where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our
mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it
should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to
the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as
a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to
give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall
then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers
did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will
in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of
revolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to say that no portion
of the speech to which I have referred was received with more marked
approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment which
has just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the past
summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from
the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern
army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South,
they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the
limits of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that the
victory will at least be doubtful.

Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of
Mississippi to be the last remedy--the final alternative. In the
language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the
Union as a great though not the greatest calamity. I would cling
tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the
fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfilment
of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for their
sons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than a