I can speak for myself--and I have no right
to speak for others--when I say, that, if I belonged to a party
organized on the basis of making war on any section or interest in the
United States, if I know myself, I would instantly quit it. We have made
no war against you. We have asked no discrimination in our favor. We
claim to have but the Constitution fairly and equally administered. To
consent to less than this would be to sink in the scale of manhood;
would be to make our posterity so degraded that they would curse this
generation for robbing them of the rights their Revolutionary fathers
bequeathed them....
Among the great purposes declared in the preamble of the Constitution is
one to provide for the general welfare. Provision for the general
welfare implies general fraternity. This Union was not expected to be
held together by coercion; the power of force as a means was denied.
They sought, however, to bind it perpetually together with that which
was stronger than triple bars of brass and steel--the ceaseless current
of kind offices, renewing and renewed in an eternal flow, and gathering
volume and velocity as it rolled. It was a function intended not for the
injury of any. It declared its purpose to be the benefit of all.
Concessions which were made between the different States in the
Convention prove the motive. Each gave to the other what was necessary
to it; what each could afford to spare.
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