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government which threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard.”
In direct conflict with truth, and with the most shameless hypocrisy, which his subsequent conduct revealed, he declared that the step was taken by himself and his State not for any selfish purpose, but “from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we have inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children.”
He concluded with an expression of a hope that peaceful relations between the two sections might be maintained, and declared that he left the Senate without any animosity toward a single member personally.
“I carry with me,” he said, “no hostile remembrance.
Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have,
Senators, at this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in the heat of discussion, I have inflicted. . . . Having made this announcement, which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu.”
Davis then left the
Senate Chamber, and immediately entered more openly upon his treasonable work, in which he had been engaged for many years.
On the same day when Davis left the Senate, the representatives of Alabama and Florida in that House formally withdrew.
Yulee and Mallory, the Florida Senators, spoke in temperate language; but Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, one of the most malignant foes of the Republic, and who was a secret plotter in Canada, during the war, of high crimes against the people of the United States, signalized his withdrawal by a harangue marked by the intensest venom., He commenced his speech by the utterance.
of what he knew to be untrue, by saying:--“I rise to announce, for my colleague and myself, that the people of Alabama have adopted an Ordinance of Separation, and that they are all in favor of withdrawing from the Union.
I wish it to be understood
that this is the act of the
people of
Alabama.”
1 He then uttered a tirade of abuse against the people of the Free-labor States, and closed by saying: “As a true and loyal citizen of
Alabama, approving of her action, acknowledging entire allegiance, and feeling that I am absolved by her act from all my obligations to support the
Constitution of the United States, I withdraw from this body, intending to return to the bosom of my mother, and share her fate and maintain her fortunes.”
His white-haired colleague,
Fitzpatrick, indorsed his sentiments, and both withdrew.
A week later,
Senator Iverson, of
Georgia, having received a copy of the Ordinance of Secession from the
Convention of the politicians of his State, formally withdrew, when he took the occasion to say, in contemplation of war :--“You may possibly overrun ”
