The Alleghanian. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1859-1865, 1864-08-25

UIOlu, ludubcot ScoStdPui>oi, R0Aie'SA' N"N y
commercial necessities. A community oi
origin and ot language among the great
mass of our people intensifes the tendency
of this broad domain toward cohesion and
unity.
This tendency may be temporarily over
borne, just as a heavy body may be lifted
from and suspended at distance above
the earth-just as Portugal has for ages
been torn from the side of Spain-just as
Italy was for centuries parceled out among
number of petty despots. In the end,
however, the law of gravitation, political
or material is certain to assert itself.
Human Slavery is the disturbing coun-
teracting, centrifugal force in our political
system, the palpable and only cause OF our
past, present and future alienation. No
one ever met an English-speaking native
of any one Of our States. who desired
disunion unless on account Of Slavery.
This Slavery is great but not an
enduring evil. All the better influences
of our time fight against it with force
utterly unknown to darker ages. The
Steam Engine, and every other important
invention (the Cotton-Gin apparently
excepted,) wars on it necessarily and
powerfully. There are not to-day half SO
many slaves in Christendom as there were
in 1900; it is not at all probable that
what remains of Slavery will much outlast
the present century.
Free Labor would soon oust Slavery
anywhere if competition were allowed;
but it never is. Had "Yankees" been
really at liberty to buy cotton and sugar
Ii ha, ~ / oh
Slavery would long since have been run
out of the South, to the great profit OF all
concerned but the institution has defen-
ses in the laws, the habits, the mobs, the
bowie knives and revolvers, Of the South,
which Free Labor has not been prepared
to overcome. There never yet has been
a day when a New-Englander buying
great South Carolina plantation at public
sale, and proceeding to work it energet-
ically by Free Labor, would not have been
regarded aud treated as dangerous public
enemy.
Our Revolutionary sages comprehended
and deprecated the deadly aRtagonism,
the "irrepressible conflict" between Free
dom and Slavery; but they deemed the
latter a blunoer so palpable, wrong SO
gross, that it must speedily vanish. Roger
Sherman, in the Federal Convention of
1857, observed that "the Abolition of
Slavery seemed to be growing in the
United States ~ and that ''the good sense
of the several States would probably by
degrees complete it." Oliver Ellsworth
remarked-"Slavery, in time, will not be
speck In our country" aud no one dis
sented or demurred. Nearly all the great
men of that Convention denounced and
reprobated Slavery; no one attempted to
justify it.
Still, the extreme South-Georgiaa and
South Carolina-clung to the abuse, in
sisted on its maintenance, demanded guar
antics for its federation so long as certain
States should see fit to uphold it. Hence
the provision that the Slave Trade should
be permitted for twenty years longer,
backed by the sharp alternative, "No
Slave-Trade, no Union" A majority
succumbed to that ultimatum. The clause
under which the fugitive slaves are re-
claimed owes its adoption to similar
requirement, though perhaps not SO clear
ly expressed. And these immoral con-
cessions were made by Gen. g. G. Pick
ney in the South Carolina Convention his
chief reasons for voting to ratify the Con-
sti.ution.
Mr.. Clay, in 1874, though on other
grounds opposing the Annexation of
Texas, urged that permanent acquisition
ought not to he refused on account of
temporary institution like Slavery.
The Northern Democratic politicians
have a single nostrum for restoring and
perpetuating the Union-further conces-
sions, lower prostra:ions to the Slave
Power. Slavery renders the South their
rotten borough, always certain to give
them large majority of its votes in Con-
gress and for President. Nomatter though
it scourges and devastates the South, it
nevertheless Brings plenteous grists to the
mill of Democracy"
This policy feeds and strengthens, while
protesting only to placate, the Union s
only formidable, inveterate enemy. It is
selfish, leading by fowery
paths down to perdition.
Such is the policy which the Democrat
ic politicians are being drilled to re-estab-
lish at Chicago and in the ensuing cleo
ton. Should it prevail, the experience
Of two generations will have been Ignored, |
and seas of blood and treasure lavished in
vain.-N Y. Tribune.
nA- 1t is stated as quite certain that |
the draft ordered to take place September |