It will not be difficult to imagine the feeling with which a
Southern soldier during the Mexican war received the announcement that
the House of Representatives had passed that odious measure, the Wilmot
Proviso; and that he, although then periling his life, abandoning all
the comforts of home, and sacrificing his interests, was, by the
Legislature of his country, marked as coming from a portion of the Union
which was not entitled to the equal benefits of whatever might result
from the service to which he was contributing whatever power he
possessed. Nor will it be difficult to conceive, of the many sons of the
South whose blood has stained those battle-fields, whose ashes now
mingle with Mexican earth, that some, when they last looked on the flag
of their country, may have felt their dying moments embittered by the
recollection that that flag cast not an equal shadow of protection over
the land of their birth, the graves of their parents, and the homes of
their children, so soon to be orphans. Sir, I ask Northern Senators to
make the case their own--to carry to their own firesides the idea of
such intrusion and offensive discrimination as is offered to us--realize
these irritations, so galling to the humble, so intolerable to the
haughty, and wake, before it is too late, from the dream that the South
will tamely submit. Measure the consequences to us of your assumption,
and ask yourselves whether, as a free, honorable, and brave people, you
would submit to it?
It is essentially the characteristic of the chivalrous that they never
speculate upon the fears of any man, and I trust that no such
speculations will be made upon the idea that may be entertained in any
quarter that the South, from fear of her slaves, is necessarily opposed
to a dissolution of the Union.
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