y I concur in the action of the people of
Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and should
have been bound by their action if my belief had been otherwise;
and this brings me to the important point which I wish, on this
last occasion, to present to the Senate. It is by this
confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a
great man whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth has been
evoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase,
'to execute the laws,' was an expression which General Jackson
applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while
yet a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now
presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States,
and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation
to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms--at least,
it is a great misapprehension of the case--which cites that
expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from
the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the
purpose of gentlemen, they may make war against a State which
has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the
United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded
State. A State, finding herself in the condition in which
Mississippi has judged she is--in which her safety requires that
she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the
Union--surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be
many), deprives herself of the advantages (and they are known to
be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close
and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus
divesting herself of every benefit--taking upon herself every
burden--she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the
laws of the United States within her limits.

"I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was arraigned
before the bar of the Senate, and when the doctrine of coercion
was rife, and to be applied against her, because of the rescue
of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the same that
it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show that I am not
influenced in my opinions because the case is my own, I refer to
that time and that occasion as containing the opinion which I
then entertained, and on which my prese