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Northern States would understand that too well to make the effort.”
He said that if they were allowed to go in peace, they would condescend to consider the Free-labor States as “a favored nation, and give them all the advantages of commercial and amicable treaties.”
He referred to the hostile feeling in the Senate as a type ,of that of the sections.
“You sit, upon your side,” he said, “silent and gloomy.
We sit, upon ours, with knit brows and portentous scowls ;” and added, wickedly or ignorantly, “I believe that the
Northern people hate the
South worse than ever the
English people hated
France; and I can tell my brethren over there, that there is no love lost upon the part of the
South.”
He concluded with angry voice and gesture, saying, “I do not believe there will be any war; but if war is to come, let it come.
We will meet the
Senator from
New Hampshire, and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism and Black Republicanism everywhere, upon our own soil; and, in the language of a distinguished member from
Ohio in relation to the
Mexican War, we will ‘ welcome you with bloody hands to hospitable graves.’
”
Senator Jefferson Davis followed with a few words, soft, but significant of treason in his purpose.
“I am here,” he said, “to perform the functions of a Senator of the
United States.
Before a declaration of war is made against the
State of which I am a citizen, I expect to be out of this Chamber; that when that declaration of war is made, the
State of which I am a citizen will be found ready and quite willing to meet it. While we remain here,
acting as embassadors of Sovereign States, at least under the form of friendship, held together by an alliance as close as it is possible for Sovereign States to stand to each other, threats from one to the other seem to be wholly inappropriate.”
Wigfall, of
Texas, a truculent debater, of ability and ready speech, of whom it might have been truthfully said, in
Shakspeare's words:--
Here's a large mouth, indeed,
That spits forth death, and mountains, rocks, and seas;
Talks as familiarly of roaring lions
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs,
did not seem to agree with the cautious, wily, and polished
Mississippi Senator.
After declaring that State after State would soon leave the
Union, and that, so far as he was concerned,, he chose not to give a “reason for the high sovereign act,” he said, “Now, Sir, I admit that a constitutional majority has a right to govern. . . . . . If we proposed to remain in this Union, we should undoubtedly submit to the inauguration of any man who was elected by a constitutional majority.
We propose nothing of that sort.
We simply say that a man who is distasteful to us has been elected, and we choose to consider that as a sufficient ground for leaving the
Union, and we intend to leave the
Union.
Then, if you desire it,” he said, with a half sneering, half defiant tone, “bring us back.
When you undertake that, and have accomplished it, you may be ”
