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 then 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 opinion 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 present conduct
is based. I then said, if Massachusetts, following her through a stated
line of conduct, chooses to take the last step which separates her from
the Union, it is her right to go, and I will neither vote one dollar or
one man to coerce her back; but will say to her, God speed, in memory
of the kind associations which once existed between her and the other
States.

It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a belief
that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers
bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present
decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created
free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social
institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been
invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That
Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and
purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their
independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man
was born--to use the language of Mr. Jefferson--booted and spurred to
ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal--meaning the
men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule;
that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by
which power and place descended to families, but that all stations were
equally within the grasp of each member of the body-politic. These were
the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for
which they made their declaration; these were the end to which their
enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how