From Albert G. Brown speeches (1859)

Speech in Congress, 30 Jan. 1850, on Omnibus:

(pp. 170-171) "Before the first fatal step is taken, remember that we have interests involved which we cannot relinquish; rights which it were better to die with than live without. The direct pecuniary interest involved in this issue is not less than twenty hundred millions of dollars, and yet the loss of this will be the least of the calamities which you are entailing upon us. Our country is to be made desolate. We are to be driven from our homes—the homes hallowed by all the sacred associations of family and friends. We are to. be sent, like a people accursed of God, to wander through the land, homeless, houseless, and friendless; or, what is ten thousand times worse than these, than all, remain in a country now prosperous and happy, and see ourselves, our wives and children, degraded to a social position with the black race. These, these are the frightful, terrible consequences you would entail upon us. Picture to yourselves Hungary, resisting the powers of Austria and Russia; and if Hungary, which had never tasted liberty, could make such stout resistance, what may you not anticipate from eight millions of southrons made desperate by your aggression ? I tell you, sir, sooner than submit we would dissolve a thousand such unions as this. Sooner than allow our slaves to become our masters, we would lay waste our country with fire and sword, and with our broken spears dig for ourselves honorable graves."

Speech at Elwood Springs, Mississippi, November 2 1850.

(p. 256)
"Let me say to you, in all sincerity, fellow-citizens, that I am no disunionist. If I know my own heart, I am more concerned about the means of preserving the Union than I am about the means of destroying it. The danger is not that we shall dissolve the Union, by a bold and manly vindication of our rights; but rather that we shall, in abandoning our rights, abandon the Union also. So help me God, I believe the submissionists are the very worst enemies of the Union. There is certainly some point beyond which the most abject will refuse to submit. If we yield now, how long do you suppose it will be before we shall be called upon to submit again ? And does not every human experience admonish us that the more we yield, the greater will become the exaction of the aggressors?"
posted by Lloyd at 10:23 AM

From Google Books)

M.W. McCluskey, ed., Speeches, Messages, and other Writings of Albert Gallatin Brown (2d ed., Philadelphia: Published by Jas. E. Smith and Co., 1859).

Speech on Nebraska and Kansas, 24 Feb. 1854:

(p. 336) "In the South we have but one standard of social merit, and that is integrity. Poverty is no crime, and labor is honorable. The poorest laborer, if he has preserved an unsullied reputation, is on a social level with all his fellows. The wives and daughters of our mechanics and the laboring men stand not an inch lower in the social scale than the wives and daughters of our governors, secretaries, and judges. It is not always so with you, and I will tell you why. The line that separates menial from honorable labor with you is not marked by a caste or distinct color, as it is with us. In the South, as in the North, all the mechanic arts are treated as honorable, and they are not the less so because sometimes practised by blacks. It may surprise our northern friends, but all the South will attest its truth, that nothing is more common in the South than to see the master and his slave working together at the same trade. And'the man who would breathe a suspicion that the master had sunk one hair's breadth in the social scale in consequence of this kind of contact would, by general consent, be written down an ass.

But there are certain menial employments which belong exclusively to the negro—these furnish a field of labor that the white man never invades, or if he does, he is not tempted there by gain. Why, sir, it would take you longer to find a white man, in my state, who would hire himself out as a boot-black, or a white woman who would go to service as a chambermaid, than it took Captain Cook to sail around the world. For myself, in thirty years, I have never found a single one.

Would any man take his boot-black, would any lady take her chambermaid into companionship ? We do not in the South, for they are always negroes; mechanics, overseers, and honest laborers, of every kind, are taken into companionship, and treated, in all respects, as equals. It is their right, and no one thinks of denying it.

I do not say that it is disreputable for white men and white women to go out to service and to perform even these lower grades of labor. But I say that with you, as with us^ they lose their position in the social scale when they do it. With you it must be done by whites, and therefore the whites lose position ; with us this menial labor is performed by negroes, and the equality among the whites is preserved."
posted by Lloyd at 10:08 AM

(From Google Books)

In M.W. McCluskey, ed., Speeches, Messages, and other Writings of Albert Gallatin Brown (2d ed., Philadelphia: Published by Jas. E. Smith and Co., 1859), he has a long speech from 1850 on the homestaed bill, advocating for "a home for everyone," with a vivid idealization of home and homestead, and lots of gender images.

He expresses the idea of homestead as freedom from society:
(p. 194)

"I repeat, sir, that I am for giving to every man in the United States a home—a spot of earth—a place on the surface of God's broad earth which shall be his against the demands of all the world—a place where, in the full enjoyment of all his senses, and the full exercise of all his faculties, he may look upon the world, and, with the proud consciousness of an American citizen, say, This is my home, the castle of my defence; here I am free from the world's cold frowns, and exempt from the Shylock demands of inexorable creditors. These, sir, are my sentiments, long entertained, and now honestly expressed; nor am I to be deterred from their advocacy by any general outcry. Call these sentiments Socialism, Fourierism, Free-Soilism—call them what you please—say this is the doctrine of " vote yourself a farm"—say it is anti-rentism—say what you please—it is the true doctrine; it embraces great principles, which, if successfully carried out, will lead us on to higher renown as a nation, add to the wealth of the separate states, and do niore for the substantial happiness of the great mass of our people than all your other legislation combined."

(p. 195)
"It is my fortune to represent a constituency in which is mingled wealth and poverty;—whilst some are wealthy, and many possess more than a competency, there are many others on whom poverty has fixed his iron grasp. All, I hope, are patriotic. But, sir, if I were going to hunt for patriots who could be trusted in every emergency; patriots who would pour out their blood like water; and who would think it no privation to lay down their lives in defence of their country, I would go among the poor, the squatters, the preemptors, the hardy sons of toil. Though I should expect to find patriots everywhere, I know I should find them here."
posted by Lloyd at 9:54 AM