The only fault I have to find with the message of the President, is the inconsistency of another portion.  He declares that, as the States have no power to secede, the Federal Government is in fact a consolidated government; that it is not a voluntary association of States.  I deny it.  It was a voluntary association of States.  No State was ever forced to come into the Federal Union.  Every State came voluntarily into it.  It was an association, a voluntary association of States; and the President’s position that it is not a voluntary association is, in my opinion, altogether wrong.

But whether that be so or not, the President declares and assumes that this government is a consolidated government to this extent:  that all the laws of the Federal Government are to operate directly upon each individual of the States, if not upon the States themselves, and must be enforced; and yet, at the same time, he says that the State which secedes is not to be coerced.  He says that the laws of the United States must be enforced against every individual of a State.

Of course, the State is composed of individuals within its limits, and if you enforce the laws and obligations of the Federal Government against each and every individual of the State, you enforce them against a State.  While, therefore, he says that a State is not to be coerced, he declares, in the same breath, his determination to enforce the laws of the Union, and therefore to coerce the State if a State goes out.  There is the inconsistency, according to my idea, which I do not see how the President or anybody else can reconcile.  That the Federal Government is to enforce its laws over the seceding State, and yet not coerce her into obedience, is to me incomprehensible.

But I did not rise, Mr. President, to discuss these questions in relation to the message; I rose in behalf of the State that I represent, as well as other Southern States that are engaged in this movement, to accept the issue which the Senator from New Hampshire has seen fit to tender—­that is, of war.  Sir, the Southern States now moving in this matter are not doing it without due consideration.  We have looked over the whole field.  We believe that the only security for the institution to which we attach so much importance is secession and a Southern confederacy.  We are satisfied, notwithstanding the disclaimers upon the part of the Black Republicans to the contrary, that they intend to use the Federal power, when they get possession of it, to put down and extinguish the institution of slavery in the Southern States.  I do not intend to enter upon the discussion of that point.  That, however, is my opinion.  It is the opinion of a large majority of those with whom I associate at home, and I believe of the Southern people.  Believing that this is the intention and object, the ultimate aim and design, of the Republican party, the Abolitionists of the North, we do not intend to stay in this Union until we shall become so weak that we shall not be able to resist when the time comes for resistance.  Our true policy is the one which we have made up our minds to follow.  Our true policy is to go out of this Union now, while we have strength to resist any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to coerce us. * * *