From Napa County Reporter, page 1 cols. 1 – 3
Napa City, Cal., Saturday, April 30, 1864

DECLAMATION, Delivered before the Napa Lyceum Club, April 21st, 1964, by LIVINGSTON GREGG

The refined sensibilities of certain “loyal” persons in our quiet village were, on the evening of the 21st instant, outraged in the extreme by a declamation delivered in the Court House, by Livingston Gregg. Our neighbor, of the Register, in the plenitude of his wisdom and sobriety, denominates the production a “secessionist diatribe.” Other “loyalists” trace its paternity to certain adroit “copperheads” who cower before the all potent arm of abolitionism, and seek to promulgate their “treason” by procuration. In justice to the accused, we may state that the declamation, in substance, was taken from the Marysville Express, a journal widely circulated in this State, and was not gotten up for the occasion by copperheads, who, it is charged, feared to express the sentiments of the declamation, and for that reason induced a youth to give voice to sentiments they dared not themselves express.

That a discriminating public may be fully advised as to the sentiments that awoke the indignation of the “intense loyalists, of hoec villa rustica, we publish the declamation, which is as follows:

MR. CHAIRMAN:—
I am proud to be able to say that I am an American citizen, and like the ancient Romans, to believe that the bare assertion of that fact is sufficient to command respect and demand protection throughout the civilized world. I am also proud that I have been brought up under the broad aegis of a constitutional government, which guarantees to each and every citizen the exercise of those reserved, inalienable eights—free thought and freedom pf speech – he being responsible only for the abuse of that right. Then again, I am proud to know that we have among us, here in Napa City, gentlemen who are disposed to encourage the youth of the land in the acquisition of knowledge, who have thought proper to extend an invitation to the young men of our schools to declaim upon, or discuss such subjects as are calculated to expand the intellect, fortify the morals and increase our love of country and partiality for Democratic principles, for I hold that without such a training no man can be a true patriot .And, gentlemen, I shall be exceedingly proud if I am awarded the prize offered as an incentive to this evening’s efforts; not so much on account of its intrinsic value, as in consideration of, or the circumstances by which it was obtained. But should it not he awarded to me, still I shall be proud, like one in ancient times, to know that Napa City produces smarter and more worthy youths than your humble servant.

The subject that I have chosen for this evening’s effort is one fraught with vital interest, not only to the present actors on the stage of our political drama, but also to us of the rising generation, who will shortly be called upon to take our respective places at the oars, or the helm of the Ship of State.

The abolition of slavery has always been and is now the leading idea of the party in power, but the bold and unscrupulous leaders of that party discovered that slavery could not be abolished without revolutionizing the fundamental principles upon which the Federal Union rested. As long as the doctrine of State Rights was recognized, it constituted an insurmountable barrier against the heresy of Abolition. State Rights I hold to be founded on great historical facts; on the letter and spirit of the Federal Constitution; on the solemn decrees of the Supreme Court; on the Kentucky resolutions of 1798-99 drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the immortal author of the Declaration of Independence; on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, drawn by James Madison, who drafted the Federal Constitution, endorsed by every Democratic National Convention that has assembled since that date; on innumerable ordinances and statute laws, State and Federal, scattered all over the records of the Republic through more than three-fourths of a century.

The authorities to which I here refer, show .that when the war ended with the mother country there were thirteen independent and sovereign communities or States—recognized as such in the treaty of peace by George III. These sovereign States, represented by delegates in Convention, made a common Government or Union, and in order that there might be no mistake as to its powers and duties, these powers and duties were written down on parchment, arid were termed the Constitution. Certain powers were delegated to the Federal Agency, and in regard to them, its authority was supreme; but these were few, having reference mainly to he common defense, and relations with foreign countries, while all powers not expressly delegated, were reserved to the States; or to the people.

It must also be borne in mind that ours is a government of delegated powers, and not the repository of alienated powers. No sovereign American citizen ever yet alienated a power or right. In the language of the Declaration of Independence, “they (the people) are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to ensure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The people and the States in their sovereign capacity, therefore, delegated whatever of power that is possessed by the Federal Government, and when their agents become unfaithful to their agency, and transcend these delegated powers, the people and the States have a right to resume the powers they had delegated, and provide new safeguards for the future

As long as the doctrine of State Rights was recognized by tile people’s agents, elected or appointed to carry on the machinery of the Governments, State and Federal, there could be no disunion growing out of slavery or any other question of local jurisdiction, because every State or political community exercised the right of regulating its domestic affairs in its own way, without interference from outsiders—responsible alone to the ordinances of the common Constitution, and the decrees of Almighty God.

The doctrine of State Rights, for eighty years, has been the Eddy-stone Light-house of the American Union. Against it the mighty waves of abolition, fanaticism and disunion, roaring and foaming with popular fury, have dashed in vain. Under its benign influence the proud structure of the Union grew broader and stronger, and its boundaries were extended over a wider territory than five hundred years of war and conquest had secured to the Roman Empire; while, as it has been well said, not a drop of blood had been shed in defense, or a man convicted of’ treason.

Abraham Lincoln and all the arch-agitators and revolutionists, whose hands are now red with the blood of a million of American freemen, saw very distinctly that State Rights lay in their path to abolition and the realization of their dreams of negro equality.

In order to force upon States, laws and domestic relations repugnant to the judgment of the people, this barrier of States Rights must be broken down, and the whole theory of the Government changed from a representative Republic to that of a central, unlimited despotism. To effect this, the Republican party resorted to a cheat. The platform upon which Mr. Lincoln was nominated was a swindle—the most stupendous falsehood ever promulgated since the foundation of the world. It declared that Republicanism would uphold and maintain the rights of the States, while every member who voted for that plank in their platform, knew that it was false, knew that they were deceiving the American people

No sooner was Mr. Lincoln elected on this platform than all disguise was thrown off, and the new President, in the name arid in the behalf of his party, thundered forth from the portico of the Capitol at Washington the new, startling and revolutionary doctrine that the Federal Government made the States, and not the States the Federal Government ; that the Union is older than the Constitution, existing outside of, and independent of, that ordinance; that States hold their rights subordinate to the higher and supreme power of the National Government at Washington; that the citizen owes unqualified and undivided allegiance to the central power; and that the States alienated, irrevocably and for all time, every attribute of sovereignty into the hands of the Federal Government, to be wielded as it might please, even to the overthrow of State Sovereignty, and the total subversion and destruction of what the Declaration of Independence termed inalienable rights. These declarations fell upon the ear of the American people like an alarm bell in the stillness of night, they sounded from ocean to ocean the death knell of the American Union. The assumption of such audacious falsehoods in the teeth of the declared opinions of the Supreme Court, and of the historical facts connected with the foundation of the Union, spread alarm and dismay throughout the country. A number of States withdrew, as far as lay in their power, from the Union, and a mighty drama of blood and horror was inaugurated, unparalleled in the annals of time.

Mr. Lincoln succeeded in overthrowing State Rights. Having torn away the brakes that the Fathers had put upon the wheels, he is now running the car with lightning speed oven the dead corse (sic) of Liberty and the mangled bodies of is countrymen. The machine Mr. Lincoln is now running is not the grand old Government made by our Fathers, but it is a monstrous revolution, a wicked usurpation, the sole end and object of which is to set free the negro in sovereign States, by Federal power, and his final equality and amalgamation with the white race. The object is to force the five millions of negros within the domain of the old Union, into social and political equality, with the thirty millions of white population, and to build on the ruins of the old Union a mongrel nation.

In consequence of this fatal error of Mr. Lincoln and his misguided advisers, our Government is being whirled round in the maelstrom of destruction as foretold and foreshadowed by many of our most eminent statesmen and purest patriots; we see states arrayed against states; our fellow citizens engaged in deadly strife.; our social and political relations discordant, disordered and distracted; armies and armed bands of guerrillas invading the peaceful homes of our countrymen; carrying with them war, devastation and destruction; and that, too, under the shadow of the Stars and Stripes, emblem of our brotherly love and unity. Following in their wake we see famine, pestilence and death, those grim, gaunt and horrible specters, gloating over the scene; casting gloom, melancholy and despair with hellish hate throughout our once favored and happy land. Oh God! how long must this be?

Friends and fellow citizens can you not, will you not join me in the prayer, and indulge with me in the hope, that we may see that glorious old flag of ours once again unfurl its ample folds, in all its pristine glory, peacefully throughout the length and breadth of our entire country, inviting the oppressed of every land to come and repose in peace and safety under its ample and refreshing shade, and while gazing upward upon its united stripes, purified from the stain of fraternal blood, its glittering Stars unobscured by the smoke and dust of battle, there see blazing forth in all refulgent splendor that sentiment most dear to every true American heart – “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever.”