Memoirs of a Senate Page: 1855-1859

Front Cover
Broadway Publishing Company, 1909 - United States - 236 pages
 

Contents

III
10
V
19
VII
51
IX
65
X
73
XIII
96
XV
117
XVIII
157
XX
174
XXV
209

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Page 100 - I derive a well-founded assurance of a commensurate vastness of effort against it by the aroused masses of the country, determined not only to vindicate Right against Wrong, but to redeem the Republic from the thraldom of that Oligarchy which prompts, directs, and concentrates the distant wrong.
Page 178 - It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand.
Page 102 - ... over the Republic ; and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position — unable to see himself as others see him — or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the Government to its original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery was national, while Slavery and not Freedom was sectional, he arraigns as sectional.
Page 225 - That a district of territory, not exceeding ten miles square, to be located, as hereafter directed, on the River Potomac, at some place between the mouths of the Eastern Branch and Connogocheague, be, and the same is hereby, accepted for the permanent seat of government of the United States...
Page 180 - Your slaves are white, of your own race: you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote; and being the majority, they are the depositaries of all your political power.
Page 102 - The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open threat, but his conduct still implies it. How little that Senator knows himself or the strength of the cause which he persecutes! He is but a mortal man; against him is an immortal principle. With finite power he wrestles with the infinite, and he must fall. Against him are stronger battalions than any marshalled by mortal...
Page 101 - The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly "to others, is always lovely to him ; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight; — I mean the harlot Slavery.
Page 198 - If I were inclined to forget my connection with them, or to deny that I sprang from them, this Chamber would not be the place in which I could do either. While I hold a seat here, I have but to look at the beautiful capitals adorning the pilasters that support this roof, to be reminded of my father's talent, and to see his handiwork. I left the scenes of my youth and manhood for the
Page 182 - Perhaps what he says is true; it may be; but do not forget — it can never be forgotten; it is written on the brightest page of human history — that we, the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her infancy; and, after ruling her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, we shall surrender her to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and the admiration of the world. Time will show what you will make of her; but...

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