SPEECH

OF

HON. ANSON BURLINGAME,

OF MASSACHUSETTS,

DELIVERED IN THE U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 21, 1856.

MR. CHAIRMAN,

The House will bear witness that I have not pressed myself upon its deliberations. I never before asked its indulgence. I have assailed no man, nor have I sought to bring reproach upon any man's State. But while such has been my course, as well as the course of my colleagues from Massachusetts, upon this floor, certain members have seen fit to assail the State which we represent, not only with words, but with blows.

In remembrance of these things, and seizing the first opportunity which has presented itself for a long time, I stand here to-day to say a word for old Massa

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chusetts not that she needs it; no, sir; for in all
that constitutes true greatness in all that gives abid-
ing strength in great qualities of head and heart
in moral power-in material prosperity -in intel-
lectual resources and physical ability-by the gen-
eral judgment of mankind, according to her popula-
tion, she is the first State. There does not live the
man anywhere, who knows any thing, to whom praise
of Massachusetts would not be needless. She is as far
beyond that as she is beyond censure. Members here
may sneer at her they may praise her past at the
expense of her present; but I say, with a full con-
viction of its truth, that Massachusetts, in her present
performances, is even greater than in her past recol-
lections. And when I have said this, what more can
I say?

Sir, although I am here as her youngest and humblest member, yet, as her Representative, I feel that I am the peer of any man upon this floor. Occupying that high stand-point, with modesty, but with firmness, I cast down her glove to the whole band of her assailants.

She has been assailed in the House and out of the House, at the other end of the Capitol, and at the other end of the Avenue. There have been brought against her general charges and specific charges. I am sorry to find at the head of the list of her assailants the President of the United States, who not only

assails Massachusetts, but the whole North. He defends one section of the Union at the expense of the other. He declares that one section has ever been mindful of its constitutional obligations, and that the other has not. He declares that if one section of our country were a foreign country, the other would have just cause of war against it. And to sustain these remarkable declarations, he goes into an elaborate perversion of history, such as that Virginia ceded her lands against the interests of the South, for the benefit of the North; when the truth is, she ceded her lands, as New York and other States did, for the benefit of the whole country. She gave her lands to Freedom, because she thought Freedom was better than Slavery -because it was the policy of the times, and events have vindicated that policy.

It is a perversion of history when he says that the territory of the country has been acquired more for the benefit of the North than for the South; he says that substantially. Sir, out of the territory thus acquired, five slave States, with a pledge for four more, and two free States, have come into the Union; and one of these, as we all know, fought its way through a compromise degrading to the North.

The North does not object to the acquisition of territory when it is desired, but she desires that it shall be free. If such a complexion had been given to it, how different would have been the fortunes of

the Republic to-day! This may be ascertained by comparing the progress of Ohio with that of any slave State in the Mississippi Valley. It will appear more clearly by comparing the free with the slave regions. I have not time to do more than to present a general picture.

Freedom and Slavery started together in the great race on this continent. In the very year the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, slaves landed in Virginia. Freedom has gone on, trampling down barbarism, and planting States-building the symbols of its faith by every lake and every river, until now the sons of the Pilgrims stand by the shores of the Pacific. Slavery has also made its way toward the setting sun. It has reached the Rio Grande on the south; and the groans of its victims, and the clank of its chains, may be heard as it slowly ascends the western tributaries of the Mississippi River. Freedom has left the land bespangled with free schools, and filled the whole heavens with the shining towers of religion and civilization. Slavery has left desolation, ignorance, and death in its path. When we look at these things; when we see what the country would have been had Freedom been given to the Territories; when we think what it would have been but for this blight in the bosom of the country; that the whole South- that fair land God has blessed so much would have been covered with cities, and villages,

and railroads, and that in the whole country, in the place of twenty-five millions of people, thirty-five millions would have hailed the rising morn exulting in republican liberty- when we think of these things, how must every honest man-how must every man with brains in his head, or heart in his bosom, regret that the policy of old Virginia, in her better days, did not become the animating policy of this expanding Republic!

It is a perversion of history, I say, when the President intimates that the adoption of the Constitution abrogated the Ordinance of 1787. It was recognized by the first Congress which assembled under the Constitution; and it has been sanctioned by nearly every President from Washington down. It is a perversion of history when the President intimates that the Missouri Compromise was made against the interests of the South, and for the benefit of the North. The truth the unmistakable truth is, that it was forced by the South on the North. It received the almost united vote of the South. It was claimed as a victory of the South. The men who voted for it were sustained in the South; and those who voted for it in the North passed into oblivion; and though some of them are physically alive to-day, they are as politically dead as are the President and his immediate advisers. Not only has the President perverted history, but he has turned sectionalist. He has become