Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis | Page 8

the already too
much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the
Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance
thereof, must be enforced; and they who stand across the path of that
enforcement must either destroy the power of the United States, or it
will destroy them."
For such utterances only a small part of the people of his State was on
that day prepared. Seduced by the wish, they still believed that the

Union could be preserved by fair and mutual concessions. They were
on their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war had already
girded on his sword. His language was then deemed too harsh and
unconciliatory, and hundreds, I among the number, denounced him in
unmeasured terms. Before the expiration of three months events had
demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other paragraphs from that
same speech became the fighting creed of the Union men of Maryland.
He further said, on that occasion:
"But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the State of
Maryland. Confident in the strength of this great government to protect
every interest, grateful for almost a century of unalloyed blessings, she
has fomented no agitation; she has done no act to disturb the public
peace; she has rested in the consciousness that if there be wrong the
Congress of the United States will remedy it; and that none exists
which revolution would not aggravate.
"Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do speak, for
the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United States; and that
when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the people for its accuracy,
and I am ready to maintain it before them.
"In Maryland we are dull, and cannot comprehend the right of
secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a vote.
We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the Constitution of
the United States, and if any convention there, called by whatever
authority, under whatever auspices, undertake to inaugurate revolution
in Maryland, their authority will be resisted and defied in arms on the
soil of Maryland, in the name and by the authority of the Constitution
of the United States."
In January, 1861, the ensign of the Republic, while covering a mission
of mercy, was fired on by traitors. In February Jefferson Davis said, at
Stevenson, Alabama, "We will carry war where it is easy to advance,
where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely
populated cities." In March the thirty-sixth Congress, after vainly
passing conciliatory resolutions by the score, among other things
recommending the repeal of all personal liberty bills, declaring that

there was no authority outside of the States where slavery was
recognized to interfere with slaves or slavery therein, and proposing by
two-thirds votes of both houses an amendment of the Constitution
prohibiting any future amendment giving Congress power over slavery
in the States, adjourned amid general terror and distress.
Abraham Lincoln, having passed through the midst of his enemies,
appeared at Washington in due time and delivered his inaugural,
closing with these memorable words:
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.
"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government,
while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend'
it.
"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our
bonds of affection.
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living hearth and hearth-stone all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as
surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Words which, if human hearts do not harden into stone, through the
long ages yet to come,
"Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation
of his taking off."
The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost godlike
gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia of
blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war. The
long-patient North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried, "My brother;
oh, my brother!" It remained for that final, ineradicable infamy of

Sumter to arouse the nation to arms! At last, to murder at one blow the
hopes we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously dragged in the dust
the glorious symbol of our national life and majesty, heaping dishonor
upon it, and,