DEFENCE OF PRESIDENT FILLMORE,

BY

HON. JAMES BROOKS,
(OF NEW YORK,)

«

BEFORE A MEETING- OF THE AMERICAN PARTY, HELD AT CINCINNATI,
FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 30, 1856.

Reported by T. Shinkwin, of Cincinnati.

JOSEPH SMITH, ESQ., IH THE CHAIR.

Mr. Brooks, on being introduced by the Chairman, and warmly wel-
comed, addressed the meeting as follows :

J

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:

I thank you heartily for this kind reception, in a community where I
never before have had the honor to appear in public

;
and, unaffectedly,

1 may say, I feel oppressed by the kind announcement which my breth-
ren of the press, sympathizing with our common profession, have made
at my coming here, in inducing you to expect something from mo, ^
plain man, untrained in public speaking, utterly beyond my power to
give. I am here, from the banks of the Hudson, on this Ohio, to in-
quire why it is, that in some parts of your State, there is an opposition
raised among men, acting with you in some things, to an eminent citizen
at my own State, whom we have always delighted to honor, and whom,
on all occasions whatever, that a proper opportunity offered, we have
honored before all other men, and whom, as the opportunity offers, once
more, I doubt not, we shall honor more than ever. (Applause.) Who
he is, you know as well as I know. What he has been, is scattered all
over the modern records of his country. The successor, the lineal suc-
cessor of the principles of Washington, and Madison, and Clay, and Web-
ster, whatever their principles may have been, their acts may have been.



c

ffl

(
2

)

his have been, and his will be
;
and if these principles cannot be upheld,

or such men be elected as Mr. Fillmore to uphold them, the time has

come when our institutions and our country are in peril of wreck. It is

eharged, indeed, against this eminent citizen, whose honor is untainted,

and against whom, as a man, nothing can be said, in public or private

life, that he is connected with a party bigoted and fanatic, hostile to the

rights of conscience, as pledged in the constitution of our common coun-

try, and hostile to men on the ground of their religion, and proscriptive

of them because of that religion, and that, if he, and his friends, had

power, they would draw around the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a Chinese

wall, which the waters of the ocean could never overleap in the tides

of distant emigration, and that, if he and his had their way, this would

be but an exclusive, proscriptive land, like that of the Celestial Empire,

so called, shutting off all outside barbarians. It is alleged, too, though a

Northern man, educated in a Northern State, among the free schools and

the freemen of these our Northern States, that this eminent citizen is dis-

loyal and unfaithful to that North, recreant to the very soil on which he

treads, traitorous to the institutions of that birth-land, and with a face

but made of dough or clay, to be moulded by any and every Southern

potter. These are great and .grave charges against any man, greater and

graver when levelled against an eminent man, and I come here from his

own State to protect him from them. If he cannot be protected, let him

go, let him fall. I stand here to protect no bigot, no fanatic, no Northern

traitor, for I scorn them all. But whence do these charges come against

the American party, and against this great pilot now standing by the

rudder of this American party, and sailing under the American flag!

From the batteries of Europe, on the one side, charging him with bigot-

ry arid fanaticism, and from the batteries of Africa, on the other, charg-

ing him with disloyalty to his country. Millard Fillmore a bigot and

^fanatic, and against the rights of conscience ! The American party bigot-

ed and fanatic, and against the rights of conscience ! Sir, we make no

war—you, who are Americans, or we, who are friends of the American
party—none of us make war upon any man’s religion, no matter what
may be its forms. I speak on my own responsibility, but in the spirit of

those with whom I act, when I say that, so far as I am concerned, I care

not what may be a man’s religion, provided he is faithful to the institu-

tions of this country. I make no war on Catholics of any kind—Lutheran
Catholics, Catholics of the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Greek

Catholics, or any species of Catholics whatsoever. I have my own reli-

gious opinions, and I give every man full liberty to have his own. It is

not on the religion of men we make war—religion of any shape or form
—but upon the politics of men whose principles are not our principles of
political administration, or whose principles are alien to the institutions of

our country. (Applause.) I know it is charged you are politically hos-

tile to the Roman Catholic because of his religion. But I say before the

public here, and I think I may say it in behalf of the American party of

the Union, that, as political men, we care not for the religion of any per-

son, not even for the Roman Catholic religion. We have not interfered,



and we do not wish to irterfere with the rights and privileges of any sect.

Let the Roman Catholic, if he pleases, entertain his own ideas of transub

stantiation : he is welcome to them all. Let the priest, if he pleases, in-

dulge in celibacy, and eschew all married life. All I can say is, that I

pity him with my whole heart, if he practises what he preaches. (Laugh-

ter.) Let all who are disposed, man, woman, or child, worship and adore

the Virgin Mary, or believe in the immaculate conception. It matters

but little to me, as a public man. They may have been so born, so

trained, and so brought up. Nay, worship of virgins is an inborn in-

stinct of the human heart. All men worship virgins—not Virgin Marys
alone, but virgins with all sorts of Christian names. (Laughter.) When

I see a virgin from the pencil of a Raphael, or a Titian, or a Guido, I can

scarcely help falling down and worshipping it myself—as a work of art.
(Continued laughter and applause.) On none of these things do we

make war, not even on the secrets of the confessional. If there be father

or husband who permits his wife or daughter to pour out the secrets of his

family, or the loves of their own tender hearts into the ears of the sympa-

thizing, unmarried priest, I might only wish I was the confessor. (Re-

newed laughter.) All these things are nothing whatever to me—noth-
ing whatever to the American party. Let a man be Jew, Gentile, or any

thing else : all we require of him is fidelity to the principles and institu-

tions of his country. Other Catholics than the Roman Catholics have

emancipated themselves from all connection with the Romish Church and

the Roman Hierarchy. The leading principle of the Revolution of 1776

was independence—free and absolute independence—from all European
thraldom, in every shape or form. When, in 1783, the treaty of peace

established our American Independence, the closest connection existed

between the Catholics of the Church of England in the United States and

the Hierarchy of England, all under the Archbishop of Canterbury
;
but

then there was an independent movement among the United States

Catholics of the Church of England to declare themselves free and inde-

pendent of the English Hierarchy
;
and as our political fathers, in their

political declaration of independence, declared themselves free and inde-

pendent, so the fathers of that church, in their religious organization, de-

clared that their forms of service, their ordinations, their rites and rituals

should be made in the United States of America. Thus, too, with the

large and powerful denomination of the Methodist church. John Wesley

was the head, the father of that church : from him all ordination pro-

ceeded
;
and even after the treaty of peace, he, beloved and endeared to

the hearts of all Methodists, claimed for his British church the power in

America, it had hitherto exercised when connected with Englaail. “ But,”

said the Methodists of America, “ we are independent politically, and will

be religiously. Our church organization shall no longer come from John

Wesley, but proceed spontaneously, free-born, from the soil of the United

States and as we politically broke loose from England, thus religiously

the Methodists broke loose too. So, too, with the Lutherans of this

country. But the Roman Catholics, notwithstanding these bright exam-

ples thus set by other religious denominations, have deemed and declared



(4)

it a part of their religion, or rather of their politics, to keep up a connec-

tion with a power and authority, spiritual and temporal, over four thou-

sand miles from this city of Cincinnati—a power and authority on the
banks of the Tiber, amid the ruins of imperial Rome—where their God is
not the Almighty God of heaven, nor their heaven that blue, arched

canopy, studded with stars above, but a heaven of their own, amid the

pictures and statuary of the Vatican, where some man—mere man—the
self-styled and self-constituted vicegerent of the God of heaven, as if the

successor of the Pagan Jupiter, rolls out thunder from his Olympus, only,

however, in paper—bulls and excommunications. (Loud applause.) The
head of the Roman Church is thus not here in these United States of

America, but afar off on the banks of the Tiber. Its power, its authority,

its dignity, its representative of God on earth, to use its own impious as-

sertion, is not here, but in that distant imperial Rome.

“But,” say the Roman Catholics, “granting all this to be true, the

Pope is only the head of our church, our mere spiritual father. We look
up to him only as a man, holding the keys of St. Peter

;
he is nothing to

us in a temporal point of view, and we are bound in all temporal matters

by the law and constitution of our country
;
we can be good citizens

here, though subjects in spirit of this imperial and Papal Rome.” Now.

I have to say in reply to all this, that allegiance is a tie that does not

admit of this species of division. No man can thus serve two masters on

earth. Loyalty is that, which cannot be thus divided and subdivided

;

the heart, and the whole heart, must be given to one country under God,

and there can be no representative on earth whatever of that God. And,

as to dividing our allegiance, our loyalty to our country,—as to this
matter of two allegiances, which Roman Catholics claim and practise,

temporal for their country, and spiritual for the Pope, if I were to make

a choice of either, in order to govern all mankind, I would far prefer the

spiritual fidelity of my subjects to any temporal fidelity whatever. What

is temporal allegiance ? It is at best but the devotion of this body, this

skeleton of ours, this mere anatomy, this flesh and blood, food for worms,

and certain to be dust, the* consecration of these only to our country

!

But what is spiritual allegiance ? The allegiance of the soul, the spirit,

the inspiring, animating, vital spark of a man ! They claim the soul for

the Pope, and give the carcasS to their country ! But let the immortal

spirit be consecrated to our flag, our country, and the miserable body go

to the worms
!
(Cheers.)

I think, my friends, I draw no airy, incomprehensible lines in this

exposition of allegiance and its obligations. I see no reason why a good

Roman Catholic, faithful to the United States, should not give this coun-

try, as our Protestant citizens do, his whole allegiance. Apd, if any

Catholic of the Chuijch of Rome be within the sound of my voice, be

he Gallican Catholic, or of the full Papal Church, I say to him, abjuring

all foreign allegiance, temporal and spiritual, that I would as cheerfully

vote for him as for any other citizen in like circumstances
;
and I will

say, further, that when the Roman Catholics of this country shall estab-

lish here their hierarchy, here their church government, independent ot



all allegiance to Rome, abjure all Papal power, and cease to tremble

under Papal excommunications,—whenever they choose to have an
American Pope, all war will cease upon them from any American party.

It is further said, that the candidate we have nominated for the Presi-

dency, and the party who nominated him, are hostile to the foreigner as

an individual : that, therefore, we are bigoted and proscriptive—because
we dislike and hate the man, and that because of this we decline to share

with him our common institutions. This allegation is not true, neither

in spirit nor in substance : it is not true that we are hostile to the for-

eigner as a man. In all our veins, (we, who are of white, and not of the

African race,)—in all our veins flows European blood. We are proud
of our ancestry, all of us

;
we cling to it with love and affection, and if

we would divest ourselves of it, we could not. We are linked to Europe
by ten thousand ties and ten thousand affections. The names, the bones,

'the graves of our ancestors are there, and we have brought over those

names for ourselves, for our children, for our towns and our villages; so

that Europe, as it were, becomes daguerreotyped on the broad surface of

the United States. We have in no degree the hostility to the foreigner
that is entertained towards us and our institutions on the continent of

Europe by almost all classes of people. If I approach any State on the

continent of Europe, what is my treatment ? The stranger near the

Belize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, or off the coast of Sandy Hook,

is not examined by a passport officer, to ascertain the color of his hair,

the height of his form, the rotundity of his person, or general appearance
;

but if I should visit Berlin, Vienna, or Imperial Rome even, I should be

scanned all over, and only the more minutely, for being an American

citizen. The fact that the passport says, I am an American, implants the

character of suspicion upon me. The police dog me, and if the descrip-

tion is not identical between me and my passport, I may be subject to
many difficulties and troubles. If I were a mechanic, I should not be

admitted, in many parts of Europe, as all foreign mechanics are here,

into their workshops and manufactories without examination, the rules of

their guilds and corporations imposing on me various restraints before I

could enter into their mechanical arts, without extraordinary permission.

But here, every foundry and manufacturing shop are thrown wide open

to the foreigner. We give him a hearty welcome as a tradesman, and
in the higher arts, of design, of painting, of sculpture, of drawing, in which

our countrymen are little trained, we give them the superiority and lead

over our own people, till we can learn these arts. All these facts dis-

close no hostility, and they know it
;

for five hundred thousand of these

people annually for some years, until within the past year or two, have

come over to enjoy this hospitality. But when they ask more of us,

—

that we give to them rights and privileges we would not give to our own

wives and children, with whom we are dearly and tenderly connected,
they thus demand what we cannot give, in the right to vote. You live

here twenty-one years before you can vote

—

you
,
who are educated and

trained in the spirit of our laws, which Washington, and Madison, and

Franklin inspired

—

you
,
who studied them in the English language, in



your childhood, in your own school-books, and are thus better qualified

to exercise the rights of suffrage at twelve years, than nine-tenths of the

foreigners at thirty or forty. (Cheers.) But we, who will not let our
wives and daughters vote, no matter what their ages, are told we are

proscriptive, bigoted, and fanatic, because we wish to keep the foreigner

here, the full length of time we have to stay, or at least some longer time

than he has to stay at present, before he can vote, and thus become a

partner in our Government ! Our principles are laid down in the well-

known motto, which reveals every thing in Know-Nothingism or Ameri-

canism,—“ AMERICANS SHALL GOVERN AMERICA.” (Loud
and prolonged Cheers.)

Go on the banks of the Rhine, stand on the castellated peaks of tin t-
beautiful river—visit the Seine, the Po, or the Tiber, and ask Prussian,
Frenchman, Austrian, or Italian, to let you, an American, govern, and

the bayonet would, I think, quickly prick your sides. The Irishman, on

the banks of the Shannon, cries, “ Irishmen shall govern Ireland the

Frenchman, on the Seine, “ Frenchmen shall govern France the Italian,

if he could have his way, “ Italy shall be governed by Italians Austria,

by Austrians
;
and we too say, with divine permission, “ Americans shall

govern America.” (Loud and prolonged cheers.) I say this with no

unkind spirit to the foreigner. It is difficult even for an educated for-

eigner to unlearn a great deal that he has learned
;

it is yet more diffi-

cult if he is unlearned, to learn what it is necessary he should know, to

be a good American citizen. Self-government is not a lesson to be

learned in an hour or a day. We have been brought up, educated, and
trained for self-government

;
we, and our fathers from the first establish-

ment of the colonies at Jamestown, in Virginia, and on Plymouth Rock

through two hundred years of training, have been arriving at the present

state of imperfection in the matter of self-government. What is self-gov-

ernment, sir ? It is not dissension, disorder, and discord—no mad, reck-
less liberty, but the restraint of our passions, propulsions, wishes, thoughts.

It is the absolute subjection of our own will, mind, and interests to the

authorized will and interests of others in our common country
;

it is, in

short, the elevation of man on earth almost to divinity in heaven
;
and he

who can govern himself in alt things is not only a man, but almost a demi-

god
;
and yet are we told, that men fresh from the darkest parts of Europe

—

from its poor-houses even—men, whom noblemen sent over here to re-
lieve their estates—the very seethings and scum of Europe, which she
has vomited forth from the inability of her own stomach to contain it,

become, by some immaculate conceptipn, the moment they place their

feet on our soil, gifted with the power and genius of self-government,

though all existing history and existing fact show that Europe itself, at

home, is incapable of self-government
!

(Cheers.) No republic dots

the whole continent, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, except one

lean, lank, miserable village, perched on the top of a mountain in

Southern Italy, the republic of San Marino. Europe has been strug-

gling ages for liberty
;
but, when won, all has degenerated into licen-

tiousness. In lieu of law there was general disorder, so that the people



(
7

)

themselves became sick of the liberty they fancied they had created, and

rushed from it, as from the jaws of death, craving the protection of the

very despotisms they had been overthrowing. Now, then, if we require

foreigners to go through a salutary training here of some years, long

enough to read our language, to comprehend and know something of

our institutions, are we intolerant—are we bigoted and fanatic ? I say
further, that it is impossible for the foreigner to forget the land of

his birth, and the institutions of his birth
;
and if he tells you he does,

mark me, he is a bad man, and with a bad heart, never to be trusted.

God has, for wise purposes, implanted an instinct in the bosom of every

man, which, next to his family, makes him love his own country, his

own home, above all other lands and countries. “ Home, sweet home,

there is no place like home,” is the song, not only of our own language,

but of all the languages of Europe.

“ Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land ?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand

;

If such there breathe, go, mark him well

:

* * * * *

He, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.”

No German, no Irishman, can ever forget the hills and valleys where
first his eyes opened on the sunlight of heaven

;
where first he heard

the sweet music of the birds
;
where first he was cradled in his mother’s

arms. Go among the Germans: go into their lager beer saloons;

among their Ssengerbunde, their Msennerchcere—and the first songs you
hear, are songs to the Fatherland. “ Mein Herz ist am Rheine,” sings
the German, “ On the Rhine is my heart.”

*
“ Wo ich bin, wo ich gehe, mein Herz ist am Rhein.”

“ Where’er I go—where’er I turn,
For Ehenish land my heart doth burn.”

0 Deutschland, heil’ges "Vaterland !
O Deutsche Lieb’ und Treue

!

Du hohes Land ! du sehones Land !
Dir sehworen wir auf’s Neue

:

[0 Dutchland, holy Fatherland 1

Thy faith and love how true

!

Thou noble land ! Thou lovely land I
We swear to thee anew.]

These sentiments of love and affection for the Fatherland are as old

as the Bible, and written and rewritten in the Latin and Greek classics,

in all forms. “ Mutant animum, non coelum qui trans mare currant,”

» a maxim and a motto. Virgil draws the picture of his hero Antores,



wounded, prostrate on the earth, looking up to heaven and dying, hut

thus remembering the land of his birth :

** Coelumque,
Aspicit, et dulcea moriens remeniseitur Argos.

These are feelings, affections, sympathies which every good man, in

every condition, high and low, in all countries, has for the land of his

birth
;
and, I repeat it, that the foreigner who swears allegiance to this

country, in good faith, as many do, yet never ceases to love and cherish
the land of his birth

;
and when his eyes are about to close in death in

©ur own happy land, in the words of the Roman poet, “ he remembers
his sweet Argos.” (Applause.)

I think I have shown, so far, that there is no good reason for this

attack on our American ship from this European battery
;
and I now

turn, with less pleasure, however, to answer that unnatural African bat-

tery which keeps up such a constant fire on that eminent citizen of my
State. It has been said, and re-said in the State of Ohio, that Millard

Fillmore is disloyal, traitorous to the land of his birth. No graver, no
more wicked, vindictive charge can be made, and they who make it

ought first to feel their ability to substantiate it. The principal ground

on which it is founded, is his course as President of the United States,

on the subject of slavery. Now slavery is a subject on which I do not,
anywhere, expect any audience to agree. You are here on the right

bank of the Ohio, with institutions, associations, feelings, and impulses,

in almost all respects differing from those separated from you but by a

river—a stream. The political relations and organizations of freedom
and slavery are antagonistic, and will ever continue to be antagonistic.

I hoped once, the day would come when the subject of slavery would

cease to be agitated in our land
;
that right reason, good sense, and a

thorough understanding of the Constitution and laws of our confederacy

would so prevail, that all would be willing to leave State institutions just

where our fathers placed them. But I have ceased to indulge in that

hope. As the. institutions are antagonistic, and ever must be, the con-

stant struggle must ever be expected. No more difficulty, however,

exists at the present moment, than existed in 1787
;
for in that year

and day, the framers of the Constitution, sitting in Independence Hall,

in Philadelphia, in Convention—in secret Know-Nothing Convention
,

(laughter,) had all the difficulties, all the troubles and disputes on the

subject of slavery which we are having at this very hour. The North

was, in the main, substantially free, or destined soon to be free, and the

South slaveholding, and destined to be more and more slaveholding.

We northern people claimed that the South should count their slaves
only as property in the formation of the representative power of the

Constitution, alleging that property in the South should no more be

considered property for representation, than property in the North.

This sometimes was our logic, but not always, for at times we alleged

this property to be persons, to have the rights of persons, and hence, it

would follow, the rights of representation. The South repelled all this,



(
9.)

and argued that it could not afford to form a compact in a Constitution

with us, if we did not recognize the laborers of the South, either as per-

sons or property to be represented? These were subjects of dispute,

more or less, from May to September, in Independence Hall, and the

Convention was in danger of breaking up on slavery and the slave in*

stitution. Tradition, indeed history to some extent, says that old Ben-

jamin Franklin, whom some haye called an infidel, and who certainly

was not an over pious man, seeing this Convention about to break up,

on this subject of slave representation, invoked his fellow-convention

men to appeal to God to bless them, to preside over their deliberations,

to direct them to peace, and concord, and concession among themselves
;

and report goes, that after prayers so offered, in a short time the diffi-

culties were settled by compromise and concession, the three-fifths prin-

ciple of representation, that every five slaves should be counted as three

persons, prevailing. The South gave to us, having the majority in Con-

gress, the control of navigation and the regulations of commerce, a

power of vast importance to the North, for we had then, as now, about

all of the navigation, and we agreed with the South, not to use that

power so as to stop the importation of slaves, until 1808; and on the

subject of fugitive slaves, we of the North agreed to surrender slaves

whenever they came upon our territory.

Such were the compacts and agreements of the Constitution made

after long and trying deliberations—and made by whom ? By such
North men as Rufus King and Nathaniel Gorham, of Massachusetts,

the Langdons and Gilmans, of New Hampshire, the Roger Shermans

and William Samuel Johnsons, of Connecticut
;
by Alexander Hamil-

ton, of New York, the Benjamin Franklins and Robert Morrises, of

Pennsylvania, and the Daytons, of New Jersey—made with such South
men as Madison, and Washington, and Rutledge, and Pinckney. The

result of their compact was this form of government, for a people then

but three millions in number, and all then on the coasts of the Atlantic

—all on the other side of the Alleghanies, but now, under the blessings
of that Constitution, rolled over the Alleghanies, along the borders of

the lakes, and swelling in grandeur upon the shores of the Pacific.

(Cheers.) If we break this Constitution, these concessions, these com-

pacts—if we keep not our faith, we go back to the disorders of the old
confederation, we approach civil war, we exchange all these blessings

our fathers secured to us, to be the prey of our own passions, and the

victims of foreign insult and aggression. (Applause.)

There are some wrong impressions prevailing on this subject of con-

cessions and compacts, and excuse me if I briefly refer to them. It is

not true, as often said, that in the formation of the government, all

parties agreed, that all the territory of the United States should be con-

secrated to £eedom. It is true, the famous ordinance of 1787 was

passed, that consecrated the Northwestern Territory all to freedom, but

not less true that all thosei territories, now Kentucky, Tennessee, Missis-

sippi, Alabama, were consecrated, or desecrated as you please, to slave-

ry. Our fathers divided the general domain. All north of the Ohio



was given to freedom—all south of the Ohio was left to slavery. Our
fathers in that division manifested the spirit in which they administered

the government. It is not true, then, that this government started at

first with disowning and excluding slavery, hut, on the contrary, recog-

nizing it, and dividing the territory of the States under it. Kentucky

belonged to Virginia. Washington signed the act which admitted her

as a slave State into the Union. Tennessee, under the name of Frank-

land, belonged to North Carolina, and the Father of his Country signed

the act that admitted her also as a slave State into the Union. The

territories, now Alabama and Mississippi, belonged to Georgia, and in

the compact with Georgia (1802-3),, under the administration of Mr.

Jefferson, they were bought, and paid for, costing us $1,250,000, and

accepted as slave territory of the United States. In 1798, under the

administration of John Adams, old John Adams, the Massachusetts Ad-

ams, the territory of Mississippi was organized—all that territory then
of Georgia, that stretched from the Chattahoochie river to the Missis-

sippi, and organized explicitly and especially as slave territory. Con-

gress enacted—especially enacted for Mississippi—the Northwestern
ordinance of organization, the Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ordinance of

1787—the whole of it, in principle, and pledge, and compact, save and
except the last section of that ordinance, that excluded slavery there-

from. Congress said, April 7th, 1798—old John Adams approving

:

* * * “ The President of the United States is hereby authorized to establish

therein (now Alabama and Mississippi), a government in all respects similar to that

now exercised in the territory northwest of the Ohio, fSgT* excepting and excluding
the last (anti-slavery) article of the ordinance of 1787.” (See Act of Congress, April

7th, 1798.)

Congress, thus, in one sense, established slavery in all that great ter-

ritory reaching from the Georgia line to the Mississippi river. And a

Massachusetts President, in 1798, affirmed the act which a Virginia

President, Jefferson, in 1803, perfected. And yet a mere Northern

party, calling itself “ Republican,” and excluding all of us who are

American, Fillmore American, only because we walk in the ways of the

Constitution and the laws of our country, forget all these facts, and

claim exclusively to walk in the ways of Washington and Jefferson

!

They forget that when Jefferson was President of the United States, he

made a treaty with France, buying of France all that then immense

Territory of Louisiana—a Territory larger in surface and extent than the
then whole United States—all of that boundless region west of the Mis-
sissippi, stretching to the Pacific Ocean, one way, and to the British

possessions on the north, the other way—all then pro-slavery territory

!

and settled with slaves in Louisiana, and on the margin of the great

Mississippi river ! And yet these Republican gentlemen, who walk in

the ways of Washington and Jefferson, ignoring all th^e, and other

great facts, tell us that our faces are of dough, while theire are of brass.

(Laughter.) In about all of our treaties with Great Britain, we have

claimed remuneration from her for slaves taken from us, as property.

After the treaty of 1783, the great points of complaint against Great



ft

Britain were, that she kept the northwestern posts in your State, and

elsewhere, and that she did not carry out the treaty agreement to sur-

render the slaves taken from New York, Charleston, and other places, or

pay for them. This demand for payment of slaves as property, was long

a subject of diplomatic dispute, never adjusted, and which, afterwards,

created much of that bad feeling that subsequently prepared for the war

of 1812. In the treaty of Ghent, Clay and John Quincy Adams nego-

tiators, there was a special compact on the part of Great Britain, that

the slaves she took from us after the treaty of peace was signed, should

be paid for by her, as property; and though she long resisted and quib-

bled under the treaty, yet, in 1826, John Quincy Adams, under whose

flag these Republican gentlemen sometimes pretend to sail, claimed pay-

ment for these slaves, and, through the arbitration of the Emperor of

Russia, Great Britain paid to our Southern countrymen $1,200;000 for

slave property.

These historical facts should be known by the people
;

for though the

American party claims not that a man should be pro-slavery or anti-

slavery—leaving these questions for all men under the Constitution to
act on as they please—yet, when our candidate is attacked and de-
nounced as a pro-slavery man, his friends feel it necessary to proclaim

these historical truths, and to challenge an investigation of them, and a

comparison of them with his administration. (Applause.)

But Mr. Fillmore, when President of the United States, it is spe-

cified, was unfaithful and disloyal to the North, in having signed

the Fugitive Slave Law—that horrible law ! It is true—true, that he
signed it. There it is, on the statute book, with his name affixed to

it. There it is written, and it cannot be unwritten, and I could not

deny the fact, if I would. No man can tear off, nor tear out from the

compact of the Constitution, the obligation to deliver up fugitive slaves,

or the fact that Millard Fillmore complied with it. This compact in

high quarters has been pronounced, “ an atrocious bargain,” “ a com-

pact with hell”—and it may be, or it may not be, I pause not now
to inquire

;
but it is a contract, a compact, he had sworn to fulfil.

George Washington made it, Ben. Franklin made it, Rufus King put

it there, and Roger Sherman, and Alexander Hamilton—men im-
mortal in civil life, in the toga and in arms—men of God as well as
men of earth. If their bargain was “ atrocious,” if it was “ a compact

with hell,” we cannot take part of it, and repudiate the rest. There it is,

a bargain, a contract, the most solemn that sovereign States ever made,

and we must take all or none. (Applause.) But the bargain, I am told,

may be endured, but not that law. The bargain is to deliver up fugi-

tive slaves on claim. The law executes the bargain, but, it is added,
“ executes it too rigorously.” I shall not stop here to ask, if there is

any thing in the law as rigorous as in the compact to deliver up, on

claim, mere claim, as all I strive for, in these remarks, is to defend my
own countryman, that eminent citizen of my own State. What we
have to do here, is to inquire if, in his position as President, he did right,

or did, wrong. It will be recollected that Fillmore was made President



by the instrumentality of the Whig party, of which party it was a car-

dinal principle, that when laws were fairly enacted by the representatives

of the people, it was the duty of the Whig President not to exercise the

one man power of preceding administrations, but whatsoever might be

his own opinions, his own feelings, after ascertaining that the law was

constitutional, to sign it, and thus let the voices of the people be ex-

pressed through their representatives. This was the the course of Fill-

more. The Fugitive Slave Law was passed. He consulted the Con-

stitution. He read the history of his country. He studied (and this is

within my own personal knowledge) the opinions of Judge McLean,

Justice Story, and others, in the celebrated case of Prigg vs. the Com-

monwealth of Pennsylvania, and then, after consulting the Attorney

General, he affixed his name to that act, as a Constitutional act, enacted

by Congress, about the expediency of the details of which men might

reasonably differ, though there could be no reasonable doubt of its Con-

stitutionality. In so doing, he but followed in the footsteps of the il-

lustrious Father of his Country. Congress in 1793, George Washington

approving, provided for the delivery of fugitive slaves by a law, in

principle and substance, the very law of 1850. The provisions, the

penalties, the general contemplation of the act are as like, as like can

well be. The act of 1793 worked well enough, and satisfactorily

enough, for forty or fifty years,—and there was no outcry against it,
till the North ran into Nullification under the lead of Sectionalism and

Abolitionism. When Abolitionism in some of our States began to nul-

lify the provisions of the Washington act in punishing Justices of the

Peace, and State officers, who executed the Law, Congress felt bound

to substitute in their stead, Federal officers, Federal Commissioners, and

in this substitution, is the only difference in principle, between the

Washington act of 1793, and the act of 1850. Let me call your atten-

tion to the men, the class of men, that enacted the Fugitive Act of

1793. It passed the Senate of the United States unanimously, the

whole North as well as the whole South saying “aye.” There were in that

Senate, Northern men of as “ stiff backbone” as any in this our day. New

Hampshire spoke in the voices of John Langdon and Paine Wingate

;

Massachusetts in George Cabot and Caleb Strong
;
Connecticut in her

Roger Sherman and her Oliver Ellsworth, subsequently Chief Justice of

the United States
;
Vermont, in a Bradley and a Robinson

;
New York,

in Rufus King; Pennsylvania, in Robert Morris; New Jersey, in John

Rutherford and Philemon Dickinson. The House of Representatives

passed the act, ayes 48, noes 7—from the North ayes 26, and from the
South ayes 22. Massachusetts was represented there in the glowing

and brilliant eloquence of her Fisher Ames, in the strong practical sense

of a Gerry and a Goodhue, and in the philosophic and scholastic training

of a Theodore Sedgwick. For Connecticut, spoke a Larned and a Wads-

worth
;
for New Jersey, a Dayton and Elias Boudinot. And New York,

my own State, then the offspring of Holland as well as of England, in

the persons of Schoonmaker, and Egt^rt Benson, the friend of Washing-

ton, swelled the general chorus of approval,

—

that, in the spirit of the



. ( 13 >

Constitution
,
was to be executed the Fugitive Slave compact of that

Constitution. (Applause.)

Millard Fillmore went no farther. He did not even make the act, but

was faithful to the pledge on which he was elected—to interpose no mere
will or caprice of his own against a Constitutional act of the Representa-

tives of the People in Congress. (Applause.) It must be remarked,

too, that the Fugitive Act of 1850 was but one of a series of acts, that

constituted what are known as the Compromise Bills of that year. These

acts were five in number—the organization of the Territories of Utah and
Hew Mexico, the abolition of the Slave Trade in the District of Colum-

bia, the prescribing of the boundaries of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Act,

and then, the admission of California into the Union. In that great

arrangement, the North lost nothing, but practically gained every thing.

Utah is free from Slavery—African Slavery, to say the least; New Mex-
ico is free, and likely to be

;
the Slave Trade has ceased to exist in the

District of Columbia. They, who voted ten millions for the regulation

of the Boundaries of Texas, and were denounced therefor, have since

seen the Republican leaders in Congress add on $2,750,000 more, even

such Senators as Mr. Seward voting “ aye —and if the execution of the
Fugitive Slave compact of the Constitution was provided for, the great

compensation in the practical eyes of Abolitionism, ought to be, the

exclusion of Slavery from the whole vast coast of the Pacific Ocean.

We gave up a few negroes under a compact, and we secured “ Freedom”
on the whole Pacific coast. All other annexations of Territory to the

United States, under all preceding Presidents; from Jefferson with his

Louisiana, on to Florida and Texas, have been slaveholding—and yet,
we, who, under Fillmore, saw all California annexed to the Union as a

Free State, the whole Pacific coast thus made free, and knew this under

him, to be the only free foreign conquest or purchase we have ever made,

are denounced by men pretending to walk in the footsteps of Washington

and Jefferson, as disloyal, as unfaithful to this country, this air, in which

we were born, and where we breathe
!

(Applause.)

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, however, was not only Constitutional,

and so pronounced to be by all our Judges of the Supreme Court, in-

cluding Judge McLean, who here in this city, in 1853, gave a most

important opinion, affirming its unquestionable Constitutionality ! but as

one of a series of bargains, it was proper, as well as dutiful, nay, it was

wise, in an economic and philosophic point of view. Not only good

neighborhood demanded it, but the best interests of the laborers in the

Free States. God has drawn a line, an indelible line of distinction be-

tween the Anglo-Saxon, and the African race—doubtless for some wise,
I day not say, unwise, purpose. No declamation can wash out the differ-

ences in our color—no logic blind us to the different organizations. I
pause not here to inquire, why God has given to us faculties and endow-

ments he has denied to the African, or idiosyncrasies and peculiarities to

that race denied to us. They can stand up under the Tropics by the raging

sun, toiling in the cane-brake, or the rice-swamps, and amid a malaria,

that would destroy us
;
and if they were not there to toil and work under



that sun, the land of the cane-brake and the rice-swamps, instead of being

cultivated, would be as barren as when our fathers first discovered it. On
the other hand, we stand up in the frozen regions of the North, amid cold

and ice, and we toil without fatigue twelve or fourteen hours the day, if ne-

cessary,—where the negro, if thus worked at all, soon dies out in his race.
Providence thus seems to have either designed a large portion of the

earth to. unproductiveness, or to cultivation by the African, while it has

secured to us, the North*. But be all this as it may, their land, it is cer-

tain, is South-land, and ours, is North-land, and the further we keep apart,

the better for all concerned. True, if they come here, they cease to be

chattel slaves, but we make social slaves of them. We drive them from
our workshops, our offices, our jury-boxes, our graveyards even, and we

doom them to all the lowest offices of servitude. Remove, however, all

the obligations of law to surrender these fugitives, from whom you are
separated in summer but by a narrow stream, and in winter connected by

a crystal bridge. Tempt them over here by creating discontent at home,

and you are bound to provide them with the means to live. You could

not, you would not, tempt even the African from his home, but to come

here to starve. To live, then, he must work, and he must work side by

side, and on equality, with you. He must enter your workshops
;
he

must stand by you, and toil by you in your foundries and manufacturing

establishments. Here, in this warm valley of the Ohio, under this hot

sun, the sooty, seething African must sweat and steam, side by side,

shoulder to shoulder, with the American. There is implanted in us, I

know not why, but so it is, though it may be wrong, all wrong, a dis-

gust for all such associations. There is an instinct in the white man that

revolts from any such social connection with the negro. The experiment

of associating or amalgamating discordant races, works damage or death

to all concerned. God never made a nobler race of men than the old

Hidalgoes of Castile'and Aragop, who crossed the ocean with, and after

Columbus, under Cortez and Pizarro, and who, overrunning even the

Andes, threw up the Spanish flag from the Gulfs of California and Mexico

to Cape Horn. Brave, chivalrous, devoted to God and their king, they

swept all before them in Mexico, in Peru, and the La Plata—everywhere,
and they established an empire in wealth and in extent beyond even the

dreams of Roman ambition. But they married and intermarried with the

African and the Indian—they crossed and intercrossed their breeds with
other races, while we, in the strong disgust of Anglo-Saxon nature, turned

from these races, and kept ourselves free from the gross intermixture.

Compare now the pictures of North and South America. There, all the

old races are dying out in manly vigor, in spirit, in courage—in every
thing that marks and makes the man. Torn and distracted by civil war,

they present a spectacle for men and angels to weep over
;
while the

little thirteen trembling colonies of Anglo-Saxons, of pure blood, of un-

contaminated race, have swollen into thirty-one confederated States, now

no third, nor fourth-rate power of the earth, but foremost and first, and

respected, though feared, by all. (Cheers.) The flag that in 1787 shook

and shivered under even the tomahawk or arrow of the Indian in your



(
15

)

own then wilderness valley, has been planted in triumph on the Rochy

Mountains, aye ! carried beyond there, far over peaks and snows, to be

reflected now from the bosom of the Pacific. (Continued applause.)

The ship that then ventured forth from your harbors and coasts with

dread or doubt, the prey of French and British decrees in council, now

'traverses every ocean, and sea in safety and security, from the Arctic to

the Antarctic, and carries that flag in grandeur and glory before king

and emperor, the emblem of Liberty and Law, the illustrious emblem of

mute, but of the sublimest victories. (Renewed applause.) The day is

coming, if we continue faithful to all the compacts of our Union, and

trust rather to our arts of peace than to the uncertain arts of war, when

it will be a prouder boast to say, “ I am an American,” than ever it was,
“ I am a Roman citizen.” (Prolonged applause.) Beyond all doubt, it

is our destiny to conquer the world, if we are faithful to our mission

—

“ On earth, Peace and good-will towards men.” The sword, the bayonet,

the mighty parade of cavalry, the huge parks of artillery—these are not
our weapons of conquest, but the noble arts of peace and prosperity, the

God-like example of men self-governing, self-restraining themselves.

Every little emigrant letter sent from America to the Elbe, the Weser,

the Rhine or the Rhone, the Liffey or the Shannon, reciting the wages of

labor here, the abundance of bread and meat, the thrift, the universal

prosperity, is a propagandist of Liberty far more irresistible than all the

artillery ranged in, or around a Sevastopol. (Applause.) All this, how-

ever, the whole Future, the bright beaming Future, all depend upon our

fidelity to our American institutions, and to the principles and pledges of

our fathers. If we cease to be faithful, our record will be the record of

all Republics gone before us, and there will be but one more tombstone

in the general graveyard of Republican History. I must confess, though

seldom surrendering to doubt, I fear for that Future—I tremble when I
feel the sectional excitement that pervades the whole political air. I

could have much to say respecting it, if I did not feel it the duty of

patriotism just now rather to quiet than to excite the public, pulse. I

trust in Godrto protect us from these sectional perils, from which, I fear,

we are now but little likely to protect ourselves.

The speaker then resumed his seat, amidst the most enthusiastic plau-

dits of the meeting.



FOR PRESIDENT,

MILLARD FILLMORE, OF NEW YORK.

FOR VICE-PRESIDENT,

ANDREW J. DONELSON, OF TENNESSEE.

A CAMPAIGN PAPER.

THE DOLLAR EXPRESS,
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