alan polk
2nd Lieutenant
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2012
The Holly Springs Gazette, January 18, 1850
Below: Quitman Speech Continued-
To Quitman and other Southerners, California’s actions were not in accordance to “the general principles of the United States,” which, according to Quitman, is also a precondition of meeting the elements of the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty.
General Riley was a military officer only, yet he assumed the office Civil Governor of California. His office, Quitman States, was not created by Congress. Under this title, nevertheless, he ordered a convention to be held under Mexican law, which, by prohibiting slavery, deprived the States of their sovereignty.
Riley, according to Quitman, also held “an election without legal officers to conduct it and make returns, where persons of all nations, whether citizens or not, naturalized or not, should vote anyway.”
Compromise only Work Against the South
Governor Quitman adds California’s action to the list of other grievances suffered by the South throughout its membership in the Union:
“At the formation of the Confederation, about three-fourths of the territory of the Union belonged to the present slave States. In the spirit of conciliation, and for the sake of peace, we consented to a deprivation of our rights, first by the Ordinance of 1787, in reference to the Northwestern Territory, and secondly, by submission to the Missouri Compromise.”
“Here, we supposed, that the spirit of aggression would stop, and we might rest quietly, south of the line agreed on by that compromise. But in this, we are disappointed. This fell spirit now demands our exclusion from every foot of territory belonging to the Union.”
Violation of the Compact
“It is a universally admitted principle, that when one of the parties to a compact, without the consent of the other, disregards, and violates that compact, the other ceases to be bound to the performance of the obligations into which he entered in its formation.”
“The non-slaveholding States have refused to abide by the terms of the Missouri Compromise, and the slave States are therefore absolved from the observance of the stipulations into which they entered, and should, at once, fall back on their original constitutional rights, by which they held an equal right with all the citizens of the United States, to remove to, and settle with their property in any of the territories of the United States.”
Compromise Leads to Aggression
“We have learned by bitter experience, the consequences of compromising our rights. Instead of peace, it only invites renewed aggression. Not only are we denied a settlement in the present free States with our property, (a right we have never refused to our Northern brethren, who wish to settle among us,) but we cannot travel through their territories without danger of being robbed of our slave property.”
These, according to Quitman, are the results of the South’s concessions. Because of this, he believes the South should “never consent to any restrictions to the extension of our southern institutions, from any portions of the territories of the Union.”
Quitman Predicts Bloodshed
“The sprit of fanaticism and aggression will never be stayed by compromises; but will continue its work of destruction, until the sacred ties which have heretofore bound us together in one great and glorious brotherhood, shall be drenched in blood, and the glorious temple of human liberty, reared by our Fathers, and consecrated by their blood, shall tumble into ruins, exposed to the jeers and taunts of the minions of despotism.”
————
Twelve years later, in 1862, the country was fully engaged in Civil War against one another, as predicted by Quitman. That same year, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech wherein he stated that “without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.”
A Memphis newspaper responded to Lincoln’s above quote in much the same manner as Quitman might have. (This article was posted by forum member @lelliott19 on another thread and which I post below.).
“Slavery in this country,” the Memphis newspaper notes, “is older than either the Constitution or the government, and it is a species of property which the government was instituted to protect and not destroy. But for the guarantee of such protection, the government never could have formed, and it was the withholding or denial of such protection that mainly induced the secession of the slave States.”
The Memphis paper ends by stating: “The government failed to perform the ends and aims for which it was created, and was, of course, no longer entitled to obedience or respect.”
End
———
Below: Quitman Speech Continued-
To Quitman and other Southerners, California’s actions were not in accordance to “the general principles of the United States,” which, according to Quitman, is also a precondition of meeting the elements of the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty.
General Riley was a military officer only, yet he assumed the office Civil Governor of California. His office, Quitman States, was not created by Congress. Under this title, nevertheless, he ordered a convention to be held under Mexican law, which, by prohibiting slavery, deprived the States of their sovereignty.
Riley, according to Quitman, also held “an election without legal officers to conduct it and make returns, where persons of all nations, whether citizens or not, naturalized or not, should vote anyway.”
Compromise only Work Against the South
Governor Quitman adds California’s action to the list of other grievances suffered by the South throughout its membership in the Union:
“At the formation of the Confederation, about three-fourths of the territory of the Union belonged to the present slave States. In the spirit of conciliation, and for the sake of peace, we consented to a deprivation of our rights, first by the Ordinance of 1787, in reference to the Northwestern Territory, and secondly, by submission to the Missouri Compromise.”
“Here, we supposed, that the spirit of aggression would stop, and we might rest quietly, south of the line agreed on by that compromise. But in this, we are disappointed. This fell spirit now demands our exclusion from every foot of territory belonging to the Union.”
Violation of the Compact
“It is a universally admitted principle, that when one of the parties to a compact, without the consent of the other, disregards, and violates that compact, the other ceases to be bound to the performance of the obligations into which he entered in its formation.”
“The non-slaveholding States have refused to abide by the terms of the Missouri Compromise, and the slave States are therefore absolved from the observance of the stipulations into which they entered, and should, at once, fall back on their original constitutional rights, by which they held an equal right with all the citizens of the United States, to remove to, and settle with their property in any of the territories of the United States.”
Compromise Leads to Aggression
“We have learned by bitter experience, the consequences of compromising our rights. Instead of peace, it only invites renewed aggression. Not only are we denied a settlement in the present free States with our property, (a right we have never refused to our Northern brethren, who wish to settle among us,) but we cannot travel through their territories without danger of being robbed of our slave property.”
These, according to Quitman, are the results of the South’s concessions. Because of this, he believes the South should “never consent to any restrictions to the extension of our southern institutions, from any portions of the territories of the Union.”
Quitman Predicts Bloodshed
“The sprit of fanaticism and aggression will never be stayed by compromises; but will continue its work of destruction, until the sacred ties which have heretofore bound us together in one great and glorious brotherhood, shall be drenched in blood, and the glorious temple of human liberty, reared by our Fathers, and consecrated by their blood, shall tumble into ruins, exposed to the jeers and taunts of the minions of despotism.”
————
Twelve years later, in 1862, the country was fully engaged in Civil War against one another, as predicted by Quitman. That same year, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech wherein he stated that “without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.”
A Memphis newspaper responded to Lincoln’s above quote in much the same manner as Quitman might have. (This article was posted by forum member @lelliott19 on another thread and which I post below.).
“Slavery in this country,” the Memphis newspaper notes, “is older than either the Constitution or the government, and it is a species of property which the government was instituted to protect and not destroy. But for the guarantee of such protection, the government never could have formed, and it was the withholding or denial of such protection that mainly induced the secession of the slave States.”
The Memphis paper ends by stating: “The government failed to perform the ends and aims for which it was created, and was, of course, no longer entitled to obedience or respect.”
End
———
Last edited: