Mr. Yulee.  Mr. President,  I rise to make known to the Senate that in consequence of certain proceedings which have lately taken place in the State of Florida, my colleague and myself are of the opinion that our connection with this body is legally terminated.

The State of Florida has, through a convention of her people duly assembled, decided to recall the powers delegated to this Government, and to assume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an independent and separate community. 

I am sure I truly represent her when I say that her people have not been insensible to the many blessings they have enjoyed under the Constitution of the United States, nor to the proper advantages of a Union directed to the great purposes of “establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquillity, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.”  They have held in patriotic reverence the memories that belong to the Union of American States in its origin and progress, and have clung with a fond assurance to the hope that its wise plan, and the just principles upon which it was based, would secure for it a perpetual endurance and transcendent usefulness.

They have decided that their social tranquillity and civil security are jeoparded by a longer continuance in the Union, not from the contemplated or necessary operation of the Constitution, but from the consequences, as they conceive, of an unjust exercise of the powers it conferred, and a persistent disregard of the spirit of fraternity and equality in which it was founded.  Recent events have impressed them with the belief that the peace of their homes and the preservation of their community interests can only be secured by an immediate withdrawal from the dangers of a perverted and hostile employment of the powers of the Federal Government.  They are not willing to disturb the peace of their associates by an inflamed and protracted struggle within the Union, for rights they could never, with self-respect or safety, surrender, and against a policy of administration which, although sanctioned and authorized by the late decision of a majority of the States, they regard to be hostile to their best interests, and violative of the legitimate duty and trusts of the Government.  They have preferred to abandon all the hopes they rested upon the common growth and common power of the Union, and to assume the serious responsibilities of a separate existence and new and untried relations.  It is only under a deep sense of duty to themselves and their posterity that so important a step has been taken.  I am sure that the people of Florida will ever preserve a grateful memory of their past connection with this Government, and a just pride in the continued development of American society.  They will also remember that although, to their regret, a majority of the people in the States of the northern section of the Union have seen their duty to lie in a path fatal to the safety of Southern society, they have had the sympathies of a large array of noble spirits in all those States, whose sense of justice, and whose brave efforts to uphold the right, have been not the less appreciated, nor will be the less remembered, because unsuccessful. 

We have not been wanting in timely warning to our associates of the unhappy tendency of their policy.  It was in the unhallowed pursuit, as we thought, of sectional aggrandizement, and the indulgence of unregulated sentiments of moral duty, that the equilibrium of power between the sections, which had been maintained until then, was ruthlessly and unwisely destroyed by the legislation of 1850.  The injustice and danger of those proceedings was considered by a large portion of the South to be so flagrant, that we resorted to an unusual formality in bringing our views and apprehensions to the attention of the country.  Upon our official responsibility, a number of the Senators, those of Florida among them, giving expression to the opinions of their constituents, presented a written protest against the wrong to which our section was subjected, and a fraternal warning against the dangerous tendency of the policy which incited to that wrong.  That protest was refused a place in the Journals of this body, contrary, as we thought, to the express duty enjoined by the Constitution; but it went before the public, and I think it proper to recall the attention of this body to its contents, in the hour when the apprehensions it expressed are fatally realized.*

[The protest is included at the end of this document.---JFE]

Let me be pardoned, Mr. President, for detaining the Senate with a further remark.  The circumstance that the State of Florida was formed upon territory acquired by the United States, and the paucity of her numbers, has been occasionally remarked upon.  Owing to causes she could not control, her settlement has been, until recently, comparatively slow.  But her population exceeds that of seven of the sixteen States that composed the Union when the census of 1790 was taken under the new Constitution ; and six of the thirteen original States had fewer numbers when they formed the Constitution.  Rights of sovereignty and liberty depend not upon numbers.

It is quite true that her limits comprehend a part of the territory to which the title was acquired by the United States from Spain.  But it is also true that a part of the consideration for the cession was a reservation to the inhabitants of the right to admission into the Federal Union upon terms of equality; and it was in view of this right that most of the inhabitants remained there.  If their number has been increased by subsequent immigration, it was mostly of citizens from others of the United States, who were lineal inheritors of the glories and fruits of the American Revolution. 

In pursuance of this stipulation, and of the established policy of the country, they were admitted into the Union; and, in the act of admission, Florida was expressly recognized and “declared to be a State,” and “admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.”

In the exercise of her equal right in the Union, and moved by a common sympathy with the people of the section of which her territory forms the extreme southern part, and with whose fate her destiny is indissolubly bound, Florida has resolved to withdraw from the present Union.  Her course derives sanction from the important fact that she is preceded in it by the chivalrous State which, by a spirited act in 1765, became, by acknowledgment of a Massachusetts historian, “The founder of the Union.”  And her resolution is rendered more fixed by the development, since her movement began, of a general tendency in the public mind of the majority section to a theory of the Constitution, and to principles of construction, which must convert this Government into an unlimited despotism.  She sees fast rising above all others the great issue of the right of the people of the States to sovereignty and self-government within their respective territorial boundaries; and in such an issue she is prepared to devote the lives and fortunes of all her people. 

Although the present means of Florida are acknowledged to be limited, yet, having once assumed the rank of a State, she assumed with its rights its duties also, and its responsibilities to her people and their posterity.  These she must fulfill, according to her best judgment, with all the more jealousy of control because weak, but with none the less claim on that account to the respect of all true men.

Acknowledging, Mr. President, with grateful emotions, my obligations for the many courtesies I have enjoyed in my intercourse with the gentlemen of this body, and with most cordial good wishes for their personal welfare, I retire from their midst in willing loyalty to the mandate of my State, and with full approval of her act. 

Mr. Mallory.  Concurring, as I do, with all that my colleague has said, I ask but a brief moment to add a word or two further.

In retiring from this body, I cannot but feel, and I will not forbear the expression of, profound regret that existing causes imperatively impel us to this separation.  When reason and justice shall have asserted ascendency over party and passion, they will be justly appreciated; and this Southern movement, demanded by considerations dear to freemen in every age, will stand proudly vindicated. 

Throughout her long and patient endurance of insult and wrong, the South has clung to the Union with unfaltering fidelity; a fidelity which, while nourishing irritation in the hearts of her own sons, has but served to nerve the arms of her adversaries.

Florida came into the Union fifteen years ago, upon an equality with the original States, and their rights in the Confederacy are equally her rights.  She could not, if she would, separate her action from her Southern sisters; and, demanded as her action is, by those considerations which a free people can never ignore, she would not if she could.  From the Union, governed by the Constitution as our fathers made it, there breathes not a secessionist upon her soil; but a deep sense of injustice, inequality, and insecurity, produced by the causes to which I have adverted, is brought home to the reason and patriotism of her people; and to secure and maintain those rights which the Constitution no longer accords them, they have placed the State of Florida out of the Confederacy. 

In thus turning from the Union to the veiled and unknown future, we are neither ignorant nor reckless of the lions in our path.  We know that the prompt and peaceful organization of a practical republican government, securing liberty, equality, and justice to every citizen, is one of the most difficult, as it is one of the most momentous duties devolving upon men; and nowhere perhaps upon the earth, beyond our own country, could this great work be achieved.  But so well are human rights and national liberty understood by our people; so deeply are they imbued with the spirit of freedom and knowledge of Government, that were this Republic utterly broken and destroyed, like the shattered vase of the poet, to whose very fragments the scent of the roses still clung, its very ruins breathing the true spirit of civil and religious liberty, would plead for and demand a wise and noble reconstruction.

Whatever may be the immediate results, therefore, of the momentous crisis now upon us, I have no fears for the freedom of my countrymen.  Nor do I admit for a moment that the great American experiment of Government has proved or can prove a failure ; but I maintain, on the contrary, that passing events should inspire in the hearts of the patriot and statesman, not only hope, but confidence.  Five States have already dissolved their connection with the Union; and throughout the several stages by which their people, in their sovereign capacity, have reached secession, they have exhibited a calmness and deliberation which find no parallel in the history of mankind.  This is entirely the result of our admirable system of independent State Governments.  And, sir, were this Federal District, with Presidents, Congress, Departments, and courts, and all the machinery of Federal Government, suddenly sunk a thousand fathoms deep, under the admirable working of these State Governments the rights and liberties of their people would receive no shock or detriment. 

In thus severing our connection with sister States, we desire to go in peace, to maintain towards them an attitude not only of peace, but, if possible, of kindness; and it is for them to determine whether we shall do so or not; and whether commerce, the great pacificator of earth, is to connect us as producers, manufacturers, and consumers, in future friendly relations.  If folly, wickedness, or pride, shall preclude the hope of peace, they may at once rear up difficulties in our path, leading at once to what I confess I regard and dread as one of the greatest calamities that can befall a nation—civil war; a civil war embracing equally North and South.  But, sir, be our difficulties what they may, we stand forth a united people to grapple with and to conquer them.  Our willingness to shed our blood in this cause is the highest proof we can offer of the sincerity of our convictions; and I warn, nay, I implore you, not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bourbons, and mistake a nation for a faction; for the people of the South, as one man, declare that, sink or swim, live or die, they will not, as freemen, submit to the degradation of a constrained existence under a violated Constitution.  But, sir, we desire to part from you in peace.  From the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons upon this continent to this hour, they have never, as Colonies or States, shed the blood of each other; and I trust we shall be spared this great calamity.  We seek not to war upon, or to conquer you ; and we know that you cannot conquer us.  Imbrue your hands in our blood, and the rains of a century will not wash from them the stain, while coming generations will weep for your wickedness and folly.

In thus leaving the Senate, and returning to my own State, to pursue with unfaltering head and heart that path, be it gloomy or bright, to which her honor and interest may lead, I cannot forbear the acknowledgment of the kindness and courtesy which I have ever received from many of the gentlemen of the Opposition; Senators to whom I am indebted for much that I shall cherish through life with pleasure, and toward whom I entertain none but sentiments of kindness and respect.  And I trust, sirs, that when we next confront each other, whether at this bar or that of the just God, who knows the hearts of all, our lips shall not have uttered a word, our hands shall not have committed an act, directed against the blood of our people. 

On this side of the Chamber, we leave, with profound regret, those whom we will cherish in our hearts, and whose names will be hallowed by our children.  One by one, we have seen the representatives of the true and fearless friends of the Constitution fall at our side, until hardly a forlorn hope remains; and whatever may be our destiny, the future, with all of life’s darker memories, will be brightened by the recollection of their devotion to the true principles of our Government, and of that wealth of head and heart in their intercourse with us which has endeared them to us and to ours forever.

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*The following is the protest referred to in Mr. Yulee's remarks, and which was presented in the Senate by Mr. Hunter on the 14th of August, 1850 with a motion for leave to have it spread upon the Journal of the Senate:

We, the undersigned Senators, deeply impressed with the importance of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of the responsibility under which we are acting, respectfully submit the following protest against the bill admitting California as a State into this Union, and request that it may be entered upon the Journal of the Senate.  We feel that it is not enough to have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught with mischief to the Union and the States which we represent, with all the resources of argument which we possessed, but that it is also due to ourselves, the people whose interests have been intrusted to our care, and to posterity, which, even in its most distant generations, may feel its consequences, to leave, in whatever form may be most solemn and enduring, a memorial of the opposition which we have made to this measure, and of the reasons by which we have been governed.  Upon the pages of a Journal which the Constitution requires to be kept so long as the Senate may have an existence, we desire to place the reasons upon which we are willing to be judged by generations living and yet to come, for our opposition to a bill whose consequences may be so durable and portentous as to make it an object of deep interest to all who may come after us.

We have dissented from this bill because it gives the sanction of law, and thus imparts validity of the unauthorized action of a portion of the inhabitants of California, by which an odious discrimination is made against the property of the fifteen slaveholding States of the Union, who are thus deprived of that position of equality which the Constitution so manifestly designs, and which constitutes the only sure and stable foundation upon which this Union can repose.

Because the right of the slaveholding States to a common and equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union has been defeated by a system of measures which, without the authority of precedent, of law, or of the Constitution, were manifestly contrived for that purpose, and which Congress must sanction and adopt, should this bill become a law.  In sanctioning this system of measures, this Government will admit that the inhabitants of its Territories, whether permanent or transient, and whether lawfully or unlawfully occupying the same, may form a State without the previous authority of law; without even the partial security of a territorial organization formed by Congress; without any legal census or other sufficient evidence of their possessing the number of citizens necessary to authorize the representation which they may claim, and without any of those safeguards about the ballot-box which can only be provided by law, and which are necessary to ascertain the true sense of a people.  It will admit, too, that Congress, having refused to provide a government except upon the condition of excluding slavery by law, the executive branch of this Government may, at its own discretion, invite such inhabitants to meet in convention under such rules as it or its agents may prescribe, and to form a constitution affecting not only their own rights, but those also of fifteen States of the Confederacy, by including territory, with the purpose of excluding those States from its enjoyment, and without regard to the natural fitness of boundary, or any of the considerations which should properly determine the limits of a State.  It will also admit that the convention thus called into existence by the Executive may be paid by him out of the funds of the United States without the sanction of Congress, in violation not only of the plain provisions of the Constitution, but of those principles of obvious propriety which would forbid any act calculated to make that convention dependent upon it; and last, but not least, in the series of measures which this Government must adopt, and sanction in passing this bill, is the release of the authority of the United States by the Executive alone to a Government thus formed, and not presenting even sufficient evidence of its having the assent of a majority of the people for whom it was designed.  With a view of all these considerations, the undersigned are constrained to believe that this Government could never be brought to admit a State presenting itself under such circumstances, if it were not for the purpose of excluding the people of the slaveholding States from all opportunity of settling with their property in that Territory.

Because, to vote for a bill passed under such circumstances, would be to agree to a principle which may exclude forever hereafter, as it does now, the States which we represent, from all enjoyment of the common territory of the Union—a principle which destroys the equal rights of their constituents, the equality of their States in the Confederacy, the equal dignity of those whom they represent as men and as citizens in the eye of the law, and their equal title to the protection of the Government and the Constitution.

Because the admission of California as a State into the Union without any previous reservation assented to by her of the public domain, might involve an actual surrender of that domain to, or at all events places its future disposal at the mercy of that State, as no reservation in the bill can be binding upon her until she assents to it, and as her dissent “hereafter” would in no manner affect or impair the act of her admission.

Because all the propositions have been rejected which have been made to obtain either a recognition of the right of the slaveholding States to a common enjoyment of all the territory of the United States, or to a fair division of that Territory between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States of the Union; every effort having failed which has been made to obtain a fair division of the Territory proposed to be brought in as the State of California.

But lastly, we dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest against its passage, because, in sanctioning measures so contrary to former precedent, to obvious policy, to the spirit and intent of the Constitution of the United States, for the purpose of excluding the slaveholding States from the Territory thus to be erected into a state, this Government in effect declares that the exclusion of slavery from the territory of the United States is an object so high and important as to justify a disregard, not only of all the principles of sound policy, but also of the Constitution itself.  Against this conclusion we must now and forever protest, as it is destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose rights have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and equality of the States which we represent, and must lead, if persisted in, to the dissolution of that Confederacy in which the slaveholding States have never sought more than equality, and in which they will not be content to remain with less.

Senate Chamber, August 13, 1850.