American Eloquence, Volume 4: Studies In American Political History (1897)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 4: Studies In American Political History (1897)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
The Senator asks me, "What would you have us do?" I have already
intimated what I would have us do. I would have us stop the war. We
can do it. I have tried to show that there is none of that inexorable
necessity to continue this war which the Senator seems to suppose. I do
not hold that constitutional liberty on this continent is bound up in
this fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest. Upon the contrary, I
fear it will find its grave in it. The Senator is mistaken in supposing
that we can reunite these States by war. He is mistaken in supposing
that eighteen or twenty million upon the one side can subjugate ten or
twelve million upon the other; or, if they do subjugate them, that you
can restore constitutional government as our fathers made it. You will
have to govern them as Territories, as suggested by the Senator, if
ever they are reduced to the dominion of the United States, or, as the
Senator from Vermont called them, "those rebellious provinces of this
Union," in his speech to-day. Sir, I would prefer to see these States
all reunited upon true constitutional principles to any other object
that could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles
of of our fathers, the Union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one
unimportant life would be nothing; nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer
to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless,
aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public
liberty and of personal freedom.'
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM,
OF OHIO. (BORN 1820, DIED 1871.)
ON THE WAR AND ITS CONDUCT;
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 1863.
SIR, I am one of that number who have opposed abolitionism, or the
political development of the antislavery sentiment of the North and
West, from the beginning. In school, at college, at the bar, in public
assemblies, in the Legislature, in Congress, boy and man, in time of
peace and in time of war, at all times and at every sacrifice, I have
fought against it. It cost me ten years' exclusion from office and honor
at that period of life when honors are sweetest. No matter; I learned
early to do right and to wait. Sir, it is but the development of the
spirit of intermeddling, whose children are strife and murder. Cain
troubled himself about the sacrifices of Abel, and slew his brother.
Most of the wars, contentions, litigation, and bloodshed, from the
beginning of time, have been its fruits. The spirit of non-intervention
is the very spirit of peace and concord. * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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