Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/314

Rh of the 6th of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen was based upon a Constitution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that government,—seceded is the word used,—had gone out from this great confederacy, and that they were defying the Constitution and the Union.

Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day; but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated, I say: she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. I know Massachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns; I have seen and conversed with her men and her women; and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.

Massachusetts has made war upon slavery wherever she had the right to do it; but, much as she abhors the institution, she would sacrifice everything rather than assail it where she has not the right to assail it.

Can it be denied, gentlemen, that we have elected a President in a legal and constitutional way? It cannot be denied; and yet you tell us, in tones that cannot be misunderstood, that, as a precedent condition of his inauguration, we must give you these guarantees.

Massachusetts hesitated, not because her blood was not stirred, but because she insisted that the government and the inauguration should go on in the manner that would have been observed had Mr. Lincoln been defeated. She felt that she was touched in a tender point when invited here under such circumstances.