THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA 73 fering, and heroic endurance, than by the Whigs of Carolina during that Revolution. The whole state, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina " drank up the most precious blood of her citizens; black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children. They were driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps; even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions, proved by her conduct that though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible. THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA WILLIAM H. SEWARD Mr.Seward's famous speech on the admission of California was delivered in the United States Senate, March 11, 1850. Four years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful in the Oriental commerce of a far distant, if not merely chimerical, future. A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own, and we were celebrating, with unanimity and enthusiasm, its acquisition, with its newly discovered, but yet untold and untouched mineral wealth, as the most auspicious of many and unparalleled achievements. To-day, California is a state more populous than the least, and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty states. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself. No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes! Shall California be received? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer, yes. For myself, as an instructed representative of one of the states of that one even of the states which is soonest and longest to be pressed in commercial and political rivalry by the new commonwealth -I answer, yes; let California come in. Every new state, whether she come from the East or from the Westevery new state, coming from whatever part of the continent she may-is always welcome. But California, that comes from the clime where the West dies away into the rising East; California, which bounds at once the empire and the continent; California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome. AGAINST THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 7.5 A SPEECH AGAINST THE KANSAS- CHARLES SUMNER Taken from a speech delivered in the United States Senate, in May, 1854. From the depths of my soul, as a loyal citizen and as a Senator, I plead, remonstrate, protest against the passage of this bill. I struggle against it as against death. But as in death itself corruption puts on incorruption, and this mortal body puts on immortality, so from the sting of this hour I find assurance of that triumph by which freedom will be restored to her immortal birthright in the Republic. The bill you are about to pass is at once the worst and the best on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at the same time. It is the worst bill inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In a Christian land and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history another is soon to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which in better days will be read with universal shame. The Tea Tax and the Stamp Act, which aroused the patriot rage of our fathers, were virtues by the side of this transgression; nor would it be easy to imagine at this day any measure which more openly and wantonly defies every sentiment of justice, humanity, and Christianity. Am I not right, then, in calling it the worst bill on which Congress ever acted? There is another side to which I gladly turn. It is the best bill on which Congress ever acted, for it annuls all past compromises with slavery, and makes any future compromise impossible. Thus it puts Freedom and Slavery face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result? It opens wide the door of the future, when at last there will really be a North, and the slave-power will be broken; when this wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our Government; when the national Government will be divorced in every way from slavery, and, according to the true intention of our fathers, freedom will be established everywhere. Thus, standing at the very grave of freedom in Kansas and Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection by which freedom will be assured, not only in these territories, but everywhere under the national Government. More clearly than ever before, I now penetrate that great future when slavery must disappear. Proudly I discern the flag of my country, as it ripples in every breeze, at last in reality, as in name, the flag of freedom-undoubted, pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the best on which Congress ever acted? Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you commit. Joyfully I welcome the promises of the future. SPEECH AGAINST SECESSION 77 SPEECH AGAINST SECESSION ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS Delivered in the Georgia Convention, November 14, 1860. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by all the demons of war which this act of yours will inevitably invite, when our green fields of waving harvests shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery, our temples of justice in ashes, all the horrors of war upon us, who but this convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall give his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably by posterity? Pause, I entreat you; consider for a moment what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in this case; and to what cause or overt act can you point on which to rest the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? and what claim founded upon justice and right has been withheld? Can you to-day name one governmental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by the Government at Washington of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer. Leaving out of view for |