MR. BAKER. I do; and that is the reason why I suggest to the honorable Senator that this criticism about States does not mean anything at all.
That is the very point. The objection certainly ought not to be that he can declare a part of a State in insurrection and not the whole of it. In point of fact, the Const.i.tution of the United States, and the Congress of the United States acting upon it, are not treating of States, but of the territory comprising the United States; and I submit once more to his better judgment that it cannot be unconst.i.tutional to allow the President to declare a county or a part of a county, or a town or a part of a town, or part of a State, or the whole of a State, or two States, or five States, in a condition of insurrection, if in his judgment that be the fact. That is not wrong.
In the next place, it provides that that being so, the military commander in that district may make and publish such police rules and regulations as he may deem necessary to suppress the rebellion and restore order and preserve the lives and property of citizens. I submit to him, if the President of the United States has power, or ought to have power, to suppress insurrection and rebellion, is there any better way to do it, or is there any other? The gentleman says, do it by the civil power. Look at the fact. The civil power is utterly overwhelmed; the courts are closed; the judges banished. Is the President not to execute the law? Is he to do it in person, or by his military commanders? Are they to do it with regulation, or without it? That is the only question.
Mr. President, the honorable Senator says there is a state of war. The Senator from Vermont agrees with him; or rather, he agrees with the Senator from Vermont in that. What then? There is a state of public war; none the less war because it is urged from the other side; not the less war because it is unjust; not the less war because it is a war of insurrection and rebellion. It is still war; and I am willing to say it is public war,--public as contra-distinguished from private war. What then? Shall we carry that war on? Is it his duty as a Senator to carry it on? If so, how? By armies under command; by military organization and authority, advancing to suppress insurrection and rebellion. Is that wrong? Is that unconst.i.tutional? Are we not bound to do, with whomever levies war against us, as we would do if he were a foreigner? There is no distinction as to the mode of carrying on war; we carry on war against an advancing army just the same, whether it be from Russia or from South Carolina. Will the honorable Senator tell me it is our duty to stay here, within fifteen miles of the enemy seeking to advance upon us every hour, and talk about nice questions of const.i.tutional construction as to whether it is war or merely insurrection? No, sir. It is our duty to advance, if we can; to suppress insurrection; to put down rebellion; to dissipate the rising; to scatter the enemy; and when we have done so, to preserve, in the terms of the bill, the liberty, lives, and property of the people of the country, by just and fair police regulations. I ask the Senator from Indiana, (Mr. Lane,) when we took Monterey, did we not do it there?
When we took Mexico, did we not do it there? Is it not a part, a necessary, an indispensable part of war itself, that there shall be military regulations over the country conquered and held? Is that unconst.i.tutional?
I think it was a mere play of words that the Senator indulged in when he attempted to answer the Senator from New York. I did not understand the Senator from New York to mean anything else substantially but this, that the Const.i.tution deals generally with a state of peace, and that when war is declared it leaves the condition of public affairs to be determined by the law of war, in the country where the war exists. It is true that the Const.i.tution of the United States does adopt the laws of war as a part of the instrument itself, during the continuance of war. The Const.i.tution does not provide that spies shall be hung. Is it unconst.i.tutional to hang a spy? There is no provision for it in terms in the Const.i.tution; but n.o.body denies the right, the power, the justice.
Why? Because it is part of the law of war. The Const.i.tution does not provide for the exchange of prisoners; yet it may be done under the law of war. Indeed the Const.i.tution does not provide that a prisoner may be taken at all; yet his captivity is perfectly just and const.i.tutional.
It seems to me that the Senator does not, will not take that view of the subject.
Again, sir, when a military commander advances, as I trust, if there are no more unexpected great reverses, he will advance, through Virginia and occupies the country, there, perhaps, as here, the civil law may be silent; there perhaps the civil officers may flee as ours have been compelled to flee. What then? If the civil law is silent, who shall control and regulate the conquered district, who but the military commander? As the Senator from Illinois has well said, shall it be done by regulation or without regulation? Shall the general, or the colonel, or the captain, be supreme, or shall he be regulated and ordered by the President of the United States? That is the sole question. The Senator has put it well.
I agree that we ought to do all we can to limit, to restrain, to fetter the abuse of military power. Bayonets are at best illogical arguments. I am not willing, except as a case of sheerest necessity, ever to permit a military commander to exercise authority over life, liberty, and property. But, sir, it is part of the law of war; you cannot carry in the rear of your army your courts; you cannot organize juries; you cannot have trials according to the forms and ceremonial of the common law amid the clangor of arms, and somebody must enforce police regulations in a conquered or occupied district. I ask the Senator from Kentucky again respectfully, is that unconst.i.tutional; or if in the nature of war it must exist, even if there be no law pa.s.sed by us to allow it, is it unconst.i.tutional to regulate it? That is the question, to which I do not think he will make a clear and distinct reply.
Now, sir, I have shown him two sections of the bill, which I do not think he will repeat earnestly are unconst.i.tutional. I do not think that he will seriously deny that it is perfectly const.i.tutional to limit, to regulate, to control, at the same time to confer and restrain authority in the hands of military commanders. I think it is wise and judicious to regulate it by virtue of powers to be placed in the hands of the President by law.
Now, a few words, and a few only, as to the Senator"s predictions. The Senator from Kentucky stands up here in a manly way in opposition to what he sees is the overwhelming sentiment of the Senate, and utters reproof,malediction, and prediction combined. Well, sir, it is not every prediction that is prophecy. It is the easiest thing in the world to do; there is nothing easier, except to be mistaken when we have predicted. I confess, Mr. President, that I would not have predicted three weeks ago the disasters which have overtaken our arms; and I do not think (if I were to predict now) that six months hence the Senator will indulge in the same tone of prediction which is his favorite key now. I would ask him what would you have us do now--a confederate army within twenty miles of us, advancing, or threatening to advance, to overwhelm your Government; to shake the pillars of the Union; to bring it around your head, if you stay here, in ruins? Are we to stop and talk about an uprising sentiment in the North against the war? Are we to predict evil, and retire from what we predict? Is it not the manly part to go on as we have begun, to raise money, and levy armies, to organize them, to prepare to advance; when we do advance, to regulate that advance by all the laws and regulations that civilization and humanity will allow in time of battle? Can we do anything more? To talk to us about stopping, is idle; we will never stop. Will the Senator yield to rebellion? Will he shrink from armed insurrection? Will his State justify it? Will its better public opinion allow it? Shall we send a flag of truce? What would he have? Or would he conduct this war so feebly, that the whole world would smile at us in derision? What would he have? These speeches of his, sown broadcast over the land, what clear distinct meaning have they? Are they not intended for disorganization in our very midst? Are they not intended to dull our weapons? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant, polished treason, even in the very Capitol of the Confederacy? (Manifestations of applause in the galleries.)
The Presiding Officer (Mr. Anthony in the chair). Order!
MR. BAKER. What would have been thought if, in another Capitol, in another Republic, in a yet more martial age, a senator as grave, not more eloquent or dignified than the Senator from Kentucky, yet with the Roman purple flowing over his shoulders, had risen in his place, surrounded by all the ill.u.s.trations of Roman glory, and declared that advancing Hannibal was just, and that Carthage ought to be dealt with in terms of peace? What would have been thought if, after the battle of Canne, a senator there had risen in his place and denounced every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure of its treasure, and every appeal to the old recollections and the old glories? Sir, a Senator, himself learned far more than myself in such lore (Mr. Fessenden), tells me, in a voice that I am glad is audible, that he would have been hurled from the Tarpeian rock. It is a grand commentary upon the American Const.i.tution that we permit these words to be uttered. I ask the Senator to recollect, too, what, save to send aid and comfort to the enemy, do these predictions of his amount to? Every word thus uttered falls as a note of inspiration upon every confederate ear. Every sound thus uttered is a word (and falling from his lips, a mighty word) of kindling and triumph to a foe that determines to advance. For me, I have no such word as a Senator to utter. For me, amid temporary defeat, disaster, disgrace, it seems that my duty calls me to utter another word, and that word is, bold, sudden, forward, determined war, according to the laws of war, by armies, by military commanders clothed with full power, advancing with all the past glories of the Republic urging them to conquest.
I do not stop to consider whether it is subjugation or not. It is compulsory obedience, not to my will; not to yours, sir; not to the will of any one man; not to the will of any one State; but compulsory obedience to the Const.i.tution of the whole country. The Senator chose the other day again and again to animadvert on a single expression in a little speech which I delivered before the Senate, in which I took occasion to say that if the people of the rebellious States would not govern themselves as States, they ought to be governed as Territories.
The Senator knew full well then, for I explained it twice--he knows full well now--that on this side of the Chamber; nay, in this whole Chamber; nay, in this whole North and West; nay, in all the loyal States in all their breadth, there is not a man among us all who dreams of causing any man in the South to submit to any rule, either as to life, liberty, or property, that we ourselves do not willingly agree to yield to. Did he ever think of that? Subjugation for what? When we subjugate South Carolina, what shall we do? We shall compel its obedience to the Const.i.tution of the United States; that is all. Why play upon words?
We do not mean, we have never said, any more. If it be slavery that men should obey the Const.i.tution their fathers fought for, let it be so. If it be freedom, it is freedom equally for them and for us. We propose to subjugate rebellion into loyalty; we propose to subjugate insurrection into peace; we propose to subjugate confederate anarchy into const.i.tutional Union liberty. The Senator well knows that we propose no more. I ask him, I appeal to his better judgment now, what does he imagine we intend to do, if fortunately we conquer Tennessee or South Carolina--call it "conquer," if you will, sir--what do we propose to do? They will have their courts still; they will have their ballot-boxes still; they will have their elections still; they will have their representatives upon this floor still; they will have taxation and representation still; they will have the writ of _habeas corpus_ still; they will have every privilege they ever had and all we desire. When the confederate armies are scattered; when their leaders are banished from power; when the people return to a late repentant sense of the wrong they have done to a Government they never felt but in benignancy and blessing, then the Const.i.tution made for all will be felt by all, like the descending rains from heaven which bless all alike. Is that subjugation? To restore what was, as it was, for the benefit of the whole country and of the whole human race, is all we desire and all we can have.
I tell the Senator that his predictions, sometimes for the South, sometimes for the Middle States, sometimes for the Northeast, and then wandering away in airy visions out to the far Pacific, about the dread of our people, as for loss of blood and treasure, provoking them to disloyalty, are false in sentiment, false in fact, and false in loyalty.
The Senator from Kentucky is mistaken in them all. Five hundred million dollars! What then? Great Britain gave more than two thousand million in the great battle for const.i.tutional liberty which she led at one time almost single-handed against the world. Five hundred thousand men! What then? We have them; they are ours; they are the children of the country.
They belong to the whole country; they are our sons; our kinsmen; and there are many of us who will give them all up before we will abate one word of our just demand, or will retreat one inch from the line which divides right from wrong.
Sir, it is not a question of men or of money in that sense. All the money, all the men, are, in our judgment, well bestowed in such a cause.
When we give them, we know their value. Knowing their value well, we give them with the more pride and the more joy. Sir, how can we retreat?
Sir, how can we make peace? Who shall treat? What commissioners? Who would go? Upon what terms? Where is to be your boundary line? Where the end of the principles we shall have to give up? What will become of const.i.tutional government? What will become of public liberty? What of past glories? What of future hopes? Shall we sink into the insignificance of the grave--a degraded, defeated, emasculated people, frightened by the results of one battle, and scared at the visions raised by the imagination of the Senator from Kentucky upon this floor?
No, sir; a thousand times, no, sir! We will rally--if, indeed, our words be necessary--we will rally the people, the loyal people, of the whole country. They will pour forth their treasure, their money, their men, without stint, without measure. The most peaceable man in this body may stamp his foot upon this Senate-Chamber floor, as of old a warrior and a senator did, and from that single stamp there will spring forth armed legions. Shall one battle determine the fate of an empire? or, the loss of one thousand men or twenty thousand, or $100,000,000 or $500,000,000?
In a year"s peace, in ten years, at most, of peaceful progress, we can restore them all. There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need for labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the Const.i.tution, free government--with these there will return all the blessings of well-ordered civilization; the path of the country will be a career of greatness and of glory such as, in the olden time, our fathers saw in the dim visions of years yet to come, and such as would have been ours now, to-day, if it had not been for the treason for which the Senator too often seeks to apologize.
MR. BRECKENRIDGE. Mr. President, I have tried on more than one occasion in the Senate, in parliamentary and respectful language, to express my opinions in regard to the character of our Federal system, the relations of the States to the Federal Government, to the Const.i.tution, the bond of the Federal political system. They differ utterly from those entertained by the Senator from Oregon. Evidently, by his line of argument, he regards this as an original, not a delegated Government, and he regards it as clothed with all those powers which belong to an original nation, not only with those powers which are delegated by the different political communities that compose it, and limited by the written Const.i.tution that forms the bond of Union. I have tried to show that, in the view that I take of our Government, this war is an unconst.i.tutional war. I do not think the Senator from Oregon has answered my argument. He asks, what must we do? As we progress southward and invade the country, must we not, said he, carry with us all the laws of war? I would not progress southward and invade the country.
The President of the United States, as I again repeat, in my judgment only has the power to call out the military to a.s.sist the civil authority in executing the laws; and when the question a.s.sumes the magnitude and takes the form of a great political severance, and nearly half the members of the Confederacy withdraw themselves from it, what then? I have never held that one State or a number of States have a right without cause to break the compact of the Const.i.tution. But what I mean to say is that you cannot then undertake to make war in the name of the Const.i.tution. In my opinion they are out. You may conquer them; but do not attempt to do it under what I consider false political pretenses.
However, sir, I will not enlarge upon that. I have developed these ideas again and again, and I do not care to re-argue them. Hence the Senator and I start from entirely different stand-points, and his pretended replies are no replies at all.
The Senator asks me, "What would you have us do?" I have already intimated what I would have us do. I would have us stop the war. We can do it. I have tried to show that there is none of that inexorable necessity to continue this war which the Senator seems to suppose. I do not hold that const.i.tutional liberty on this continent is bound up in this fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest. Upon the contrary, I fear it will find its grave in it. The Senator is mistaken in supposing that we can reunite these States by war. He is mistaken in supposing that eighteen or twenty million upon the one side can subjugate ten or twelve million upon the other; or, if they do subjugate them, that you can restore const.i.tutional government as our fathers made it. You will have to govern them as Territories, as suggested by the Senator, if ever they are reduced to the dominion of the United States, or, as the Senator from Vermont called them, "those rebellious provinces of this Union," in his speech to-day. Sir, I would prefer to see these States all reunited upon true const.i.tutional principles to any other object that could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles of of our fathers, the Union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one unimportant life would be nothing; nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public liberty and of personal freedom."
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM,
OF OHIO. (BORN 1820, DIED 1871.)
ON THE WAR AND ITS CONDUCT;
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 1863.
SIR, I am one of that number who have opposed abolitionism, or the political development of the antislavery sentiment of the North and West, from the beginning. In school, at college, at the bar, in public a.s.semblies, in the Legislature, in Congress, boy and man, in time of peace and in time of war, at all times and at every sacrifice, I have fought against it. It cost me ten years" exclusion from office and honor at that period of life when honors are sweetest. No matter; I learned early to do right and to wait. Sir, it is but the development of the spirit of intermeddling, whose children are strife and murder. Cain troubled himself about the sacrifices of Abel, and slew his brother.
Most of the wars, contentions, litigation, and bloodshed, from the beginning of time, have been its fruits. The spirit of non-intervention is the very spirit of peace and concord. * * *
The spirit of intervention a.s.sumed the form of abolitionism because slavery was odious in name and by a.s.sociation to the Northern mind, and because it was that which most obviously marks the different civilizations of the two sections. The South herself, in her early and later efforts to rid herself of it, had exposed the weak and offensive parts of slavery to the world. Abolition intermeddling taught her at last to search for and defend the a.s.sumed social, economic, and political merit and values of the inst.i.tution. But there never was an hour from the beginning when it did not seem to me as clear as the sun at broad noon that the agitation in any form in the North and West of the slavery question must sooner or later end in disunion and civil war.
This was the opinion and prediction for years of Whig and Democratic statesmen alike; and, after the unfortunate dissolution of the Whig party in 1854, and the organization of the present Republican party upon the exclusive antislavery and sectional basis, the event was inevitable, because, in the then existing temper of the public mind, and after the education through the press and the pulpit, the lecture and the political canva.s.s, for twenty years, of a generation taught to hate slavery and the South, the success of that party, possessed as it was of every engine of political, business, social, and religious influence, was certain. It was only a question of time, and short time. Such was its strength, indeed, that I do not believe that the union of the Democratic party in 1860 on any candidate, even though he had been supported also by the entire so-called conservative or anti-Lincoln vote of the country, would have availed to defeat it; and, if it had, the success of the Abolition party would only have been postponed four years longer. The disease had fastened too strongly upon the system to be healed until it had run its course. The doctrine of "the irrepressible conflict" had been taught too long, and accepted too widely and earnestly, to die out until it should culminate in secession and disunion, and, if coercion were resorted to, then in civil war. I believed from the first that it was the purpose of some of the apostles of that doctrine to force a collision between the North and the South, either to bring about a separation or to find a vain but b.l.o.o.d.y pretext for abolishing slavery in the States. In any event, I knew, or thought I knew, that the end was certain collision and death to the Union.
Believing thus, I have for years past denounced those who taught that doctrine, with all the vehemence, the bitterness, if you choose--I thought it a righteous, a patriotic bitterness--of an earnest and impa.s.sioned nature. * * * But the people did not believe me, nor those older and wiser and greater than I. They rejected the prophecy, and stoned the prophets. The candidate of the Republican party was chosen President. Secession began. Civil war was imminent. It was no petty insurrection, no temporary combination to obstruct the execution of the laws in certain States, but a revolution, systematic, deliberate, determined, and with the consent of a majority of the people of each State which seceded. Causeless it may have been, wicked it may have been, but there it was--not to be railed at, still less to be laughed at, but to be dealt with by statesmen as a fact. No display of vigor or force alone, however sudden or great, could have arrested it even at the outset. It was disunion at last. The wolf had come, but civil war had not yet followed. In my deliberate and solemn judgment there was but one wise and masterly mode of dealing with it. Non-coercion would avert civil war, and compromise crush out both abolitionism and secession. The parent and the child would thus both perish. But a resort to force would at once precipitate war, hasten secession, extend disunion, and while it lasted utterly cut off all hope of compromise. I believed that war, if long enough continued, would be final, eternal disunion. I said it; I meant it; and accordingly, to the utmost of my ability and influence, I exerted myself in behalf of the policy of non-coercion. It was adopted by Mr. Buchanan"s administration, with the almost unanimous consent of the Democratic and Const.i.tutional Union parties in and out of Congress; and in February, with the consent of a majority of the Republican party in the Senate and the House. But that party most disastrously for the country refused all compromise. How, indeed, could they accept any? That which the South demanded, and the Democratic and Conservative parties of the North and West were willing to grant, and which alone could avail to keep the peace and save the Union, implied a surrender of the sole vital element of the party and its platform, of the very principle, in fact, upon which it had just won the contest for the Presidency, not, indeed, by a majority of the popular vote--the majority was nearly a million against it,--but under the forms of the Const.i.tution. Sir, the crime, the "high crime," of the Republican party was not so much its refusal to compromise, as its original organization upon a basis and doctrine wholly inconsistent with the stability of the Const.i.tution and the peace of the Union.
The President-elect was inaugurated; and now, if only the policy of non-coercion could be maintained, and war thus averted, time would do its work in the North and the South, and final peaceable adjustment and reunion be secured. Some time in March it was announced that the President had resolved to continue the policy of his predecessor, and even go a step farther, and evacuate Sumter and the other Federal forts and a.r.s.enals in the seceded States. His own party acquiesced; the whole country rejoiced. The policy of non-coercion had triumphed, and for once, sir, in my life, I found myself in an immense majority. No man then pretended that a Union founded in consent could be cemented by force. Nay, more, the President and the Secretary of State went farther.
Said Mr. Seward, in an official diplomatic letter to Mr. Adams: "For these reasons, he (the President) would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs (the secessionists), namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, although he were disposed to question that proposition. But in fact the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State." * * * This Federal republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor. This, sir, was on the 10th of April, and yet on that very day the fleet was under sail for Charleston. The policy of peace had been abandoned. Collision followed; the militia were ordered out; civil war began.
Now, sir, on the 14th of April, I believed that coercion would bring on war, and war disunion. More than that, I believed what you all believe in your hearts to-day, that the South could never be conquered--never.
And not that only, but I was satisfied--and you of the Abolition party have now proved it to the world--that the secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the State. * * * These were my convictions on the 14th of April. Had I changed them on the 15th, when I read the President"s proclamation, * * *
I would have changed my public conduct also. But my convictions did not change. I thought that, if war was disunion on the 14th of April, it was equally disunion on the 15th, and at all times. Believing this, I could not, as an honest man, a Union man, and a patriot, lend an active support to the war; and I did not. I had rather my right arm were plucked from its socket and cast into eternal burnings, than, with my convictions, to have thus defiled my soul with the guilt of moral perjury. Sir, I was not taught in that school which proclaims that "all is fair in politics." I loathe, abhor, and detest the execrable maxim.
* * * Perish office, perish honors, perish life itself; but do the thing that is right, and do it like a man.
Certainly, sir; I could not doubt what he must suffer who dare defy the opinions and the pa.s.sions, not to say the madness, of twenty millions of people. * * * I did not support the war; and to-day I bless G.o.d that not the smell of so much as one drop of its blood is upon my garments. Sir, I censure no brave man who rushed patriotically into this war; neither will I quarrel with any one, here or elsewhere, who gave to it an honest support. Had their convictions been mine, I, too, would doubtless have done as they did. With my convictions I could not. But I was a Representative. War existed--by whose act no matter--not by mine. The President, the Senate, the House, and the country all said that there should be war. * * * I belonged to that school of politics which teaches that, when we are at war, the government--I do not mean the Executive alone, but the government--is ent.i.tled to demand and have, without resistance, such number of men, and such amount of money and supplies generally, as may be necessary for the war, until an appeal can be had to the people. Before that tribunal alone, in the first instance, must the question of the continuance of the war be tried. This was Mr.
Calhoun"s opinion * * * in the Mexican war. Speaking of that war in 1847, he said: "Every Senator knows that I was opposed to the war; but none but myself knows the depth of that opposition. With my conception of its character and consequences, it was impossible for me to vote for it. * * * But, after war was declared, by authority of the government, I acquiesced in what I could not prevent, and what it was impossible for me to arrest; and I then felt it to be my duty to limit my efforts to give such direction to the war as would, as far as possible, prevent the evils and dangers with which it threatened the country and its inst.i.tutions."
Sir, I adopt all this as my position and my defence, though, perhaps, in a civil war, I might fairly go farther in opposition. I could not, with my convictions, vote men and money for this war, and I would not, as a Representative, vote against them. I meant that, without opposition, the President might take all the men and all the money he should demand, and then to hold him to a strict responsibility before the people for the results. Not believing the soldiers responsible for the war or its purposes or its consequences, I have never withheld my vote where their separate interests were concerned. But I have denounced from the beginning the usurpations and the infractions, one and all, of law and const.i.tution, by the President and those under him; their repeated and persistent arbitrary arrests, the suspension of _habeas corpus_, the violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press, and of speech, and all the other multiplied wrongs and outrages upon public liberty and private right, which have made this country one of the worst despotisms on earth for the past twenty months, and I will continue to rebuke and denounce them to the end; and the people, thank G.o.d, have at last heard and heeded, and rebuked them too. To the record and to time I appeal again for my justification.
HENRY WARD BEECHER,
OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1813, DIED 1887.)
ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL, OCTOBER 16, 1863
For more than twenty-five years I have been made perfectly familiar with popular a.s.semblies in all parts of my country except the extreme South.
There has not for the whole of that time been a single day of my life when it would have been safe for me to go South of Mason"s and Dixon"s line in my own country, and all for one reason: my solemn, earnest, persistent testimony against that which I consider to be the most atrocious thing under the sun--the system of American slavery in a great free republic. [Cheers.] I have pa.s.sed through that early period when right of free speech was denied to me. Again and again I have attempted to address audiences that, for no other crime than that of free speech, visited me with all manner of contumelious epithets; and now since I have been in England, although I have met with greater kindness and courtesy on the part of most than I deserved, yet, on the other hand, I perceive that the Southern influence prevails to some extent in England.
[Applause and uproar.] It is my old acquaintance; I understand it perfectly--[laughter]--and I have always held it to be an unfailing truth that where a man had a cause that would bear examination he was perfectly willing to have it spoken about. [Applause.] And when in Manchester I saw those huge placards: "Who is Henry Ward Beecher?"--[laughter, cries of "Quite right," and applause.]--and when in Liverpool I was told that there were those blood-red placards, purporting to say what Henry Ward Beecher had said, and calling upon Englishmen to suppress free speech--I tell you what I thought. I thought simply this: "I am glad of it." [Laughter.] Why? Because if they had felt perfectly secure, that you are the minions of the South and the slaves of slavery, they would have been perfectly still. [Applause and uproar.]
And, therefore, when I saw so much nervous apprehension that, if I were permitted to speak--[hisses and applause]--when I found they were afraid to have me speak [hisses, laughter, and "No, no!"]--when I found that they considered my speaking damaging to their cause--[applause]--when I found that they appealed from facts and reasonings to mob law--[applause and uproar]--I said, no man need tell me what the heart and secret counsel of these men are. They tremble and are afraid. [Applause, laughter, hisses, "No, no!" and a voice: "New York mob."] Now, personally, it is a matter of very little consequence to me whether I speak here to-night or not. [Laughter and cheers.] But, one thing is very certain, if you do permit me to speak here to-night you will hear very plain talking. [Applause and hisses.] You will not find a man--[interruption]--you will not find me to be a man that dared to speak about Great Britain 3,000 miles off, and then is afraid to speak to Great Britain when he stands on her sh.o.r.es. [Immense applause and hisses.] And if I do not mistake the tone and temper of Englishmen, they had rather have a man who opposes them in a manly way--[applause from all parts of the hall]--than a sneak that agrees with them in an unmanly way. [Applause and "Bravo!"] Now, if I can carry you with me by sound convictions, I shall be immensely glad--[applause]; but if I cannot carry you with me by facts and sound arguments, I do not wish you to go with me at all; and all that I ask is simply FAIR PLAY. [Applause, and a voice: "You shall have it too."]