The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1860-06-07
HAITIMORE.
THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1850.

II every opposition member of Congress were
!, ascuss the question of Slavery in the tone and
.oroner Of Mr.. LovEJoY, in the House, and Mr..
Cr,,rxER. in the Senate, the Federal UNION could
- last another month. The former, with the
sririt of fanatic and the zeal of bgot exhaust
"a every epithet of abuse that could be found in
ramarkably copious vocabulary to express his real
Or affected adherence of Slavery itself and of the
Slave States in general. The latter, in an elabo-
rate speech, more carefully worded and treading
ut all times on the very verge of parliamentary
decorum yet rarely overstepping it, has distin-
ouished his return to the Senate after four years
absence by ra<ing up from the archives of Con-
cress. and from all manner of outside sources, |
every possible fact and incident that either direct
lvor indirectly, could be brought to bear upon
the subject of Slavery in its moral, social and poit-
ica aspects These two gentlemen, it is safe to as
sumo represent the advance guard, and express the
sentiments and ultimate views of the Republican
party of which they are prominent members.
That their extreme opinions will be disavowed by
those among their colleagues who are more eau
tious and polite, or who fear to look the issue
squarely in the face, is not at all improbable; but
every one who has read history to any purpose
well knows that in times of high political excite
ment, and in great crises always, those who tim
idly counsel half measures rudely thrust aside
or are compelled TO yield to the dicaton of the
holder and more INSCRIPTIONS men of their party.
No sensible man fail TO see that the inevitable
tendency of such speeches as those of Messrs.
LovEJoY and SUMNER is to widen the breach
which now exists between the North and the
South, and that the obvious design of those coarse
and viruent phippcs was either to force the South
to yield submissively to the demands of the
abolitioniss, to take resolute stand in defence
of those rights which are guaranteed to it by the
provisions of the Federal compact, but which
sectional preudices heightened into sectional hos
tility, have placed in imminent peril. When Mr.
LINCOLN declared, during his canvass for the
Senatorship in Illinois, that the States of the
UNION must be wholly slave or wholly free, he
struck the keynote of the party of which he has
since become the recognized standard-bearer.
The ''irrepressible conflict doctrine Of Mr.. SEW
ARD scarcely went so far as this. What Mr.
LovEJoY said in the House, and what Mr. SUMNER,
in choicer phraseology but far more deliberately,
has repeated in the Senate is in strict accordance
with the proposition authoritatively enunciated
by Mr.. LINCOLN on the prairies of Illinois.
"Grander debate than this, on Slavery" says
Mr.. SUMNER, ''has not occurred in our history
''rareIy in any history; can this debate
''close or subside, except with the triumph of
freedom So says LINCoLN so says LovEJoY
so also intimates though in more guarded terms
Mr. SEWARD. Here, then, we have the prime
leaders of the Republican party, expressing, each
L., MI
means nothing less than that Slavery within the
limits of the UNION must and shall be abolished
But in what manner do the Republicans seek to
accomplish this result? By reason by argument,
by proving it to be immoral, unwise, impoltic
and unjust by demonstrating concIusivey that
it works a serious injury TO the material pros
perity of the Republic; or by appealing to the
Southern States, in a spirit of fraternal regard
to examine well this question-to investigate it
calmly in all its bearings, and, after due rehec-
ton, to decide whether it is really that terrible
curse which many people at the North sin
cerelv believe it to be? Is this the feeling with
which the Republicans approach the question
which in its solution has the power to rend the
UNION into fragments? Every page of the history
of the last five years distinctly shows that they
have been animated by far different spirit. In
the House and in the Senate their speeches have
been filled with acrimonious invectives, and
Southern representatives have been compelled to
listen, hour after hour, to vulgar epithets and
coarse illusions; to taunts and menaces, and to
the viliication of Southern planters and Southern
matrons, poured out without stint, and with an
air of triumphant insolence that invited, and, in
any other place, would have justified, personal
chastisement. What wonder then that they
should have sometimes found their patience tried
overmuch and that they should have been goaded
into violations of the rules of the House, which
have more than once threatened to end in a gen.
eral conflict? Now that this uncompromising war;
fare upon the institutions of the South is openly
declared it becomes the imperative duty of every
man who desires TO witness the perpetuaton
the UNION to rally under a common standard
without regard to what his previous party affilia-
tons may have been. Sectionalism, whether
North or South must be put down, and the ques-
ton of Slavery must be taken out of the arena
politics and restricted TO those limits within which
the discussion of its merits or dement's may be, by
general consent, acknowledged to be eminently
right and proper.