“Senator [Jefferson] Davis would speak for the South. He was still Senator, still its spokesman. Mississippi had not yet officially notified him of her action yesterday.
“Events, with a current hurrying on as it progresses, have borne me past the point where it would be useful for me to argue the question of rights.
What, Senators, today is the condition of the country? From every quarter of it comes the wailing cry of patriotism pleading for the preservation of the great inheritance we derived from our fathers. Tears are now trickling down the stern face of man; and those who have bled for the flag of their country, and are willing now to die for it, stand powerless before the plea that the [Republican] party about to come into power laid down a platform, and that come what will, though ruin stare us in the face, consistency must be adhered to, even though the Government be lost.
Why should not the garrison at Fort Sumter be withdrawn, if it would ease the tension and save bloodshed? And as for the flag:
Is there any point of pride which prevents us from withdrawing that garrison? I have heard it said by a gallant gentleman that the great objection was an unwillingness to lower the flag. To lower the flag!
Can there, then, be a point of pride so sacred a soil as this, where the blood of the fathers cries to Heaven against civil war? Can there be a point of pride against laying upon the sacred soil today the flag for which our fathers died? My pride, Senators, is different.
My pride is that the flag shall not set between contending brother; and that, when it shall no longer be the common flag of the country, it shall be folded up and laid away like a vesture no longer used; that it shall be kept as a scared memento of the past, to which each of us can make a pilgrimage, and remember the glorious days in which we were born.
I have striven to avert that catastrophe which now impends over the country, unsuccessfully, and I regret it. If you desire at this last moment to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so.
If you will not have it thus; if the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and reliance on force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be inaugurated the like of which men have not seen.
Is there wisdom, is there patriotism in the land? If so, easy must be the solution to the question. If not, then Mississippi’s gallant sons will stand like a wall of fire around their State . . . ”
(Congress and the Civil War, Edward Boykin, McBride Company, 1955, pp. 269-271)
Though South Carolina is usually associated with nullification of odious federal law, it was New England which first broached secession from the Union and openly nullified the United States Constitution with personal liberty laws.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com The Great American Political Divide
Jefferson Davis Identifies the Nullifiers
“But the name of South Carolina, most unaccountably to him [John C. Calhoun], seemed always to evoke in certain quarters even in the South, a peculiar sentiment of dread. What had she done, that gallant sister of the ancient and primitive thirteen, to inspire aversion or incite contumely? Did she falter in the revolution? Never — always its defender!
But the ignorant calumniator says she nullified. The charge was untrue; she never nullified a federal statute; but her voice has been shrill and clear in the cause of right, and her opposition invincible to wrong. Why charge upon South Carolina the sin of Massachusetts? Massachusetts nullifies both the statute and organic law; South Carolina is consistently obedient to both; yet Massachusetts is eulogized, South Carolina derided.”
(Jefferson Davis, May 29, 1857 speech at Jackson, Mississippi)
