Year: 1860

| III


on Is IN danger, not by reason of invasion from


abroad, but of revolution at home, produced b,
conflict OF opinion and action between the North


ern and Southern States as to that slave labor


which exists IN the Southern States alone lis true


out which exists there to the benefit use and pro6
| States. Il : l.


The Union! How gratefully have we not regard


ed that noble work of our fathers by which we are


not hostile foreign States but family of conradar


ated Republics, without vexatious custom honsas y,
impeded commercial intercourse along our resnec
tive frontiers-without conflict of commercial sys
tems-with free interchange of cur respective pro.
ductiOns, agricultural, mineral marine or mann.
facturing-with right of passage from one to the
Other and freely following the pursuits of industry
and happiness in either-with complete eyemption
at home from all those horrors of local warm a
word, specially privileged by our Federal orranizo
ton from all the terrible drawbacks on public and
private prosperity-which meanwhile wasted the
resources and destroyed the power of all the rest of
Christendoml


The Union! How delightedly have we not con-
templated that grand spectacle of the American
Constitution Over-canOpying our country as a lumi
nous armament of sublimty and beauty filled with
all beneiicent emanatons-causng the wilderness
TO blossom as garden, and new State after State
TO spring up under the light and heat of its radi.
ance-so that by the arts of peace, and the expan.
sive ltehood of our institutions, the New World
seemed to belong to us of right, and the name OF
Americans had come to be ours alone and rang on
the ear as round and full as ever that of Roman
did in the pamier days Of the most famous ciyiza-
tlon of the Old World.


Such was the Union which our Fathers estab
lIshed,-a Union founded on the cornerstone idea
ol the Original independence and constitutional CO.
equality of the States


1t was let to degenerate sons of theirs to bepin
to undo that great work, which they had not Wis
dom to comprehend or virtue to maintain in its
pristine integrity and strength.


1t was not until twenty wears after the pstabIisI
ment OF the Constitution when the last of the revo
lutlonary Presidents was in the seat of federal
power, that men of the Northern States began 70
strike blows at the equality of the States. bv insist
ing on the putting of the institutions of Southern
States under the ban of the Union, in excluding
them from the common federal territory.


IreadIng IN the same path, the next step of
abandonment or perversiOn of the Constitution bv
the sons was for the Northern States to assume to
conilscate the property and other domestic RIGHTS
OF citizens of the South sOournng or in transit at
the North, the possession of which, during such
soJourn or transit, is guaranteed to them by the
same explicit provision of the Constitution which
guarantees to the citizens of the North the privi
lege to go with their property and other domestic
rights In transit or sojourn into any Southern
State.


Then the Sons proceeded to pass acts in the North
ern States to nulify or impede the right of recla
nation of fugitives from service, which the Con
sttution had explicitly stipulated for and which
constitutional right the Fathers had confirmed bv
an appropriate act Of Congress.


Next, degenerate sons, in contempt of the idea
ana work of their fathers proceeded to organize in
the Northern States a system of agitation and pro-
pagandlsm, by means of societies, incorporated and
others, Tor the purpose of preaching at the North
crusade against the institutions and the people of
the Southern States. This agitation went on until
the minds OF too many at the North had got to be
utterly lost to all sense of truth asehood rieht
or or wrong; and everything of good gave way TO the
lanatlc clamor of mere unreasOning and senseless
sympathy with black men; to such degree that to
Dfeak covenants; to steal property or to facilitate
the stealing of it to write and distribute documents
melting to insurrection, murder and rapine. to
peullon Tor, to insist upOn to advocate and to urge
IN season and out o. season. the deliberate violation
OF the compacts of the Constitution or the over
throw OF the Union Such came to be the familiar
sights and sounds of our daily life. The sacred
pulpit, to great extent, became infected with no.
lItlcal abotionism, as with an epidemic plague


The churches, and their ancary associations.
were distracted, divided, broken up Political mar.
Ties became demOraliZed. Current literature as
sumed morbid, jaundiced ,fOulish black hue The
leading thought of Governors and of Legislatures
came to be the mcddlesome interference bv mes
sages, resolutions, and otherwise, with the insitu-
tons OF the Southern States. Political power at
the North could be obtained only by pandering to
tins unconstitutional spirit of acknowledgements
Most OF the political, and many of the religions and
proessedly literary journals, fell into the same per
verse condition as that of the local public mind
which they reflected. The favorite orators in the
Northern States We're such as decaimed AGAINST
the constitutional rights, the free inhabitants and
the institutions of the Southern States. who de-
nounced the Constitution and the Union because
oi tne constitutional rights which the South has in
the Union, and who had reached snch a pitch of de
monac possession as to pray for the advent of can
antlslavery Constitution, an anti-sav Bible and
an anti slavery Cod" if petty a question As the
81 Iruvidence Of hKage the sum of the universe
speech and thought of tens of thousands of persons
IN the Northern States of such hostility of feel
ing towards their fellOw-citiZens of the Southern
States as the bitterest national hatred and that
only could apply to foreign enemies and the senti-
ment did not fail to intensity itself into actual hos.
tile inroads from the Northern into the Southern
States-the authors of those inroads to be honored
and in some cases sanctiiied, yea almost deled if
not in all, yet 10 but too many Of the most inte-
gent and cultivated and professediy moral and
ligious among the Northern States.


And at length, to cap the climax Of political
alteration, the Sons entered upon that which the
Fathers dreaded and warned against as the great
last peril of the Union. These uEiilia sons of the
fathers organized a sectional combination of the
Northern States, with sectional candidates for the
offices of President and Vice President of the United
States, through whom, if elected, to impose their
will on the Southern States; and, failing in their
first attempt to do this, they have now as they as
sumo to believe, at length succeeded in a second
attempt of the same sort, by the election of a Pres-
dent, whose distinctive idea is that States with
domestic institutions-sOme free labor, some slave
laber-cannot exist together in the Union; that
there is an irrepressble conflict between them; and
that of course the Fathers erred in assuming that
States with varying domestic institutions can co
exist, and in framing a Constitution expressly
adapted to that precise end and constructing
the Union.


Meanwhile, the expression at the North of the
sentiment OF opposition to slavery at the South has
produced among the people of the latter senti-
ment of angry rejection of our oilicous advice
where it is advice only, and of still angrer repul
sion of it where it passes from advice to act and
becomes, according to their belief unconstitutional
interference with their rights in the Union. Ex-
hnp tnt tInn hn nY1n do Al
other encroachment the one aide leads to repri-
sal and retortiOn on the other; =
and so, finally, we become heated on both Sides our
blood Is up, and all of sudden awake to the
perception of the fact that longer have the
common attachments of common country; and
then it is but step-nay, it is but accident of
the error of some State, or the madness of some
individual man-which separates us from civil war,
revolution, consummated dissolution of the Union.


To that point have now arrived and it is a
question of revolution, and nothing else.


If we do not desire to have that next step taken,
nor to continue subject to that accident which may
precipitate the catastrophe, the South must re-
trace its false steps, if it has taken any, and the
North must retrace its false steps, if it has taken
any;


To return, then. The tenor and spirit of the
Constitution federal, as distinguished from
central; the powers of local government are with
the States, not with the Union by the Constitution
the Federal Government is but the trustee of the
States for purposes defined and prescribed; the
Southern States have right to undertake to
convert the North to their ideas of local interest
and the Northern States have no right to under
take to convert the South to their ideas of local in
terest the attempt to do this on either side is con
trary to the Constitution and subversive of the
Union; and the organization of the personal
Administration Of the Federal Government on such
premises would be of itself the overthrow of
the Constitution. In ether words, the consecra-
ton of the distinctive political idea of Mr.. Lincoln
whether take that idea in the form as first
enunciated by him, or copied, repeated and
elaborated in successive speeches by MIR. Seward
and others,I say the conservation of that idea bv
making it to preside over the Administration Of
the Federal Government, would be of itself a rev.
olution in the institutions of the United States
more radical and complete than that which sepa-
rated us from Great Britain, or that which estab-
lished, or that which established the dynasty of
the Napoleons in France.


repeat, then, the Inauguration of the iden of
the irrepressibe conflict, the idea that States of
differing domestic institutions cannot continue to-
gether in union, the idea that or The other fact Is
to to be- is revolution; revolution either in the
impression of unity OF domestic laws all the
States alike, or in the dissolution of the Union be-
cause of the absence of such unity.


There is no escape from that. You, the RepubH-
cans by Abraham Lincoln, the selected representa-
tive of your opinions and policy, and by the prin-
ciples and reasonings with which your speakers and
writers have succeeded in getting plurality of
votes for electors assumed to be favorable to the
designation Of him for President have declared and
announced that the two different kinds of States