For the sake of peace, for the love of civil liberty, for the honor of our name, our race, our religion, let us preserve the Union, loving it better as the clouds grow darker.
John Sherman
The Public Record
John Sherman was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office throughout the Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He also served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party. Between 1861 and 1897, John Sherman served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 32 years and holds the record for longest serving senator from the state of Ohio.
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Let us cling to each other in the hope that our differences will pass away, as they often have in times past.
The ordinance or act of a state is no defense for treason, nor does it lessen the moral guilt of that crime.
No state can release us from the duty of obeying the laws.
I know no way but to cling to the government framed by our fathers, to administer it in a spirit of kindness, but in all cases, without partiality, to enforce the laws.
How can we avert a calamity at which humanity and civilization shudder?
The result of the contest would not depend upon the first blow of the first year, but blood shed in civil war will yield its baleful fruit for generations.
It is idle for individuals of either section to suppose themselves superior in military power.
The same qualities that have enabled a single generation of men to develop the resources of a continent, would enable us to destroy more rapidly than we have constructed.
It is either hostilities between the government and the seceding states; or, if separation is yielded peaceably, it is a war of factions--a rivalry of insignificant communities, hating each other, and contemned by the civilized world.
I speak but the logic of facts, which we should not conceal from each other.
To peacefully accomplish such results we must change the nature of man.
Without disrespect to South Carolina, it would be easy to show that Shay's rebellion and the whisky insurrection involved the government in greater danger than the solitary secession of South Carolina.
This great government might well treat with indulgence paper secession, or the resolves of her convention and legislature, without invoking physical force to enforce the laws among her citizens.
The defense of the property of the United States and the collection of the revenues need not cause the shedding of blood, unless she commences a contest of physical force.
She is still in the Union, and neither the President nor Congress has the power to consent to her withdrawal.
Plotters for disunion avail themselves of the weakness of the executive to precipitate revolution.
No law has been passed by Congress to secure this constitutional right.
The same article of the constitution that secures the recapture of fugitives from service and justice, also secures the rights of citizens of Pennsylvania and Ohio to all the immunities and privileges of citizens of the several states.
These cases have now become so frequent and atrocious, as to demand the attention of the general government.
Count up all the cases of rescue of negroes in the north, and you can find in your newspapers more cases of unlawful lynching and murder of white men in the south.
I venture the assertion that there have been more cases of kidnapping of free negroes in Ohio, than of peaceable or unlawful rescue of fugitive slaves in the whole United States.
So far as they infringe upon the constitution, or impair, in the least, a constitutional right, they are void and ought to be repealed.
It is always right and proper for each state to apply to state laws the test of the constitution.
I am, therefore, opposed to any change in the constitution, and to any compromise that will surrender any of the principles sanctioned by the people in the recent contest.
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