Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/336

 330 Southern Historical Society Papers.

ble rules of constitutional law as laid down by Daniel Webster, we find they can only exist in the palpable and gross violation of the Constitution as it then was.

Mr. Webster's argument is so full, clear and exhaustive that I will not be guilty of the folly of attempting to add to or elucidate it. I commend it to the attention and perusal of all Southern men and women. Its teachings should be transferred to our school-books to supersede and paralyze the false and poisonous manufacture of his- tory that has found its way into so many of the books that have been introduced into the schools of the South, with the purpose to mislead and disease the minds of our children as to the purpose, policy and good faith of our separation from the government of that " originally small party" so much condemned, if not despised, by Mr. Webster, and to which he administered such rebukes as to induce us to believe he could and would keep it in check, and perhaps obliterate it.

If Daniel Webster could have been spared to the Union there would not, in my opinion, have arisen cause for separation. His death in October, 1852, unbridled the fanaticism of that "originally small party " and brought it into power eight years later, when it proposed to conduct the Government on its peculiar sentiments of morality regardless of the constitutional limitations and restrictions which had been upholden and enforced by the Supreme Court for more than seventy-five years. It was the "higher law party" acting without warrant of authority, and in violation of that compact of which Mr. Webster said one party could not disregard any one pro- vision and expect the other to observe the rest. That great man loved law, system, order ; had great respect for the ability, patriotism and integrity of the Supreme Court of the United States, and would certainly, I think, have acquiesced in its decision made at December term, 1856, that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories. His course through life warrants the conclusion that he would have urged it as a settlement of that agitation.

Our affairs having reached the crisis indicated, the work of seces- sion began. The question is : Did we have that right which we ex- ercised in the hope that war would not follow. We proposed to quit in peace.

The first authority I rely on in support of the right is a speech of Mr. Lincoln (head and leader of coercion) made in the House of Representatives on the I2th of January, 1848. He said : "Any peo- ple, anywhere, being inclined, and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one