Good God!  What, is this an entire surrender!

My lord, I find my heart so full of grief and indignation that I must beg pardon not to finish the last part of my discourse, that I may drop a tear as the prelude to so sad a story.

JOHN BELL (1797-1869)

John Bell, of Tennessee, who was a candidate with Edward Everett on the “Constitutional Union” ticket of 1860, when Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee gave him their thirty-nine electoral votes in favor of a hopeless peace, will always seem one of the most respectable figures in the politics of a time when calmness and conservatism, such as characterized him and his coadjutor., Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, had ceased to be desired by men who wished immediate success in public life.  He was one of the founders of the Whig party, and by demonstrating himself to be one of the very few men who could win against Andrew Jackson’s opposition in Tennessee, he acquired, under Jackson and Van Buren, a great influence with the Whigs of the country at large.  He was a member of Congress from Tennessee for fourteen years dating from 1827, when he won by a single vote against Felix Grundy, one of the strongest men in Tennessee and a special favorite with General Jackson.  Disagreeing with Jackson on the removal of the deposits, Bell was elected Speaker of the House over Jackson’s protege, James K. Polk, in 1834, and in 1841 he entered the Whig cabinet as Secretary of War under Harrison who had defeated another of Jackson’s proteges, Van Buren.  In 1847 and again in 1853, he was elected United States Senator from Tennessee and he did his best to prevent secession.  He had opposed Calhoun’s theories of the right of a State to nullify a Federal act if unconstitutional, and in March 1858, in the debate over the Lecompton constitution, he opposed Toombs in a speech which probably made him the candidate of the Constitutional Unionists two years later.  Another notable speech, of even more far-reaching importance, he had delivered in 1853 in favor of opening up the West by building the Pacific Railroad, a position in which he was supported by Jefferson Davis.

Mr. Bell was for the Union in 1861, denying the right of secession, but he opposed the coercion of the Southern States, and when the fighting actually began he sided with Tennessee, and took little or no part in public affairs thereafter.  He died in 1869.

AGAINST EXTREMISTS NORTH AND SOUTH (From a Speech in the Senate, March 18th, 1858. on the Lecompton Constitution)