Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/22

18 make one effort to bind the states together with the cords of affection? And has it come to this? Is this the spirit in which this government is to be administered? If so, let me tell gentlemen, the seeds of dissolution are already sown, and our children will reap the bitter fruit.

The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Webster,) while he exonerates me personally from the charge, intimates that there is a party in the country who are looking to disunion. Sir, if the gentleman had stopped there, the accusation would have “passed by me like the idle wind, which I regard not.” But when he goes on to give to his accusation “a local habitation and a name,” by quoting the expression of a distinguished citizen of South Carolina, (Dr. Cooper,) “that it was time for the south to calculate the value of the Union,” and in the language of the bitterest sarcasm, adds, “Surely then the Union cannot last longer than July, 1831,” it is impossible to mistake either the allusion or the object of the gentleman. Now, Mr. President, I call upon every one who hears me to bear witness that this controversy is not of my seeking. The Senate will do me the justice to remember that, at the time this unprovoked and uncalled-for attack was made on the south, not one word had been uttered by me in disparagement of New England; nor had I made the most distant allusion either to the senator from Massachusetts or the state he represents. But, sir, that gentleman has thought proper, for purposes best known to himself, to strike the south, through me, the most unworthy of her servants. He has crossed the border, he has invaded the state of South Carolina, is making war upon her citizens, and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and her institutions. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold; I will struggle, while I have life, for our altars and our firesides, and, if God gives me strength, I will drive back the invader discomfited. Nor shall I stop there. If the gentleman provokes the war, he shall have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemy’s territory, and not consent to lay down my arms until I have obtained “indemnity for the past and security for the future.” It is with unfeigned reluctance, Mr. President, that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty; I shrink almost instinctively from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me; and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty. Be the consequences what they may, the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me this necessity. The senator from Massachusetts has thought proper to cast the first stone; and if he shall find, according to a homely adage, “that he lives in a glass house,” on his head be the consequences. The gentleman has made a great flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts. I shall make no professions of zeal for the interests and honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one state in the Union, Mr. President, (and I say it not in a boastful spirit,) that may challenge comparison with any other, for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that state is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the revolution up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made, no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity; but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by