it. I have used strong language to be sure, but it has been uttered" more in sorrow than in anger." I have felt it to be a solemn duty, which I owed to my constituents, and to this nation, to make one more solemn appeal to the justice of their oppressors.

Let me, then, sir, beseech them, in the name of our common ancestors, whose blood was mingled together as a common offering, at the shrine of our common liberty-let me beseech them, by all the endearing recollections of our common history, and by every consideration that gives value to liberty and the union of these states, to retrace their steps as speedily as possible, and to relieve a high-minded and patriotic people from an unconstitutional and oppressive burden, which they cannot longer bear.

67. SOUTH CAROLINA DURING THE REVOLUTION.-Hayne.

Mr. President,—The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, while he exonerates me personally from the charge, intimates that there is a party in the country, who are looking to disunion. Sir, if the gentleman had stopped there, the accusation would "have passed by me as the idle wind which I regard not." But when he goes on to give his accusation a local habitation and a name, by quoting the expression of a distinguished citizen of South Carolina,-"that it was time for the south to calculate the value of the union," and in the language of the bitterest sarcasm, adds,—" surely then the union cannot last longer than July 1831," it is impossible to mistake either the allusion or the object of the gentleman. Now, Mr. President, I call upon every one who hears me, to bear witness that this controversy is not of my seeking. The senate will do me the justice to remember, that at the time this unprovoked and uncalled for attack was made upon the south, not one word had been uttered by me in disparagement of New-England, nor had I made the most distant allusion either to the senator from Massachusetts, or the state he represents. But, sir, that gentleman has thought proper, for purposes best known to himself, to strike the south through me, the most unworthy of her servants. He has crossed the border, he has invaded the state of South Carolina, is making war upon her citizens, and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and her institutions. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold-I will struggle while I have life, for our altars and our firesides; and if God give me strength, will drive back the

invader discomfited. Nor shall I stop there. If the gentleman provoke the war, he shall have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemy's territory and not consent to lay down my arms, until I shall have obtained "indemnity for the past, and security for the future." It is with unfeigned reluctance, Mr. President, that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty-I shrink almost instinctively from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me, and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty. Be the consequences what they may, the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me this necessity. The senator from Massachusetts has thought proper to cast the first stone, and if he shall find, according to the homely adage, that "he lives in a glass house"on his head be the consequences. The gentleman has made a great flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts-I shall make no professions of zeal for the interests and honor of South Carolina of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one state in the union, Mr. President, (and I say it not in a boastful spirit,) that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the union, that state is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the revolution up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made; no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity, but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by parties, or surrounded by difficulties, the call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord ceased at the sound-every man became at once reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country. What, sir, was the conduct of the south during the revolution? Sir, I honor New-England for her conduct in that glorious struggle: but great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the south. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with generous zeal which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be for ever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all considerations, either of

interest or of safety, they rushed into the conflict, and fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never was there exhibited in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance, than by the whigs of Carolina during that revolution. The whole state, from the mountain to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens-black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children! Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumpters and her Marions, proved by her conduct, that though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible.

68. SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.- -Webster. The eulogium pronounced on the character of the state of South Carolina by the honorable gentleman, for her revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge, that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor: I partake in the pride of her great names. them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions-Americans allwhose fame is no more to be hemmed in by state lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits.

I claim

In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country, and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him, whose honored name the gentleman bears himself does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir,-increased gratification and delight, rather. Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own state and neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven-if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the south-and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections-let me indulge in refreshing remembrances of the past-let me remind you that in early times no states cherished greater harmony, both of principle and of feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God, that harmony might again return. Shoulder to shoulder they went through the revolution-hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts-she needs none. There she is behold her and judge for yourselves. There is her history-the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston,

and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker's Hill; and there they will remain for ever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state, from New-England to Georgia; and there they will lie for ever.

And sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it-if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness, under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it: and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

Moll

69. ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.-Wirt.

In the structure of their characters; in the course of their action; in the striking coincidences which marked their high career; in the lives and in the death of these illustrious men, and in that voice of admiration and gratitude which has since burst, with one accord, from the twelve millions of freemen who people these states, there is a moral sublimity which overwhelms the mind, and hushes all its powers into silent

amazement.

The European, who should have heard the sound without apprehending the cause, would be apt to inquire,—“What is the meaning of all this? What have these men done to elicit this unanimous and splendid acclamation? Why has the whole American nation risen up, as one man, to do them honor, and offer to them this enthusiastic homage of the heart? Were they mighty warriors, and was the peal that we have heard, the shout of victory? Were they great commanders, returning from their distant conquests, surrounded with the spoils of war, and was this the sound of their triumphal procession? Were they covered with martial glory in any form, and was this 'the noisy wave of the multitude rolling back at their approach?" Nothing of all this: No; they were peaceful and aged patriots, who, having served their country together, through their long and useful lives, had now sunk together to the tomb. They had not fought battles; but they had formed and moved the great machinery of which battles were only a small, and comparatively, trivial consequence. They had not commanded armies; but they had commanded the master-springs of the nation, on which all its great political, as well as military movements, depended. By the wisdom and energy of their counsels, and by the potent mastery of their spirits, they had contributed pre-eminently to produce a mighty revolution, which has changed the aspect of the world. A revolution which, in one-half of that world, has already restored man to his "long lost liberty;" and government to its only legitimate object, the happiness of the people: and, on the other hemisphere, has thrown a light so strong, that even the darkness of despotism is beginning to recede. Compared with the solid glory of an achievement like this, what are battles, and what the pomp of war, but the poor and fleeting pageants of a theatre ? What were the selfish and petty strides of Alexander, to conquer a little section of a savage w compared with this generous, this magnificent advance the emancipation of the entire world!