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| Israel Washburne, Jr. |
March 11, 1861. |
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Maine, lying on the extreme eastern border of the Republic, and adjoining the British possessions, had, in 1860, a population of over six hundred thousand.
Its people watched the rising tide of revolution with interest, and were among the first to offer barriers against its destructive overflow.
The idea of nationality, so universally a sentiment among intelligent men all over the Free-labor States, made such action instinctive; and everywhere assurances of aid were given to the Chief Magistrate of the Republic.
Israel Washburne, Jr., was then Governor of Maine.
In his message to the Legislature, on the day of its assembling at Augusta, he ably reviewed the history of the Slavery question, and recommended the repeal of any laws that were unconstitutional.
“Allow no stain,” he said, “on the faith and devotion of the State to the Constitution and the rights of the States.”
He declared that the concessions demanded by the politicians of the Slave-labor States were wholly inadmissible, and incompatible with the safety of the Constitution, as the exponent and defender of republican institutions.
He stigmatized secession as a crime without the shadow of a right.
“There is no such right in the Constitution,” he said.
“Congress cannot grant it; the States cannot concede it, and only by the people of the States, through a change in the Constitution,
can it be conferred.
The laws, then, must be executed, or this, the best, because the freest and most beneficent Government that the world has ever seen, is destroyed.”
He pledged the State to a support of the Union, and he was sustained in this by the Legislature, who, on the 16th, declared by a large majority the attachment of the people of that State to the Union, and loyalty to the Government, and requested the Governor to assure the President of that attachment and loyalty, and “that the entire resources of the State, in men and money,” were “pledged to the Administration in defense and support of the Constitution and Union.”
Willing to make concessions for the sake of peace, the State Senate afterward passed a bill
repealing the Personal Liberty Act.
Massachusetts was an early and conspicuous actor in the great drama we are considering.
In many aspects, in nature and society, it was totally unlike South Carolina, the cradle of the rebellion.
Its people were the most energetic, positive, and ever-active of any State in the Union, and its wealth for each person was greater than any other.
It was regarded by the people of the Slave-labor States as the central generator of the Abolition force that threatened the destruction of Slavery; and South Carolina orators and journalists made Massachusetts the synonym of Puritanism, which they affected to despise, as vulgar in theory and in practice.
It must be confessed that much that was done in religion, in politics, and in social life in Massachusetts, did not harmonize with the opinions, habits, and feelings of the people of South Carolina.
The representatives of Massachusetts in the National Senate (Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner) were known in every
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