Year: 1860

Throughout the year since our last meet
ing, the country has been eminently pros
porous, in all its material interests. The
general health has been excellent, our
harvests have been abundant, and plenty
smiles throughout the land. Our COM
merce and manufactures have been prose.
cuted with energy and industry, and have
yielded fair and ample returns. In short,
no nation in the tide of time has ever pre-.
sented spectacle of greater material
prosperity than we have done until with
in very recent period


Why is it, then, that discomfort now so
extensively prevails, and the Union of the
States, which is the source of all these
blessings, is threatened with obstruction
The long continued and Incorporate inter-
ference of the Northern people with the
question of slavery in the Southern States
has at length produced its natural effects
The different sections of the Union are
now arrayed against each other, and the
time has arrived, SO much dreaded by the
Father of his Country, when hostile geo.
graphical parties have been formed. II
have long foreseen and often forewarned
my countrymcn of the now impending
danger. This does not proceed solely from
the claim on the part of Congress or the
territorial legislatures to exclude slavery
from the Territories, nor from the efforts
OF different States to defeat the execution
of the fugitive slave law.


All or any of these evils might have
been endured by the South without danger
to the Union, (as others have been,) in
the hope that time and reflection might
apply the remedy. The immediate peril
arises not so much from these causes as
from the fact that the incessant and violent
agitation Of the slavery question through
out the North for the last quarter of a
century has at length produced its malign
influence on the slave, and inspired them
with vague notions of freedom Hence a
sense of security no longer exists around
the family alter, This feeling of peace at
home has given place to apprehension of
servile insurrection. Many matron
throughout the South retires at night in
dread of what may bcfall herself and her
children before the morning.


Should this apprehension of domestic
danger, whether real or imaginary, extend
and intensity itself until it shall pervade
the masses of the Southern people, then
disunion will become inevitable. Self
preservation is the first law of nature ,and
has been implanted in the heart of man by
his Creator Tor the wiscst purpose and no
political union, however traught with bless
ings and benefits in all respects, can long
continue, II the necessary consequence be
to render the homes and the fresides OF
nearly half the parties to it habtually and
hopelessly insecure. Sooner or later the
bonds of such Union must be sevcred.-
1t is my conviction that this fatal period
has not yet arrived; and my prayers to
God is that He would preserve the Consti-
tuition and the Union throughout all gen,
erations.


But let us take warning in time, and
remove the cause of danger. 1t cannot be
denied that, for five and twenty years, the
agitation at the North against slavery in
the South has been incessant. In 1885
pictorial hand-bills, and infammatory ap-
peals, were circulated extensively through
out the South, of character to excite the
passions of the slaves and, in the Ian
guage of General Jackson, "to stimulate
them to insurrection, and produce all the
horrors Of a servile war;" This agitation
has ever since been continued by the pub
lie press, by the proceedings of State and
county conventions, and by abolition SER
mons and lectures. The time of Congress
has been occupied in violent speeches on
this never ending subject; and appeals in
pamphlet and other forms, endorsed by
distinguished names, have been sent forth
from this central point, and spread broad
cast over the Union.


How easy would it be for the American
people to settle the slavery question forever,
and to restore peace and harmony to this
distracted country.


They, and they alone, can do it. All
that is necessary to accomplish the object,
and all for which the slave States have
ever contended, is to be let alone, and per-
mitted to manage their domestic institu-
tions in their own way. As sovereign
States, they, and they alone, are RESPONSE
bic before God and the world for the slavery
existing among them. For this, the people
of the North are not more responsible, ,and
have no more right to interfere, than with
similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil
Upon their good sense and patriotic fore
bearance | confess l still greatly rel y -
Without their aid, it is beyond the power
of any President, no matter what may bC
his own political proclivities, to restore
peace and harmony among the States.