A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention: For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861Chittenden, L. E. (Lucius Eugene)
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A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention: For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861
Chittenden, L. E. (Lucius Eugene)
Conference Convention (1861 : Washington, D.C.); United States -- Politics and government -- 1857-1861
The gentleman from Massachusetts speaks for the North. Massachusetts
does not constitute the North. I venerate the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. I have many friends there. I look with pride upon her
connection with the Revolution; upon her public men, her manufactures,
her public institutions. Her people who have accomplished so much,
will not turn a deaf ear to our wants now. We wish to go to her people
and obtain their judgment upon our propositions. But Massachusetts is
not all the North. Rhode Island constitutes a part of it. She has
always spoken for us. She will speak for us to-day. What does New
Jersey say? What does the great State of Pennsylvania and the greater
Northwest say? Surely they do not echo the sentiments of the gentleman
from Massachusetts. They are with us, and we will trust to them.
I dislike this way of answering for sections of the country. I have
heard similar language from Mr. CALHOUN. He was fond of saying, "The
South says--The South thinks--The South will do," this or that. I did
not like it then. It stirred up all the rebellious sentiments of my
nature; for I knew the statement was not true. I do not like such
language better now. Let the _people_ of Massachusetts speak. I know
they will not refuse to fulfil the compact of their fathers.
We are brothers. I feel we can settle this important question which
portends over us like an eclipse; we can leave this glorious country
to our posterity. Once more let me refer to the noble and eloquent
counsels of MADISON, and I am done. As children of the same family, as
fellow-citizens of a great, glorious, and proud Republic, he invoked
the kindred blood of our people to consecrate our common Union, and to
banish forever the thought of our becoming aliens.
Mr. EWING:--I have never in any manner countenanced the discussions of
slavery and the questions connected with it, at the North. I have
always, so far as possible, discouraged those discussions. No good can
possibly come from them. Is the North the _censor morum_ of the
South? We have faults enough ourselves; let us consider and try to
correct them, before we interest ourselves so much in those of our
neighbors.
If there was any danger that slavery would be extended at the North, I
would oppose its extension there, and I would teach my sons to oppose
it. But this danger has never existed. Does any one fear that slavery
will go into New York or Massachusetts? No sane man thinks or ever
thought so.
But it exists, and we must deal with it as it is. As one northern man,
I do not want the negroes distributed throughout the North. We have
got enough of them now. I have watched the operation of this
emigration of slaves to the North. Ten negroes will commit more petty
thefts than one thousand white men. We cannot permit them to come into
Ohio. Wherever they have been permitted to come, it has almost cost us
a rebellion. Before we begin to preach abolition I think we had better
see what is to be done with the negroes.
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