The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1860-02-25

Pork less buoyan Sales of made at
siss37h and Of new prime at $l4 SIX SIS. Sugars
in farIdemand, with sales Of about 600 hhds at
prices given in another place. Coffee firm, with sales
OF 200 bags Of Rio at l2hc and some small lots OF Java
at full prices. Freghs quite steady, with moderate
engagements at unchanged rates.
Oisunion at the South-The Cause and
tho Remedy.
The chief organ of Sewardi in this city charges
the democracy of the South with being a disunion
party-a charge which has been often made of
late, and reiterated usque ad naussam. This
charge is, to a certain extent, undoubtedly
true, and ought to be admitted. 1t is true con-
ditionally-true in certain contingency, which
may or may not happen. The universal senti-
ment not only of the democracy of the South,
but of the whole South, is, that in the event of
the anti slavery parties of the North gaining
the ascendant in the federal government, the
wisest policy of the Southern communities is to
secede peaceably from the Union, before ty-
rant majority in Congress proceeds to reduce
them to base subsection, which would place
them in the position of conquered provinces,
instead of Independent sovereign States.
This has been proclaimed by the leading men
of the South in both houses of Congress, de-
clared in their State Legislatures and by the
Governors of States, enunciated by the people
in their mass meetings, and by their presses
from Delaware to Texas
Now this is an alarming condition of things,
tending directly to the breaking up of the
Union, and the question is, what cause has pro-
l hos of Wo Rot h
| years of antislavery agitation at the North has
at last eliminated in crisis which has driven
the South to the wall and compels it to stand
at bay. A moral war has been waged against
its institutions, which are guaranteed by the
constitution, protected by the constitution, and
incorporated into the very framework of the
constitution. Garrison and Phillips are un-
doubtedly right, and honest as they are right,
when they pronounce the constitution "pro.
slavery" 1t is pro slavery, and therefore they
curse it, and curse the Union of which it is the
bond. The moral war against the institutions
of the South has proceeded step by step till at
length it has become physical war-a war Of
saltpetre and birthstone, and rifles and pixies, of
which the saint and martyr John Brown is the
pioneer, and of which Helpers Compen-
dunn, endorsed by oil the leading men
of the republican party, is the law
and gospel. William H. Seward, who has
| given this book o special endorsement, is the
prophet of the party, who, like Mahomet, with
| the Koran in one hand and q sword in the
other, issues his declaration of war against the
South, threatening to subject its institutions to
higher law "a new book of Mormon);
and his disciple, Mr.. Hickman, of Penn
sylvania, follows up the menace of the
"irrepressible conflict" of which there was
foretaste at Harper's Ferry by another
menace that the higher law will be forced upon
the South by eighteen millions of bayonets;
and the man who is at the head of this party,
William H. Seward, is its candidate for the
Chief Magistracy, which would place at his dis
posal, and at their disposal, the federal army
and navy and the militia of the several States
Has not the South, then, reason to fear the
worst in the event of the triumph of the anti
slavery party, and the election of William II.
| Seward? And is it not natural that the South
should mediate and threaten secession from
Union which would no longer exist but on
parchment, and which would be henceforth only
the union of the shark with his prey? The
Harper's Ferry invasion may be explained
away, hnt the South will regard the election Of
Mr.. Seward as the palpable, incontrovertible,
overt act of the whole North, foreshadowing
the other overt acts in his programme. 1t will
regard his election by a Northern majority
and sectional issue as the first act of dis.
union committed by the combined Northern
States, and it will consider itself as absolved be-
fore God and man from all future allegiance to
the Union. Judging from the best information
we have received from every State in the
South, our solemn conviction is that if Mr.. Sew
ard should be elected, or any other man who
adopts the programme Of his irrepressible
conflict" he will never be inaugurated at the
Capitol in Washington.
The causes which are precpitating this ter.
rible catastrophe are the same which have led
to similar results in all other countries. Take
for instance, the case Of England and her North
| American colonies. What produced their re
volt? 1t was the oppression of the mother
country, which attempted by a high hand to in
terfere with the legislation Of the colonial Assem-
blies and to ignore the rights of the people
They demonstrated in vain, and at last threat
ened. The leaders who gave expression to theii