will never give her up. The time is coming when these outgoing States will stand in actual need of all that sympathy can do for them. Let us remain where we can effectually exert them-continue at home rendering our duty to the paternal government, and receiving the shelter of the paternal roof, and when those who have wandered off shall have wasted their substance and turned their faces once more, homeward, we will be there the first to kill the fatted calf and welcome back the returning prodigal. It is a point almost universally conceded in Maryland, that the only right which can be invoked to the support of the present disunion movement, is that ultimate right of an oppressed people-the right of revolution—and it is possible that the day may come when those Northern aggressions may reach the point of such an oppression as to justify this last resort. But where are the signs of such an oppression now existing as to justify such a revolution? Where on God's fair earth can another people be found so powerful and prosperous, united under a government so free. Our very abundance, if not our much learning, would seem to have made us mad. We are like an ungrateful, who never knew what sickness was; who has been blessed with a lifetime of vigorous health, without ever pausing to appreciate its blessings, until some withering disease at last, contracted by his own blind and headstrong course, opens his eyes to the blessings he had wasted, and leaves him forever afterwards a stricken monument of his own egregious folly. There has always seemed to me an ardor about an American's patriotism, exceeding that of other people-a heartiness about the greeting with which he recognizes his country's flag wherever found—an involuntary identification of himself with all who are found beneath it-that bids me hope the day is yet distant when he will submit to see it supplanted by any other. Well may it be so, for where is the other to be found that through long ages has ever won or worked its way to such renown as it has achieved within the memory of living men. Who will consent to see it now struck? and those national airs, too, that never, from our nursery days, could we listen to without keeping time to their measures with both hands and feet-the Old hundreds of our country's minstrelsy-who will consent to see them now expunged from one of our national hymn books? Let us, my friends, cherish all these time honored emblems with warmer love than ever. And when to their inspiring influences our country shall once more rise above the mountain wave of faction, against which she is now struggling, let us cheer her on in the language of an American poet, bidding God speed "to that old ship of State. Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee-are all with thee!"' SPEECH OF HON. REVERDY JOHNSON. Mr. President and Gentlemen of Baltimore: For this cordial and warm salutation, you have my most sincere and grateful thanks. Although willing to refer it in some measure to feelings of personal kindness to myself, I prize it the more, infinitely the more, from the assurance it gives me that you believe I am, as I know you are, attached, devotedly attached, to the Union our fathers bequeathed to us as the crowning work of all their trials, struggles, perils, in the mighty war which, ending in our independence, animated and strengthened the hopes of human liberty in the bosoms of its votaries in all the nations of the earth. As long as they were spared to us, that work, under their superintending vigilance and patriotic wisdom, was preserved in its perfect integrity. No false local ambition was suffered to mar it; no unfounded, heretical doctrine of State rights was permitted to overturn it. No vandal hand dared to strike at it. No traitorous heart-if in those days there was one-ventured to breathe even its destruction. They died-and thank God that it was so—in the full belief that that priceless legacy would be valued by us as they had valued it, and forever transmitted in its entirety as complete and absolute as they left it. Their last moments were made happy in the conviction that the freedom they had won and secured, and preserved, would be immortal. They no doubt too supposed, as well they might, that the faults of a frail nature, whatever these may have been, would in mercy be blotted out of the record of Heaven's chancery, in consideration of the mighty achievement of striking down tyrranny, and establishing enlightened, constitutional freedom, by a form of government admirably adapted, if honestly administered, to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty" to themselves and their posterity. Fearless as they were, boldly as they faced death in every battle field, nobly as they defied the mighty power of England, then almost the mistress of the world, and gloriously as they triumphed over it-philosophically as in the closet and at the council board they meditated on the future of their country-they could not bring themselves, they had not the heart-to look to that future which would be its condition if the Union, intended to be consolidated by that Constitution, should ever be destroyed. If in a moment of temporary despondency the thought flitted through the mind, the constant prayer was, that their eyes should be sealed in death before the happening of the dire catastrophy. The immortal author of the Declaration of Independence, a States-rights man of the strictest sect, and as sincere and as zealous a friend of human freedom as ever blessed the world, whilst in such a moment indulging the apprehen sion, had for himself but the consolation of an antecedent grave. "My only comfort and confidence (said he in a letter to a friend, on the 13th of April, 1820,) is that I shall not live to see it; and I envy not the present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of their fathers' sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of self government. The treason against human hope will signalize their epoch in future history as the counterpart of the medal of their predecessors. That "human hope" even now, before the entire generation is gone, whose noble deeds and consummate wisdom kindled it into ecstatic strength, is losing its fervor. Despair rather-sickening, frightful despair—is taking its place. The heart of the good and true men of the land, in every corner of this ocean-bound Republic, beats with trembling solicitude lest that hope is now and forever to be blasted. It fears, and it has reason to fear, that the fondly cherished experiment may now be ultimately decided. That it may now be proved that self-government is not within the capacity of man. Let it be our purpose, as I know it is our ardent wish, to take counsel with our countrymen, our brothers, East, West, North and South, patriotism knows no latitudes, who, true to the teachings of a noble ancestry, cling as we do, with unfaltering attachment, to the Union they gave, and so commended to us, as the ark of our political safety. Who faithful to all, yes, to all the obligations which that Union imposes, or was intended to impose upon States and citizens, and to all the rights and the powers it confers on the united whole, are, with us, resolved, by prudent counsels, patriotic efforts, gratitude, reverence for the great dead, solicitude for the peace, happiness, honor of the living present, love for the countless generations that are to follow, and respect for the opinion of the world, already condemning us, even in anticipation, of our possible "treason against human hope," are willing, anxious, resolved to sacrifice individual opinion, yield conflicting prejudices, frown down party plottings, stifle the grating voice of the demagogue, tread into nothingness the political partisan, drive into exile the designing traitor, and in an elevated and patriotic and fraternal spirit, resolve to amend what may be defective, define what may be, or esteemed to be doubtful, in the sacred charter of our liberty and the source of our present prosperity and power and world-wide fame, so as to extinguish the nation's fears, electrify with delight unspeakable its patriotic heart, and place it upon a foundation so deep and impregnable that the most skeptical will pronounce the danger over, and the world see that this generation, like the last, is incapable of "treason against human hope," and will never have a counterpart of the medal our ancestors left us, as their proudest boast, the emblem of their conviction that "man is capable of selfgovernment," and that with us it can only be successfully demonstrated, by preserving, in all its purity, "the unity of government which constitutes us one people," and, with unsleeping vigilance, guarding it through all time as “a main pillar of the edifice of our real independence.” And I have an abiding faith, if time is given for such a consultation, that all will be well, and American citizens everywhere, as in the days of our fathers, be brought to know and hail each other but as brothers-joint-heirs of a common inheritance of constitutional freedom, co-workers in the almost holy purpose of so using and maintaining it as to challenge the admiration and command the imitation of the world. I have said, gentlemen, that its founders intended the Union to be perpetual. This is evident from the causes which induced it, and equally evident from the Constitution itself which accomplished it. It is necessary, perhaps, to a just understanding of the difficulties which surround and embarrass us, that this should be clearly understood. And although the immediate occasion would not justify or admit of a full examination of the subject, you will, I hope, not think it amiss if I submit to you a few suggestions in regard to it. Before, and for nearly two years subsequent to the Declaration of Independence, the struggle was maintained by union alone. |