My friends: Again it has been granted to me to mingle with you in the periodical reunion of our political family; again to look upon the well-remembered faces associated with the memory of so many struggles for the cause of Democracy, sacred to us as the cause of truth and of our country.
Accustomed, as a Representative of the State, most frequently to address those who listen with purpose to controvert, if not to misinterpret, it is a grateful privilege to exchange opinions with those who have a common sympathy and from whose opposition one can but expect the correction of error, until final agreement is reached by the establishment of truth.
The occasion, the circumstances, and the heady greeting with which you welcome me home, bring to me such joy as the mariner may feel, when, his trials ended, his doubts and fears are resolved by seeing the smoke of his own cottage and the shadows of the trees which speak to his heart of affection and rest.
The purpose for which we were assembled has been achieved, and we are about to disperse each and all in their appropriate sphere to labor for the common good. You have chosen our standard bearers not for their own, but for the public interest - for Democracy regards Government as the property of the people, and recognizes no proscriptive right to office. You have met the issues of the day as becomes a party whose characteristics are stability and progress. While the world is changing, and new relations, material and moral, are the result, you cannot stereotype a form of expression for your opinions; neither can the principles which are eternal and of universal application, be too often reasserted. To stand still, or to walk with retroverted eyes, would ill become the genius of our age, and still less the condition of our country. It is ours to deal with the present, and look to the future, and it is only by walking out from the shadows of the past that its lights become available to our onward course. By the bold encounter of power and the arraignment of precedent, all the great victories have been won. The history of our predecessors furnishes both incentive and a chart.
Had the listened to the counsel of "conservatism," and in view of the hazards of expansion and the mingling of different nations and languages in our Confederacy, Louisiana, and Florida, and California, had not been of us. Had they shrunk from the conflict with which monarchy threatened republicanism, the time-honored policy of "no entangling alliances" had not remained to us, but in lieu of it, we should have been under treaty stipulation forbidding us in any event to acquire the Island of Cuba. Your duty is twofold - your responsibility is immeasurable. It is yours to maintain the Constitution, and to adapt it to the changes of time and of circumstance, that the purposes for which it was ordained may be realized by ourselves and posterity; it is yours to develop the institutions we inherited, to their greatest capacity; and your responsibility embraces all the hopes which depend upon the demonstration of man's capacity for self government.
For more than fifty years have Democratic principles prevailed in the administration of our Government. The fame, the prosperity, the growth and happiness of our country, attest the adaptation of our theory to a confederation of Free and Sovereign States. We have pride in the past, we have zeal for the present, way we not have hope for the future?
If I use the form of interrogation, it is not because I am prone to despair of the Republic, but because we are necessarily cognizant of the fact that the unity of the people of the States is disturbed by a sectional, fanatical hostility, as irrational as it is vicious. However well it may serve to fan the flame of local excitement, and to promote the personal ambition of an aspirant, the idea of incompatibility for the purposes of our Union because of different systems of labor in the States, is palpably absurd, and would be suicidal if the purpose avowed were attainable. Though the defense of African Slavery (thus it is commonly called) is left to the South, the North are jointly benefited by it. Deduct from their trade and manufactures all which is dependent upon the products of slave labor, their prosperity would fade, and poverty would come upon them "as one that traveleth." Our fathers wisely saw harmony in diversity, and mutuality in the opposite character of the climate, population, and pursuits of the people in the different States. But to them the proposition was far less apparent than it is to us. A vast expansion of territory and the addition to the list of its productions of the great staples of our country's exports, have given to free trade between the States a value which could not have been fully anticipated. All of the necessities, and nearly all of the luxuries of life, are now produced within the limits of the United States, and exchanged for each other without other charge than the cost of transportation. The day, I hope, is not distant, when by the acquisition of tropical territory, we shall complete the circle of products.
What but fatuity could cause a commercial manufacturing people to overlook their advantage in such a relation as that which exists between the North and the South? Ours is an agricultural people, blessed with a fruitful soil and a genial climate; the elements unite with man to render his labor profitable. We have, under these circumstances, no inducement to engage in a general competition with those who, for want of land and by rigor of climate find in the workshops their only industrial employment. Stimulated by class legislation, and aided by taxes indirectly wrung from other pursuits, it has had a further extension than this - but I speak of its just and normal condition - such as will exist when, under the operation of equal laws, no other Federal tax shall be imposed upon the citizen than that which is necessary to enable the General Government to perform its delegated functions. That errors of theory and practice should occur in the administration of a system of government as novel and complex as ours, should not excite surprise; and the facility with which reform has from time to time been introduced, proves how complete are the compensating advantages of our new system. Errors of judgment, or from want of information, cannot destroy the principles of our Government, and of such it was truly said "they are never dangerous while reason is left free to combat them."
It is, however, otherwise when division is made on a geographical basis; and it has been our fortune to witness this last worst phase of political division. A party too powerful to be unheeded, and marked as nations are distinguished, by territorial limits, is now organized for the destruction of the labor system of the South, and seeks to obtain possession of the General Government that its machinery may be used in aid of their war upon our existence as a sovereign State.
Such would be the consequence of success in the nefarious object the pursuit of which they avow. Their movement has no longer the character of speculative philosophy. It is not the political division of a people because of different opinions upon matters of joint interest; but is in the nature of a foreign war waged for conquest and dominion.
So far as the abstract right to hold the African in bondage is concerned, we have cause to congratulate ourselves on the progress which within the last ten years truth and sound philosophy have made.
Anterior to that time it had been the habit of Southern men to refuse to discuss a question of strictly domestic concernment with those who assumed to invade it. Thus, for a long period, error scattered her seeds broadcast over the land, while reason, in over confidence, stood passive. The recent free discussion by the press, and on the forum, have dispelled delusions which had obscured the mind of a generation until even among ourselves it was more easy to find the apologist than the defender. The case is now so far reversed, that many Northern men have addressed themselves to the task of defending our constitutional rights, on the ground of their justice; and there is not probably an intelligent mind among our own citizens who doubts either the moral or the legal right of the institution of African Slavery as it exists in our country.
It is not a little curious to note the fluctuations of English and American, of Northern and of Southern opinion, upon this subject.
During the colonial condition, Great Britain not only protected the slave-trade, but denied to the Colonies the right to prohibit the importation of negro slaves into their respective territory. Now she is the source of an agitation against the United States, because the descendants of the negroes so imported are held in bondage.
The Northern States once held slaves, and their acts of emancipation generally followed the transfer of the property to the Southern States; their people engaged in the importation of African slaves, and now persecute the South, though holding by purchase from them; and the sons of those who conducted the trade would
