is defied. No man has ever shown it, and no man ever can, because it is not on the statutebook. If it be there, it is easy to show it. If I am wrong, let my colleagues here set me right; and lest, perhaps, I may be in error, I ask them, one and all-I appeal to you, Mr. Speaker, to the gentleman from Madison, Gen. Kemper, to my ardent disunion friend from Stafford, Mr. Seddon, to all the confessed secessionists in this body, and to all such outside of this body, to put their finger on one Federal law in the least degree infringing the constitutional rights of the South. If it exist, let me see it, that I may recant the error. not even in the Chicago platform. Mr. Lin- | ern, let it be pointed out. The production of it coln, Mr. Seward, Mr. Caleb B. Smith, Attorney-General Bates, Senator Wilson, and all the chief men of the Republican party repudiate it -none maintain it but professed and extreme Abolitionists, such as Gerritt Smith, Henry Ward Beecher, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Arthur Tappan, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips, whose fanatical and wicked efforts, backed by all the aid they can enlist from the rank and file of pure Abolitionism, can never any more disturb or harm the institution of slavery in the States than the zephyr's breath can unseat the everlasting hills, and whose impotent assaults upon the constitutional rights of the South, and on the Constitution and the Union, not sympathized in by the great mass of the Northern people-on the contrary, expressly disavowed by near two millions of conservative voters of the North at the late Presidential election-should be laughed to scorn by the Southern people, and heeded only "as the idle wind that passeth by." I repeat, there is no such doctrine in the Chicago platform; and what, in my judgment, ought forever to quiet Southern apprehension in regard to slavery in the States, and even elsewhere-at the late session of Congress-in which, by the secession of the Gulf States, as already stated, the Republicans have the majority-a resolution was adopted by the necessary constitutional majority, recommending an amendment to the Constitution, whereby, hereafter, interference with slavery in the States by the Federal Government is to be totally and forever forbidden. Has the proposition to interfere with the slave trade between the States been ever heard of in Congress, or has it been even talked about except by the worst class of Abolitionists? Not one, then, of the four things has been done for which Virginia said she would withdraw from the Union. Why, then, all this hot excitement, and this hot haste to get out of the Union? Can Virginia on her own principles, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, proceed hastily to extreme measures of resistance, or to the adoption of the seizure and appropriation proposed by the resolutions before us? Verily, if her sons in this Hall, who are constituted the special guardians of her honor, regard her consistency as one of her jewels, they will make that jewel glow all the brighter by voting down these shame-bringing resolutions, and repudiating secession until, on her own solemnly avowed principles, the hour for resistance and revolution shall have come. Beyond all this, I desire to be informed what wrong has been done me, or any citizen of the South, or the South at large, by that Federal Government which some regard as accursed, and which they so hurry to destroy. I, for one, am not aware any. If there be any law on the Federal statute-book impairing the right of one Southern man, or impeaching the equality of the Southern States with the North | The More than this, there is not only no such statute to be found from 1789 to this moment, but the Federal Government has been to the South the most parental of Governments. It has yielded to the South all it ever asked or demanded. In 1793 the South wanted a fugitive slave law, and, as it was entitled, received it. It demanded afterwards a better and more stringent fugitive slave law, and it was not only granted, but the drafting of it was left to a Virginia Senator of the United States, Mr. Mason. In 1820 we made with the Federal Government a certain compact, the celebrated Missouri Compromise, with which we were then so well pleased that every Southern Senator but one voted for it, and a large majority of Southern Representatives. But in the course of time, when the wave of politics set high, and politics became a trade, we became dissatisfied with the compromise of 1820, and we appealed to the Federal Government to break up the old, and make a new contract. Federal Government-this accursed Federal Government that we are so anxious to annihilate-took us at our word, broke up the old and gave us a new bargain, whereby the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the Kansas-Nebraska pro-slavery act substituted. Federal Government, then, has not been unkind or unjust to the South. It has been even especially kind and parental to our section; and more than this, the South, by Northern accord, has had the Federal Administration in its own hands during nearly the whole period of our national existence. It has not only had the Legislative and Executive Departments, but the Supreme Judiciary, the possession of which last is priceless assurance to the South; for every good citizen, every lover of law and order and good government, will bow willing acquiescence to the decisions of the Supreme Court, and those decisions, whenever involving the delicate subject of slavery, have thus far been all on the side of the South. Why, then, should we of the South desire to part with such a government? And why should we make such haste to rid ourselves of it when we know by official returns that we had at the North at the last election 1,600,000 friends standing fast and faithfully by us? Some wrongs we are undoubtedly suffering at the The hands of some of the Northern States, as the ion against it in our own State-her Jefferson continued slavery agitation, the incendiary ef- declaring that even the old Confederation, a fusions of a portion of the Northern pulpit and Government far weaker than the present Fedpress, the personal liberty statutes, the opera-eral Union, possessed the power of coerciontions of the underground railroad, and the emi-her Madison, the very father of the Constitugrant-aid societies, and the occasional non- tion, solemnly asserting that its framers never extradition of fugitive slaves. These are un- for one moment contemplated so disorganizing questionably offences against Southern peace and ruinous a principle-her great and good and against all good neighborhood, and they Marshall decreeing more than once, from the ought to cease, as I doubt not in time they bench of the Supreme Judiciary, that the Fedwill, or at least be materially mitigated; but eral Constitution did not constitute a mere these grievances lie not at the door of that compact or treaty, but a government of the parental Federal Government, whose blessings whole people of the United States, with sudrop upon us as gently as the dews of heaven, preme powers within the sphere of its authornor are they now for the first time existing. ity-Judge Spencer Roane, the Ajax Telamon, They existed and we endured them under the in his day, of her State-rights republicanism, Democratic administrations of Mr. Polk, Mr. endorsing the sentiment: "It is treason to Pierce, and Mr. Buchanan, never dreaming of secede!"-her Thomas Ritchie, the "Napoleon making them a cause for the dissolution of the of the Press" and Jupiter Tonans of the modUnion; and I presume if Mr. Breckinridge had ern democracy, heralding through the columns been elected they would never have been even of the Richmond Enquirer, the impregnable heard of as causes for disruption. Patiently maxims that "no association of men, no State and meekly we bore these grievances when or set of States has a right to withdraw from Democratic Presidents held sway; but under the Union of its own accord," and that "the the rule of Mr. Lincoln they became wrongs so first act of resistance to the law is treason to enormous and intolerable that for them we the United States; "the decisions of some of must in an instant shiver this blessed Union the most enlightened of the State judiciaries in into fragments. repudiation of the dangerous dogma; the conBut the practical inquiry here arises-that current disavowal of it by the Marshalls, and which so much concerns the masses of the peo- Kents, and Storys, and McLeans, and Waynes, ple-shall we redress these grievances or make and Catrons, and Reverdy Johnsons, and Guththem lighter, or remedy any wrong by dis-ries, and all the really great jurists of the land; union? Most assuredly not. Whatever ills we are suffering will be a thousand times aggravated by a separation of the States. The slavery agitation will be intensified; we shall lose scores of slaves where now we lose one; because, by the abolition of the Fugitive Slave Law, and by reason of the readier facilities for escape, there will be no effectual impediment to such escape; the underground railroad will be sped, and its operations vastly extended; emigrant-aid societies will be augmented in number, and means, and efficiency; and for one Henry Ward Beecher and Garrison's Liberator, we shall have a thousand. The alienation which will be left behind disunion, the bitter and deep-seated sectional hates, and incessant border feuds and wars that must and will flow from the source of disruption, will as surely bring about these lamentable results as God's sun will send down his rays upon the earth when his broad disc glories above the horizon. These Senate resolutions, Mr. Speaker, are evidently designed as a stepping stone to the secession of the State-as the entering wedge -the preliminary notice-a scheme to "fire the Virginia heart and rush us out of the Union; and, so regarding them, I might inquire by what warrant it is we may retire from the confederacy? But I shall not argue this doctrine of secession. The simple history of the Constitution; its simpler and yet plainer reading; the overwhelming authority of our fathers against it; the crushing weight of opin the brand of absurdity and wickedness which has been stamped upon it by Andrew Jackson, and Webster, and Clay, and Crittenden, and Everett, and Douglas, and Cass, and Holt, and Andrew Johnson, and Wickliffe, and Dickinson, and the great body of our truly eminent statesmen: these considerations and authorities present the doctrine of secession to me with one side only. But I do wish to inquire of my colleagues, if they have seriously reflected on the consequences of secession, should it come? Do you expect (as I have heard some of you declare) that the power and influence of Virginia are such that you will have peaceable secession, through an immediate recognition of the separate independence of the South? Alas! you hug a delusion. Peaceable secession-secession without war! You can no more have it than you can crush in the rack every limb and bone of the human frame without agonizing the mutilated trunk. "Peaceable secession! (said Mr. Webster) peaceable secession! Sir, (continued the "great expounder,") your eyes and mine are not destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface!" No! Secede when you will, you will have war in all its horrors: there is no escape. The President of the United States is sworn to see that the laws be faithfully executed, and he must and will-as Gen. Washington did, and as Gen. Jackson The would have done in 1833-use the army, and the navy, and the militia, to execute the laws, and defend the Government. If he does not, he will be a perjured man. Besides, you cannot bring the people of the South to a perfect union for secession. There are those-and "their name is legion "--whom no intimidation can drive into the disunion ranks. They love the old Union which their fathers transmitted to them, and under which their country has become great, and under which they and their children have been free and happy. Circumstances may repress their sentiments for a while, but in their hearts they love the Union; and the first hour they shall be free to speak and to act, they will gather under and send up their joyous shouts for the Stars and Stripes. They will not fight with you against the flag; so that there must be a double war-a Federal war and a war among ourselves. And it may be that whole States may refuse to join in the secession movement, (which is most probable,) and then we shall witness the revolting spectacle of one Southern State warring against and in deadly conflict with another; and then, alas! will be over our unhappy country a reign of terror none the less terrific than that which deluged with blood and strewed with carnage revolutionary France. Supposing, then, the State to have seceded, and war to have opened, what trophies do you look for?-what are you to gain? Will you win greater security for the institution of slavery in the States? You do not want it. None except demented abolitionists assail it. The Supreme Court has raised an impregnable bulwark for its defence. And even the Republican party (as already remarked) has voluntarily tendered you an amendment of the Constitution forever guaranteeing slavery in the States against even the touch of Federal legislation."Hands off!" is their emphatic warning to the abolitionists. Will you strengthen your claim to the common Territories-advance your privilege of carrying your slaves thither? Here, too, the Supreme Court by the Dred Scott decision, has settled your rights; and the Administration party in Congress have abandoned the Wilmot Proviso-passed territorial laws without any slavery restriction whatever-thus leaving every slaveholder in the South free to enter the Territories with his slaves, and even throw ing the ægis of judicial protection over that species of property when there. Moreover, what care you for this Territorial right? It is of not the least practical concern. Slavery will go wherever it is profitable, just as sure as water finds its level. No human legislation can prevent it, because the instincts of the human constitution and the laws of soil and climate are stronger than any law-giving of finite man. Just as sure will slavery never go where soil and climate forbid. Now, in none of the Territories do the laws of soil and clilaves to abide. Thus, in New mate Mexico, which is five times as large as the State of New York, and where slavery exists by law, being recognized and protected by a slave-code, there are, according to the late census, but twenty-six slaves, and they are the body servants of officers of the civil Government and of the army! Why, then, should the North care to exclude slavery from Territories from which God and nature have ordained its exclusion; and what should the South care for the right to carry slaves where Almighty God has decreed they shall never go? Of what practical value to the South is a privilege which, admitted, has carried to an area five times the territorial extent of New York only twenty-six slaves? Now, I ask, if for so worthless a boon we shall give up this great and glorious Union, whose benefits are pre-eminently practical, and as genial and numerous as they are practical? And shall we aggravate our folly by stickling for this right to the point of disunion, when the right, if worth any thing, is fortified and secured by the decision of the highest judicial tribunal of the land, and controverted by none? Shall we go to war, and to civil war, for a bauble so empty and worthless? But it is often insisted that we may hereafter acquire territory adapted to slavery, and that then we may be denied our rights. Well, "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." When those things happen, and the evil is upon us, or obviously approaching, it will be quite time enough to get ready for resistance and defence. But, in God's name, let us not take disunion "by the forelock." Let us not, in mere anticipation of evils that may never reach, and of wrongs that may be never done us, destroy the best government that man was ever blessed with, and under whose happy auspices we, the people of the United States, have attained a growth, and grandeur, and power, and freedom, and prosperity, and happiness, unparalleled, for so brief a period, in the history of the nations of the earth. Nor shall we lose by waiting. We are not prepared now for war. We have few of the materials of war. We have no arms, no ships, no forts, little or no commerce, no manufac tures—all of which are indispensables of war. Suddenly going to war, we should be at a great disadvantage in every respect, except in the unflinching bravery and indomitable spirit of our people. Waiting for some actual and dangerous aggression, and in the mean time preparing for the worst, if the signs indicate the necessity, we shall be in a condition to meet our foes whenever and wherever they come. Shall we, by secession and war, lose fewer slaves by obtaining a better execution of the fugitive slave law? Why, by secession you annul the fugitive slave law, and forfeit all its benefits. Moreover, you bring Canada, the great asylum for fugitive slaves, to the Virginia line; so that, to get his freedom, a slave has but to cross a narrow stream or an imaginary line: and, by avoiding all obligation to return fugitives, and discouraging all willingness to do so, you | oly being thus gone, what will slavery be worth? create other asylums north of us, immediately And what will the Cotton States be worth withcontiguous to the border Slave States-the in- out slavery? evitable consequence of which will be, not In my judgment, there is no safety for this only that those States will lose a much larger institution save in the Constitution of the Unitnumber of slaves than heretofore, but that ined States. There it is recognized and protected. a few years slavery will disappear from them altogether. The truth is, there is but one safety for the slave interests of the border States, and that is in having friendly neighbors on the north of them, and not only friendly neighbors, but friendly, stringent, coercive, penal legislation. With Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and Indiana, and Illinois, and Iowa, made enemies of as enemies, and bitter enemies, secession will surely make them-no human power can prevent the extinction of slavery in the States of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Fire will not more effectually reduce the fagot to cinders, or water extinguish flame, than secession will bring slavery in those States to annihilation. To bring the matter home, if with a stringent fugitive slave law, executed (as I think) with all reasonable fidelity and success, and with friends north of us acknowledging the obligation to execute its provisions, and reasonably willing to do so-I say, if under these favorable circumstances we now lose slaves enough to make us feel the loss, and excite alarm, how infinitely greater will be the loss and the danger when the facilities of escape shall be infinitely multiplied, when we shall have no law to enforce our rights, and none to help us but embittered and spiteful enemies. Shall we, by secession and war, get clear of the personal liberty bills? Quite the contrary. Not half the Free States have as yet enacted personal liberty laws. All of them will pass them if you break up the Union. Revenge will do its work, and the enactments it will dictate will be far more inimical to the interests of the slaveholders than any that now blot the statutebooks of the North. Besides, time, reflection, and better understanding may lead to the repeal of all these offensive statutes. So far from strengthening the institution of slavery by secession, we shall weaken, if not destroy it. If the war which disunion is to bring with it shall continue for a few years, England and France, cut off from their supplies of American cotton, will seek them from other sources; and as it is well ascertained that cotton can be grown to any extent in India, Australia, South America, Central America, the West Indies, and other parts of the globe, the new sources of supply will be found. India already farnishes to England, per annum, 600,000 bales. And the high prices which the article will command during the continuance of the war, and the opening of railroads to transport it to the sea, will so stimulate the production that, before the lapse of many years, England and France will not be dependent on the Southern States for their supplies and the Southern cotton monop No other property is specially protected. Slaves are represented; no other property is. This Union of ours is the great bulwark of slavery. Nowhere else has it flourished; and break up the Union when you will, you knock away its strongest prop. A Southern Confederacy will be to it its deadliest blast, if not its grave. The whole civilized world is intensely hostile to slavery; and the moment a new confederacy is formed, based on the single idea of slavery, numerous and malignant antagonisms will be provoked, which may endanger the institution. But under the shield of the Constitution of the United States, these antagonisms, whether foreign or domestic, are, and ever will be, harmless. In that blessed instrument it is a recognized institution-part and parcel of our frame of government, and of our social and industrial system-to the protection of which the entire power of the great Government of the United States stands pledged before the entire world. Thus secure under the wing of the Union, why shall we risk its security by rushing on untried experiments? Then we gain nothing for our peculiar institution by secession. For what, then, are we plunging into the dark abyss of disunion? In God's name tell me. I vow I do not know, nor have I ever heard one sensible or respectable reason assigned for this harsh resort. We shall lose every thing; gain nothing but war, blood, carnage, famine, starvation, social desolation, wretchedness in all its aspects, ruin in all its forms. We shall gain a taxation, to be levied by the new government, that will eat out the substance of the people, and "make them poor indeed." We shall gain alienation and distrust in all the dear relations of life. We shall gain ill blood between father and son, and brother and brother, and neighbor and neighbor. Bereaved widowhood and helpless orphanage we shall gain to our hearts' content. Lamentation, and mourning, and agonized hearts we shall gain in every corner where "wild war's deadly blast" shall blow. We shall gain the prostrationmost lamentable calamity will it be-of that great system of internal development, which the statesmen of Virginia have looked to as the basis of all her future progress and grandeur, and the great hope of her speedy regeneration and redemption. We shall gain repudiation; not that Virginia will ever be reluctant to redeem her engagements, but that she will be disabled by the heavy burdens of secession and war. We shall gain the blockade of our ports, and entire exclusion from the commerce, and markets, and storehouses of the world. shall gain the hardest times the people of this once happy country have known this side the War of Independence. I know not, indeed, of We one single interest of Virginia that will not be | perity unsurpassed has crowned the national wrecked by disunion. And, entertaining these views, I do shrink with horror from the very idea of the secession of the State. I can never assent to the fatal measure. No! I am for the Union yet. Call me submissionist or traitor, or what else you will, I am for the Union-as I said upon another occasion, "while Hope's light flickers in the socket." In Daniel Webster's immortal words, "Give me Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." And if I may presume to tender an humble exhortation to my colleagues in this hall, I would say to them, as I said to a number of my respected constituents, who recently called on me for my views of the crisis that besets us "As Washington advised all his countrymen, cling fondly to the Union. Take every chance to save it. Conference with the Border States, convention of the Slave States, general convention of all the States-try these and all other conceivable means of saving the Union from wreck. And when all conceivable expedients shall have seemingly failed, if there be but one faint ray of hope, let that light you to yet one more effort to save it." Doc. 65. energies, the liberties of the people been secure at home and abroad, while the national standard floated honored and respected in every commercial mart of the world. On the return of this glorious anniversary, after a period but little exceeding the allotted lifetime of man, the people's representatives are convened in the council chambers of the republic to deliberate on the measures for preserving the Government under whose benign influence these grand results have been achieved. A rebellion, the most causeless in the history of the race, has developed a conspiracy of long standing to destroy the Constitution formed by the wisdom of our fathers, and the Union cemented by their blood. This conspiracy, nurtured for long years in secret council, first develops itself openly in acts of spoliation and plunder of public property, with the connivance and under the protection of treason enthroned in all the high places of the Government; and at last, in armed rebellion for the overthrow of the best Government ever devised by man, without an effort in the mode prescribed in the organic law for a redress of all grievances, the malcontents appeal only to the arbitrament of the sword, insult the nation's honor, and trample upon its flag, inaugurate a revolution which, if SPEECH OF GALUSHA A. GROW, successful, would end in establishing petty jarring confederacies or anarchy upon the ruins ON TAKING THE CHAIR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRE- of the Republic, and the destruction of its libSENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, JULY 4. erties. The 19th of April, canonized in the first struggle for American nationality, has Gentlemen of the House of Representatives of been reconsecrated in martyr blood. Warren the United States of America :has his counterpart in Ellsworth, and the Words of thanks for the honor conferred by heroic deeds and patriotic sacrifices of the the vote just announced, would but feebly ex- struggle for the establishment of the Republic press the heart's gratitude. While appreciat- are being reproduced upon battle-fields for ing this distinguished mark of your confidence, its maintenance. Every race and tongue of I am not unmindful of the trying duties inci- men almost is represented in the grand legion dent to the position to which you have assigned of the Union, their standards proclaiming, in a me. Surrounded at all times by grave respon- language more impressive than words, that sibility, it is doubly so in this hour of national here indeed is the home of the emigrant, and disaster, when every consideration of gratitude the asylum of the exile; no matter where was to the past and obligation to the future tendrils his birth-place, or in what clime his infancy around the present. Fourscore years ago, was cradled, he devotes his life to the defence fifty-six bold merchants, farmers, lawyers, and of his adopted land, the vindication of its mechanics, the representatives of a few feeble honor, and the protection of its flag, with the colonists, scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, same zeal with which he would guard his native met in convention to found a new empire, hearthstone and fireside. All parties, sects, based on the inalienable rights of man. Seven and conditions of men, not corrupted by the years of bloody conflict ensued, and the Fourth institutions of human bondage, forgetting byof July, 1776, is canonized in the hearts of the gone rancors or prejudices, blend in one phagreat and good as the jubilee of oppressed na- lanx for the integrity of the Union and the tionalities, and in the calendar of heroic deeds perpetuity of the Republic. Long years of it marks a new era in the history of the race. peace in the pursuits of sordid gain, instead of Three-quarters of a century have passed away, blunting the patriotic devotion of loyal citizens, and the few feeble colonists hemmed in by the seem but to have intensified its development, ocean in front, the wilderness and the savage when the existence of the Government is asin the rear, have spanned a whole continent sailed. The merchant, the banker, and the with a great empire of free States, rearing tradesman, with an alacrity unparalleled, profthroughout its vast wilderness the temples of fer their all at the altar of their country, while science and of civilization on the ruins of sav- from the counter, the workshop, and the plough, age life. Happiness, seldom if ever equalled, brave hearts and stout arms, leaving their tasks has surrounded the domestic fireside, and pros-unfinished, rush to the tented field; the air |