one chapter in this history, however, which Mr. Jefferson has not filled up; and I must therefore supply the deficiency. It is to be found in the protests made by New England against the acquisition of Louisiana. In relation to that subject, the New England doctrine is thus laid down by one of her learned doctors of that day, now a doctor of laws, at the head of the great literary institution of the east; I mean Josiah Quincy, president of Harvard College. I quote from the speech delivered by that gentleman on the floor of Congress, on the occasion of the admission of Louisiana into the Union.
“Mr. Quincy repeated and justified a remark he had made, which, to save all misapprehension, he had committed to writing, in the following words: If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the states from their moral obligation; and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must.”
Mr. President, I wish it to be distinctly understood, that all the remarks I have made on this subject are intended to be exclusively applied to a party, which I have described as the “peace party of New England”—embracing the political associates of the senator from Massachusetts—a party which controlled the operations of that state during the embargo and the war, and who are justly chargeable with all the measures I have reprobated. Sir, nothing has been further from my thoughts than to impeach the character or conduct of the people of New England. For their steady habits and hardy virtues I trust I entertain a becoming respect. I fully subscribe to the truth of the description given before the revolution, by one whose praise is the highest eulogy, “that the perseverance of Holland, the activity of France, and the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, have been more than equalled by this recent people.” Hardy, enterprising, sagacious, industrious, and moral, the people of New England of the present day are worthy of their ancestors. Still less, Mr. President, has it been my intention to say any thing that could be construed into a want of respect for that party, who, trampling on all narrow, sectional feeling, have been true to their principles in the worst of times; I mean the democracy of New England.
Sir, I will declare that, highly as I appreciate the democracy of the south, I consider even higher praise to be due to the democracy of New England, who have maintained their principles “through good and through evil report,” who, at every period of our national history, have stood up manfully for “their country, their whole country, and nothing but their country.” In the great political revolution of ’98, they were found united with the democracy of the south, marching under the banner of the constitution, led on by the patriarch of liberty, in search of the land of political promise, which they lived not only to behold, but to possess and to enjoy. Again, sir, in the darkest and most gloomy period of the war, when our country stood single-handed against “the conquerer of the conquerers of the world,” when all about and around them was dark and dreary, disastrous and discouraging, they stood a Spartan band in that narrow pass, where the honor of their country was to be defended, or to find its grave. And in the last great struggle, involving, as we believe, the very existence of the principle of popular sovereignty, where were the democracy of New England? Where they always have been found, sir, struggling side by side, with their brethren of the south
