Disunionism

“ Upon this issue the entire nation has been involved in a moral distemper, that threatens its utter and irrevocable dissolution. Union—the child of compact, the creature of social and political tolerance—stands face to face with Disunion, the natural off-spring of that anti-slavery sentiment, which has ever warred against the interests of [Pg 4] the people and the elements of true government, and struggles for the maintenance of that sacred pledge by which the United States have heretofore been bound in a common brotherhood. ”

“ It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims—its first magistrate cannot, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty—the consequence must be fearful for you, distressing to your fellow-citizens here, and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal—it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. ”

“ If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin. ”

“ For the purpose of keeping the nation true to the Union and false to itself, these men exerted every faculty and all their strength. They exhausted their genius in showing that slavery was not, after all, very bad, and that disunion was the most terrible calamity that could by any possibility befall the nation, and that the Union, even at the price of slavery, was the greatest possible blessing. They did not suspect that slavery would finally strike the blow for disunion. ”

“ The best policy, therefore, for the people of the Free States to pursue, was to present a bold and solid front to the pro-slavery element; to try to convince the Southern people that there was an overwhelming sentiment in the North against the arrogations of the slave-power; that the threat of disunion was considered a contemptible attempt to terrorize a spirited people; that this attempt would, henceforth, be treated with disdain; that a disunion movement, if indeed undertaken, would be sternly resisted by the united North ”

“ I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether with my short sight I can fathom the depth of the abyss below, nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. ”

“ At a stroke, it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade. It would do for the disunionists that which of all things they most desire,—feed them well and give them disunion without a struggle of their own. It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to maintain the Union; and while very many who have favoured it are doubtless loyal citizens, it is, nevertheless, very injurious in effect. ”

“ If disunion and civil war were crouching in the rough way of the Nation’s duty, the Republic was not to turn aside into easier ways to avoid them. It should on the contrary, regardless of consequences, seek to re-establish itself in justice and liberty. ”

“ I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, endeavored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the Union is in danger. ”

“ It is therefore by appeal for the Union that people are deluded. In this way the weak are cajoled, the timeserving are seduced, and the timid are frightened; and people professing opposition to Slavery gravely come forward as supporters of these Proslavery factions.
The unknown is apt to be exaggerated; so that, if these threats of disunion were now heard for the first time, we might, perhaps, pardon men who yield to their influence. ”

“ I would unite with anybody to do right, and with nobody to do wrong. And as the Union, under the constitution, requires me to do nothing which is wrong, and gives ine many facilities for doing good, I cannot go with the American Anti-slavery Society in its doctrine of disunion. ”

“ Their obvious tendency also is, to throw amongst the states of the union the apple of discord—to increase those jealousies and suspicions, which have been already too far excited, and to give new life, activity and nurture to those seeds of dissention and disunion which have been recently sown with an unsparing hand by insidious combinations and associations, all of them professing to promote the general good, but acting in direct opposition to their professions. ”

“ The party under which the war for the Union was conducted is to be denounced and proscribed as the party of disunion, and we are to be edified by addresses on the indissoluble unity of the nation by Secessionists, who have hardly yet had time to wash from their hands the stains of Union blood. ”

“ Third, That to the Union of the States, this Nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may: And we congratulate the Country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of Disunion, so often made by Democratic members, without rebuke, and with applause, from their political associates ”

“ The popular fiat has gone forth in opposition, on the one hand, to secession and disunion, whether in the shape of active rebellion, or its more insidious ally, advocacy of an inglorious and dishonourable peace; and, on the other, to everything that savors of abolition, or tends towards a violation of the guarantees of slave property provided by the Constitution. ”

“ To the psychologist it is plain that the seriousness of disunion is the discouragement to ourselves it necessarily involves. In this lies its single and its immense importance. Every note of disunion is a loss of moral power of incalculable influence; every evidence of union is an equally incalculable gain of moral power. Both halves of this statement deserve consideration, but the latter is incomparably the more important. If disunion were the more potent influence, a great deal might be done for national morale by the forcible control of opinion and expression. ”

“ The voice of history tells us—the bloodstained fields of our sister republics of America proclaim, that disunion would be the signal for WAR—a war of conquest, in which the weak would fall before the power of the strong; and upon the ruins of this now happy Union might arise the darkest despotism that ever crushed the liberties of mankind, for it would be established and could only be maintained by the bayonet. ”

“ This is what they may realise by their union; their disunion, on the contrary, will only encourage the fatal conduct of these men who are endangering the future equally, some by their opposition, the others by their headlong violence. ”

“ If ever one or several states, being a minority, can, by menacing a dissolution of the Union, succeed in forcing an abandonment of great measures deemed essential to the interests and prosperity of the whole, the Union from that moment is practically gone. ”

“ Multitudes of our fellow-citizens are so infatuated with fear of the danger of disunion, which has now passed, that they create a danger of centralism fatal to all liberty—to all constitutional government—and at last by inevitable reaction to the Union itself. ”

“ In the years 1831 and 1832 it had become an inquiry, a subject of disquisition in my State, and the late Judge Gaston, in an address delivered in 1832 before the Literary Societies of the University, thus treats of the subject:
"Threats of resistance, secession, separation, have become common as household words in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized with, and the public mind will soon become accustomed to, the detestable suggestion of disunion. ”

“ Many persons at the very dawn of independence felt the weakness of a union of such conflicting sentiments and interests as those of freedom and slavery, and were free in the expression that either slavery or freedom must rule and control the destinies of the nation—that the two could not, nor would not, co-operate peaceably in the same field. ”

“ Many persons deprecate our plan, for fear of a civil war; and terrific ideas of rivers of blood rolling across our fields, and piles of bones heaped on our shores, startle them in their slumbers, as the rustling of a leaf fills the slaveholder's heart with fear. In the first place, how very absurd is this idea of a civil war being the result of disunion. Can any one seriously urge it, as an objection to this movement? Look at the vast extent of territory open to the incursions of an enemy, if the North should withdraw from the South. ”

“ As great an evil as disunion would be, we consider there is still a greater, and that is, submission to the unrestricted will of a reckless fanaticism which overrides the barriers erected by the Constitution for the protection of the minority, and tramples with ruthless iron heel, upon the plainest principles of justice and equality. ”

“ Fellow-citizens of the United States! The threat of unhallowed disunion—the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered—the array of military force to support it—denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. ”

“ That, as we feel deeply convinced that our own divisions have been the leading causes of our own misfortunes, and, by weakening our influence in the councils of the empire, have deprived us of our share in the general prosperity, so we are no less firmly persuaded that it is by union alone that we can repair the evils that dissension has created. ”

“ A kindred spirit now animates the Free States against the Slave Power, breathing everywhere its involuntary inspiration, and forbidding repose under the attempted usurpation. It is the spirit of the Lord, and is irresistible. The threat of disunion, too often sounded in our ears, will be disregarded by an aroused and indignant people. Ah, Sir, Senators vainly expect peace. ”

“ Some few of the young men, ardent, impetuous, devoted to ideas, believed that disunion was the only possible relief from the constant insults and aggressions of the North, its oppression and its selfish power. ”

“ Disunity was the theme that kept repeating itself, throughout our history, and it shall continue to be repeated in our history as a nation unless today, you and I, now fully resolve that we shall root out the causes of factionalism and disunity in our country and unite as a people to establish a true and effective Republic. ”

“ We all know how every occurrence has been magnified by the disunion press and leaders and scattered abroad, and for no other purpose than to arouse the passions of the people and drive them into the Southern Disunion movement; for if you can make the people believe that the terrible accounts of abolition plots here are true, they will be ready for anything, sooner than suffer their continuance. ”

“ If the union is weak, shall we encrease the debility? Or, when a more perfect consolidation is essential to the national existence, shall we employ repulsion instead of attraction, and thus widen the inconvenient and ruinous distance between the different members of our political body? ”

“ Men say: "Look at our history: revolutions have not been in our line; and look at our political map: its construction is unfavorable to an organized uprising, and without unity what could a revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and in the future." ”

“ There is ever an union in a perverted sense between those who are beneath power and those who wish to be above it; and oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the agency of a deluded multitude. ”

“ Resolved, That it would be folly to deny that there has been and still is danger to the existence of the Union, where there is prevalent so much of a spirit of disunion, constantly weakening its strength and alienating the minds of one part of the people of the United States from another; and that if this spirit be not checked and restrained, and do not give way to a spirit of conciliation and of patriotic devotion to the general good of the whole country, we cannot expect a long continuance of the political tie which has hitherto made us one people ”

“ Where there is the germ of disunion, where the whole is split up, even sometimes into contradictory parts, and where an absolute reconciling unity is wanting, where what connection there may be is derived rather from casual outward ties than from inner necessary union, the whole system must of necessity dig its own grave, and become its own murderer. Now it was exactly at such a time of supreme crisis that I had the good or the evil fortune to be at Yverdon. ”