Senator
Joseph Lane (1801-1881) was born in North Carolina, moved early in life
with his family to Kentucky, then to Indiana where he served from
1821-1846 intermittently as a State legislator. A colonel of the Second
Indiana Volunteer Regiment in the Mexican War, he rose to the rank of
brigadier-general. In 1849, President James Polk appointed him Governor
of the Territory of Oregon; upon the admission of Oregon to the Union
he served in the US Senate from 1859-1861. He was nominated for Vice
President on the Democratic ticket of John Breckinridge and Lane.
Senator Lane pleaded to his colleagues, “In God’s name, let us have
peace.” The following are brief excerpts from his Senate speech.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon, Speech in the United States Senate, March 2, 1861:
Mr.
President….I am for the Union upon the principles of the Constitution,
and not a traitor. None but a coward will even think me a traitor; and
if anybody thinks I am, let him test me. [The South] will go out of this
Union and into one of their own; forming a great, homogeneous, and
glorious Southern confederacy. And it has been, Senators, in your power
to prevent this; it is and has been for you to say….whether the Union
should be saved or not.
If
a people of a State, believing themselves oppressed, undertake to
establish a Government, independent of which they formerly owed
allegiance, and the latter interferes with the movement, and employs
force to prevent such a consummation, no one who acknowledges the great
truth that the basis of free government is the “consent of the
governed,” will deny that such interference is an act of usurpation and
tyranny.
One
of the framers of the Constitution….has left on record his views of the
injustice, impracticability, and inefficiency of force as a means of
coercing States into obedience to Federal authority. The subject being
under consideration in the convention which framed the Constitution:
“Mr.
Madison observed, that the more he reflected on the use of force, the
more he doubted the practicability, the justice, and the efficiency of
it, when applied collectively, and not individually. A Union of the
States containing such an ingredient, seemed to provide for its own
destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a
declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably
be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous
compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would
be framed as might render this resource unnecessary; and moved that the
clause be postponed.” (Madison Papers, Debates in the Federal
Convention, vol. 5, p. 140)
Among
the statesmen of the Revolution – those who participated in the
formation of our Government – there was no one who had such exalted
notions of the power and dignity of the Federal Government, as the great
[Alexander] Hamilton. He was a consolidationist. The advocates of
coercion might expect to obtain “aid and comfort” from the recorded
declarations of one of his political faith. But an examination of his
writings will show….[that] he was the advocate of leniency and
conciliation towards refractory States, and deprecated a resort to force
as madness and folly. He said, in a debate on this subject:
“It
has been observed, to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects
that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to
a single State. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a
civil war? Suppose Massachusetts, or any large State, should refuse
and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have
influence to procure assistance, especially from those States which are
in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea
represent to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying
State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of
another….Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be
well disposed towards a Government which makes war and carnage the only
means of supporting itself – a Government which can exist only by the
sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This
single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable
citizen against such a Government.” (Elliot’s Debates, vol. 2, p. 233)
(The Politics of Dissolution, Marshall L. DeRosa, editor, Transaction Publishers, 1998, pp. 308; 314-315)
Would love to get my hands on Mr. DeRosa's book. You have had several articles mentioning it.
ReplyDeletePhyllis (N/W Jersey)
Yes and he has an article in the March/April 2013 Confederate Veteran entitled 'The Rationalization of American Militaristic Imperialism."
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