in it as utterly null and void, and forming no part of the instrument.* Nevertheless, sir, in the adjustment of 1850, provision was made to enforce this solemn compact. And hence, the popular tumults, the mobs, the forcible rescues, and the nullifying acts of the New England States, and other parts of the North, which yet find countenance and applause even from a thousand presses and tens of thousands of citizens, upon the pretext that the rendition of fugitives is distasteful and revolting to the North. Yes, Abolitionist, it is the Constitution which you attack, not the act of 1850. It is the extradition of "panting fugitives," under any circumstances, or by virtue of any law, at which you rebel. Be manly, then, and outspoken, and honest. Act the part of cowards and slave-stealers no longer. Assail the Constitution itself, and do it openly-it is the Constitution which demands the restoration-and cover not up your assaults any longer, under the false and beggarly pretense that it is the act of Congress which you condemn and abhor.

I know, sir, that it is easy, very easy, to denounce all this as a defense of slavery itself. Be it so; be it so. But I have not discussed the institution in any respect-moral, religious, or political. Hear me; I express no opinion in regard to it; and, as a citizen of the North, I have ever refused, and will steadily refuse, to discuss the system in any of these particulars. It is precisely this continued and persistent discussion and denunciation in the North, which has brought upon us this present most perilous crisis; since to teach men to hate, is to prepare them to destroy, at every hazard, the object of their hatred. Sir, I am resolved only to look upon slavery outside of Ohio, just as the founders of the Constitution and Union regarded it. It is no concern of mine-none, none-nor of yours, Abolitionist. Neither of us will attain heaven by denunciations of slavery; nor shall we, I trow, be cast into hell for the sin of others who may hold slaves. I have not so learned the moral government of the universe; nor do I presumptuously and impiously aspire to the attributes of Godhead, and seek to bear upon my poor body the iniquities of the world.

I know well, indeed, Mr. President, that in the evil day which has befallen us, all this, and he who utters it, shall be denounced as "pro-slavery; and already, from ribald throats, there comes up the slavering, driveling, idiot epithet of "doughface." Again; be it so. These, Abolitionist, are your only weapons of warfare; and I hurl

* THE BUFFALO RESOLUTION, 1843, offered by a committee of which SALMON P. CHASE, of Ohio, was a member." Resolved, That we hereby give it to be distinctly understood, by this nation and the world, that, as Abolitionists, considering that the strength of our cause lies in its righteousness, and our hopes for it in our conformity to the laws of God, and our support for the rights of man, we owe to the sovereign Ruler of the Universe, as a proof of our allegiance to him, in all our civil relations and offices, whether as friends, citizens, or as public functionaries, sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, to regard and treat the third clause of that instrument, whenever applied in the case of a fugitive slave, AS UTTERLY NULL AND VOID, and, consequently, as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States, WHENEVER WE ARE CALLED UPON AS SWORN TO SUPPORT IT."

TAMAY

them back defiantly into your teeth. I speak thus boldly, because I speak in and to and for the North. It is time that the truth should be known and heard, in this the age of trimming and subterfuge. I speak this day, not as a Northern man, nor a Southern man; but, God be thanked, still as a United States man, with United States principles; and though the worst happen which can happen though all be lost, if that shall be our fate, and I walk through the valley of the shadow of political death, I will live by them, and die by them. If to love my country; to cherish the Union; to revere the Constitution; if to abhor the madness and hate the treason which would lift up a sacrilegious hand against either; if to read that in the past, to behold it in the present, to foresee it in the future of this land, which is of more value to us and the world for ages to come, than all the multiplied millions who have inhabited Africa from the creation to this day-if this it is to be pro-slavery, then, in every nerve, fiber, vein, bone, tendon, joint, and ligament, from the top-most hair of the head to the last extremity of the foot, I am all over and altogether a PRO-SLAVERY MAN.

To that part now, Mr. President, of the Germans who have been betrayed upon this question, I address a word of caution. Little more than a year ago, availing themselves of the Nebraska question as the pretext, mischievous and designing demagogues, just at the moment they prepared to deny you the full enjoyment of your own political rights here in Ohio, persuaded some of you to trail in the dust at the heels of the Abolition rout. They told you, and you believed it, some of you, that, failing to establish civil liberty against the crowned oppressors of your fatherland, and seeking for it as exiles in America, you had the right, nevertheless, to intermeddle with personal liberty among the inhabitants of other States and Territories, to form political associations exclusively German, to adopt platforms of your own as such, to instruct us in the science of government, the nature of free institutions, and the value of freedom, to require of us to give away our public lands to all alike, naturalized or alien, white or black, to denounce the people of the South, because of the "curse of slavery," to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law, to abolish slaveholding throughout the States, in conformity with, as you alleged, and perhaps by virtue of power derived from, the Declaration of Independence, and finally to propose to convert your good old German May festival into an Abolition mass meeting, in our very midst. These things, they persuaded some of you to believe and to do. But at this very moment, and by the self-same demagogues, was the knife put to your own throats, and you were quietly guillotined, and your heads thrust into the basket, upon just the principles they had persuaded you that you had the right to intermeddle with the domestic, moral, and religious concerns of other States and Territories. Opening now your eyes to the fraud thus practiced upon you, learning the true character of the men who beguiled you, and remembering that the first State which breasted and turned back the torrent which was sweeping you, and your hopes, and your rights before it, was the slaveholding State of

Virginia, through the Democratic party of Virginia, followed up by every southern State, Kentucky alone excepted, retrace your steps now into the ranks of that party, stand fast to your true interests and true position, concern yourselves no longer with the business of others, but quietly enjoy, and calmly defend, your own rights, remembering always those who have ever sustained you in whatsoever truth and liberty and justice demand for you.

Trust

Addressing myself now, finally, Mr. President, to the Democratic party of Ohio, I say: You are a political party; hence, all your principles must as well take shape and color, as reflect them, from the fundamental institutions of the country; and those principles which belong to Democracy, universal and theoretical, are to be modified and adjudged by the Constitution. It has always been your boast, that you are peculiarly the party of the Constitution and of that Union which results from, and exists only, by the Constitution. And just in proportion as you value these, will you mold and modify your doctrine, and your practice, to sustain and preserve them in every essential element. Sure I am, at least, that you will not, for the sake of an abstract principle, purely, or mainly moral, or religious, and to us not political, and urged now in the very spirit of treason and madness, and far removed from every personal concern of yours, sacrifice or even imperil these priceless legacies of a generation at least as good and as wise as we. not to past success. Times have changed. For four years you filched inglorious triumphs by fomenting dissensions among your enemies, and by exhausting all the little arts of partisan diplomacy, to keep the Whig and Abolition parties asunder. You wasted your time striving to pluck out of the crucible of politics the fluxes which they threw in, seeking thus vainly to prevent or impede a fusion which was inevitable, and which, when it came, overwhelmed you as with a flood of lava, in disastrous, if not ignominious defeat. Was this conduct befitting a great and enduring party-conduct worthy the prestige of your name? Learn wisdom from Virginia, your mother State; she is ever invincible, because she is always candid and manly and true to principle. Look no longer now to availability; above all, be not deceived by the false and senseless outcry against that most just, most Constitutional, and most necessary measure the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The true and only question now before you is: Whether you will have a Union, with all its numberless blessings in the past, present, and future, or Disunion and civil war, with all the multiplied crimes, miseries, and atrocities which human imagination never conceived, and human pen never can portray?

I speak it boldly-I avow it publicly-it is time to speak thus, for political cowardice is the bane of this, as of all other republics. To be true to your great mission, and to succeed in it, you must take open, manly, one-sided ground upon the Abolition question. In no other way can you now conquer. Let us have, then, no how compromise, no idle and mistimed homilies upon the sin and evil of slavery in a crisis like this, no double-tongued, Janus-faced, delphic

responses at your State conventions. No; fling your banner to the breeze, and boldly meet the issue. PATRIOTISM ABOVE MOCK PHILANTHROPY; THE CONSTITUTION BEFORE ANY MISCALLED HIGHER LAW OF MORALS OR RELIGION; AND THE UNION OF MORE

VALUE THAN MANY NEGROES.

If thus, sir, we are true to the country, true to the Union and the Constitution, true to our principles, true to our cause and to the grand mission which lies before us, we shall turn back yet the fiery torrent which is bearing us headlong down to the abyss of disunion and infamy, deeper than plummet ever sounded; but if in this, the day of our trial, we are found false to all these, false to our ancestors, false to ourselves, false to those who shall come after us, traitors to our country and to the hopes of free government throughout the globe, Bancroft will yet write the last sad chapter in the history of the American Republic.

NUMBER TWO.

THERE IS A WEST: FOR THE UNION FOREVER; OUTSIDE OF THE UNION, FOR HERSELF.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 16, 1859.

MORE than four years had intervened between the delivery of the preceding speech and the one that here follows. Meantime the evil agencies, there so clearly depicted, and against which those earnest warnings were given, had been steadily maturing their work of mischief. Like some vile insects, which consume and destroy the foundations of houses, working silently and unseen, and permitting the occupants to receive the first intimations of danger when they feel their dwellings crumbling and falling around them, so were those industrious fanatics consuming and destroying the foundations of the Union.

The JOHN BROWN raid into Virginia gave the first public and distinct intimation of the coming, trouble. Moved by the same spirit, and aiming at the same end as that whole great army of fanatics to which he belonged, only having less than an average share of prudence and sagacity, he broke from the ranks, and rushed

forward in advance of the lines. It has been said that "coming events cast their shadows before," and it might have been added, that those coming events sometimes send forward miniature representations, from which may be seen, by substituting great things for small, what will be the character of those events when they come.

To all who hated that dear old Union which God gave to our fathers, JOHN BROWN's raid was a signal for rejoicing, while it sent a thrill of horror to the heart of every true patriot. The whole country was startled, and, for a brief period, deeply aroused. Men took sides, and showed, by their words and deeds, either that they were leagued in sympathy with those who had resolved on the destruction of the Union, or else that the Union was held in the firm grasp of their strongest and deepest affections.

Among those who took a prominent place in this latter class was Mr. VALLANDIGHAM, of Ohio. On many occasions he had predicted the very dangers whose first loud note of alarm was now sounding. Especially had he predicted and portrayed those dangers in that speech on the 29th of October, 1855. He had described the character and form of the coming trouble, as if seen with the keen eye of prophecy. And now, as the danger draws nearer, we find him still at his post. Congress had assembled at its first meeting after that notable and ominous event; a Speaker was to be elected, and the question was, should he be one who had lent the sanction and influence of his name to principles involved and illustrated in the late raid of JOHN BROWN.

It was under these circumstances-the general question before the House being the election of a Speaker-that Mr. VALLANDIGHAM obtained the floor, but yielded it for the purpose of a ballot. No choice having been made, he resumed the floor, but proposed again to yield for another ballot. Objection being made, he proceeded to address the House, as follows:

MR. CLERK: Desiring to speak at some length, and with some regard to method, upon the more important subjects which have been introduced into this debate, I can not consent to yield the floor except upon a point of order, or for a strictly personal explanation. I claim no right myself to interrupt others for the purpose of interrogatory or catechising, and in return acknowledge no right in them to subject me to cross-examination as a witness upon this floor. I trust, along with other reforms, to see the ancient decorum and propriety of legitimate debate restored within these walls. In nothing, therefore, which I propose to say, do I mean to offend, by personal reflection upon any member of this House.

And now, in the first place, Mr. Clerk, allow me to say that I do