history. Their errors were the natural offspring of incapacity and the
false teaching received in their youth. While, therefore, we cannot
admire or approve their conduct, these circumstances incline us more
to sorrow than to anger, disarm our resentment, and dispose us to
forgive what, under other circumstances, would deserve the severest
censure.

But what excuse can we find for the peculiar champions of popular
rights in this Chamber; these zealous servants of the people, forever
ringing in our ears, "Let the voice of the people be heard; respect
the will of the people; _vox populi vox Dei_!" Sir, I say too, let the
voice of the people be heard and respected. And I think, for the sake
of consistency with all my past professions as a Democrat, I am bound
to respect the declared will of the sovereign States which, for
reasons satisfactory to themselves, have seceded from the Union and
established a separate and independent Government. Whatever the causes
may have been which impelled them to a separation from the other
States, I am bound to respect the expression of their sovereign will;
and I heartily reprobate the policy of attempting to thwart that will
under the pretence of "punishing treason" and "enforcing the laws." We
are told that the design is to attempt nothing more than to collect
the revenue in the ports of the seceded States. To say nothing of the
justice or injustice of the attempt so to do, I ask Senators from the
North, and the Senator from Tennessee, _will it pay_? Will it not be a
declaration of war against the seceding States, involving the people
of all the States in a long and bloody conflict, ruinous to both
sections? Are their ethics not the ethics of the school-boy pugilist,
"Knock the chip off my shoulder"?

One of the framers of the Constitution [Mr. MADISON], whose
expositions of that instrument all classes, all parties, have
heretofore received, and still receive, or pretend to receive, with
profound deference and respect, has left on record his views of the
injustice, impracticability, and inefficacy of force as a means of
coercing States into obedience to Federal authority.

Among the statesmen of the Revolution--those who participated in the
formation of our Government--there was no one who had such exalted
notions of the power and dignity of the Federal Government, as the
great HAMILTON. He was a consolidationist. The advocates of coercion
might naturally expect to obtain "aid and c