The Life of Jefferson Davis. Alfriend Frank Heath

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СКАЧАТЬ in his own case, decide. Whether or not the use of that letter was justifiable, how is it to be assumed that the Southern States are bound by any opinion there enunciated? How to be asserted that we, the residents in those States, have pinned our faith to the sleeve of any man, and that we will follow his behest, no matter whither he may go? But was this the only source of information, or was the impression otherwise sustained? Did Mr. Yancey, in his speech delivered at Charleston, justify the conclusions which the Senator draws from this letter? Did he admit them to be correct? There he might have found the latest evidence, and the best authority. Speaking to that point, Mr. Yancey said:

      “It has been charged, in order to demoralize whatever influence we might be entitled to, either from our personal or political characteristics, or as representatives of the State of Alabama, that we are disruptionists, disunionists per se; that we desire to break up the party in the State of Alabama – to break up the party of the Union, and to dissolve the Union itself. Each and all of these allegations, come from what quarter they may, I pronounce to be false. There is no disunionist, that I know of, in the delegation from the State of Alabama. There is no disruptionist that I know of; and if there are factionists in our delegation, they could not have got in there, with the knowledge upon the part of our State Convention that they were of so unenviable a character. We come here with two great purposes: first, to save the constitutional rights of the South, if it lay in our power to do so. We desire to save the South by the best means that present themselves to us; and the State of Alabama believes that the best means now in existence is the organization of the Democratic party, if we shall be able to persuade it to adopt the constitutional basis upon which we think the South alone can be saved.”

      He further says:

      “We have come here, then, with the twofold purpose of saving the country and saving the Democracy; and if the Democracy will not lend itself to that high, holy, and elevated purpose; if it can not elevate itself above the mere question of how perfect shall be its mere personal organization, and how wide-spread shall be its mere voting success, then we say to you, gentlemen, mournfully and regretfully, that, in the opinion of the State of Alabama, and, I believe, of the whole South, you have failed in your mission, and it will be our duty to go forth, and make an appeal to the loyalty of the country to stand by that Constitution which party organizations have deliberately rejected.” [Applause.]

      Mr. Yancey answers for himself. It was needless to go back to old letters. Here were his remarks delivered before the convention, speaking to the point in issue, and answering both as to his purposes and as to the motives of those with whom he conferred and acted.

      The Senator next cited the resolutions of the State of Alabama; and here he seemed to rest the main point in his argument. The Senator said that Alabama, in 1856, had demanded of the Democratic convention, non-intervention, and that, in 1860, she had retired from the convention because it insisted upon non-intervention. He read one of the resolutions of the Alabama Convention of 1856; but the one which bore upon the point was not read. The one which was conclusive as to the position of Alabama then, and its relation to her position now, was exactly the one that was omitted – I read from the resolutions of this year – was as follows:

      “Resolved, further, That we re-affirm so much of the first resolution of the platform adopted in the convention by the Democracy of this State, on the 8th of January, 1856, as relates to the subject of slavery, to-wit.”

      It then goes on to quote from that resolution of 1856, as follows:

      “The unqualified right of the people of the slaveholding States to the protection of their property in the States, in the Territories, and in the wilderness, in which territorial governments are as yet unorganized.”

      That was the resolution of 1856; and like it was one of February, 1848:

      “That it is the duty of the General Government by all proper legislation, to secure an entry into those Territories to all the citizens of the United States, together with their property, of every description; and that the same shall be protected by the United States, while the Territories are under its authority.”

      So stands the record of that State which is now held responsible for retiring, and is alleged to have withdrawn because she received now what, in former times, she had demanded as the full measure of her rights. Did she receive it? The argument could only be made by concealing the fact that her resolutions of 1848 and 1856 asserted the right to protection, and claimed it from the General Government. What, then, is the necessary inference? That, in the Cincinnati platform, they believed they obtained that which they asserted, or that which necessarily involved it. So much for the point of faith; so much for the point of consistency in the assertion of right. But if it were otherwise; if they had neglected to assert a right; would that destroy it? If they had failed at some time to claim this protection, are they to be estopped, in all time to come, from claiming it? Constitutional right is eternal – not to be sacrificed by any body of men. A single man may revive it at any period of the existence of the Constitution. So the argument would be worthless, if the facts were as stated. That they are not so stated, is shown by the record.

      Here allow me to say, in all sincerity, that I dislike thus to speak about conventions; it does not belong to the duties of the Senate; we did not assemble here to make a President, except in the single contingency of a failure by the people and by the House of Representatives to elect. When that contingency arrives, the question will be before us. I am sorry that it should have been prematurely introduced. But since the action of the recent convention at Charleston is presented as the basis of argument, it may be as well to refer to it, and see what it is. The majority report, presented by seventeen States of the Union, and those the States most reliable to give Democratic votes – the States counted so certain to give Democratic votes that they have been regarded as a fixed basis, a nucleus to which others were to be attracted – these seventeen States reported to the convention a series of resolutions, one of which asserted the right to protection. A minority of States reported another series, excluding the avowal of the right – not exactly denying it, but not avowing it – and a second minority report was submitted, being the Cincinnati platform, pure and simple. It is true that a majority of delegates adopted the minority report, but not a majority of States, nor does it appear, by an analysis of the votes, and the best evidence I have been able to obtain, that it was by a majority of delegates, if each had been left to his own choice; but that, by one of those ingenious arrangements – one of those incidents which, among jurists, is described as the favor the vigilant receives from the law – it so happened that, in certain States, the delegates were instructed to vote as a unit; in other States they were not; so that, wherever they were instructed to vote as a unit, the vote must so be cast, and wherever they were not, they might disintegrate. Thus minorities were bound in one instance, and released in another; and, by a comparison made by those who had an opportunity to know, it appears that the minority report could not have got a majority of the delegates, if each delegate had been permitted to cast his own vote in the Convention. Neither could it have obtained, as appears by the action of the committee, in a majority of the States, if they had been spoken as such. So that this vaunt as to the effect of the adoption of the platform by a majority, seems to have very little of substance in it. Again, I find that, after this adoption of a platform, a delegate from Tennessee offered a resolution:

      “That all the citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the Territories of the United States; and that, under the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which we recognize as a correct exposition of the Constitution of the United States, neither their rights of person or property can be destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation.”

      It does not appear that a vote was taken on it. There is a current belief that it would have been adopted. If it had been, it would have been an acknowledgment by the Democracy, in convention assembled, that the question had been settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court. But in the progress of the convention, when they came to balloting, СКАЧАТЬ