The Daily Dispatch: July 27, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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The great speech of Senator Breckinridge.

The Newark (New Jersey) Journal pays the following just compliment to the recent patriotic speech of Senator Breckinridge, in the United States Senate. Though surrounded by the bayonets of forty thousand Federals, his manly voice rang out in trumpet tones in rebuke of the President and his usurpations:

‘ The Voice of a Patriot.--Hon. John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, occupied the attention of the Senate on Tuesday, in discussing the resolution approving the unconstitutional acts of the President. His speech is a master piece of logical eloquence, judging from the telegraphic abstract which has reached us. It is a noble defence of the Constitution and the laws, against the usurpations and tyranny of the Executive, in plunging the country into a sectional, civil war, without warrant of law or legal authority.

Mr. Breckinridge contended that Congress, by resolution, could not make constitutional what is unconstitutional by the same authority, and that such approval would be adding to the subversions of the Constitution already accomplished. So far from approving the President's acts, he thought that officer should be rebuked by both houses of Congress. He recapitulated the various gross outrages committed by the Executive upon the constitutional rights of the people, reviewing the history of the country since the 4th of March, concluding with a reference to the numerous efforts at compromise which had been made by conservative citizens, which the South had been willing to accept, but which had been persistently refused and ruled out of order by the dominant party.

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