The Issues Involved in the Presidential Contest

platform-the Georgia union platform made by the State of Georgia in 1851, when the State was restless about the abolition of the slave trade between the States and the District of Columbia. The people of Georgia met in Convention and passed an ordinance which is now a part of the Constitution of Georgia. It is as follows, in part:

1. That we hold the American Union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was destined to perpetuate; that past associations, present fruition and future prospects will bind us to it so long as it continues to be the safeguard of those rights and principles.

2. That if the thirteen original parties to the contract, bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, whilst their separate interests were in embryo; their peculiar tendencies scarcely developed; their revolutionary traits and triumphs still green in memory; found union impossible without compromise, the thirtyone of this day will yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy to preserve that Union which has extended the sway of Republican Government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and proportionably advanced their civilization and national great

ness.

3. That in this spirit we have maturely considered the action of Congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission of California into the Union; the organization of Territorial Governments for Utah and New Mexico; the establishment of a boundary between the latter and the State of Texas; the suppression of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, and connected with them, the rejection of the propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to abolish it in the District of Columbia, and while we do not wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy.

4. That Georgia in our judgment, will and ought to resist, even (is a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union, any action of Congress upon the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, or in places subject to the jurisdiction of Congress, incompatible with the safety, domestic tranquility, the rights and honor of the slaveholding States, or in any act suppressing the slave trade between the slaveholding States. or in any refusal to admit as a State any Territory hereafter applying because of the existence of slavery therein, or in any act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the Territories of Utah and New Mexico, or in any act repealing or materially modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves.

ready to knuckle and bow and submit to the Northern people under a higher law. That man has a right to condemn me for writing the Slaughter letter. No other man has a right to do so. No Union man of 1851 has. No Bell man of 1860 has.

I want to read to the Bell men here, because I am inclined to think that what I shall read will

be authority even for them, and I hope they will tinkle their bell over it until the next time they speak of me as a disunionist. Here is what Mr. Bell says. I read you from the official record:

"Sir, no man who loves his country, no man who has any just pride in the reflection that he is an American citizen, but must desire that these dissensions should cease, for, sir, it is not a mere question whether we shall preserve the Union; for that may be, and yet prove no great boon either to ourselves or to posterity.'

The Union no great boon. Doesn't that sound like Yancey?

"The question is not whether these States shall continue to be united according to the letter of the Covenant by which they are bound together; it is whether they shall continue to be united in heartwhether they shall continue to be practically and efficiently carrying out the great end of the assocition. * *This is the question, and when you present that issue to me, say at once, give me separation, give me disunion, give me anything in preference to a Union sustained only by power-by constitutional and legal ties-without confidence. If our future career is to be one of eternal discord and of angry crimination and recrimination, give me rather separation with all its consequences.'

Well, now, there is no aggression here, mind you, simply the constant scene of quarreling, When you present threatening, and discord. that issue to him, he says at once, "give me separation-give me disunion," says John Bell, "Give me anything in preference to a Union sustained only by power, by const tutional and legal ties without confidence. Ah! He says he is against the Union sustained by constitutional and legal ties, if you don't have confidence between each other. If your sentiments don't agreealthough the ties are constitutional and legalhe says, give me disunion rather.

That is John Bell. John Bell then has told you what? Why, gentlemen, did I go as far as that when I said in my Slaughter letter, "we will precipitate the cotton States into a revolution the next aggression-at_the_proper moment on the next aggression?" Did I go as far as John Bell, who said he did not want to wait for the next

And it was made a part of the Constitution of Georgia, which no law can repeal, that when the next aggression comes on the South, the Govern or of Georgia is bound at once to call the people together to take measures to go out of the Union. That was the Union platform in 1851, adopted by the Union party in the State of Ten-aggression, but says if this constant warfare is to nessee, and adopted throughout the South generally. This Slaughter letter therefore was thisgo to work and prepare, that when the time comes the Southern people will be ready to enforce the Union, not the disunion platform-resistance to the next aggression upon your constitutional rights.

Is there any man here who claims to be a Southern man, who is willing to stand up before a Tenue 39e audience and say, "I am not willing to say that the South shall not resist any aggression upon her constitutional rights?" Is there any such man here, be he Douglas or Bell man? [Cries of No.] If there is, I should like to look at him, and to know his name-and I should like his neighbors and the people gener

be continued, give me separa ion. How dare any Bell man to call me a disunionist? How dare he stand up and repeat that as to me and not denounce Bell as a disunionist? Sir, if you do that, I say to your face you are a political hypocrite, unworthy of the confidence of the people. A disunionist, when all the charge that is made against me is, that I am ready to strike a blow for our constitutional rights, against unconstitutional aggression? And yet you dare support Bell who says, give me disunion rather than the Union with a want of confidence. How can the people have confidence in you, gentlemen-how can the Union-loving people of the conntry→ those who only know the Union through the Constitution when having such a Union-when you,

Bell stands a head and shoulders above me in the ranks, you support John Bell?

The Douglas men, what do they do? Ah! they say he is a disunionist-Yancey is an agitatorhe disrupted the Democratic party-he got up the Alabama platform to divide the Democratic party-and yet it so happens that history tells you that the Alabama platform simply asked for our constitutional rights, and did not say that we would go out of the Union, but out of the Democratic party. We went out, did we not? Eight

And then it goes on, and has twelve articles, which it is unnecessary to read. Now, what do you say, when I pronounce that this instrument here so carefully got up as a campaign paper to be used among the people, and put forth under the auspices of the Nashville Patriot, an republished in the Memphis Appeal as an authentic document-what do you say when I pronounce it a base, infamous, political forgery! [Great applause.] I don't say these gentlemen forged it. I know nothing of them. I don't know where they got it. They may possibly have got it from some miserable lying sheet in Alabama, and tak

of the Democratic States went out, and I should call that a pretty wide breach-so wide, indeed, that no Douglas man can ever get to Heaven, if it is between him and hell. [Laughter.] And yet it so happens when I went back to the Democracy of Alabama, it fell to my fortune to lead offing it for granted to be true, republished it. I in the cause of conciliation and moderation, and state this to you. The Constitution of the United Leagues of the South, the only one adopted in endeavoring to heal the breach that had occurred at Charleston, to give the Democracy time to that I ever heard of, was published the next mornrepent. To reconsider, I took occasion to leading after it was adopted in public meeting. A off in asking that Convention to send us to Baltimore. Had it been my object to break up the Union by that disruption, I had already broken up the party, and had the Union at my feet, and yet you find me in the Convention at Montgomery saying, "let us go back with the olive branch although they have insulted us-although they have done us a wrong-let us go back and unite the gallant Democracy once more in gallant and glorious support of the Constitution and the rights of the South."

But they say "the league!" Oh, that is a secret thing! Bring it out; maybe it has a cloven foot, and a tail hidden under its constitution. They tell us it is a secret thing. They tell us that I am forming it through the country, and if you don't look out I will have a league formed in the city of Memphis. Some man writes to the States, a Douglas paper published at Washington, that I am forming a league with test oaths, and all that. Now all of that is a manufactured

lie.

In 1858 I did form a league in Montgomery. It existed three months. The people frowned it down, and the Democracy frowned it down-I thought it a good thing, but the citizens did not. I wish to God every man in the South was a member of a Southern league. I wish every man at the North was. If it were so, the objects of the league would be promoted, and the constitutional rights of the South would be protected.

But they tell us that is not the object. I have it stated here in the Mem his weekly Appeal. Now I will say in the first place, the leage never was a secret association. It was extinguished within three months after it was initiated-the members never met without public notice being given in the papers or by hand-bills-its meetings were held with open doors, and its proceedings were always published on the following day in the newspapers. There was no test oath about it. But here is an article that I am told has been diligently prepared. It is taken from the Nashville Patriot. Is that a Douglas or a Bell paper? [Voices, Bell! Bell!] He says of the

large number were struck off and circulated; and afterwards seeing a document put forth purporting to be the Constitution, I wrote a letter correcting the misapprehension. I have given the Constitution, at length, everywhere I have spoken I have, at each place, met the same document, and have reiterated the same truth; and yet the Douglas orators in my State still carry it about and promulgate it. Are they so utterly destitute of merit that they cannot do a fair and manly piece of justice and courtesy? Have I not a right to demand of these gentlemen the ordinary rules of fair play? That they should at least put me on trial before their readers, and say Mr. Yancey has denied it? Perchance it has been done. I have endeavored to find out that it has, but I cannot so learn. But, on the contrary, I find myself attacked again and again.

I love the favorable verdict of my kind as much as any other man. I have endeavored to live a life of self-denial, of justice-to pursue the ways of tru.hfulness towards my fellow-men, and in all my relations I have endeavored, with all the infirmities of human nature upon me, to do justice to all. Truth, justice, and the Constitution has been my motto, in private as well as in public life. If any of these gentlemen will point to the day or the hour when I have uttered a word or sentence, or did an act that was untrue to any constitutional right of any section, I will come down from this platform and never utter another word to the people. [Applause.]

What is the league? Here it is. Listen to what I recommend to every slaveholder. See, each of you, if there is a word or a line that you disapprove. When I get through I shall challenge any one to rise in his place and say that it is treasonable:

66 CONSTITUTION OF THE MONTGOMERY LEAGUE OF UNITED SOUTHERNERS.

Believing that the South is in need of some efficient and organized mode of concentrating public opinion upon public men and measures, and of influeucing and guiding political parties, with a view to the advancement and protection of her constitutional rights, and that the want of this has enabled all political parties to sacrifice those rights to their own necessities;

And believing further that it is the duty of the South to use ali proper means to maintain her rights

fore the world in resuming the powers she has delegated to the general Government, in the event she fails to obtain justice in the Union, we organize ourselves under the following Constitution:

666

ART. 1. This Association shall be known as the 'Montgomery Leage of United Southerners.'

ART. 2. Its officers shall consist of a President,

Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, who shall hold their offices one year, or until their successors shall be elected.

ART. 3. Election of all officers shall be made annually, and be by ballot.

"ART. 4. Any person may become a member of

this league who shall pledge himself to carry out its objects, and shall sign this Constitution.

ART. 5. The object of this league is, by the use of proper means, to create a sound public opinion in the South on the subject of enforcing the rights of the South in the Union. Among its primary ideas are: 1. No more compromise of those rights, either in party platforms or in National legislation. 2. A full recognition and maintenance of those rights, as paramount to the safety of the Federal Administration or the success of National parties. 3. The elevation to the public councils of the ablest and purest Southern men.

"ART. 6. This league will nominate no candidate for any office, State or Federal; but its members are pledged to use all honorable means to secure the nomination by the respective parties to which they belong, of sound, able, and pure men of the Southern rights school.""

Southern Confederacy, floats now at his mast-head a prospectus proclaiming that it is in favor of disunion if the slave trade laws are not repealed. He, also, is a supporter of Douglas. Would it be manly, fair, or candid in me to charge Mr. Douglas with being in favor of repealing those laws, because that gentleman supports him? There are, doubtless, in your churches, some men that ought not to be there. They are there from worly and sordid motives, and are not the true followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. Shall I charge the churches with worldliness because that is so? When Jesus Christ came upon earth, there was a man of the chosen twelve who was himself a bad man and a betrayer. Should Jesus Christ have been crucified by the Jews because there was a bad man among the twelve? Yet the Douglas men say so by their philosophy. I have no doubt that fellow was a Douglas fellow. [Much laughter and applause.]

The party that will condemn Breckinridge as a disunionist-when during the whole of his life he has avowed himself in favor of extending the limits of the Union-merely because Yancey is his friend, [laughter,] I tell you is such a man who, had he been living in the time of Christ, would have been a Judas, and then he would have crucified Jesus Christ for entertaining him.

Grant all that is alleged against me-grant that I am a bad man-don't you know some of the most unmitigated scoundrels unhung in Memphis who are supporting Douglas? [Laughter.] And is not the same true of Bell? Yet, by the logic that makes the Democratic ticket a disunion

Rise up, you Bell and Douglas men, and say that that is a disunion document. Who is there here that will denounce any single object of that leagne? Where does the disunion rest? Where resides the treason? Where lies the want of fealty to my section, my country, and my country's Constitution, that I should be called a dis unionist? Oh! gentlemen, how hard that he who is willing to forego office for years as I have done-ticket, because I am its supporter, you must make asking nothing of the people, refusing the whole Douglas out a very bad man, and Bell only his time since I was a young man to be connected in equal. any way with candidacy for office, but that whole time giving my mind, intellect, heart, character, and money, to try to raise the Southern mind to a perception of its rights, in order that we may be men in the hour that tries men's souls-how hard that such a man should be denounced as a demagogue, an office-seeker, and a traitor? [Ap-cused me, and in the manner in which they have plause ]

Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to you. have spoken, 1 trust, but the words of experience and of rith. I have been far more respectful to my opponents than hey have been to me. [A voice, That's so, Mr Yancey."] I have done them no injustice I have aggressed on nobody, nor have I assailed any man's reputation, any man's name, or any man's patriotism. Their avowed opinions, as candidates, are before me, and I have a right to deal with those opinions as an individual; but my acts as an individual, have nothing, in fact, to do with this canvass. Suppose I were all that is charged on me-how does that affect Breckinridge and Lane, who stand forth the defenders and advocates of the constitutional Union and a constitutional Democracy?

At Charleston and Baltimore, Mr. Douglas had a friend, Colonel Gaulden, of Georgia, who made two speeches in favor of reopening the African slave trade. He was cheered by every body there, and rebuked by no man. Would it be right, and fair, and just in me to charge Mr. Douglas with being in favor of reopening the slave trade, because Col. Gaulden was in favor of

But I don't acknowledge that I am a bad mannot before a Douglas tribunal nor a Bell one. There is a tribunal before which, it is said, there are none good-not one. There I stand abashed. But I don't acknowledge before that tribunal that accuses me in the spirit in which they have ac

done it and this with their failure to do me the justice to publish my answer. I don't acknowledge before them that I am as bad as they. How much worse they are than I am, I don't pretend to say. [Laughter and applause ]

The hour is late. I only wish to say in closing, let us look where the true Democracy is-let us see where the old Democratic banner floats-and let us see where the bolters are, and what their object is, and see if there is not among them an animal that has a ring on his tail; see if you can't find the coon-skin sticking out now. Some of these Douglas fellows have got the paint on their brush, and they are trying to paint their followers

now.

If the temple of our common liberty, in process of time, shall be taken possession of by those who have no right there-if the Temple of Liberty be removed from the place where the true Constitutional Liberty is to be had, and where the true worship of the Goddess of Liberty is to be carried on-if we find there, instead, the thieves and hucksters, shall we not look to it? There is a lesson given to us in the Word of Holy Writ, when the Temple of the Jews, that

Bell stands a head and shoulders above me in the ranks, you support John Bell?

The Douglas men, what do they do? Ah! they

say he is a disunionist-Yancey is an agitator he disrupted the Democratic party-he got up the Alabama platform to divide the Democratic party-and yet it so happens that history tells you that the Alabama platform simply asked for our constitutional rights, and did not say that we would go out of the Union, but out of the Democratic party. We went out, did we not? Eight

which it is unnecessary to read. Now, what do you say, when I pronounce that this instrument here-so carefully got up as a campaign paper to be used among the people, and put forth under the auspices of the Nashville Patriot, an republished in the Memphis Appeal as an authentic document-what do you say when I pronounce it a base, infamous, political forgery! [Great applause.] I don't say these gentlemen forged it. I know nothing of them. I don't know where they got it. They may possibly have got it from some miserable lying sheet in Alabama, and taking it for granted to be true, republished it. I state this to you. The Constitution of the United Leagues of the South, the only one adopted that I ever heard of, was published the next morn

And then it goes on, and has twelve articles,

of the Democratic States went out, and I should call that a pretty wide breach-so wide, indeed, that no Douglas man can ever get to Heaven, if it is between him and hell. [Laughter.] And yet it so happens when I went back to the Democracy of Alabama, it fell to my fortune to lead off in the cause of conciliation and moderation, and in endeavoring to heal the breach that had occurred at Charleston, to give the Democracy time to repent. To reconsider, I took occasion to leading after it was adopted in public meeting. A off in asking that Convention to send us to Baltimore. Had it been my object to break up the Union by that disruption, I had already broken up the party, and had the Union at my feet, and yet you find me in the Convention at Montgomery saying, "let us go back with the olive branch although they have insulted us-although they have done us a wrong-let us go back and unite the gallant Democracy once more in gallant and glorious support of the Constitution and the rights of the South."

But here is an article that I am told has been diligently prepared. It is taken from the Nashville Patriot. Is that a Douglas or a Bell paper? [Voices, Bell! Bell!] He says of the

I love the favorable verdict of my kind as much as any other man. I have endeavored to live a life of self-denial, of justice-to pursue the ways of truthfulness towards my fellow-men, and in all my relations I have endeavored, with all the infirmities of human nature upon me, to do justice to all. Truth, justice, and the Constitution has been my motto, in private as well as in public life. If any of these gentlemen will point to the day or the hour when I have uttered a word or sentence, or did an act that was untrue to any constitutional right of any section, I will come down from this platform and never utter another word to the people. [Applause.]

CONSTITUTION OF THE MONTGOMERY LEAGUE OF
UNITED SOUTHERNERS.

"Believing that the South is in need of some efficient and organized mode of concentrating public opinion upon public men and measures, and of influencing and guiding political parties, with a view to the advancement and protection of her constitutional rights, and that the want of this has enabled all political parties to sacrifice those rights to their own necessities;

And believing further that it is the duty of the South to use ali proper means to maintain her rights

fore the world in resuming the powers she has delegated to the general Government, in the event she fails to obtain justice in the Union, we organize ourselves under the following Constitution:

ART. 1. This Association shall be known as the 'Montgomery Leage of United Southerners.'

"ART. 2. Its officers shall consist of a President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, who shall hold their offices one year, or until their successors shall be elected.

ART. 3. Election of all officers shall be made annually, and be by ballot.

"ART. 4. Any person may become a member of this league who shall pledge himself to carry out its objects, and shall sign this Constitution.

Southern Confederacy, floats now at his mast-head a prospectus proclaiming that it is in favor of disunion if the slave trade laws are not repealed. He, also, is a supporter of Douglas. Would it be manly, fair, or candid in me to charge Mr. Douglas with being in favor of repealing those laws, because that gentleman supports him? There are, doubtless, in your churches, some men that ought not to be there. They are there from worly and sordid motives, and are not the true followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. Shall I charge the churches with worldliness because that is so? When Jesus Christ came upon earth, there was a man of the chosen twelve who was himself a bad man and a betrayer. Should Jesus Christ ave been crucified by the Jews because there was a bad man among the twelve? Yet the Douglas men say so by their philosophy. I have no doubt that fellow was a Douglas fellow. [Much laughter and applause.]

Rise up, you Bell and Douglas men, and say that that is a disunion document. Who is there here that will denounce any single object of that leagne? Where does the disunion rest? Where resides the treason? Where lies the want of fealty to my section, my country, and my country's Constitution, that I should be called a d unionist? Oh! gentlemen, how hard that he who is willing to forego office for years as I have done-ticket, because I am its supporter, you must make asking nothing of the people, refusing the whole Douglas out a very bad man, and Bell only his time since I was a young man to be connected in equal. any way with candidacy for office, but that whole time giving my mind, intellect, heart, character, and money, to try to raise the Southern mind to a perception of its rights, in order that we may be men in the hour that tries men's souls-how hard that such a man should be denounced as a demagogue, an office-seeker, and a traitor? [Ap-cused me, and in the manner in which they have plause ]

Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to you. have spoken, 1 trust, but the words of experience and of truth. I have been far more respectful to my opponents than hey have been to me. [A voice, That's so, Mr Yancey."] I have done them no injustice-I have aggressed on nobody, nor have I assailed any man's reputation, any man's name, or any man's patriotism. Their avowed opinions, as candidates, are before me, and I have a right to deal with those opinions as an individual; but my acts as an individual, have nothing, in fact, to do with this canvass. Suppose I were all that is charged on me-how does that affect Breckinridge and Lane, who stand forth the defenders and advocates of the constitutional Union and a constitutional Democracy?

now.

« Նախորդը Շարունակել »

Books