Mr. Spratt, at the
close of the address of the Commissioner from Alabama, Mr. Bullock,
spoke in substance as follows:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:
I have been
commissioned by the State of South Carolina to present to your
consideration certain important acts of the people of that State.
In the causes of that action it was supposed you also had an interest;
and that you might be officially advised of them, and that you might
also learn their scope and purport, it was thought proper to send a
Commissioner, specially charged to that object. In that capacity
I have now the honor to appear before you, and would bring to your
notice the measures contained in the papers which I have now the honor
to present.
The first contains
the Ordinance by which South Carolina has repealed her Ordinance
ratifying the Constitution of the United States, and has assumed the
rights and powers of an independent State. The other contains the
plan for the formation of a Southern Confederacy, and when I shall have
read them I will make them the subject of a few remarks.
Mr. Spratt here read the papers referred to.
Resuming, he said,
with respect to the first of these Ordinances, I will have nothing to
say at present, but will address attention to the plan of government
presented in the second. The presentation of this plan by the
Convention of South Carolina to the Convention of this State, is
obviously based upon the assumption that Florida would place herself in
independence of the General Government. It would have been
improper and unbecoming else, and from the promptness with which
Florida called her Convention, and the spirit manifested by her people,
it was in fact thought not to be improbable that she would have passed
her ordinance before I could have the honor to appear before you.
As, however, you are in Convention, and have expressed the wish to hear
from your sister State, and as you exhibit, also, the purpose at an
early day to perform that high act of political sovereignty, it is
still not improper I should execute my trust, and bring more distinctly
to your perception the precise plan which, in that event, it has seemed
to our people would best and in the promptest way accomplish the object
of a government for the seceding States.
Among our people
there were two opinions as to the most proper plan of proceeding to
this object. There were those who were much impressed with the
importance of an organized Government before the first of March.
It was thought that the Black Republican party at the North might, upon
the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, attempt to put in force their threats
of aggression on the sovereignties of the South. It was thought
that to attain that object of a speedy Government no other plan was
possible than that of taking as its basis the laws and Constitution of
the United States. That such laws and Constitution gave us a
Government formed to our hand, and one on which, from experience of its
operation, we could have no fears when in the hands of Southern
men. Then there were others equally impressed with the importance
of a Government at an early day who were yet averse to the
reappearance in a Southern Confederacy of all the features of the
Federal Constitution. They objected to many of its provisions,
and among them to the provision that the slave states should have but
three-fifths of a representation in the Federal Congress; to that by
which it was possible to render, by discriminating duties, the
interests of one section tributary to the advancement of another.
It were unnecessary to mention more---and they found that, if that
Constitution, without modification, be adopted as the basis of
temporary government; that interests would aggregate around it; that
border states might come in, which having few slaves, would have an
interest in perpetuating the present basis of representation.
That other States might come in which, inclined to manufacture, would
have an interest in perpetuating the protective policy. That
interests and individuals might become combined to protract the offices
assumed under such government, and that thus supported, it might defy
the power of those States who now call it into being. Such were
the various views entertained upon this subject, and those views it was
attempted to harmonize in the measure now presented to your
consideration. Those who favored a Provisional Government were
permitted to accomplish their object in the provision that delegates
shall be sent to a Convention of the people of seceding States, with
the
power to adopt as the basis of a Government the Laws and Constitution
of the United States. While those who wished to be assured that
the Provisional Government should not become permanent, and to
necessarily perpetuate the objectional features of the present
Constitution, have accomplished their object in the provision that the
same delegates so calling the Provisional Government into existence,
shall go immediately on and make the modifications and adopt the forms
necessary to a permanent Government, which, when adopted by the
Conventions of the several States, should supersede the temporary
Government, and thenceforth embody the organic laws and political
structure for the Confederacy of the South.
Such is the measure I
have the honor to present. If adopted, it will give us an
organized Government before the first of March. The people of
Texas, the last State calling a Convention, will meet on the 25th of
January instant, and within ten days thereafter her delegates may meet
us in Convention. That Convention may be organized by the 11th of
February, ordering then an election for Electors for President and
Vice-President, and Senators and Representatives to the Congress of a
Southern Confederacy. These officers may be elected by the 23rd
of February, and repairing at once to the Federal Capital, wherever
that may be, may enter at once upon a Government as perfect in theory
and efficient in practice as any that by possibility may oppose
us. With respect to the time and place of meeting, nothing has
been said, upon the supposition that Florida would be next out of the
Union. It was proposed that Florida should state her wishes upon
this subject, to which, if consistent with the object contemplated, I
was instructed to assent, and as it was supposed that these
appointments
would be made with reference to the convenience of other States, it was
not questioned but that they would meet with their assent, and also to
be final on the subject matter.
And now, Mr.
President, and gentlemen of the Convention, having discharged myself of
the special object of my mission, I might be relieved from trespassing
further upon your attention, but as the action of my State has been
questioned, and as in this movement, so fraught with interest to the
people of our State, it is important that the most perfect
understanding should exist, it is not improper, perhaps, that I should
dwell an instant on that subject. It is not that I would
extenuate that action of my State, nor is it that I would assume there
can be any misconceptionof our motives by the people of this
State. You are too nearly related to us to misinterpret us, and
your ready action has evinced too much of zeal in that cause to which
my State is now devoted to allow me room to question your sympathy in
her movements; but if no question has been made, it were well to avoid,
by proper presentation, the possibility of its occurrence.
Of the sufficiency of
our causes for action but little need be said. You also exhibit
the sense of a sufficient cause of action in assembling here. It
was certain that we were under a common government with a people
implacably hostile to our interests and our institutions. It was
certain that they possessed the power to control the legislative action
of the General Government, at least within the limits of the
Constitution, and thus, therefore, it was certain that, to the extent
of its constitutional power, the legislature of the Union would
discriminate between the sections, and that our section could have only
those advantages , which, from the letter of the Constitution, it could
extract. Nor was that all. The Constitution itself had
become plastic in the hands of the superior legislative power that had
moulded it to forms that were never contemplated by its framers, and in
its letter and spirit it had been violated. The letter of the
compact had been distinctly violated in the refusal of the North to
surrender slaves and fugitives from justice. The import had been
violated in the navigation laws, the protective policy and in the
assumption of the power to regulate the institution of domestic
slavery. Nor was this all. In further acts of violence they
might be checked by the veto of the Executive or by the adjudication of
the courts. To avoid this they had grasped the one; they
declared the purpose soon to grasp the other. An instrument had
been put forward for the presidency, for reason only of his hostility
to the South. He has been elected for that reason. They
have
declared the purpose to remodel the Supreme Court, and make
subserviency to their views the condition of appointment, and thus
therefore the revolution was complete. We had concurred with
other States in the formation of a confederacy, the powers of that
confederacy had been usurped by the North, and had been placed in the
hands of a sectional majority. The usurpation was as complete and
perfect as if it had been made by a single man. A single despot,
while he would make every effort, to fortify himself in power, would
yet be impartial between the different sections of the country, poised
upon the apex of the State he would have no motives of interest to
advance one section and depress the other; but with the despotism of a
sectional majority, we could have no such security. There could
be no such impartiality in the exercise of power. A sense of
sectional interest would control them. That interest would become
the measure of their infliction, and a despotism so unmitigated as this
would be never yet has tasked the endurance of a people, and to such a
despotism we could not submit. There were many reasons why the
cause of liberty was especially dear to the people of our State.
There was scarce a man within the limits of the State, within whose
veins there did not flow the blood of men who had periled life for its
achievement. There was scarce a spot within her limits that had
not been watered with the blood of patriots who had perished to defend
it. It was not the Union, as some suppose, but liberty, that
inspired the efforts of our fathers. The Union was an
after-thought. The battles of Lexington, Concord, Bunker’s Hill
and Fort Moultrie had been fought before the Declaration of
Independence, and victory and peace were both achieved before the
inauguration of our present Union. It was not, therefore, the
Union, but liberty---not the institution, but the power of choosing
institution---not the temple, but the spirit of human right for whose
cultivation that temple was erected; and it were a perversion and a
wrong to substitute the idol, and to claim for that the tribute of
eternal veneration. Instead of its being the injunction of our
fathers that at all events we should preserve existing institutions, it
was the precept of their lives that for proper causes we should break
them down. Bound to England by the most endearing ties, by the
memory of a common ancestry, by affection, and by the dread of her
imposing power, they broke away. They aroused themselves from the
lap of a luxurious abundance---they tore themselves from the embrace of
relatives and friends---they dared the vengeance of the strongest power
upon earth, and gave their homes to the flames and their flesh to the
eagles, rather than submit to a union inconsistent with the principles
of human right, with which they were commissioned; and can it be that
they have left it for an eternal precept that in like condition we are
not to follow their example? It surely cannot. And if when
imperiled liberty again invokes us, we dare not spring to its defence,
it were impious longer to desecrate the names of our great fathers by
simulating a sentiment of veneration for the deeds of their
achievement. Such being the condition in which we were placed, we
could not but conceive the cause sufficient for our action.
In other sections of
the South, however, it is urged, we should have waited for an overt
act. It was assumed that the administration of Mr. Lincoln might
be less perilous in fact than it seemed to be in promise, and it is
contended, therefore, that we should have waited its results; but of
this suggestion we could not see the force. The question was not
as to the ills of despotism, but as to the fact of despotism. To
slaves it may be a question whether the repetition of the lash can be
endured, but to freemen the only question is as to the assumption to
inflict the lash, and that determined, it could little matter whether
there should be one lash more or less. But there could be no
motive for waiting, except in the hope that aggression might turn back,
and of that, in our conception, there was not the slightest
possibility. There has, I fear, been a misconception as to the
nature of this controversy. There seems to be the impression that
aggression has been voluntary, and that with a better conception of the
merits of our cause, the people of the North could forego their
movements to encroach upon us---but it is not so. It is a great
fact, important to be understood, that, properly considered, the
contest is not between the North and the South, or between the people
of the North and the people of the South, but it is between the forms
of society that has become established—the one at the South and the
other at the North. Within this government two societies have become
developed, as distinct in form and constitution as any two beings in
animated nature. The one is the society of one race, the other of two
races. The one is based on free labor, the other on slave labor. The
one is braced together by but the two great relations of life—the
relations of husband and wife, and parent and child; the other by the
three relations of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and
slave. The one embodies the social principle that equality is the right
of man; the other, the social principle that equality is not the right
of man, but the right of equals only. The one, embodying the social
principle that equality is the right of man, has expanded upon the
horizontal plane of a democracy; the other, embodying the social
principle, that equality is not the right of man, but the right of
equals only, has assumed to itself the rounded form of a social
aristocracy. In the one there is universal suffrage; in the other the
suffrage only of the ruling race. In the one, therefore, the power of
government is in the lower strata of society; in the other it is in
only the upper. In the one, when pressure comes to be intense, the mass
must surely rise, and so the ship of State be turned bottom upwards. In
the other the ship of State, ballasted by a disfranchised class, must
ever sail erect and onward. Such are some of the differences that
distinguish the two societies which have been formed within the limits
of this Union, and the contest was inevitable. It was not of option,
but of necessity. There is and must be an irrepressible conflict
between them, and it were best to realize the truth. Each had the right
to a government expressive of its nature. Each was forced to struggle
for such a government, and under a common government each must strive
for its appropriation. Of two lobsters in a single shell, the natural
expansion of the one becomes inconsistent with the existence of the
other. An eagle and a fish, held together by an indissoluble bond of
union, can never, for any reason of its propriety, concur in any common
course of movement. The eagle, however minded to do so, could not
share the element suited to the fish, and live. The fish, however
minded to do so, could not share the element suited to the bird, and
live. Each, in the natural assertion of itself, must war upon the
other, and one must perish that the other may survive, unless the bonds
of an unnatural union shall be cut between them. And so the North must
war upon the South. Having the power to do so, it must assert itself
through the forms of a common government, and dis-affirm the nature of
an antagonist society. The orator, to be heard, must speak against
slavery. The preacher, to preserve his congregation, must preach
against slavery. The candidate, to be elected, must promise to
act against slavery. The officer, to retain his office, must
redeem the pledges of the candidate. All must yield to the
tendencies of an antagonist society, and aggression must roll on.
The leaders, so called, are but the exponents of the movement, and are
as powerless to control it as the reeds that float upon the current;
and in the face of facts like these, when the purpose of aggression is
declared—when the revolution is accomplished—when despotism is become
established and when it is urged on by a social power, which is no more
able to restrain itself than waters can forbear to flow to lower
levels; it were simplicity to wait for “overt acts” and in such
momentous exigency it were madness to forego a moment longer the action
necessary to emancipation.
But it is said that
we should have waited for the concurrence of other States; yet of this
we could not see the force. We could act alone, but of ourselves, we
could not co-operate with other States. If inclined to co-operate with
us, they could join us, if not, we could not co-operate with them by
waiting. And it is perhaps sufficient to relieve us from the
imputation of having put ourselves improperly forward in this movement,
that from every section of the South—from Maryland and Virginia even—we
have been urged, again and again, by all classes and conditions of men,
to move forward intrepid and alone, and trust that other States would
join us. There is no public man in our State who has not received
scores of urgent letters to that end, and we ourselves were painfully
oppressed with the conviction that such a movement upon our part was
necessary to the just assertion of the Southern cause.
We
have never doubted
but that the fortunes of the South would ultimately be vindicated in
some form of action. We could not doubt but that aggression would
roll on to action that could not be endured. We knew that the men
of the South were too instructed, and too brave, to submit to the
severities of final subjugation; and we knew that at some point or
other they must strike; but it greatly mattered what should be the form
of their resistance. If States should lead, and give the imprimata of
authority to acts in vindication of our rights, there was ground to
hope that the issues would be peaceful, or, if not, that the end would
be achieved without an unnecessary expenditure of life. But, if
States should not lead, and men should be forced to outrage by
aggression. we could only hope to wade to victory through the
calamities and crimes of civil war. It was, then, a matter of the last
importance whether the action should be by States or by men; whether we
should inaugurate a political, or merely physical, resistance; and as,
therefore, it was a matter of the last importance that we should act by
State, it was necessary that we should comply with the conditions with
which a State could act; and with such conditions it was difficult to
comply. To so act, it was necessary that there should be a popular
majority in favor of such action, nnd it is rare that such a popular
majority can occur. To that end it was necessary that the majority of a
people stiould be instructed to the importance of the issue It is also
necessary that they should have the courage to disregard the perils of
the movement; and such occurrences rarely happen. In fact, I know of no
instance in the history of the world, in which a people have
deliberately resolved upon an act of political disolution. Even
our fathers did not, and blood had been shed from Massachusetts to
Georgia before there was the political intrepidity to assert their
independence. And so it ever has been, that in States as in men. the
conservatisms of life have been stronger than the motives to destroy
it. The stimulant of physical collision has been necessary to
political movement, and blood has been ever required to the baptism of
a regenerated nation. But in South Carolina we thought there was the
chance of political action. For years we have been without the
distractions of party issues—for years our attentions have been fixed
upon the aggressions of the General Government. Our readiness to
detect the danger was greater, perhaps, than that of other States; and
if any State could ever hope to act upon a political issue, we could
hope to act upon the issues presented by the election of Mr.
Lincoln. But there were also fortuitous circumstances that
concurred to aid us. It was a fortuitous circumstance that the
Federal officers within our State were too spirited to hold commissions
upon the implications of a willingness to perform the service
aggression might exact, and upon the incident of that election were
ready to renounce them. It was a fortuitous circumstance that our
legislature was in session, and was ready to respond to the feeling of
our people. It was a fortuitous circumstance that no other event had
occurred to preoccupy the public mind; and so it was, that as the
feelings of our people became aroused that, as amid these
circumstances, there gleamed the hope of political action, we sprang
to the occasion. We pressed the measure onward. We did all we could to
inspire the popular heart to the great achievement, and we yet believe
that in so acting only, was there a possibility of success if, instead
of acting for ourselves, we had named some future time for the
co-operation of the other States, we believe the measure would have
failed. We believe that other Southern states themselves would
have looked upon it as a backing down, and would have lost the courage
necessary to concurrence; and I myself believe that if the State of
South Carolina had stated some distant day for future action, to see if
other States would join us, and had thus allowed the public feeling to
subside, she herself would have lost the spirit of adventure, and would
have quailed from the shock of this great controversy. But we did not
do so. We pressed sternly onward, trusting that other States, with a
generous confidence befitting the occasion, would properly conceive our
motives.
And now, having
braved the adversary, having presented ourselves as the first object of
his vengeance; having offered our State as the battleground for
Southern rights; having arrogated nothing more than a pre-eminence of
danger, and having erected a standard around which other States may
rally, or, if not, having erected at least one nationality under the
authority of which the powers of slavery may stand in that fearful
contest for existence which at some time or other was bound to come, we
cannot realize that in any sense we have been wanting in respect to
other States. It has rather been our hope that we would aid them in
their movements, and that they would be only the more ready to share
the peril of the contest when thus assured of our perfect willingness
even in advance, to bear our full proportions of its dangers.
Such are the
considerations, imperfectly stated, which have induced the action of my
State—I have dwelt upon them longer perhaps than was necessary; but am
grateful for the indulgence with which you have seemed to overlook the
error, and reverting again to the especial object of my mission, 1 have
but to add, that if you should happen to pass your ordinance of
secession before the action to that end of any other State, it will be
for you to indicate your wishes as to the time and place for the
Convention of seceding States, and these I will forward to
Commissioners
at other States for their concurrence. And in view of the probability
that you may have some purpose to express in this regard, I will wait a
few days longer for any communication you may have to make upon the
subject.
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