One
policy or the other should have been taken; and it is not for me to say
which, though my opinion is well known; but one policy or the other
should have been pursued. He should have brought his opinion to one
conclusion or another, and to-day our country would have been safer than
it is.
What is the message before us? Does it benefit the case? Is there a
solution offered here? We are informed in it of propositions made by
commissioners from South Carolina. We are not informed even as to how
they terminated. No countervailing proposition is presented; no
suggestion is made. We are left drifting loosely, without chart or
compass.
There is in our recent history, however, an event which might have
suggested a policy to be pursued. When foreigners having no citizenship
within the United States declared war against it and made war upon it;
when the inhabitants of a Territory, disgraced by institutions offensive
to the laws of every State of the Union, held this attitude of
rebellion; when the Executive there had power to use troops, he first
sent commissioners of peace to win them back to their duty. When South
Carolina, a sovereign State, resumes the grants she had delegated; when
South Carolina stands in an attitude which threatens within a short
period to involve the country in a civil war unless the policy of the
Government be changed, no suggestion is made to us that this Government
might send commissioners to her; no suggestion is made to us that better
information should be sought; there is no policy of peace, but we are
told the army and navy are in the hands of the President of the United
States, to be used against those who assail the power of the Federal
Government.
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