An independent speech.
--
Hon. Wm. B. Reed, former
U. S. Minister to
China, made a speech in
Crawford county, Pa., on the 17th ult., which is quite a bold utterance, considering that
habeas corpus has been suspended.
In it he said:
‘
There is another word beside these — and a word just now of great significance — independence.
In the view of those (and the school is not a small one,) who think us, in the sense of consolidation, one people, it has no meaning.
To the minds of those who think as we do it has a deep significance.
It means this: That so long as the
Union lasts and the
Constitution stands
Pennsylvania, united with her sister States, has no wish to resume any power which, for the common good and for specified and limited purposes, she surrendered; no thought of separation, no dream of isolation, no wish of being other than she was before this terrible convulsion came upon us — the keystone of the great arch, whose ruin, beginning at both ends--North and South--is in no sense attributable to her. But it means more than this.
It means that if, in the dread dispensation of
Providence, punishing us for our conscious and unconscious sins, the
Union, once and still our pride, should perish, either through violence or less agonizing disintegration — that
Pennsylvania, still a sovereign Commonwealth, still an organized community, shall have power to stand by itself or to seek new companionship, or — and I now repeat language uttered by me before a drop of blood was shed, and which no threat has ever led me to retract — to be ready to bind together, if occasion offers, the broken Union, and resume her place of loyalty and devotion.
’
