“Negro Slavery not Unjust.” A SPEECH BY CHARLES O’CONOR AT THE UNION MEETING AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, NEW YORK CITY, DEC. 19, 1859. Mb. Ma yob and Gentlemen :—I cannot express to you the delight which I experience in beholding in this great city so vast an assembly of my fellow citizens, convened for the purpose stated in your resolutions. I am delighted beyond measure to behold at this time so vast an assembly responding to the call of a body so respectable as the twenty thousand New Yorkers who have convened this meeting. If anything can give assurance to those who doubt, and confidence to those who may have had misgivings as to the permanency of our institutions, and the solidity of the support which the people of the North are prepared to give them, it is that in the queen city of the New World, in the capital of North America, there is assembled a meeting so large, so respectable, and so unanimous as this meeting has shown itself to be in receiving sentiments which, if observed, must protect our Union from destruction, and even from danger. (Applause.) Gentlemen, is it not a subject of astonishment that the idea of danger, and the still more dreadful idea of dissolution, should be heard from the lips of an American citizen, at this day, in reference to, or in connection with, the sacred name of this most sacred Union ? (Applause.) Why gentlemen, what is our Union ? What are its antecedents ? What is its present condition ? If we ward off the evils which threaten it, what its future hope for us and for the great family of mankind ? Why, gentlemen, it may well be said of this Union as a government, that as it is the last offspring, so is it Time’s most glorious and beneficent production. Gentlemen, we are created by an Omniscient Being. We are created by a Being not only All-Seeing, but All-Powerful and All-Wise. And in the benignity and the farseeing wisdom of His power, He permitted the great family of mankind to live on, to advance, to improve, step by step, and yet permitted five thousand years and upward to elapse ere He laid the foundatinn of a truly free, a truly happy, and a truly independent empire. It was not, gentlemen, until that great length of time had elapsed, that the earth w&s deemed mature for laying the foundations of this mighty and prosperous State. It was then that He inspired the noble-minded and chivalrous Genoese to set forth upon the trackless ocean and discover the empire that we now enjoy. But a few years, comparatively, had elapsed when there was raised up in this blessed land a set of men whose like had never before existed upon the face of this earth. Men unequalled in their perceptions of the true principles of justice, in their comprehensive benevolence, in their capacity to lay safely, justly, soundly, and with all the qualities which should insure permanency, the foundations of an empire. It was in 1776, and in this country, that there assembled the first, the very first, assembly of rational men who ever proclaimed, in clear and undeniable form, the immutable principles of liberty, and consecrated, to all time I trust, in the face of tyrants, and in opposition to their power, the rights of nations and the rights of men. (Applause.) These patriots, as soon as the storm of war had passed away, sat down and framed that instrument upon which our Union rests, the Constitution of the United States of America. (Applause.) And the question now before us is neither more nor less than this: whether that Constitution, consecrated by the blood shed in that glorious Revolution, consecrated by the signature of the most illustrious man who ever lived, George Washington (applause) — whether that instrument, accepted by the wisest and by the best of that day, and accepted in convention, one by one, in each and every State of this Union—that instrument from which so many blessings have flown—whether that instrument was conceived in crime, is a chapter of abominations (cries of No, no ”), is a violation of justice, is a league between strong-handed but wicked-hearted white men to oppress, and impoverish, and plunder their fellow-creatures, contrary to rectitude, honor and justice. (Applause.) This is the question, neither more nor less. We are told from pulpits, we are told from the political rostrum, we are told in the legislative assemblies of our Northern States, not merely by speakers, but by distinct resolutions of the whole body—we are told by gentlemen occupying seats in the Congress of the Union through the votes of Northern people—that the Constitution seeks to enshrine, to protect, to defend a monstrous crime against justice and humanity, and that it is our duty to defeat its provisions, to outwit
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=