"Mr. President, if we were engaged in the performance of our accustomed legislative duties, I might well rest content with the simple statement of my concurrence in the remarks just made by my colleague. Deeply impressed, however, with the solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible to the duty of recording, amongst the authentic reports of your proceedings, the expressions of my conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged and acted well and wisely in the crisis of her destiny.
"Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion in the discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing. It has been said that whatever may be the rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution—even granting their right to resume for sufficient cause, those restricted powers which they delegated to the General Government, in trust for their own use and benefit—still Louisiana can have no such right, because she was acquired by purchase. Gentlemen have not hestitated to speak of the sovereign States formed out of the territory ceded by France as property bought with the money of the United States, belonging to them as purchasers; and although they have not carried their doctrine to its legitimate results, I must conclude that they also mean to assert, on the same principle, the right of selling for a price that which for a price was bought.
"A hundredfold, sir, has the Government of the United States been reimbursed by the sales of public property, of public lands, for the price of the acquisition; but not with the fidelity of the honest trustee has it discharged the obligations as regards the sovereignty.
"If then, sir, the people of Louisiana had a right which Congress could not deny, of the admission into the Union with all the rights of all the citizens of the United States, it is in vain that the partisans of the rights of the majority to govern the minority with despotic control attempt to establish a distinction, to her prejudice between her rights and those of any other State. The only distinction which really exists is this—that she can point to a breach of treaty stipulations expressly guaranteeing her rights as a wrong superadded to those which have impelled a number of her sister States to the assertion of their independence.
"The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State are those of Virginia. No more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated powers, successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of her express reservation made and notified to her sister States when she consented to enter the Union. And, sir, permit me to say that of all the causes which justify the action of the Southern States I know none of greater gravity and more alarming magnitude than that now developed of the denial of the right of secession. A pretension so monstrous as that which perverts a restricted agency, constituted by sovereign States for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape from such despotism when powers not delegated are usurped, converts the whole constitutional fabric into the secure abode of lawless tyranny and degrades sovereign States into Provincial dependencies.
"It is said that the right of secession, if conceded, makes of our Government a mere rope of sand; and to assert its existence imputes to the framers of the Constitution the folly of planting the seeds of death in that which was designed for perpetual existence. If this imputation was true, sir, it would merely prove that their offspring was not exempt from that mortality which is the common lot of all that is not created by higher than human power. But it is not so, sir, that facts answer theory. For two-thirds of a century this right has been known by many of the States to be at all times within their power. Yet, up to the present period, when its exercise has become indispensable to a people menaced with absolute extermination, there have been but two instances in which it has been even threatened seriously; the first, when Massachusetts led the New England States in an attempt to escape from the dangers of our last war with Great Britain; the second, when the same State proposed to secede on account of the admission of Texas as a new State into the Union.
"Sir, in the language of our declaration of secession from Great Britain it is stated as an established truth that 'all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have been accustomed.' And nothing can be more obvious to the calm and candid observer of passing events than that the disruption of the Confederacy has been due, in great measure, not to the existence but to the denial of this right. Few candid men would refuse to admit that the Republicans of the North would have been checked in their mad career, had they been convinced of the existence of this right and the intention to assert it. The very knowledge of its existence by preventing occurrences which alone could prompt its exercise would have rendered it a most efficient instrument in the preservation of the Union. But, sir, if the fact were otherwise—if all the teachings of experience were reserved—better, far better, a rope of sand, ay, the flimsiest gossamer that ever glistened in the morning dew, than chains of iron and shackles of steel; better the wildest anarchy, with the hope, the chance, of one hour's inspiration of the glorious breath of freedom that ages of the hopeless bondage and oppression to which our enemies would reduce us.
"We are told that the laws must be enforced; that the revenues must be collected; that the South is in rebellion without cause and that her citizens are traitors.
"Rebellion! The very word is a confession; an avowal of tyranny, outrage, and oppression. It is taken from the despot's code and has no terror for other than slavish souls. When, sir, did millions of people as a single man rise in organized, deliberate, unimpassioned rebellion against justice, truth and honor? Well did a great Englishman exclaim on a similar occasion:
_ " 'You might as well tell me that they rebelled against the light of Heaven; that they rejected the fruits of the earth. Men do not war against their benefactors; they are not mad enough to repel the instincts of self-preservation. I pronounce fearlessly that no intelligent people ever rose or ever will rise against a sincere, rational, and benevolent authority. No people were ever born blind. Infatuation is not a law of human nature. When there is a revolt by a free people with the common consent of all classes of society there must be a criminal against whom that revolt is aimed.'
"Traitors! Treason! Ay, sir, the people of the South imitate and glory in just such treason as glowed in the soul of Hampden; just such treason as leaped in living flame from the impassioned lips of Henry; just such treason as encircles with a sacred halo the undying name of Washington! You will enforce the laws. You want to know if we have a Government; if you have any authority to collect revenue; to wring tribute from an unwilling people? Sir, humanity desponds and all the inspiring hopes of her progressive improvement vanish into empty air at the reflections which crowd on the mind at hearing repeated with aggravated enormity the sentiments at which a Chatham launched his indignant thunders nearly a century ago. The very words of Lord North and his royal master are repeated here in debate not as quotations but as the spontaneous outpourings of a spirit the counterpart of theirs. In Lord North's speech, on the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, he said:
"'We are no longer to dispute between legislation and taxation; we are now only to consider whether or not we have any authority there. It is very clear we have none, if we suffer the property of our subjects to be destroyed. We must punish, control, or yield to them.'
"And thereupon he proposed to close the port of Boston, just as the representatives of Massachusetts now propose to close the port of Charleston in order to determine whether or not you have any authority there. It is thus that in 1861 Boston is to pay her debt of gratitude to Charleston, which in the days of her struggle proclaimed the generous sentiment that 'the cause of Boston was the cause of Charleston.' Who after this will say that Republics are ungrateful? Well, sir, the statesmen of Great Britain answered to Lord North's appeal, 'Yield.' The courtiers and the politicians said, 'Punish, control.' The result is known. History gives you the lesson. Profit by its teachings.
"So, sir, in the address sent under the royal signmanual to Parliament it was invoked to take measures 'for better securing the execution of the laws' and acquiesced in the suggestion. Just as now the Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels is proposing with your assent 'to secure the better execution of the laws' by blockading ports and turning upon the people of the States the artillery which they provided at their own expense for their own defense and entrusted to you and to him for that and for no other purpose. Nay, even in States that are now exercising the undoubted and most precious rights of a free people, where there is no secession, where the citizens are assembling to hold peaceful elections for considering what course of action is demanded in this dread crisis by a due regard for their own safety and their own liberty, ay, even in Virginia herself the people are to cast their suffrages beneath the undisguised menaces of a frowning fortress. Cannon are brought to bear on their homes and parricidal hands are preparing weapons for rending the bosom of the mother of Washington.
"Sir, when Great Britain proposed to exact tribute from your fathers against their will Lord Chatham said:
"'Whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent. Whoever attempts to do it attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a robbery. You have no right to tax America. I rejoice that America has resisted. Let the sovereign authority of this country over the Colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatever, so that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures and exercise every power except that of taking money out of their own pockets without their consent'
"It was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century and for the Congress of a Republic of free men to witness the willing abnegation of all power save that of exacting tribute. What Imperial Britain with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power over dependent colonies could not even attempt without a vehement protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated form, if you can enforce it, against independent States.
"Good God! Sir, since when has the necessity arisen of recalling to American legislators the lessons of freedom taught in lisping childhood by loving mothers; that pervade the atmosphere we have breathed from infancy; that so form part of our very being that in their absence we would lose the consciousness of our own identity? Heaven be praised that all have not forgotten them; and that when we shall have left these familiar halls, and when force bills, blockades, armies, navies and all the accustomed coercive appliances of despots shall be proposed and advocated, voices shall be heard from this side of the Chamber that will make its very roof resound with the indignant clamor of outraged freedom. Methinks I still hear ringing in my ears the appeal of the eloquent Representative [Hon. George H. Pendleton of Ohio] whose Northern home looks down on Kentucky's fertile borders. Armies, money, blood cannot maintain this Union; justice, reason, peace may.
"And now to you, Mr. President, and to my brother Senators on all sides of this Chamber, I bid a respectful farewell; with many of those from whom I have been radically separated in political sentiment my personal relations had been kindly, and have -inspired me with a respect and esteem that I shall not willingly forget; with those around me from the Southern States, I part as men part from brothers on the eve of a temporary absence, with a cordial pressure of the hand and a smiling assurance of a speedy renewal of sweet intercourse around the family hearth. But to you noble and generous friends who, born beneath other skies, possess hearts that beat in sympathy with ours; to you who, solicited and assailed by motives the most powerful that could appeal to selfish natures, have nobly spurned them all; to you who in our behalf have bared your breasts to the fierce beatings of the storm and made willing sacrifice of life's most glittering prizes in your devotion to constitutional liberty; to you who ever made our cause your cause, and from many of whom I feel I part forever, what shall I, can I, say? Naught I know and feel, is needed for myself; but this I will say for the people in whose name I speak to-day;—whether prosperous or adverse fortunes await you, one priceless treasure is yours, the assurance that an entire people honor your names and hold them in grateful and affectionate memory. But with still sweeter and more touching return shall your unselfish devotion be rewarded.
"When in after days the story of the present shall be written, when history shall have passed her stern sentence on the erring men who have driven their unoffending brethren from the shelter of their common home, your names will derive fresh luster from the contrast, and when your children shall hear repeated the familiar tale it will be with glowing cheek and kindling eye, their very souls will stand a tip-toe as their sires are named and they will glory in their lineage from men of spirit as generous and of patriotism as high-spirited as ever illustrated or adorned the American Senate."
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Farewell Speech Of Judah P. Benjamin
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