The following is an extract from
Edward Everett's letter accepting his nomination for the Vice-Presidency by the
Union Convention at
Baltimore.
After expressing his regret that by the acceptance he shall have to retire from any further labors in behalf of
Mount Vernon be refers to the angry state of feeling in the country and the necessity for the revival of the kindly sentiments which once existed between the
North and the
South, as sufficient excuse to warrant his sacrificing his own inclinations.
He thus proceeds:
I suppose it to be the almost universal impression — it is certainly mine — that the existing state of affairs is extremely critical.
Our political controversies have substantially as an died and almost purity sectional character — that of a fearful struggle between the
North and the
South.
It would not be difficult to show at length the perilous nature and tendency of this struggle, but I can only say, on this occasion, that, in my opinion, it cannot be much longer kept up, without rending the
Union.
I do not mean that either of the great parties in the country desires or aims at a separation of the States as a final object, although there are extremists in considerable numbers who have that object in view.
While a potent and a careful influence is exercised by men of this class, in both sections of the
Union a portion of the conservative masses are insensibly and gradually goaded into concurrence with opinions and sentiments with which in the outset, they had no sympathy.
Meantime, almost wholly neglecting the main public interests, our political controversies turn more and more on questions, in reference to which as abstract fondness, the great sections of the country difference countably, though there is nothing practically important at stake, which requires the discussion to be kept up. These controversies are carried on with steadily increasing bitterness and exasperation.
The passions thus kindled have already led to acts of violence and bloodshed, approaching to civil war in the
Territories and attempted servile insurrection in the States.
The great religious and philanthropic association of the country are sundered, and the kindly social relations of North and South seriously impaired.
The national House of Representatives, hovering on the verge of anarchy, requires weeks to effect the organizations, which ought to be the work of an hour, and it house its sessions, (many of its members, I am told, armed with concealed weapons) on the crest of a volcano.
The candidates for the Presidency representing respectively the dominant sectional ideas, will, at the ensuing election, in all probability, be supporter by a purely geographical vote.
In other words, we are already brought to a pass, at which North and South cannot and will boy to operate in the periodical reorganization of the
Government.
Can such a state of things long continue, especially with the ever-present risk of new causes of exasperation?
I own that it seems to a impossible, unless some healing course is adopted, that the catastrophe, which the mass of good citizens so much deprecate, should be much longer delayed.
A spirit of patriotic moderation must be called into action throughout in Union, or it will assuredly be broken up. Unless the warfare of inflammatory speeches and incendiary publications is abandoned, and good citizens, as in 1776 and 1787, North and South, will agree to deal with the same elements of discord (for they existed then as now) as our fathers dealt with them, we shall but for a very few years longer be even nominally brethren of one family.
The suggestion that the Union can be maintained by the numerical predominance and military profess of one section exerted to coerce the other into submission, is in my judge at, as self contradictory as it is dangerous.
It comes invalid with the death smell from fields wet with brother's blood.
If the vital principle of all republican governments is "the concept of the governed" much more does a union of conquest sovereign States require, as its basis, the forming of its members and their voluntary cooperate on in its organic functions.
Comment on the above is unnecessary.--Contrast it with the Fourth of July speech of this same
Edward Everett, in which he out
Greeley's Greeley in his wild hurrah for the entire subjugation of the
South.
Even in the hot blaze of that natural indignation which the wicked invasion of the
South has caused, the
South will do the
North no such injustice as to suppose that
Edward Everett is a fair specimen of her people.--There are some whose voices have not joined the rabble shout, nor bowed the knee to Baal; there are a few who boldly and manfully have spoken out for truth and justice; and even of the brutal multitude, wallowing in fierce passions, it cannot be said that they are inconsistent and hypocritical.
But
Edward Everett, the cold, selfish, false pretender, who cannot plead ignorance, and who has sported his butterfly wings in hospitable Southern sunshine, what a repulse he is after all!
