Free-State movement

“ Let the asperities growing out of the controversy die with the controversy. All I ask is, that in future we recognize the right of the people of a Territory to form a Free State, or a Slave State, as they may choose, and come into the Union on an equality with the other States. ”

“ According to the philosophy of the Revolution, every man, every community, every state and every nation is bound to enforce, and cause to be enforced, this law of nature and of nations, which prevents the voluntary or involuntary alienation by any man, any community, any state or any nation of his or its rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ I love our free and happy government, but not because it confers any new rights upon us. Our rights spring from a nobler source than human constitutions and governments,—from the favor of Almighty God.
“We are not indebted to the Constitution of the United States, or of this State, for the right of free discussion. We are thankful that they have hedged it about with so noble a defence. ”

“ Justice to the country and the dictates of sound policy, require that the legislature should confine itself to such subjects as will preserve the basis of entire equality; and when a sufficient population is here, and they choose to adopt a state government, that they shall be 'perfectly free,' without let or hindrance, to form all their domestic institutions in their own way, and to dictate that form of government, which, in their deliberate judgment, may be deemed proper. ”

“ The General Will, then, is the application of human freedom to political institutions. Before the value of this conception can be determined, there is a criticism to be met. The freedom which is realised in the General Will, we are told, is the freedom of the State as a whole; but the State exists to secure individual freedom for its members. A free State may be tyrannical; a despot may allow his subjects every freedom. What guarantee is there that the State, in freeing itself, will not enslave its members? ”

“ It is government by the will of rapacious individuals, in opposition to the will [13] of the community, made known and declared in the laws. A free state, at the same time that it is free itself, makes all its members free, by excluding licentiousness, and guarding their persons and property and good name against insult. It is the end of all just government, at the same time that it secures the liberty of the public against foreign injury, to secure the liberty of the individual against private injury. ”

“ The great field of law which concerns the permanent relations of free states is not yet covered by a recognized science. Must there not therefore emerge from this conception of a universal and common law of nature and of nations, a third science of law, covering this field, which will take as its basal proposition the doctrine that free statehood is the normal and rightful condition of all communities on the earth's surface within suitable limits for the formation of a just public sentiment, and which will concern itself with the permanent relations between free states? ”

“ It was the hopes of our people to have their trade on a respectable footing. But it never entered into my head that we should quit liberty, and throw ourselves into the hands of an energetic government. Do you want men to be more free, or less free, than they are? Gentlemen have been called upon to show the causes of this measure. ”

“ If the principles and the corresponding terms adopted by the Revolutionary Fathers were adopted by them as of universal significance, and if they were right, must we not apply these principles and these terms to-day, when the position of America is reversed and she stands as a great and independent State in relationship with distant communities which are so circumstanced that they can never participate on equal terms in the institution and operation of her government? ”

“ the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition; the authoritarian one and the libertarian one.
And again, on the eve of the great Social Revolution these two traditions stand face to face.
Between these two currents, always full of life, always battling in humanity,—the current of the people and the current of the minorities which thirst for political and religious domination,—our choice is made.
We again take up the current which led men, in the twelfth century, to organise themselves on the basis of a free understanding, of free initiative of the individual, of free federation of those interested. ”

“ The presence in states either of a prerogatived class or of a body of people who, whether by open denial of civil rights or by restrictive laws, are thwarted in the free development of their capacities, or of an ecclesiastical organisation which disputes the authority of the state on matters of right and thus prevents the perfect civil fusion of its members with other citizens, always breeds an imagination of there being some competition of interests between states. ”

“ If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. ”

“ But it may be observed, that the opportunities may be diminished, and the permanency defeated, by the equalizing tendency of our laws.
No free country has ever been without parties, which are a natural offspring of freedom. ”

“ Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; ”

“ What shall we say of that government which has not power or inclination to insure the exercise of those solemn rights and immunities which it guarantees? To declare a man to be free, and equal with his fellow, and then to refrain from enacting laws powerful to insure him in such freedom and equality, is to trifle with the most sacred of all the functions of sovereignty. Have not the United States done this very thing? Have they not conferred freedom and the ballot, which are necessary the one to the other? ”

“ Events, which no man could have foreseen or controlled, had gathered for judgment, and at last a great nation had decreed freedom to a poor, debauched and servile race. But who should lead them, who should now defend them against themselves—give shape and system to their undisciplined wishes—carry them safely through the anarchy of unbounded liberty, and crystallize them into a STATE, whose only sure basis is the Rights and Duties of Labor, Thought, Speech and Worship, the Rights and Duties of Manhood? ”

“ You want the rights and liberties of the citizen protected! Then let us have the Union and peace restored upon the basis of equal justice to all men; let us have a country purged of those abnormities which shun the light of free discussion; let the natural rights of man be held sacred; let us have a Republic firmly established upon complete harmony between our social institutions and the fundamental principles underlying our political system,—and the rights and liberties of the citizen will no longer be in danger! ”

“ I hold, moreover, sir that inasmuch as every man is, by force of circumstances beyond his own control, a subject of government somewhere, he is, by the very constitution of human society, entitled to share equally in the conferring of political power on those who wield it, if he is not disqualified by crime; that in a despotic government he ought to be allowed arms, in a free government the ballot or the open vote, as a means of self-protection against unendurable oppression. ”

“ Federal employees and officials ready to act at the beck and call of the Government would swarm all over the country. State rights and individual rights would be restricted and invaded, and liberty would exist only in name. ”

“ Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. ”

“ In other words, you, my Democratic friends, in the name of liberty asserted the right of one man, under State law, to deprive another man of his freedom; in the name of democracy you asserted the right of one class of people under State law to rule despotically over another class; in the name of self-government you asserted the right of the States to exclude a large portion, sometimes even amounting to a majority of their population, from all participation in self-government. ”

“ The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the government, in passing through its present perils, will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights, more permanent and enduring than heretofore. ”

“ Acknowledge the right to control government, and you acknowledge the right to control life. So long as it lies in the power of one class to impose taxes, to regulate the hours of labour, to admit and to exclude from occupations, and generally to control the political organization of society, so long will its members be tempted to dispose of the members of the subject class in every part of life. When the equality of both classes in the State is admitted, the admission of their equal worth in all their private relations inevitably follows. ”

“ The prosperity of the people, the perpetuity of our form of government, the rights of the states and the public can only be preserved by guarding against all encroachments made upon free institutions, whether they originate in congress or out of it—whether they are enunciated from the bench of the supreme court, or from the stump. ”

“ Let all unite and stand shoulder to shoulder in solid phalanx for the right and frown down the spirit of anarchy now rampant, and ere long the rights of the individual shall again be respected, and this country shall again and in fact become the "home of the free." ”

“ Nevertheless, if we are forced to revolutions, let us propose to our consideration the idea of a free monarchy, established on fundamental laws, itself the apex of a vast pile of municipal and local government, ruling an educated people, represented by a free and intellectual press. ”

“ The war has proved moreover that our free Government, like other free governments, though slow in its early movements, acquires in its progress a force proportioned to its freedom, and that the union of these States, the guardian of the freedom and safety of all and of each, is strengthened by every occasion that puts it to the test. ”

“ And they may make a part in a constitution of government more lasting than any of those in which the people, possessing or pretending to the entire legislature, are, when assembled, the tyrants, and, when dispersed, the slaves of a distempered state. In governments properly mixed, the popular interest, finding a counterpoise in that of the prince or of the nobles, a balance is actually established between them, in which the public freedom and the public order are made to consist. ”

“ The revolution found the rights of the individual at the mercy of the States; it rescued them from their arbitrary discretion, and placed them under the shield of National protection. It made the liberty and rights of every citizen in every State a matter of National concern. Out of a Republic of arbitrary local organizations it made a Republic of equal citizens—citizens exercising the right of self-government under and through the States, but as to their rights as citizens not subject to the arbitrary will of the States. ”

“ All the difference which can arise to states from diversities, in the number or continuance of governors, can only flow from the motives and opportunities, which those different circumstances may give their deputies, of extending, or making a bad use of their power. But whether a people enjoy more or fewer of their natural rights, under any form of government, is a matter of the last importance; and upon this depends, what, I should chuse to call, the civil liberty of the state, as distinct from its political liberty. ”

“ The sympathies available for the purpose are those of race, language, religion, and, above all, of political institutions, as conducing most to a feeling of identity of political interest. When a few free states, separately insufficient for their own defense, are hemmed in on all sides by military or feudal monarchs, who hate and despise freedom even in a neighbor, those states have no chance for preserving liberty and its blessings but by a federal union. ”

“ Is it not likely to be true that the moral tone of the republic —our estimation of constitutional liberty—will be lessened by the creation of a body of civilized people over whom our flag waves as an emblem of power only? ”

“ Are our institutions wrested from us and others foreign to our taste forced upon us? No! Is the right of free speech, a free press, or free suffrage taken from us? No! Has our property been taken from us and the Government failed to interpose when called upon? No, none of these! The rights of the States and the rights of individuals are still maintained. We have yet the Constitution, we have yet a judiciary, which has never been appealed to in vain—we have yet just laws and officers to administer them; and an army and navy, ready to maintain any and every constitutional right of the citizen. ”