American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
I will now read my own demands, acting under my own convictions, and the
universal judgment of my countrymen. They are considered the demands of
an extremist. To hold to a constitutional right now makes one considered
as an extremist--I believe that is the appellation these traitors and
villains, North and South, employ. I accept their reproach rather than
their principles. Accepting their designation of treason and rebellion,
there stands before them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel as ever
descended from revolutionary loins.
What do the rebels demand? First, "that the people of the United States
shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or any
future acquired territories, with whatever property they may possess
(including slaves), and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment
until such Territory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with or
without slavery, as she may determine, on an equality with all existing
States." That is our territorial demand. We have fought for this
Territory when blood was its price. We have paid for it when gold
was its price. We have not proposed to exclude you, though you have
contributed very little of blood or money. I refer especially to New
England. We demand only to go into those Territories upon terms of
equality with you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy the
common property of the whole Union, and receive the protection of the
common government, until the Territory is capable of coming into the
Union as a sovereign State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit
itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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