honor against the honor of a savage-while other soldiers of the revolution have won for themselves immortal honor, and freedom for their country? No, sir, it is not just to treat them so. If any soldier of the revolution stand in patriotic merit above another, it is he who fought the solitary fight in far and distant parts. No flag-no spirit-stirring fife and drum to cheer him on-no Washington to lead him up in confidence to battle-no pay, no arms, nor ammunition furnished-no clothes nor meat-his name upon no roll-he fights from high impulse and love of country, not for pay, or “plunder;" and, if he falls, no stone to tell the spot-no book is written about him; but if a monument at all, it is left by the hand of a hunter, carved in the bark of the tree that shades his grave. And if he lives, and is old and poor, a wanderer from house to house, there is no pension for him. No, sir, no pension. Why? His name is not enrolled in a book!

LXVI-NORTHERN LABORERS.

CHARLES NAYLOR.

I AM a Northern laborer. Aye, sir, it has been my lot to have inherited, as my only patronage, at the early age of nine years, nothing but naked orphanage, and utter destitution; houseless and homeless, fatherless and penniless, I was obliged, from that day forward to earn my daily bread by my daily labor. And now, sir-now, sir, when I take my seat in this hall as a free representative of a free people, am I to be sneered at as a Northern laborer, and degraded into a comparison with the poor, oppressed, and suffering negro slave? Is such the genius and spirit of our institutions? If it be, then did our fathers fight, and bleed, and struggle, and die in vain!

But, sir, the gentleman has misconceived the spirit and tendency of Northern institutions. He is ignorant of Northern character. He has forgotten the history of his country.

Preach insurrection to the Northern laborers! Preach insurrection to me! Who are the Northern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the

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deeds and doings of Northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank.

Sir, who was he that disarmed the thunderer, wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove, calmed the troubled ocean, became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world—whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence; prominently assisted in moulding your free institutions; and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt till the last moment of recorded time? Who, sir, I ask, was he? A Northern laborer; a Yankee tallow chandler's son; a printer's runaway boy! And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, was he that, in the days of our Revolution, led forth a Northern army, yes, an army of Northern laborers, and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign invaders who was he? A Northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith-the gallant General Greene; who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer, in the battles of our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these?

Sir, our country is full of the glorious achievements of Northern laborers. Where are Concord, and Lexington, and Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the North? And what, sir, has shed an imperishable renown on the never-dying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring, and patriotism, and sublime courage of Northern laborers? The whole North is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence of Northern laborers. Go, sir, go preach insurrection to men like these.

LXVII-DISCUSSION OF WEBSTER AND HAYNE.

WM. C. JOHNSON.

It was a conflict, in my apprehension, more sublime than the warring of contending elements. It was a conflict of mind, whose mind met and subdued mind. The occurrence

to which I allude formed a new epoch in the history of this nation, and presented a spectacle of the highest sublimity. I do not use the word "sublimity" in the august sense of the bookmen; of old ocean, when the elements fret its vast bosom into fearful terror; of the grand prairie on fire, which forces the heavens to reflect its lurid light, and fills the mind with an idea of immensity of flame; of the pale and blue mountain crag, which lifts its aspiring head to the heavens, as if to defy the terror of the lightning and the thunders; nor of the wide and headlong cataract, which precipitates itself from the fearful height above to the abyss below, dashes its angry waves into foam, and hangs its spray and its rainbow in the heavens as a trophy of its awful power and sublimity. I have seen all this; but there is a sublime spectacle which has struck me with more peculiar force, and one which reminds me more of the influence and power of Daniel Webster's great speech on that memorable occasion. It is the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, or the silent meeting of the Ohio with the Mississippi. There is no awful terror there which astonishes reflection; no dreadful noise that subdues the senses; but you see the meeting of mighty waters; you see a vast river swallowing up, without commotion, vast rivers; you see that great mother of waters flowing on in sullen and silent grandeur, as if it received no aid, as if it were unconscious that there were other streams. You are not amazed at its breadth, nor its depth, but you are awed at its quiet, sublime silence, and power. Your mind is not alarmed It is thrown into a new

or astonished, but forced to reflect. and endless world of meditation. You behold a stream which has flown on from the beginning of the world, and will roll on through all time, which defies the control of all human power, and is the same, unchanged and unchangeable. Such was the moral power of the speech to which I allude-its calm and unostentatious power, its moral sublimity, which bore down all resistance, and forced i's influence through all the channels of human thought. The doctrine of State supremacy had spread from town to town, from county to county, and from state to state. It rolled on like mighty waters, overleaping their banks from South to North, as each aspiring wave strove to overreach its predecessor in the anxious progress.

It was then that the reproach of being a Northern man was thrown upon Daniel Webster; he was accused-no matter

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how wrongfully, he was still accused—with having been an accessory of the Hartford Convention, which was charged with having had a design of a dissolution of the Union: in the same breath he was called a consoladitionist, and a federalist, and an opposer of the war. Under such a cloud of prejudice he rose in his senate place, and by a mighty effort of mind, such as history furnishes but one parallel to, in its influence upon a nation, and that the master effort of the great Cicero, he dashed back the angry waters to their fountains, to flow on in future in their usual and well-defined courses. It was a victory more glorious than any won on the battle-field—a victory without carnage. It was the triumph of intellect controlling intellect, and staying physical hostilities by the moral force of reason and the sublime eloquence of wisdom.

LXVIII-ON THE PLATFORM OF THE CONSTITUTION.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

FINALLY, the honorable member declares that he shall now march off, under the banner of State Rights! March off from whom? March off from what? We have been contending for great principles. We have been struggling to maintain the liberty, and to restore the prosperity of the country; we have made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the old flag, the true American flag, the Eagle, and the Stars and Stripes, waving over the chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off under the State Rights banner! Let him go. I remain. I am where I ever have been, and ever mean to be. Here, standing on the platform of the general Constitution-a platform broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of the whole country-I shall ever be found. Intrusted with some part in the administration of that Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in the spirit of those who formed it. Yes, sir, I would act as if our fathers, who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on us—as if I could see their venerable forms bending down to behold us, from the abodes above. I would act, too, sir, as if that long line of posterity were also viewing us, whose eye is hereaf ter to scrutinize our conduct.

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors, and our posterity, having received this inheritance from the former, to transmit it to the latter, and feeling that if I am born for any good, in my day and generation, it is for the good of the whole country, no local policy, or local feeling, no temporary impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold on the Constitution and the Union. I move off, under no banner not known to the whole American people, and to their Constitu tion and laws. No, sir, these walls, these columns

I came into public life, sir, in the service of the United States. On that broad altar my earliest, and all my public vows, have been made. I propose to serve no other master. So far as depends on any agency of mine, they shall continue United States; united in interest and in affection; united in everything in regard to which the Constitution has decreed their Union; united in war, for the common defence, the common renown and the common glory; and united, cornpacted, knit firmly together in peace, for the common pros perity and happiness of ourselves and our children.

LXIX-IMPRESSMENT OF AMERICAN SEAMEN.

HENRY CLAY.

SIR, government has done too much in granting those paper protections. I can never think of them without being shocked. They resemble the passes which the master grants to his negro slave- "Let the bearer, Mungo, pass and repass without molestation." What do they imply? That Great Britain has a right to seize all who are not provided with them. From their very nature, they must be liable to abuse on both sides. If Great Britain desires a mark, by which she can know her own subjects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from his mast-head should be the credentials of our seamen. There is no safety for us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule, that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies) are protected by the flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the