Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1856-12-11

IlHSIllutlOlS VI eAlSGluS CGaIeS. " dCCOlu'
plish their objects, they dedicate themselves
to the odious task of depreciating the gov.
Iernment organization which stands in their
way, and Of calumniating, with indiscrimi-
nate invective, not only the citizens of par
ticular States, with whose laws they find
fault, but all others of their citizens
throughout the country, who do not partici.
pate with them in their assaults upon the
constitution, framed and adopted by our fa-
theirs, and claiming for the privileges it has
secured, and the blessings it has conferred,
the steady support and grateful reverence Of
their children. They seek an object which
they we'll know to be revolutionary one.
They are perfectly aware that the change in
the relative condition of the white and black
races in the slaveholding States, which they
would promote, is beyond their lawful au-
thority that to them it is foreign object
that it cannot be effected by any peaceful in
strumentality of theirs that for them, md
the States of which they are citizens, the on
ly path to it's accomplishment is through
burning cities, and ravaged fields, and
slaughtered populations, and all there is
most terrible in foreign, complicated with
civil and servile war and that the first step
in the attempt is the forcible disruption of
country embracing in its broad bosom a
degree Of liberty, and an amount of individ-
ual and public prosperity, to which there is
no parallel in history, and substituting in its
place hostile governments, driven at once
and inevitably into mutual devastation and
fratricidal carnage, transforming the now
peaceful and felicitous brotherhood into a
vast permanent camp of armed men, like the
rival monarchies of Europe and ASIA
Well knowing that such, and such only, are
the means and consequences of their plans
and purposes, they endeavor to prepare the
people of the United States for civil war by
doing everything in their power to deprive
the constitution and laws of moral authori-
ty, and to undetermine the fabric of the
Union by appeals to passion and sectional
prejudice, by indoctrinating its people with
reciprocal hatred, and by educating them to
stand face to face as enemies, rather than
shoulder to shoulder as friends.
It is by the agency ofsuch unwarrantable
interference, foreign and domestic, that the
minds of many otherwise good citizens, have
been so infamed into the passionate con-
demnation of the domestic institutions of the
southern States as at length to pass insensibly
TO almost equally passionate hostility towards
their fellow-citizcns Of those States, and
thus, finally, to fall into temporary fellow
ship with the ayowed and active enemies Of
the constitution. Ardently attached to lib
erty in the abstract, they DO not stop to con-
ho ~, tho,
would attain can be ACCOMPLISHED nor to re-
feet that, even if the evil were as great as
they deem ii. they have no remedy to apply,
and that it can b.. on " aggravated by their
violence aud u.ir0n,'itnti. ntl action. +,
question which i one of the most diifc'n %
al! the problems o. snciai institution f'''''-
cal economy. AMI stateS,nanship urea.
with unreasoning intenperp<e Oh .housn'
and language. ExtremeSnese. eA'ie'hes'
Violent attack from y :, \ 'r'h mas c's III
evitable conscQucpe IN 'he grown OF spi-
rit of angry dpafnce at the South thus.
in the nroS<ess of events we had reached
that cors1mmation which the voice of the
ncoyfe has now pointedly rebuked. Of the
attempt of portion of the States, by sec
tional organization and movement, to usurp
the control of the government of the United
States.
I confidently believe that the great body
of those who inconsiderately took this fatal
step are sincerely attached to the constitu-
ton and the Union. They would, upon de-
shrink with unaffected horror
from any conscious act Of disunion or civil
war But they have entered into path
which leads nowhere, unless it be to civil
war and disunion. and which has no other
possible outlet. They have proceeded thus
far in that direction in consequence of the
stages of their progress having
consisted of series of secondary issues, each
of which professed to be confined within con-
stitutional and peaceful limits, but which
attempted indirectly what few men were
willing to do directly-that is, to act ag-
gressively against the constitutional rights
Of nearly one-half of the thirty-one States.
In the long series of acts Of indirect ag
gression, the first was the strenuous agita-
ton, by citizens of the northern States, in
Congress and out of it, of the question of
negro emancipation in the southern States.
The second step in this path of evil con-
sisted of acts of the people of the northern
States, and, in several instances of their
governments, aimed to facilitate the escape
of persons held to service in the southern
States, and to prevent their extradition when
reclaimed according to law and in virtue Of
express provisions of the constitution. To
promote this object, Legislative enactments
and other means were adopted to take away
or defeat rights which the constitution SOL
emnly guaranteed. In order to nullify the
then existing act of Congress concerning the
extradition of fugitives from service, laws
we're enacted in many States forbidding their
officers, under the severest penalties, to par
ticipate in the execution of any act of Con-