Growth of the Union sentiment.
The idea of a Union of the several Colonies was of slow and painful growth.
There were instinctive thoughts of intrinsic and eternal value melting in the minds of noble men, like precious metals in heated ladles, which were cast into a model form of government upon this wild, wooded continent, far away from the Old World's theater, where bad rulers had debauched and debased humanity for centuries.
The installation of a new system of inter-state and intersocial regulations, where democracy would mean the rule of the people by representation, and republicanism should signify that public affairs are conducted with single care for the people's rights-this new fashion formed in the political processes of Colonial development, and which all royal and aristocratic
Europe derided as a madcap scheme, was the priceless product of prolonged conflicts which bestrewed the field of our heroic history with the wrecks of many patriotic endeavors, but emblazoned it at last by the triumphs of sound principles and the establishment of our novel, potent and rythmical system of government.
The English Colonies deployed along the
Atlantic coast for a thousand miles from
Buzzard's Bay, the outpost of the
Plymouth Settlement, to
Brunswick harbor, where
Oglethorpe fought, rocked the infant Union in the cradle of those recurring political storms which beat upon it in varying fury for one hundred and fifty years. There was such a growing appreciation of the common interest that wherever the
British Crown
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asserted the claim to hold the Colonies dependent for laws and liberties upon the royal will, the
American discussions had the same fire, the protests showed the same spirit and the resolutions of Assemblies assumed the same form.
The idea of Colonial association grew.
Franklin formed a ‘
New England Confederacy,’ and made the fatal mistake of confining the
Union to the States of the
East, in memory whereof, I may here take courage to suggest that the word ‘Confederacy’ as applied to a compact among States can never hold an unwelcome place in the
American lexicon since the use of the term was born in the brain of
Franklin, and that the sound thereof should be as sweet to
New England ears as the cooing of a babe, because the first political child of that name was baptized in the waters of
Massachusetts Bay.
Now in those old times, when the
Union idea was struggling upward into life and light, what aid came from that Southern section which this generation has been taught to think were ever the restless and inveterate opposers of the
Union?
I proceed, by your leave, to state as a fact which shines forth in cloudless evidence, that the
Southern Colonies were the foremost to nurse the earliest hope of Colonial alliance, and when troubles increased, when
Franklin's Confederacy (limited) had been ditched in the sectional mire, when patriots were trying to devise nearer and broader relations—the first practical step toward our present organized American Union was taken when
Dabney Carr, in 1773, proposed in the Legislature of Virginia to provide a plan of concerted action, and the
State having adopted the first scheme of inter-Colonial correspondence, as a great Northern historian justly says, ‘laid down the foundation of the
Union.’
A crisis was reached in 1774, upon the passage by Parliament of the bill to close the port of
Boston, but this attempt to coerce a sister Colony by armed invasion fired the
Southern heart, and then the fraternal cry that ‘the cause of
Massachusetts is the cause of all’ rang like a liberty bell from
Maryland to
Georgia.
Virginia in the lead, called for a Congress of Deputies to consider the common defense, and in June following
Massachusetts agreed to the proposal.
Other Colonies clustered to a center, and the first Continental Congress assembled in
Philadelphia.
Concerning this advance toward Union,
Bancroft quotes the words of
Gadsden: ‘Had it not been for
South Carolina no Congress would have happened.’
To that first Congress, Georgia, having broken over the opposition of the royal governor, sent a representative one thousand miles by land to make known its people's espousal of the common
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cause; and
North Carolina, having met in a voluntary provincial assembly, against the angry protest of its governor, hurried its ambassador to the General Congress.
Thus the
South, although not yet threatened with invasion, demonstrated its fraternal spirit.
A long stride of the
Union sentiment was made by this event; but it soon felt, pending the stress of the Revolutionary war, that yet another step must be taken, and in this, also, the
South led the advance.
At its instance a committee was appointed to draft the
Articles of Confederation under which the alliance of the Colonies grew into the stronger form, and by which general Confederacy of States the war for American liberty was successfully fought.
May I not take courage again from this memorial further to say that the title, ‘
Confederate States of America,’ can never represent anything but an honorable nation to any honorable mind.
But there was still another step necessary to a ‘more perfect union.’
The Revolutionary war separated the States from
England but did not establish a perfect Union among themselves.
Difficulties concerning inter-State relations arose, especially involving
Massachusetts,
Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, New York and
New Jersey to such extent as to make disunion and anarchy imminent.
What was the voice of the
Southern States at that critical juncture?
I am happy in being made able to answer that amidst these portentous perplexities the first suggestion on record of ‘the more perfect Union’ was made by
Madison, and that
Virginia, as the spokesman of Southern sentiment, arose to the political zenith and drew after her all the stars of the Confederation into that inspired convention which adopted the
Constitution of the United States of
America.
So it appears that your South nourished the earliest idea of Union among the endangered ‘settlements’; called the deputies of the Colonies to assemble in general committee of correspondence; suggested the Continental Congress of States; devised the
Articles of Confederation, and moving on with the love of Union in its warm heart, advanced the great idea step by step until the loftiest distinction was reached, when it proposed to create this present United States Government by a written Constitution.
Your Union, my countrymen, developed into its present form, your Constitution, which is the palladium of your rights as States or as people, and all the privileges you enjoy in this free Commonwealth are due at least in equal measure to the energy, the valor, the wisdom and the patriotism of Southern men.
In order to make this demonstration still more distinct, I will note
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in hurried review the origin and progress of the idea of Disunion, indulging the hope that the sweet spirit of charity will prevail while we consider any sins for which all sections may be brought to confession.
It is true, indeed, that signs of sectional strife and threats of disunion were made during even the administration of
Washington, but these sentiments did not come from the
South.
In 1796, while the Presidential election was pending, a lieutenant-governor, referring to the probable election of
Jefferson, said: ‘I sincerely declare that I wish the
Northern States would separate from the
Southern the moment that event shall take place’; but it was not the governor of any Southern State who first declared that the election of a President was a cause of secession.
There was a secret junto formed within less than twenty years after the
Union was organized, composed in part of eminent men pledged to bring about the dissolution of the
Union, but that junto did not have one Southern member.
There was a convention of prominent leaders held during the war of 1812, to consider a plan for withdrawing all the
East from the
Union, but that convention was held at
Hartford, not at
Richmond, and had not one Southern supporter.
There was one attempt at nullification in one Southern State in 1832, on the debatable plea that certain measures of General Government violated the
Constitution, and that attempt was promptly suppressed by a Southern
President; but there were many actual nullifications of Federal law by Legislatures of Northern States after 1850, without pretense of sustaining the
Constitution, which no
President seriously tried to forbid.
There were open threats to disrupt the ties that bind the States together on account of the annexation of
Texas, which the
Southern people so much desired; but the Union-loving South went on to greaten the Nation with new and rich territory, and then arrested the cry of secession by concessions to Northern opinion.
There were some fanatical disunionists who said that the
Constitution of our happy country was ‘an agreement with hell;’ but that profanity did not fall from Southern lips.
Some madmen called our starry flag ‘a flaunting lie;’ but it was no Southern fire-eater who blistered Old Glory with that lurid insult.
Disunion was somewhat rampant in 1848, but its fires burned in the bosoms of fanatics about slavery who did not care enough for the negro to buy him back into freedom with the money they had sold him for into slavery.
Meanwhile, let it be frankly admitted that the disunion spirit began to grow in the
South after 1850.
The example of threatened secession had been set before it, and new agitations, invasions and other irritations
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wearied the
Southern people into the final adoption in practice of the theory they had been taught.
The South had learned much from the intelligence and thrift of its Northern co-patriots, and while imbibing some errors, had profited by many of their valuable views; but it now appears that secession by States which these, our brothers, so persistently taught us to regard as a final but friendly and legal remedy for wrongs must be rebuked as the least defensible and most immoral of all measures a sovereign people can adopt.
