Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
"But the cry of disunion by the weak or designing had no
terror for him. If his attachment to the Union was less, he
might tamper with the deep disease which now afflicts the body
politic, and keep silent till the patient was ready to sink
under its mortal blows. It is a cheap, and he must say but too
certain a mode of acquiring the character of devoted attachment
to the Union. But, seeing the danger as he did, he would be a
traitor to the Union and those he represented to keep silence.
The assaults daily made on the institutions of nearly one
half of the States of this Union by the other--institutions
interwoven from the beginning with their political and social
existence, and which cannot be other than that without their
inevitable destruction--will and must, if continued, _make
two people of one_ by destroying every sympathy between
the two great sections--obliterating from their hearts the
recollection of their common danger and glory--and implanting
in their place a mutual hatred, more deadly than ever existed
between two neighboring people since the commencement of the
human race. He feared not the circulation of the thousands of
incendiary and slanderous publications which were daily issued
from an organized and powerful press among those intended
to be vilified. They cannot penetrate our section; that
was not the danger; it lay in a different direction. Their
circulation in the non-slaveholding States was what was to be
dreaded. It was infusing a deadly poison into the minds of
the rising generation, implanting in them feelings of hatred,
the most deadly hatred, instead of affection and love, for
one half of this Union, to be returned, on their part, with
equal detestation. The fatal, the immutable consequences,
if not arrested, and that without delay, were such as he had
presented. The first and desirable object is to arrest it in
the non-slaveholding States; to meet the disease where it
originated and where it exists; and the first step to this is to
find some common constitutional ground on which a rally, with
that object, can be made. These resolutions present the ground,
and the only one, on which it can be made. The only remedy is
in the State rights doctrines; and if those who profess them
in slaveholding States do not rally on them as their political
creed, and organize as a party against the fanatics in order to
put them down, the South and West will be compelled to take the
remedy into their own hands. They will then stand justified in
the sight of God and man; and what in that event will follow
no mortal can anticipate. Mr. President (said Mr. C.), we are
reposing on a volcano. The Senate seems entirely ignorant of
the state of feeling in the South. The mail has just brought
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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