Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/112

108 was a well-intended effort to remove this cause of complaint. The north thinks such imprisonments illegal and unconstitutional. As the cases occur constantly and frequently, they think it a great grievance.

Now, sir, so far as any of these grievances have their foundation in matters of law, they can be redressed, and ought to be redressed; and so far as they have their foundation in matters of opinion, in sentiment, in mutual crimination and recrimination, all that we can do is, to endeavor to allay the agitation, and cultivate a better feeling and more fraternal sentiments between the south and the north.

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member on this floor declarations of opinion, that this Union should never be dissolved, than the declarations of opinion, that, in any case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with pain, and anguish, and distress, the word secession, especially when it falls from the lips of those who are eminently patriotic, and known to the country, and known all over the world, for their political services. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish—I beg every body’s pardon—as to expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who sees these states now revolving in harmony around a common centre, expecting to see them quit their places, and fly off, without convulsion, may look, the next hour, to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without producing the crash of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great constitution under which we live here, covering this whole country—is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun—disappear almost unobserved, and die off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the states; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in heaven—I see that disruption must produce such a war as I will not describe in its twofold character!

Peaceable secession! peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other! Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What states are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shriek, and fall to the ground? Why, sir, our ancestors—our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives—would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of the Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty states to defend itself? I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly. There is to be a Southern Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things. I do not mean to say that it is true, but I