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Ex. CLV.-SECESSION DOCTRINES COMBATED.

Speech in Congress, March 12, 1838.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

MR. PRESIDENT: The honorable member from Carolina * habitually indulges in charges of usurpation and oppression against the government of his country. He daily denounces its important measures in the language in which our Revolutionary fathers spoke of the oppressions of the mother country. Not merely against executive usurpation, either real or supposed, does he utter these sentiments, but against laws of Congress passed by large majorities; laws sanctioned for a course of years by the people. These laws he proclaims every hour to be but a series of acts of oppression. He speaks of them as if it were an admitted fact that such is their true character. This is the language he uses, these are the sentiments he expresses, to the rising generation around him. Are they sentiments and language which are likely to impress our children with the love of union, to enlarge their patriotism, or to teach them and to make them feel that their destiny has made them common citizens of one great Republic!

A principal object in his late political movements, the gentleman tells us, was to unite the entire South; and against whom, or against what, does he wish to unite the entire South? Is not this the very essence of local feeling and local regard? Is it not the acknowledgment of a wish and object to create political strength, by uniting political opinions geographically? While the gentleman wishes to unite the entire South, I pray to know, Sir, if he expects me to turn towards the polar star, and, acting on the same principle, to utter a cry of Rally! to the whole North? Heaven forbid! To the day of my death neither he nor others shall hear such a cry from me.

Finally, the honorable member declares that he shall now march off, under the banner of State rights! March off from whom? March off from what? We have been contending for great principles. We have been struggling to maintain the liberty and to restore the prosperity of the country; we have made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the old flag-the true American flag, the eagle and the stars

*John C. Calhoun.

SECESSION DOCTRINES COMBATED.

241

and stripes-waving over the chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off under the Staterights banner!

Let him go. I remain. I am where I have ever been, and ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the general Constitution,-a platform broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of the whole country,-I shall still be found. Intrusted with some part in the administration of that Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of those who framed it. Yes, Sir. I would act as if our fathers, who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on me,- -as if I could see their venerable forms bending down to behold us from the abodes above! I would act, too, as if the eye of posterity was gazing on me.

Standing thus, as if in the full gaze of our ancestors and our posterity, having received this inheritance from the former to be transmitted to the latter, and feeling that, if I am born for any good in my day and generation, it is for the good of the whole country, no local policy, no local feeling, no temporary impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the constitution and the Union. I move off under no banner not known to the whole American people, and to their Constitution and laws. No, Sir! These walls, these columns,

"Fly

From their firm base as soon as I."

I came into public life, Sir, in the service of the United States. On that broad altar my earliest and all my public vows have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So far as depends on any agency of mine, they shall continue united States; united in interest and in affection; united in everything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed their union; united in war, for the common defence, the common renown, and the common glory; and united, compacted, knit firmly together, in peace, for the common prosperity and happiness of ourselves and our children!

11

Ex. CLVI.-THE BIRTH-DAY OF WASHINGTON.

RUFUS CHOATE.

THE birth-day of the "Father of his Country!" May it ever be freshly remembered by American hearts! May it ever reawaken in them a filial veneration for his memory; ever rekindle the fires of patriotic regard to the country which he loved so well; to which he gave his youthful vigor and his youthful energy during the perilous period of the early Indian warfare; to which he devoted his life, in the maturity of his powers, in the field; to which again he offered the counsels of his wisdom and his experience, as President of the Convention that framed our Constitution; which he guided and directed while in the chair of state, and for which the last prayer of his earthly supplication was offered up when the moment came for him so well, so grandly and so calmly, to die.

He was the first man of the time in which he grew. His memory is first and most sacred in our love; and ever hereafter, till the last drop of blood shall freeze in the last American heart, his name shall be a spell of power and might. "First in the hearts of his countrymen!" Yes, first! He has our first and most fervent love. Undoubtedly there were brave and wise and good men before his day, in every colony. But the American Nation, as a nation, I do not reckon to have begun before 1774. And the first love of that young America was Washington. The first word she lisped was his name. Her earliest breath spoke it. It is still her proud ejaculation; and it will be the last gasp of her expiring life!

Yes! others of our great men have been appreciatedmany admired by all. But him we love. About and around him we call up no discordant and dissatisfied elements,―no sectional prejudice nor bias,-no party, no creed, no dogma of politics. None of these shall assail him. When the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm, and cheer every American heart. It shall re-illumine that Promethean fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted love of country, which his words have commended, which his example has consecrated.

Where may the wearied eye repose,

When gazing on the great,
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?

E PLURIBUS UNUM.

Yes, one-the first, the last, the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West,

Whom Envy dared not hate,

Bequeathed the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one."

Ex. CLVII.-"E PLURIBUS UNUM.”

JOHN PIERPONT.

243

THE harp of the minstrel with melody rings,

When the muses have taught him to touch and to tune it; But though it may have a full octave of strings, To both maker and minstrel, the harp is a unit. So the power that creates

Our Republic of States,

Into harmony brings them at different dates;
And the thirteen or thirty, the Union once done,
Are "E Pluribus Unum "-of many made one.

The science that weighs in her balance the spheres,

And has watched them since first the Chaldean began it, Now and then, as she counts them and measures their years, Brings into our system, and names, a new planet. Yet the old and new stars,

Venus, Neptune and Mars,

As they drive round the sun their invisible cars,
Whether faster or slower their races they run,
Are "E Pluribus Unum "—of many made one.

Of that system of spheres, should but one fly the track,
Or with others conspire for a general dispersion,
By the great central orb they would all be brought back,
And each held in her place by a wholesome coercion.
Should one daughter of light

Be indulged in her flight,

They would all be engulfed by old Chaos and Night.
So must none of our sisters be suffered to run;

For, "E Pluribus Unum".

-we all go, if one.

Let the demon of discord our melody mar,

Or Treason's red hand rend our Union asunder;

Break one string from our harp, or extinguish one star,
The whole system's ablaze with its lightning and thunder.
Let the discord be hushed!

Let the traitors be crushed,

Though Legion their name, all with victory flushed!
For aye must our motto stand, fronting the sun:
"E Pluribus Unum,"-though many, we're one!

Ex. CLVIII.-REMONSTRANCE AGAINST THE WAR WITH

MEXICO.-1847.

THOMAS CORWIN.*

SIR: while the American president can command the army, thank God I can command the purse. He shall have no funds from me in the prosecution of such a war. That I conceive to be the duty of a senator. If it is my duty to grant whatever the president demands, for what am I here? Have an American Senate and House of Representatives nothing to do but to obey the bidding of the President, as the army he commands is compelled to obey under penalty of death? No, your Senate and House of Representatives were never elected for such purpose as that. They have been modelled on the good old plan of English liberty, and are intended to represent the English House of Commons, who curbed the proud power of the king in olden time, by witholding supplies if they did not approve the war. It was on this very proposition of controlling the executive power of England by witholding the money supplies, that the House of Orange came in; and by their accession to the throne commenced a new epoch in the history of England, distinguishing it from the old reign of the Tudors and.Plantagenets and those who preceded it. Then it was that Parliament specified the purpose of appropriation, and since 1688 it has been impossible for a king of England to involve the people of England in a war, which your president, under your republican institutions, and with your republican constitution, has yet managed to do. He commands this army, and you must not withhold their supplies. He involves your country in wasteful and exterminating war against a nation with whom we have no cause of complaint, but Congress may say nothing!

*U. S. Senator from Ohio.

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