent to Fortress Monroe because it is the only convenient depot to receive them. It is not only the most natural and proper place to send them to, but the only one in the State within convenient reach. The panic, therefore, which has arisen from these simple circumstances is totally groundless, and is, I must say, unworthy the chivalry of Virginia. It can have no effect but to scare timid women and children, and does not become grown up and bearded men; and if this legislature, under provocation so slight, and circumstances so trivial, shall adopt these resolves, they will provoke the contempt of the brave and chivalrous throughout the land. And, after all, is not all this outcry about these guns one in a series of devices designed to precipitate Virginia into secession? Sir, I verily believe it; for I have too much respect for Virginia and Virginians to suppose that they can be frightened by the moving of a few guns from Bellona Arsenal to Fortress Monroe. No; it is nothing more nor less than the driving of a peg to hang excitement and panic on an ingenious scheme of frenzied disunionists to effect, by the exasperation of the public mind, already strung to a high pitch, the darling object of their mad desires: the secession of the State, and a thorough disruption of the Union. Outside pressure they know to be indispensable to the accomplishment of their unholy purpose; and this matter of the Bellona guns is too tempting a theme for sensation to be passed over without an effort to turn it to account. national ships, all the navigable waters within them, and to anchor its shipping in any port or harbor within their territorial limits, and with out asking leave of the State authorities. I shall not undertake to say that there can be no circumstances under which the State might properly take possession of the cannon. If she were at war with the Federal Government on account of palpable and insufferable oppression, and if by a revolution inaugurated to break the shackles of that oppression, she had dissolved all connection with that Government, (as did our fathers in the Revolution,) the principles of self-defence and the inexorable necessities of the case might justify the act. But we are not at war with the Federal Government; our connection with it is yet undissolved; Virginia is still in the Union, and being yet a member of the Confederacy, she is bound by all the duties and responsibilities of that membership. Observing those duties and responsibilities, she cannot seize and appropriate to herself property that is held for national purposes-for the common defence-that, in other words, belongs to the Union, or the common Government. Secondly, this General Assembly, with all its powers, has no right to pass these resolutions. The guns are the property of the United States Government-that all admit. Fortress Monroe, to which locality they were to have been transported, is also the property of the United States. Virginia, by solemn act of Assembly, and by formal deed, duly recorded in the Clerk's office of my County, (and which I have often read,) ceded and transferred "all her right, title, and interest of, in, and to the lands at Old Point Comfort to the United States, for purposes of fortification and national defence." Then, if the guns are the property of the United States, and Old Point Comfort is also the property of the United States, what right, moral or legal, has Virginia to lay her hands upon the guns, or to hinder the transfer of them to the lands of the United States? A Thirdly, the seizure of the guns by the State man takes and carries away for his own use would be an act of war against the Federal my horse, and the law pronounces it larceny-Government. The taking of the property of in plainer language, stealing. Now, what difference, I beg to know, is there, either in morals or in law, between the act of an individual illegally taking and carrying away another's property, and that of a State doing the same thing? Do we make the matter better by paying for the guns after they have been seized? Not at all; for the wrong is in the seizure and appropriation. If a man steals my cow, does he, by tendering payment after the stealing, escape the moral infamy or legal penalty of the act? Sir, I shall regard the passage of these resolutions as a foul stigma upon the good name of our State. It will blot her escutcheon dark and deep forever. God forbid she should do the dishonorable and dishonoring deed! I trust she is quite too proud-too mindful of her past renown-to imitate the example of those of her erring sisters who have not scrupled to lay violent Irands on the forts, and dock-yards, and ships, and cannon, and muskets, and balls, and powder, and even the mints and money of the United States. Mr. Speaker, these guns are not ours-let us not take them. I presume the extremest secessionist will scarcely contend that the United States must first obtain the consent of the State before transporting guns over her territory. No such consent can be required. The Government of the Union has the power to declare war, and to raise and maintain armies and navies. It has, in other words, and has exclusively, the warmaking power; and from this power results, by irresistible deduction and necessity, the right to transport all implements and materials of war, to inarch troops through the territories of any and all the States, to navigate, with the one nation by another has always been re- And Another objection I may here take to the passage of the resolutions, that it will much increase the excitement and panic already existing through the State, and so existing more by misapprehension and the ceaseless efforts of a sensation press, than for any just and suthicient cause. It will alarm unnecessarily the innocent women and the plain yeomanry of the State, who have little time to investigate mat- | any outrage upon the rights of Virginia, or of ters of public concern, and will lead to general the South? Virginia, then, on her own esdisquiet. The adoption of the resolutions will tablished principles of political action, ought be regarded as a sort of license to the wicked not now to present the spectacle she does of elements among us. Besides the mass of con- extreme excitement, and ought not and cannot, scientious and honorable secessionists, there is consistently rush upon the violent and unconin this State, as in all others, a class who desire stitutional measures involved in these Senate revolution because they may be benefited and resolutions, much less secede from the Union. cannot be injured by change-that class so well She ought-it becomes her dignity and her andescribed by the historian Sallust as studiosi cient renown-to look calmly, even placidly, nocarum rerum-desirous of change-because, around her, and from the stand-point of that in the general upheaving of society, they might dignity and renown surveying the whole ground, come to the surface, and be bettered in their consider and advise, and remonstrate and forcondition. This class long for collision and bear, and forbear yet again, until every pacific blood, because they know well that the first and constitutional expedient for composition and clash between the State and Federal muskets- safety shall have been exhausted. And furtherthe first drop of blood that collision spills-will more these radical measures of seizing the enkindle a flame that will light them on to the United States arms and seceding from the Union, accomplishment of their foul, hellish purposes are totally unwarranted by the more recent of blood and carnage. This class would, in a political action of Virginia. In 1850, when the mere spirit of adventure, fire the very temples subject of the Wilmot Proviso was up for conof liberty, and dash into fragments that proud- sideration in her Legislature, she took a new est and noblest monument of human wisdom- position. She declared that if any one of four the union of these States-the handiwork of things should be done by the Federal GovernWashington, and Franklin, and Madison, and ment, she would "resist at all hazards, and to Gerry, and Morris, and comrade conscript fa- the last extremity: " first, the application of thers-ander which we have been the proudest, the Wilmot Proviso to the common territories; freest, happiest, greatest nation on the face of secondly, the abolition of slavery in the District the earth. This class does exist in Virginia. of Columbia; thirdly, interference with slavery It exists all over the civilized earth, and it is no in the States; and fourthly, interference with detraction from Virginia to say that it exists the slave trade between the States. Has any within her domain; she would be an exception one of these things been done? Has the Wilto all human society, if she did not hold in her mot Proviso been applied to the Territories? bosom such a class. Now all this class will be No. On the contrary, at the late session of stimulated by the passage of these revolutionary, Congress, though it had, by the secession of and force-inviting, and lawless resolutions, to the Gulf States, a clear majority, that body, deeds of lawlessness, violence, and blood. Let Black Republican as it is, passed three Territhis legislature beware how it holds out the torial bills-from all of which the Wilmot seductive bait. It may encamp us on a mine, Proviso was excluded-no slavery prohibition which a spark may explode, and the explosion whatsoever; and more than this, a provision of which may "deal damnation round the land," was incorporated in each of them that all and involve the fathers and mothers, and hus- rights of property questions of personal freedom bands and wives, and sons and daughters, and should be determined by the principles and brothers and sisters, and innocent children of proceedings of the common law, with the right Virginia in miseries and woes unnumbered, and of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United the end whereof none of the present generation States-provisions that open the Territories to may live to see. every citizen of the Union who may choose to carry his slaves thither. The Black Republicans, as my friend from Stafford so delights, with peculiar emphasis, to call them, have themselves surrendered, given up, the Wilmot Proviso. And had the Cotton States remained in the Union, could this Black Republican party, with its minority of twenty-one in one In 1798 she fixed her great general rule-house and eight in the other, have ever applied that the Federal Government should not be resisted until it had committed some "deliberate, palpable, and dangerous" infraction of the Constitution. What infraction of this sort has been committed by the Federal Government? What is it where is it—when was it committed? Has the present Administration perpetrated any such aggression? And if the seceding States had remained in the Union, could Congress, with twenty-one majority in one House, and eight in the other, have committed Lastly, there is nothing in the past political action of Virginia, nor any thing in the past or present relations between her and the Federal Government, to justify the extreme and revolutionary movement the secessionists propose for her, and which is plainly shadowed in the resolutions before us. No. the Wilmot Proviso to the Territories that be- Has |