In treason there are no accessories. There has been, I fear, an
erroneous impression on this subject, among a portion of our
people. If it has been thought safe, to counsel and instigate
others to acts of forcible oppugnation to the provisions of a
statute, to inflame the minds of the ignorant by appeals to
passion, and denunciations of the law as oppressive, unjust,
revolting to the conscience, and not binding on the actions of
men, to represent the constitution of the land as a compact of
iniquity, which it were meritorious to violate or subvert, the
mistake has been a grievous one; and they who have fallen into
it may rejoice, if peradventure their appeals and their counsels
have been hitherto without effect. The supremacy of the
constitution, in all its provisions, is at the very basis of our
existence as a nation. He, whose conscience, or whose theories
of political or individual right, forbid him to support and
maintain it in its fullest integrity, may relieve himself from
the duties of citizenship, by divesting himself of its rights.
But while he remains within our borders, he is to remember, that
successfully to instigate treason, is to commit it. I shall not
be supposed to imply in these remarks, that I have doubts of the
law-abiding character of our people. No one can know them well,
without the most entire reliance on their fidelity to the
constitution. Some of them may differ from the mass, as to the
rightfulness or the wisdom of this or the other provision that
is found in the federal compact, they may be divided in
sentiment as to the policy of a particular statute, or of some
provision in a statute; but it is their honest purpose to stand
by the engagements, all the engagements, which bind them to
their brethren of the other States. They have but one country;
they recognize no law of higher social obligation than its
constitution and the laws made in pursuance of it; they
recognize no higher appeal than to the tribunals it has
appointed; they cherish no patriotism that looks beyond the
union of the States. That there are men here, as elsewhere, whom
a misguided zeal impels to violations of law; that there are
others who are controlled by false sympathies, and some who
yield too readily and too fully to sympathies not always false,
or if false, yet pardonab