Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches
History
Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches
North Carolina -- Biography
No wonder that the South always insisted that the Federation was
a limited partnership; and no wonder that her rapacious partners
insisted on a government of unlimited powers, when they employed
such powers for unequal taxation, sectional expenditures, and
unlimited "protection." Those who have clamored most persistently
for a "strong government" have never scrupled to sap its strength
for purposes of private emolument. Those who have panted most for
a consolidated republic have now fully disclosed their purpose of
sequestering its assets. They have not consolidated the patriotism
of the republic, but they have drawn a line of division from the
Atlantic to the Great Lakes--a division of interests, division
of sentiment, division of population, division of history, and
a division of churches. Who can measure the hypocrisy of those
writers and politicians who teach the people that the way to make
the government strong is to give to one section "implied powers"
to plunder the other? Having gotten their wealth by the craft of
booming nationalism and centralization, they now perceive that in
order to keep it they must hold themselves ready to "hedge" with the
doctrine of States' rights and reserved powers. So, while college
professors are confusing the mind of youth about "the two opposing
theories of government," the facts of opposing interests are jarring
the foundations of society and wrenching the fetters which bind the
States in a "more perfect Union."
Robert Toombs said, in a speech before the Georgia Legislature, in
November, 1860: "The instant the Government was organized, at the
very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire
and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its
powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pursued that
policy to this day. They demanded a monopoly of the business of
ship-building, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign
ships to citizens of the United States, which exists to this day.
They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get
higher freights than they could get in open competition with the
carriers of the world. Congress gave it to them, and they yet hold
this monopoly. * * * These same shipping interests, with cormorant
rapacity, have steadily burrowed their way through your legislative
halls, until they have saddled the agricultural classes with a large
portion of the legitimate expenses of their own business. We pay a
million dollars per annum for the lights which guide them in and
out of your ports. We have built, and keep up, at the cost of at
least another million a year, hospitals for their sick and disabled
seamen, when they wear them out and cast them ashore. We pay half a
million to support and bring home those they cast away in foreign
lands. They demand, and have received, millions of the public
money to increase the safety of harbors and lessen the danger of
navigating our rivers; all of which expenses legitimately fall upon
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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