In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, and the whole country, and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country.  Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,—­does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his suffering, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina?  Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit in Carolina a name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom?  No, sir,—­increased gratification and delight rather.  Sir, I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own state or neighborhood; when I refuse for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven; if I see extraordinary capacity or virtue in any son of the South; and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate a tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts.  She needs none.  There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves.  There is her history; the world knows it by heart.  The past, at least, is secure.  There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.  And, sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit.  If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that Union, by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gathered around it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest monuments of its glory and on the very spot of its origin.

Notes.—­The Laurenses were of French descent.  Henry Laurens was appointed on the commission with Franklin and Jay to negotiate the treaty of peace at Paris at the close of the Revolution.  His son, John Laurens, was an aid and secretary of Washington, who was greatly attached to him.

The Rutledges were of Irish descent.  John Rutledge was a celebrated statesman and lawyer.  He was appointed Chief Justice of the United States, but the Senate, for political reasons, refused to confirm his appointment.