Stephen Arnold Douglas

“ It is a crime against constitutional freedom and the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the wide world to attempt to blot out the United States from the map of Christendom. Yet this attempt is now being made. The government of our fathers is to be overthrown and destroyed. The capital that bears the name of the Father of his Country is to be bombarded, and leveled to the earth among the rubbish and the dust of things that are past. The records of your government are to be scattered to the four winds of heaven. ”

“ Are we to be called upon to fold our arms, allow the national capital to be seized by a military force under a foreign revolutionary flag; to see the archives of the government in the hands of a people who affect to despise the flag and government of the United States? I am not willing to be expelled by military force, nor to fly from the Federal Capital. ”

“ I appeal to you, my countrymen — men of all parties — not to allow your passions to get the better of your judgments. Do not allow your vengeance upon the authors of this great iniquity to lead you into rash, and cruel, and desperate acts upon loyal citizens who may differ with you in opinion. Let the spirit of moderation and of justice prevail. You cannot expect, within so few weeks after an excited political canvass, that every man can rise to the high and patriotic level of forgetting his partisan prejudices and sacrifice everything upon the altar of his country ”

“ I had supposed that it was a cardinal and fundamental principle of our system of government that the decision of the people at the ballot box, without fraud, according to the forms of the Constitution, was to command the implicit obedience of every good citizen. If defeat at a presidential election is to justify the minority, or any portion of the minority, in raising the traitorous hand of rebellion against the constituted authorities, you will find the future history of the United States written in the history of Mexico. ”

“ Hence, I repeat that while I am not prepared to take up arms or to sanction war upon the rights of the Southern States; upon their domestic institutions; upon their rights of person or property, but, on the contrary, would rush to their defense and protect them from assault, I will never cease to urge my countrymen to take up arms and to fight to the death in defense of our indefeasible rights. Hence, if a war does come, it will be a war of self-defense on our part. It will be a war in defense of our own just rights ”

“ Whenever our government is assailed — when hostile armies are marching, under new and odious banners against the government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war.The greater the unanimity the less blood will be shed. The more prompt and energetic the movement and the more imposing in numbers, the shorter will be the struggle. ”

“ Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody — calamitous — I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts, and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition. ”

“ The first duty of an American citizen, or of a citizen of any constitutional government, is obedience to the constitution and laws of his country. I have no apprehension that any man in Illinois, or beyond the limits of our own beloved State, will misconstrue or misunderstand my motive. ”

“ Can we permit nations foreign to tis to collect revenues off our products — the fruits of our industry? I ask the citizens of Illinois — I ask every citizen in the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies, in the valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri toted me whether he is willing to sanction a line of policy that may isolate us from the markets of the world and make us dependent provinces upon powers that thus choose to surround and hem us in? ”

“ For the first time since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, a wide-spread conspiracy exists to destroy the best government the sun of heaven ever shed its rays upon. Hostile armies are now marching upon the Federal Capitol, with a view of planting a revolutionary flag upon its dome ”

“ When calling upon Democrats to rally to the tented field, leaving wife, child, father and mother behind them to rush to the rescue of the President that you elected, do not make war upon them and try to manufacture partisan capital at their expense out of a struggle in which they are engaged from the holiest and purest of motives. ”

“ I warn you, my countrymen, whenever you permit this to be done in the Southern States, New York will very soon follow their example. New York — that great port, where two-thirds of all our revenue is collected, and whence two-thirds of our products are exported, will not long be able to resist the temptation of taxing fifteen millions of people in the great West when she can monopolize the resources and release her own people thereby from any taxation whatsoever. ”

“ It is to enable the tier of States bordering on the Atlantic and the Pacific, and on the Gulf, surrounding us on all sides, to withdraw from our Union — form alliances among themselves and then levy taxes on us without our consent and collect revenue without giving us any just proportion or any portion of the amount collected. Can we submit to taxation without representation? ”

“ It is a historical fact, well known to every man who has read the debates of the Convention which framed the constitution, that the Southern States refused to become parties to the constitution unless there was an express provision in the constitution prohibiting Congress to levy an export duty on any product of the country. ”

“ There is and should be nothing disagreeable or humiliating to men who have differed, in times of peace, on every question that could divide fellow-men, to rally in concert in defense of the country and against all assailants. ”

“ Hence I say to you, my countrymen, from the best consideration I have been able to give to this subject, after the most mature reflection and thorough investigation, I have arrived at the conclusion that, come what may, war, if it must be, although I deplore it as a great calamity, yet, come what may, the people of the Mississippi Valley can never consent to be excluded from free access to the ports of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ When this paramount duty shall have been performed, it will be proper for each of us to resume our respective political positions, according to our convictions of public duty. Give me a country first, that my children may live in peace ”