Union, such as Governor Johnson, of Tennessee, Mr. Etheridge, of Tennessee, Mr. Clemens, of Virginia, and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland. They declared themselves for the Union, at all events. Whatever the majority would do willingly, without coercion, to remove suspicions and fears, and to strengthen their hands, they would gladly accept. But not so they who traded with treason, and struck hands with rebellion, for the purpose of coercing the General Government into a substantial change of the Constitution :-Those States and those men who, like Virginia and most of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, took the attitude of threatened secession, claimed it as a right, offered protection to others in exercising it, and then announced the terms on which they would be satisfied to forego secession or revolution, and permit the Government to be carried on! Such was the position of Virginia and of Ex-President Tyler, such the position of Mr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, and I have yet to be taught that such has not been the position of Mr. Crittenden.

Had there been an Executive, this should have been a question between the Executive Department and the revolutionists; and there was, properly, nothing for Congress to do but to furnish means. But there was no Executive, at the most critical time. And, even after the changes in the Cabinet, any access of fear on the part of the President, or of misplaced confidence, would give all to the winds again. I believe we shall learn, in time, that Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams made their calm, conciliatory, wellpoised speeches, firm against all concession, yet not defying the revolutionists, at a moment when they did not know that any hour the Government might not fall from under them; and because they knew there was no Executive with which it was safe to defy the revolutionists to their last resource.

The first inquiry is, upon what has this vast movement rested, and from what causes has it sprung?

The lever with which they have worked, has been Slavery. This is the strongest single interest in the country. Beside its alleged two thousand millions in value, it has the advantage of being purely sectional, and of being universal in the section in which it exists. The very dangers that attend it, make its guardians the more watchful, sensitive, and united. Another source of its power is that it comes home to the business and bosoms of every man, woman, and child in the South. It is their one staff, their daily bread, a matter of hearthstones, presenting a dreadful alternative of prosperity and peace, or servile war; a mortal struggle for supremacy or for life. This power, too, has the advantage (for purposes of concerted action, I mean) of being wielded by a few. The whole number of voting slaveholders probably does not exceed one hundred thousand, and the few managers of this voting power are able to act with more secresy than is possible in our part of the country. For such purposes, they have most of the advantages of an oligarchy.

Another source of influence is in the characteristics of the Southern people. Eighty years ago, Mr. Burke spoke of them thus:

"There is another circumstance attending these [the Southern] Colonies which makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those of the Northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case, in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much of pride as virtue in it, but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the Southern Colonies are more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the Northward. Such were all the ancient Commonwealths; such were our gothic ancestors; such, in our days, are the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves."

One or two hundred years of tropical life and slave institutions have not ameliorated this combination of haughtiness of domination over others, with jealousy of their own freedom. These traits have led to two results, in their influence on national politics,

the exercise of extreme powers of government when it has been in their possession, and the assertion of the right of nullification and secession as a defence against any apprehended attacks on their own privileges.

Another source of influence has been the fact that this political organization, based on slavery, has controlled the politics and wielded the patronage of the General Government for thirty years; and it is hard for a privileged class to part with its monopoly, and sink to the level of the rest of us, and take its chances of honors and power at the ballot-box. It does not require much art and effort to persuade them that acquiescence in the decision of the majority is a degrading submission, and the revolution of the wheel of fortune an attack on vested rights.

Mr. Buchanan says, in his message, that questions of the territories, and of the rendition of fugitive slaves, though sufficient for purposes of ordinary political action, were not enough to account for secession. That must be traced to fear and suspicions respecting slavery at home, questions of forcible abolition or insurrection. This is true; and without this lever to work with, the movement could not have been promoted with such success. And the revolutionists have systematically worked upon the fears, interests, and passions of the South, on this point, with the most untiring and ingenious energy. But even here they could not have

succeeded alone. They have received great aid from the North. Since the resistance to the aggressions of slavery, political and territorial, has fallen to the charge of one party, the opponents of that party have acted with a unity of design on that head. Their object has been to defeat the Republican party, by preventing its getting any foothold, or even a hearing, at the South. The design has been to establish an impassable gulf between that party and the South, -a gulf which can neither be bridged over, nor sailed over, and over which not even a bird of peace shall fly. This result would not only lose that party every chance of a Southern vote, but, keeping it a sectional party, would diminish its influence at home, and even render it suspected and odious. This policy, like that of Cromwell in attempting to exterminate the Irish, was well enough, (except in a moral point of view), if it succeeded, but fraught with terrible dangers if it failed. If the Republican party came into power, rebellion became an imminent danger. I acquit the Northern journals that have been engaged in this work, of any intention to furnish sustenance to secession or revolution. They intended only a usual, but not defensible party warfare. But it is not possible for men to limit the effect of their wrong.

In this connection, I wish to say a word about the Abolitionists of the North.

THE ABOLITIONISTS OF THE NORTH.

No man can understand the politics of this country who does not understand the position of this class. Want of that knowledge misleads people in Europe and at the South. I refer to the members of that association identified with the names of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips. I will not join in the cry of the pack which is setting upon them; for they are a minority, engaged in an unprofitable and unpopular cause, for which they have suffered much, and some of them, Mr. Phillips certainly, have made large sacrifices; and especially not now, when their adversaries have clothed them with the dignity of representing, in their own persons, the right of free speech on public questions.

The scheme of their doctrine is this: Slavery is of that class of sins known as mala in se, with which all voluntary connection is itself a sin. The Constitution of the United States recognizes slavery, and makes some compromises with it. A conscientious man ought not, therefore, to have any voluntary connection with the Constitution. True to this logic, and with a fidelity to their convictions we cannot but respect, they seceded long ago. They could not carry any State or county, or town with them, and therefore they are not protected by Virginia, and granted immunity by Mr. Buchanan. As they are peace men, non-resistants, they have not seized the forts, nor called the attention of the laws to themselves. But they seceded, on their own private account, as individuals. They resigned all offices, State and national; refuse to

take the oath of allegiance; never vote in any election, State or national, and belong to no party. They are open, avowed disunionists, and pray and preach for dissolution.

If the disunionists of the South had taken the same view of duty, there would have been less trouble. But they have taken the oath, voted, controlled parties, and held the highest offices, and, in fact, have been the Government, and only left the Cabinet and the Senate when they saw that their longer stay there was of less benefit to the cause of treason than their open secession.

These abolitionists at the North, of whom I speak, left to themselves, and of their own force, attract little attention, and have little influence. Their disconnection from politics, their secession attitude, their disunion purposes, render it so. I have known them from my college days, and I do not see but that they have the same orators, and much the same audiences, they had then. I do not see that they have added one convert of note to their ranks, or even kept pace with the increase of population. Their organ is the Liberator. Who sees the Liberator? Is it sold at our railroad stations, or in our steam cars, or horse cars, or at our steamboat landings, or depots for periodicals, or hawked in the streets? I see a good deal of what is going on in Boston, but, to the best of my recollection, I never saw that journal but once in my life, and then it was sent to me by mail from a Southern city.

I know this association claim that all the anti-slavery element in the political action of the country is attributable to their efforts. I believe this to be an entire mistake. They are simply that extreme left of a great body of moral opinion and feeling, which you will find on every subject, in every thinking community. They might as reasonably attribute the public interest felt in the late comet, to the articles that may have appeared upon it in the columns of the Liberator.

But this association has been a mine of wealth to the revolutionists of the South, and to the opponents of the Republican party in the North, who, by an intentional confounding of names and terms, have represented their speeches and resolves as the speeches and resolves of men engaged in political action, of Republicans, and have been the very wings on which their words have been borne all over the South, creating false impressions as to the purposes and principles of the Republicans and the North, alarming fears, arousing passions, and furnishing a complete magazine of weapons and ammunition for the promoters of disunion. And at this moment, it is in the power of a few Northern journals that you and I could name, if they would sink their party purposes and make a clean breast of the truth, to do more than any men in the country to restore confidence and peace.

But we Republicans, and all men of the North, whether of our party or not, have duties to perform relating to this great question. We cannot tell what a day may bring forth. Our representatives may at any moment be called upon to act, and desire to know our

opinions; and we ourselves, sooner or later, must meet all these issues. Allow me, therefore, to call your attention to them in their order.

SLAVERY WITHIN THE STATES.

It is a fundamental principle of our government that all the domestic relations are matters of State control. The right of the slave States to the exclusive control of slavery within their borders, rests on a broader and deeper basis than any special provision of the Constitution. It is bound up, indissolubly, with all the domestic relations of every State, with those of husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, master and apprentice, and all the laws regulating labor, education, internal police, and the tenure and descent of property. This is such a truism in our policy, that it need not have been placed in the platform of any party, were it not for the wilful misrepresentations of opponents, and the honest fears and suspicions of the South, engendered in the way I have attempted to describe. These fears and suspicions it is our duty to meet and minister to, in the kindest spirit, line upon line, and precept upon precept, by speech, by resolves of party conventions and Legislatures, by explanatory and declaratory acts, and, if they desire it, even by an amendment of the Constitution securing this principle, which we are all interested in maintaining, even more firmly than it now is, although we all believe such an amendment to be pure supererogation.

SLAVE REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS.

As dear to the lovers of free institutions as is the equality of representation, yet our ancestors, who had periled life and fortune for that principle, made the compromise, believing it necessary to ensure the Union, that five slaves should be counted as three free men in the ratio for representation. Then there were few slaves, and few slave States, and it was hoped and believed that in most of them slavery would die out or be gradually abolished. But, from unforeseen causes, slavery has advanced at a fearful pace. The slave States became increased three-fold; and the slaves are now more numerous than the entire population of the Union then was,— free and slave, black and white, together. The slaves give to the freemen of the South nearly as many representatives as all New England is entitled to. Yet the North has acquiesced in the extension of this anomaly and privilege to all the new States, without objection, and almost withont a murmur. And if we intend to preserve the Union, we must expect to acquiesce in it.

SERVILE INSURRECTIONS.

By the Constitution, the General Government is obliged to protect each State, on the application of the State, from domestic violence. It is to aid, if required, in putting down insurrections against the law of State, whether that law be slavery or any other