HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.slavery/sesncex0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
SPEECH
EDWARD STANLY, OF N. CAROLINA,
EXPOSING THE CAUSES OF THE SLAVERY AGITATION.
Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 6, 1850.
This hour rule, Mr. Chairman, compels us to
economize time very closely, and consolidate ideas
as much as possible. I will try and do so, 'that I
may not write out any thing more than I shall
say
wish to say a few plain things in a plain way.
I wish to say a little for Buncombe-not only the
western but the eastern Buncombe, which I repre-
sent; and, if honorable gentlemen are not desirous
to hear this, I advise them to take themselves, on
this rainy day, to a more comfortable place than
this. I intend most of what I say for my constitu-
ents. I have not spoken before, because I thought
when matters of such vast magnitude were in-
volvcd, We ought to wait and hear what the people
at home have to say of them. Now, I feel prepared
not merely to express my own opinions, but those
also of my honest constituents. I hope to say no-
thing offensive to any gentleman. Certainly, I
have no such desire. I shall most carefully avoid
to strike the first blow. If I am assailed, I must
take care of myself in the best way I may. And
now to come right at it.
I have heard a great deal said here, and read
much recently, of -encroachment on the South-
aggressions on the South; and, though I know we
have cause in some respects to complain of the con-
duct of a portion of our northern people, I cannot
include the whole North in the just censure due to
the conduct of the aggressors. I have attentively
watched the debate here and in the Senate. I have
looked at the party newspapers of the day, and I
have been brought to the settled belief, yea con-
viction, that much of the hue and cry is caused by
a malignant wish to embarrass the Administra-
tion, and to build up the party Qvhom the people
hurled from gower in November, 1848. Many of
the speeches ere, relative to the admission of Cali-
fornia, are marked by unkind allusion to the Presi-
dent, and sometimes improper and furious, though
feeble, aspersions as to his motives.
It seemed to me that if gentlemen, from the South
especially, believed our peculiar institutions were
in danger, they would desire to produce harmony
offeeling, to speak calmly as tobrethrenin the midst
of a common danger; that they would try and pro-
duce united action. But instead of manifesting
such a disposition, the Administration is ruthlessly
asstiled, and the Whig party fiercely denounced.
For examples of these party speeches, I refer to
that of the gentleman from Mississippi, (Mr.
BRowN,) and of the gentleman from Maryland,
(Mr. McLANE,) who on this matter made a party
speech, and tried, as he did before the House was
organized, to blow his boatswain's whistle and pipe
alfhands on his side to duty. There were other
speeches of a like character. I want to show this
agitation, this attempt to excite alarm, is now, as
it was last summer in the southern States, for party
purposes. I believe I can show it.
In 1837, when Mr. Van Buren was President, an
abolition petition, presented by a gentleman from
Vermont, I think, produced a great tumult here.
A southern meeting was held in a committee-room
down stairs. Patton's resolution, which rejected
abolition petitions, was the fruit of that meeting.
Presenting this petition was one of Mr. CALHOUN'S
encroachments. Mr. Van Buren's friends foula
it necessary to sustain him, as a northern manh
with southern principles, and then he made this
abolition excitement the platform for his electiom
to the Presidency. In vain did the Whigs at that
time warn the southern country he would be a
traitor; that his past life had shown he was unsound
upon the question of slavery. No matter what
should be the consequence to the South, his gane
was' to be played. In 1838, when Mr. Woodb=y
was inVan B uren's cabinet, and was engaged ii that
interesting correspondence to his suS-treasurer,
Mr. Atherton, of New Hampshire, who was called
the prince of humbugs, introduced his wooden
nutmeg, doughfaced, chivalry resolutions; a caucnz
was he d in which southern Van Buren Democrats
sat side by side with the worst anti- slavery men; from
which secret caucus all the southern Whigs were
excluded; and these resolutions, then denounced as
Janus-faced and double-meaning, were the hybrid
offspring of that caucus. These resolutions were
to quiet agitation. I denounced them, and refused
to vote or them, and I was sustained at home.
They were also denounced, if I mistake not, by
other southern gentlemen, as betraying the South.
[A late article in the Republic, in this city, e
poses the Atherton caucus, by giving a true account
of their origin.]
When General Harrison was nominated, he was
denounced as an Abolitionist. Mr. Clay was aa
Abolitionist; and Mr. Van Buren's doughfaces were
the friends and allies of the South. I hope the
race of doughfaces is extinct. They were a miser-
able set of beings,--ere puppets of Van Buren,-
anti-slavery men at home, allies of the South here-
Now and then, one is alive, mourning for the lost
spoils, and editing a paper that tries to alarm the
South by the old song, of 1838, The Whigs are
Abolitionists. Once we were told, there are no
Democratic Abolitionists at the North. Now how
changed! Even in the Senate, a member of that
body (Mr. CLEMENS, of Alabama, a Democrat, ox
the 17th January, 1850) said:
I said the people of the South had been hereto-
fore laboring under the delusion that the northern
Democrats were their friends. I said it was a deiu-
'sion, and I was glad to have an opportunity ofex-
'plaining it to them. God deliver me from such
'friends as the northern Democrats! I would rather
'trust northern Whigs to-day. They commenced the
game earlier, and have not to go so far to get in a
proper position. Look at the resolutions of Demo-
cratic legislatures and the messages of Democratic
governors, and the resolutions adopted by Demo-
cratic conventions, and then tell me about north-
ern Democrats being the friends of the South.
Mr. CALHOUN, too, thinks all the northern people
are more or less hostile to us. Sir, I will not
admit that either of the great parties of the North,
as such, are hostile to the South. Some members
of each are hostile-are fanatical-but the great
body of both parties at the North, I cannot believe,
are traitors to the Constitution and the Union. And,
sir, it affords me pleasure to say, that when I hear
bold and manly speeches, such as those made by
the gentlemen from Illinois (Mr. BISSELL) and
from Indiana (Mr. FITCH,) I honor their intre-
Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/sesncex0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)