State had not moved as an organized community. A few men were rioting at Baltimore; and as I marched there at the head of United States troops, the question came up, What have I before me ? You will remember that I offered then to put down all kinds of insurrections so long as the State of Maryland remained loyal to the United States. Transferred from thence to a wider sphere at Fortress Monroe, I found that the State of Virginia, through its organization, had taken itself out of the Union, and was endeavoring to erect for itself an independent government; and I dealt with that State as being in rebellion, and thought the property of the rebels, of whatever name or nature, should be dealt with as rebellious property, and contraband of war, subject to the laws of war. [Great applause.] I have been thus careful in stating these various steps, because, although through your kindness replying to eulogy, I am here answering every charge of inconsistency and wrong of intention for my acts done before the country. Wrong in judgment I may have been; but, I insist, wrong in intention or inconsistent to my former opinions, never Upon the same theory by which I felt myself bound to put down insurrection in Maryland, while it re’ mained loyal, whether that insurrection was the work of blacks or whites, by the same loyalty to the Constitution and laws, I felt bound to confiscate slave property in the rebellious State of Virginia. [Applause.] Pardon me, sir, if right here Isay that I am a little sensitive upon this topic. I am an old-fashioned Andrew Jackson Democrat of twenty years' standing. [Applause. A voice: “The second hero of New Orleans.” Renewed applause culminating in three cheers.] And so far as I know, I have never swerved, so help me God, from one of bis teachings. [Great applause.] Up to the time that disunion took place, I went as far as the farthest in sustaining the constitutional rights of the States. However bitter or distasteful to me were the obligations my fathers had made for me in the compromise of the Constitution, it was not for me to pick out the sweet from the bitter ; and, fellow-democrats, I took them all [loud cheers] because they were constitutional obligations [applause]; and sustaining them all, I stood by the South and by Southern rights under the Constitution until I advanced and looked into the very pit of disunion, and into which they plunged, and then, not liking the prospect, I quietly withdrew. [Immense applause and laughter.] And from that hgur we went apart, how far apart you can judge when I tell you, that on the 28th December, 1860, 1 ehook hands on terms of personal friendship with Jefferson Davis, and on the 28th of December, 1862,1 had the pleasure of reading his proclamation that I was to be hanged at sight. [Great applause and laughter.] And now, my friends, if you will allow me to pause for a moment in this line of thought, as we come up to the point of time, when these men laid down their constitutional obligations, let me ask, what then were my rights, and what were theirs ? At that hour they repudiated the Constitution of the United .States, by vote in solemn Convention; and not only that, but they took arms in their hands, and undertook by force to rend from the Government what seemed to them the fairest portion of the heritage which my fathers had given to you and me as a rich legacy for our children. When they did that, they abrogated, abnegated, and forfeited every constitutional right, and released me from every constitutional obligation, so far as they were concerned. [Loud cheers.] Therefore when I was thus called upon to say what should be my action thereafter with regard to slavery, I was left to the natural instincts of my heart, as prompted by a Christian education in New England, and J dealt with it accordingly. [Immense applause.] The same sense of duty to my constitutional obligations, and to the rights of the several States that required me, so long as those States remained under the Constitution, to protect the system of slavery,—that same sense of duty after they had gone out from under the Constitution, caused me to follow the dictates of my own untrammelled conscience. So you see—and I speak now to my old Democratic friends—that, however misjudging I may have been, we went along together, step by step, up to that point; and I claim that we ought still to go on in the same manner. We acknowledged the right of those men to hold slaves, because it wasguaranteed to them by the compromise of our fathers in the Constitution; but if their State rights were to be respected, because of our allegiance to the Constitution and our respect to State rights, when that sacred obligation was taken away by their own traitorous acta, and we, as well as the negroes, were disenthralled, why should not we follow the dictates of God’s law and humanity ? [Tremendous applause, and cries of “ Bravo, Bravo.”] By the exigencies-of
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