One Union One Constitution One Destiny (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from One Union One Constitution One Destiny Such, Mr. Chairman, is a fair presentation of the condition of our country one short year ago. But how changed the scene! In the place of peace, prosperity, and happiness, we find ourselves engaged in civil strife; the hostile tread of armed men is heard on every side; the nation is convulsed from centre to circumference with great and warlike preparations; the clash of arms is heard throughout the land, and blood is made to flow on a hundred battle-fields, and our national existence is threatened with overthrow. It is a fearful question. Who and what has caused this sudden and unexpected change? Where were our wise men and prudent legislators, that whatever causes of discontent existed might not have been removed? Upon the Administration of James Buchanan and the Thirty-Sixth Congress rests the fearful responsibility of permitting the present fearful state of things to exist; and in all time to come the closing days of his Administration, and the action of that Congress, will be regarded as the darkest period in American history. Mr. Chairman, I belong to that class of men who believe that it is far better to settle all questions of national difficulty by an appeal to reason and to the ballot-box rather than by the arbitrament of arms; and I am sincere in the reflection that, considering the boasted civilization of the American people, the present civil war must be regarded in all time to come as a scandal and disgrace to the age in which we live, and the authors of it, when the passions of the present hour shall have subsided, in the judgment of posterity will be considered as the moral monsters of this generation, and the worst foes to free institutions and the cause of well-regulated liberty among men. This rebellion is one of the legitimate fruits of the excesses to which party spirit has been carried in this country, and of the continued and fierce agitation of the question of African slavery; the loss of political power furnishing a motive to ambitious men to put it on foot, and the slavery question being the moving power by which they hoped to excite and enlist the sympathies and the services of the great body of the southern people. The national Government having fallen into the hands of a weak and vacillating President, his Cabinet composed in part of the conspirators themselves - bold, reckless, and unscrupulous - using their ill-gotten power to encourage the purposes of disloyalty and precipitate national disaster; whilst the people, shocked and amazed, and yet incredulous as to the wicked objects which these men had in view, the rebellion at the outset met with a degree of success and encouragement, causing thousands of good men to doubt the ability of the Government to check its progress and to overthrow those who had taken up arms against it. Never did a free people enter more reluctantly into an unwilling contest than did the loyal people of the United States with the disunionists of the South, who "forced this war upon the country." It was not until State after State had broken their plighted faith and violated all the obligations of the Federal Constitution, in passing ordinances of secession, not until the Federal Treasury had been robbed, our arsenals and armories despoiled of their arms, our ships sent to distant seas, armies raised to resist the authority of the General Government, peaceful vessels fired into, and a weak and beleaguered garrison compelled to surrender, that the national Government took the first step to exert its authority and to maintain the supremacy of the laws and the Federal Constitution. Never in the history of the world was so much forbearance displayed by a great Government towards those in rebellion against it, and who were plotting its overthrow. The purpose from the beginning was to break up the Government.