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jury in the state to which they fled. They pretended to believe that our fugitive slaves were entitled to more rights than their white citizens; perhaps they were right, they know one another better than I do. You may charge a white man with treason, or felony, or other crime, and you do not require any trial by jury before he is given up; there is nothing to determine but that he is legally charged with a crime and that he fled, and then he is to be delivered up upon demand. White people are delivered up every day in this way; but not slaves. Slaves, black people, you say, are entitled to trial by jury; and in this way schemes have been invented to defeat your plain constitutional obligations.

The next demand made on behalf of the South is, "that Congress shall pass effective laws for the punishment of all persons in any of the states who shall in any manner aid and abet invasion or insurrection in any other state, or commit any other act against the laws of nations, tending to disturb the tranquillity of the people or government of any other state." That is a very plain principle. The Constitution of the United States now requires, and gives Congress express power, to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the laws of nations. When the honorable and distinguished Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] last year introduced a bill for the purpose of punishing people thus offending under that clause of the Constitution, Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at New York, which I have before me, declared that it was a "sedition bill"; his press and party hooted at it. So far from recognizing the bill as intended to carry out the Constitution of the United States, it received their jeers and jibes. The Black Republicans of Massachusetts elected the admirer and eulogist of John Brown's courage as their governor, and we may suppose he will throw no impediments in the way of John Brown's successors. The epithet applied to the bill of the Senator from Illinois is quoted from a deliberate speech delivered by Lincoln in New York, for which, it was stated in the journals, according to some resolution passed by an association of his own party, he was paid a couple of hundred dollars. The speech should. therefore have been deliberate. Lincoln denounced that

bill. He places the stamp of his condemnation upon a measure intended to promote the peace and security of Confederate States. He is, therefore, the enemy of the human race, and deserves the execration of all mankind.

We demand these five propositions. Are they not right? Are they not just? Take them in detail, and show that they are not warranted by the Constitution, by the safety of our people, by the principles of eternal justice. We will pause and consider them; but mark me, we will not let you decide the question for us.

Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and the duties of the Federal Government. I am content and have ever been content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I do not believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that I would have voted for it as a proposition de novo, yet I am bound to it by oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by established forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance, but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on the false idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitution is the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that "the powers not granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to the states, belonged to the states respectively or the people." Now I will try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The law of nature, the law of justice, would say-and it is so expounded by the publicists -that equal rights in the common property shall be enjoyed. Even in a monarchy the king cannot prevent the subjects from enjoying equality in the disposition of the public property. Even in a despotic government this principle is recognized. It was the blood and the money of the whole people (says the learned Grotius, and say all the publicists) which acquired the public property, and therefore it is not the property of the sovereign. This right of equality being, then, according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to all states, when did we give it up?

You say Congress has a right to pass rules and regulations concerning the territory and other property of the United States. Very well. Does that exclude those whose blood and money paid for it? Does "dispose of" mean to rob the rightful owners? You must show a better title than that, or a better sword than we have.

But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. But how? By our judgment? No, not until the last resort. What then; by yours? No, not until the same time. How then try it? The South has always said, by the Supreme Court. But that is in our favor, and Lincoln says he will not stand that judgment. Then each must judge for himself of the mode and manner of redress. But you deny us that privilege, and finally reduce us to accepting your judgment. The Senator from Kentucky comes to your aid, and says he can find no constitutional right of secession. Perhaps not; but the Constitution is not the place to look for state rights. If that right belongs to independent states, and they did not cede it to the Federal Government, it is reserved to the states, or to the people. Ask your new commentator where he gets the right to judge for us. Is it in the bond?

The Northern doctrine was, many years ago, that the Supreme Court was the judge. That was their doctrine in 1800. They denounced Madison for the report of 1799, on the Virginia resolutions; they denounced Jefferson for framing the Kentucky resolutions, because they were presumed to impugn the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States; and they declared that that court was made, by the Constitution, the ultimate and supreme arbiter. That was

the universal judgment—the declaration of every free state in this Union, in answer to the Virginia resolutions of 1798, or of all who did answer, even including the State of Delaware, then under federal control.

The Supreme Court have decided that, by the Constitution, we have a right to go to the territories and be protected there with our property. You say, we cannot decide the compact for ourselves. Well, can the Supreme Court decide it for us? Mr. Lincoln says he does not care what the Supreme Court decides, he will turn us out anyhow. He says this in his debate with the honorable member from

Illinois [Mr. Douglas]. I have it before me. He said he would vote against the decision of the Supreme Court. Then you did not accept that arbiter. You will not take my construction; you will not take the Supreme Court as an arbiter; you will not take the practise of the government; you will not take the treaties under Jefferson and Madison; you will not take the opinion of Madison upon the very question of prohibition in 1820. What, then, will you take? You will take nothing but your own judgment; that is, you will not only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our construction, discard the practise of the government, but you will drive us out, simply because you will it. Come and do it! You have sapped the foundations of society; you have destroyed almost all hope of peace. In a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, arbiter. Your party says that you will not take the decision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago; you said so in committee; every man of you in both houses says so. What are you going to do? You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you—that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we have passed that point; they demand equal rights; you had better heed the demand.

GEORGE GRAHAM VEST

ON INDIAN SCHOOLS

[George Graham Vest was born in Kentucky in 1830. He graduated at Centre College in his native State, and after studying law and receiving a diploma at Transylvania University he settled in Missouri. His reputation as a lawyer soon became such that in a few years he was elected to the State legislature. When the Civil War came he advocated Secession, and sat in the Confederate Congress-two years in the House and one year in the Senate. When peace was restored he was not long in gaining the ear of the people of his State, thanks to his gift of oratory and devotion to Democratic principles. He was elected to the United States Senate from Missouri in 1879, and has been continuously reelected since that year. The speech that follows was the result of an extensive Western tour of investigation of the Indian schools, and was delivered in the United States Senate in 1900.]

M

R. PRESIDENT: I shall not take the time of the Senate in discussing this oft-debated question as to the contract schools. My opinions have been so emphatically and repeatedly expressed that it is hardly necessary for me now to give information on that subject to any one. who has taken any interest in the matter.

There are people in this country, unfortunately, who believe that an Indian child had better die an unbeliever, an idolater even, than to be educated by the Society of Jesus or in the Catholic Church. I am very glad to say that I have not the slightest sympathy with that sort of bigotry and fanaticism. I was raised a Protestant; I expect to die one; I was never in a Catholic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sympathy with many of its dogmas; but, above all, I have no respect for this insane fear that the Catholic Church is about to overturn this government. I should be ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in any such ignorant belief.

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