Cassius Marcellus Clay epub Speech of Cassius M. Clay Before the Law Department of the University of Albany, N. Y: February 3, 1863 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Speech of Cassius M. Clay Before the Law Department of the University of Albany, N. Y: February 3, 1863Again: article 4, section 2, United States Constitution, declares that, The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. The Constitution of the United States and the Constitutions of all the States have declared in favor of freedom of assemblage of the people - freedom of utterance by speech and writing - and freedom of religion; and yet in no Slave State have these rights of American citizenship been allowed. They have been in some Slave States forbidden by law, and in all suppressed by sys tematic mob-violence, which, in the most liberal of them, was declared by the most respectable slave-holding citizens, to be the common law of the South. I stop, not to give isolated cases, as the annexation of Texas, and the armed violence in Kansas, but confine myself to these systematic violations of the Constitution. How dare, then, the enemies of the Republican party to plead our disregard of the Constitution in vindication of the Southern Rebellion? The world knows that this charge of the slave-holders and their allies is not only a calumny against us, but not at all the cause of the rebellion. For the fact is notorious, that the slave interest held power over us, not only in the veto of a Democratic President, but in a pro-slavery court of the United States, and a senatorial and legislative majority in the Congress, at the day and hour when they entered into this crime against human nature.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.