South Carolina—A Colony and State [pp. 668-688]

SOUTH CAROLINA-A COLONY AND STATE.
ART. V.-SOUTHT CAROLINA-A COLONY AND STATE.
[Some months since, in noticing the address of Mr. Trescot before the His torical Society of South Carolina, we expressed the wish to extract a few pas sages from it, for the benefit of our readers. A subsequent examination has satisfied us that it is one of those carefully prepared, able, and elaborate documents
which can be studied everywhere with advantage, and which ought to take a
place among those which it is our aim to collect from every source for permanent
preservation. The original department of the REvIEw is sufficiently extended
in its scope and character to warrant us occasionally in occupying a few pages in
this manner. The oration was originally published in the Charleston Mercury,
from which we copy it.]-ED.
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: However political philosophers
may disagree as to the respective merits of a consolidated or a federal government-however commentators on the Constitution may differ as to the leading idea of its provisions and the shape into which
its founders expected it to develop, this much is certain, that now
States have become the great factors by which nearly all of our results are accomplished, that State pride, State influence, State enterprise, as distinguished from the action of our central congressional
governmnent, are the means by which, and the channels through
which, the far larger and more important part of our daily life is condu cted.
If an American be asked abroad, of what country are you, his first
impulse is to answer, I am a New-Yorker, a Virginian, a Massachusetts man, or a Carolinian, as the case may be. Whatever his pride
in his nationality, his home instincts and affections are bounded by
State lines. And as the English Queen said, that when she was
dead they would find "Calais" graven in her heart, so in every
American heart there is written the name of the locality, obscure, hidden away from the eyes of historians and geographers, in the nook
of some great mountain range, in the cove of some vast river, in the
rich valley of some empire State, but the spot still around which all
that is truly his life revolves; where the governor's review made the
event of his schoolboy days; where judges, holding the State commission, first impressed him with the majesty of law; where his first
vote was cast for member of the State Legislature; where the tax for
the State road or the State capitol was warmly discussed by his el(ters when they met at the village post-office or gathered around the
dinner table; the spot, in short, where local interests, acting on local
affections, introduced him from boyhood into a sphere of higher activity, and taught him first both his duties and his privileges as a
citizen.
And this strong State influence governs wider interests. IIHas the
President an important office to fill, he must select the State before
he can scrutinize the fitness of the man-for New-York, and Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and Ohio, must have appointments of such
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