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![handle is hein.slavery/pmsqwsh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE AND TIE SLAVERY QUESTION.
SPEECH OF RON. I. WASHBURN, OF MAINE.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 10, 1856.
Mr. WASHBURN, of Maine, said:
Mr. SPEAKER ; I am not inclined to favor the
proposition before the House to print an unusu-
ally large number of copies of this, message.
The success of the amendment to the motion of
the gentleman from Ohio [ AP. CAMELL] would
be regarded, not unfairly perhaps, as an endorse-
ment by the House of *the contents of that ex-
traordinary paper. I propose to state briefly some
of the reasons which counsel me not to be a party
to such endorsement. The message opens with
studied and calumnious misrepresentations of
tho purposes of a great, growing, and patriotic
party, soon to be the dominant party in the Re-
public ; it contains charges against the people of
the free States of unfriendly designs and aggres-
sions, running through many years, upon 'the
people of the slave States, and which I believe to
be without the slightest fbundation in fact; it is
full of sophistries and special pleadings, out of
place in what should be a respectful and dignified
State paper; finally and chiefly, it proclaims doc-
trines which I must regard as anti-republican
and unconstitutionnil, at war with the theory of
our Rysteto and the genius of our institutions.
The President says :
Protected by the law and sag's of the Government
they asstil, associAtions have b|eat formed in 'one of the
States, of ldtividual I who, vratetdbov to seeK Mlaly to
prevent tne spread ve t -t istiti of Slavery inato the
pr'sent or fut ire ulcioate States of the Uamoai. are really
inflamed with Se-re to ehatige tile donestic institutions
of existing State,
It is not difficult to understand to whom the
President refers in this extract. The Republican
party pretend to seek only to prevent the spread
of Slavery into the present inchoate or future in-
choate States of the Union-and this, it is not
denied, is the party to which he alludes ; but
wlyile pretending this, and no more, he alleges
that its members are really inflanted with a desire
to chang(e the domestic institutions of existing
States-or, in other words, to abolish. Slavery in
the States in which it exists. The Republicans
deny and have ever denied this imputation. They
seek only to do that for which they- have con-
stitutional warrant, and they know and admit that
they have no right to interfere with Slavery in the
States. But the President tells them and -the
country that he knows better, and that their pre-
tences are false and hypocritical ; that-
*'To accomplish their obij ect , they dedicate them-elves
to the odiola tasc of dpreciaetin tle Govertnent or-;Mi-
ization wich tands itt their way, aid ot clumiia tiug,
with iudtscrimihate invectiye, not Otnly the citizens oftar
ticular SL'ttte, with whose lawi they find filt, but all
others o Lheir te low citizeis througktout the country who
do not participate with them in their assaults upon the
Cotntlitiut, framed and adopted by our fathers, arid
claiming, for the privileges it has secured and the bless.
ings it has conferred, the steady support an gratefl'
reverence of ,heir children. They seek an object which
they wll knowl to be a revolutionary one.
They seek, says this flippant libeller, to revo-
lutionizeto break up, and destroy, the Govern-
upent under which they live, to subvert the Con-
.Stitution which claims their steady support and
grateful reverence. They well know what they
are about. The President does not content him-
self with saying that the tendency of their opin-
ions and actions is to revolution, but he pdrmits
himself to assert that they mean it:
Thf y are Tierficlly aware that the change in the relative
condition of the white atid black rac's it the slavehold-
ing States, *which thtey would promote, is lleyondtheirlaw-
ful authority.
They are .perfectly aware that they are en--
gaged in an unlawful work I The firstofficer in
the Government must entertain a-very poor opin-
ion of a large majority of the people in eleven,
States of the Union, including that in which he.
was born and educated. They understand. too,.
that their object is a foreign as well as an illegal
one; yet so determined are they to accomplish it,.
that they are even prepared to resort to the means
which he found so successful in subjugating un-
happy Kansas, and will push on, though their
path lies through burning cities, and ravaged
fields, and slaughtered populations, and all there
is most terrible in foreign, complicated with civil
and servile war. With all their shamnaing, they
are downright disunionists, for they are perfectly
aware that the first step in the attempt to,
emancipate the slaves, (which the President alleges,
they have already taken,) is theforcible disru -
tion of a country embracing in its broad bosom a
degree of liberty, and an amount of individual
and public prosperity, to which there is no par-
allel in history, and substituting in its place hos-
tile Governments, driven at once and inevitably
into.mutual devastation and fratricidal carnage,
transforming the now peaceful and felicitous
brotherhood into a vast permanent camp of armed
men, like the rival monarchiea of Europe and
Asia,
If this indictment can be sustained, the history
of the world does not furnish the record of a peo-
ple more insatiate and malignant in their wicked-
ness than the one million four hundred thousand
men who compose the Republican party of the
United States. Not satisfied with destroying the.
Union, they would follow up this great crime by
consummating the work of emancipation among](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/pmsqwsh0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)