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
Mr. RANDOLPH:--I think the gentleman from Maryland is right.
Mr. ALEXANDER:--I desire to ask whether a resolution to supersede the
motion to adjourn is in order?
The PRESIDENT:--I think the question should first be taken on the
motion to strike out the last clause in the resolution.
Mr. STOCKTON:--If the Conference felt as I do, it would at once
establish such peremptory orders as would bring a speedy termination
to this whole business. Upon what, let me ask gentlemen, does the
salvation of the Union depend at this moment? What is it alone that
prevents civil war now? I answer, it is the session of this
Convention--this august Convention! We stand in the presence of an
awful danger! We feel the throes of an earthquake which threatens to
bring down ruin on the whole magnificent fabric of our Government! Is
it possible that we should suffer this ruin to take place? Would it
not impeach the wisdom and good sense of our day and generation to
permit the edifice which our fathers constructed--to crumble to
pieces? No! fellow countrymen, it is necessary that we, by trusting in
God, who guided our ancestors through the stormy vicissitudes of the
Revolution, should this day resolve that the Union shall be preserved!
In the execution of that resolve let us unfold a new leaf in our
national history, and write thereon words of peace. Peace or war is
in our hands--an awful alternative! Peace alone is the object of our
mission; to restore peace to a distracted country. I have spent my
whole life in the service of my country. I love the people of every
State in it. They have been under my command and I have been under
theirs. I know them, and I know that this Union can never be dissolved
without a struggle. Will you hasten the time when we shall begin to
shed each other's blood? No! gentlemen, no!
There seems to be but one question which gives us any difficulty in
adjusting. That is, about the right of the South to take their slaves
into the territories. Is it possible that we can permit this Union to
be broken up because of any difference on such a question as this?
Better that the territories were buried in the deep sea beyond the
plummet's reach, than that they should be the cause of such a
deplorable result.
But it is not the value of the territories which is in dispute; it is
not whether the North or the South shall colonize them, because, as
the gentleman from New York has said, that though the territory south
of 36 deg. 30' had been ten years open to Southern colonization, only
twenty-four slaves had been introduced into it. No, the real question
is, whether pride of opinion shall succumb to the necessities of the
crisis.
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