fice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I shall not live to weep over it."

We will now pass down to the period when a new element was brought into this unfortunate controversy. In 1835 petitions for the abolition of slavery in places subject to the authority of the general government, began to be presented to congress. This form of proceeding was adopted merely to adjust a lever which might reach the institution of slavery within the states; and it is hazarding little to affirm, that such was distinctly understood to be the design of the movement. Such an attempt should have been met by the prompt and stern rebuke of the common government of all the states: For it would seem to be an axiomatic truth, that where several states had entered into an alliance, there was an obligation on each to respect the institutions of the other; and that any attempt to use the alliance for the purpose of assailing the institutions of any one of the parties, was a breach of faith, and must ensue in a dissolution of the alliance. Stern rebuke and unyielding resistance should have been offered by congress to all these attempts; and such was the course advised by southern statesmen. As far back as 1838 the dangers which are now around us were clearly foretold by Mr. Calhoun; and it may serve to convince us that the final result is not far in the future, if we see before us the antecedents which had been distinctly traced. I ask leave, therefore, to have read an extract from a speech made in 1838:

"This was the only question of sufficient magnitude and potency to divide this Union; and divide it, it would, or drench the country in blood, if not arrested. He knew how much the sentiment he had uttered would be misconstrued and misrepresented. There were those who saw no danger to the Union in the violation of all its fundamental principles, but who were full of apprehension when danger was foretold or resisted, and who held not the authors of the danger, but those who forewarned or opposed it, responsible for consequences. But the cry of disunion by the weak or designing had no terror for him. If his attachment to the Union was less, he might tamper with the deep disease which now afflicts the body politic, and keep silent until the patient was ready to sink under its mortal blows. It is a cheap, and he must say, but too certain a

mode of acquiring the character of devoted attachment to the Union. But seeing the danger as he did, he would be a traitor to the Union and those he represented, to keep silence. The assaults daily made on the institutions of nearly one-half of the states of this Union by the other-institutions interwoven from the beginning with their political and social existence, and which cannot be other than they are, without their inevitable destruction, will and must, if continued, make two people of one, by destroying every sympathy between the two great sections, obliterating from their hearts the recollections of their common danger and glory, and implanting in their place a mutual hatred, more deadly than ever existed between two neighboring people since the commencement of the human race. He feared not the circulation of the thousands of incendiary and slanderous publications, which were daily issued from an organized and powerful press, among those intended to be vilified. They cannot penetrate our section; that was not the danger; it lay in a different direction. Their circulation in the non-slaveholding states was what was to be dreaded. It was infusing a deadly poison into the minds of the rising generation, implanting in them feelings of hatred, the most deadly hatred, instead of affection and love, for one-half of this Union, to be returned on their part with equal detestation. The fatal, the immutable consequences, if not arrested, and that without delay, were such as he had presented.

The abolitionists tell you, in so many words, that their object is to abolish slavery in the district of Columbia, as but one step towards final abolition in the states. With this object, avowed by the abolitionists, what do duty and policy demand on our part ? We see the end; and that, if it can be effected, it would be our destruction. Shall we yield or stand fast? That is the question. If we yield an inch, we are gone. The very ground on which we are asked to make the first concession, will be urged on us with equal force to make the second, the third, and every intermediate one, till the last is consummated. * At every step they

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would become stronger, and we weaker, if we should be so infatuated as to make the first concession. * There never was a question agitated, where the most unyielding opposition was so necessary for success.

He ought not, perhaps, to be surprised that senators should differ so widely from him on this subject. They did not view the disease

as he did. He saw working at the bottom of these movements the same spirit which, two centuries ago, convulsed the christian world, and deluged it in blood; that fierce and cruel spirit of persecution which originated in assumed superiority and mistaken principles of duty, that made one man believe that he was accountable for the sins of another, and that he was the judge of what belonged to his temporal and eternal welfare, and was bound, at the peril of his own soul, to interfere to rescue him from perdition. Against this fell and bloody spirit it was in vain to interpose this amendment. An inflexible adherence to our principles and our rights, and a decided and emphatic tone, equally remote from violence or concession, only can save us. The deluded agitators must be plainly told that it is no concern of theirs what is the character of our institutions, and that they must not be touched here, or in the territories, or the states, by them or the government; that they were under the guardian protection of the constitution, and that we stood prepared to repel all interference, or disconnection, be the consequence what it might."

Unfortunately for the south, concession became again its policy. It was virtually admitted that the north had a right to assail the institution of slavery when congress agreed to receive their petitions. Logically, this admission demanded a consideration of the matter of the petition. But with singular inconsistency a rule was made that the petitions should be laid upon the table without further action. So violent a separation of premises and conclusions satisfied no one; and the result was, that the agitation continued with unabated zeal. The political parties into which the country was divided, made their court to this fanatical element, added to its strength, and gave direction to its blindness.

Its first fruits were developed in the severance of christian fellowship in the churches. Inflamed with zeal by imaginary wrong, and assuming as an article of the faith, that slavery was a sin, they denounced their brethren of the south as unworthy of meeting with them at the table of their common Master. The professed followers of that meek and gentle Saviour, who, from the hills of Galilee and from the mountains of Judea had looked down without censure upon thousands of dwellings inhabited by slaveholders-of that Saviour, one of whose first miracles was the healing and restoring to a Roman master his slave sick with the palsy, and commending that

master, by declaring that he had not found faith like his in all Israel; these northern professors of a new christianity cannot hold communion with slave owners.

The great apostle of the Gentiles could compass the Roman world, and preach to the thousands and tens of thousands of slaveholders around him, without one word of reproach. He could convert to the faith the fugitive slave of one of his friends, and send back to him that slave, without the smallest imputation upon his faith or practice. Nay, more-as though the spirit of God had prepared beforehand the means to enlighten every christian upon this very subject, the church of God is inspired to place in the canon of scripture the noble and respectful letter written by St. Paul to this slaveholding master. The whole Roman world, from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules,-from the Danube to Mount AtlasGoths and Ostrogoths, Vandals, Huns, Gauls and Britons, all can hold communion with each other, through the one common Lord, when professing the common faith; yet here in the same nation, under the same constitution, with the same Bible, professing one faith, the north cannot hold fellowship with the south. The great leading denominations (Methodist and Baptist) have entirely severed their connection with each other. The Presbyterian and Episcopalian still meet together, and are yet preserved from this fanaticism. But in one portion even of Presbyterian and in many of the smaller denominations, the cords are chafed and worn so as to be incapable of further stress; and so it results that the north acknowledges no fellowship with the south. They practically have added a new article to the christian creed, and in all these cases the tidal wave of persecution has set in from the north, and at each flow it surges higher and higher upon the south without any interval of ebb.

The next step in our history, to which I must allude, is the admission of Texas into the Union. At this period there were 26 states in the Union, evenly divided between the north and the south. Southern development had been exhausted; but in the territory remaining, five states were yet to be added to the north. The world's convention which met at London in 1843, had taken into its consideration the abolition of slavery in Texas. In this convention were delegates from New England; and it is matter of history that the convention waited on the British minister, and urged upon him a government loan to Texas to be applied towards the abolition of slavery.

What took place in the secret conclave of the minister, can easily be conjectured, from the following outline of a debate in the British parliament, extracted from the London Times:

"TEXAS.—In the house of lords, on Friday the 18th August, Lord Brougham introduced the subject of Texas and Texan slavery in the following manner:

Lord Brougham said that, seeing his noble friend at the head of the foreign department in his place, he wished to obtain some information from him relative to a state of great interest at the present time, namely, Texas. That country was in a state of independence, de facto, but its independence had never been acknowledged by Mexico, the state from which it was torn by the events of the revolution. He was aware that its independence had been so far acknowledged by this country, that we had a treaty with it.

It was a

The importance of Texas could not be underrated. country of the greatest capabilities, and was in extent fully as large as France. It possessed a soil of the finest and most fertile character, and it was capable of producing nearly all tropical produce, and its climate was of a most healthy character. It had access to the gulf of Mexico, through the river Mississippi, with which it communicated by means of the Red river.

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markets from whence they obtained their supply of slaves were Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia; which states constantly sent their surplus slave population, which would otherwise be a burden to them, to the Texan market. No doubt it was true, as has been stated, that they treated their slaves tolerably well, because they knew that it was for their interest to rear them, as they had such a profitable market for them in Texas. This made him irresistibly anxious for the abolition of slavery in Texas; for if it were abolished there, not only would that country be cultivated by free and white labor, but it would put a stop to the habit of breeding slaves for the Texan market. The consequence would be, that they would solve this great question in the history of the United States, for it must ultimately end in the abolition of slavery in America. He therefore looked forward most anxiously to the abolition of slavery in Texas, as he was convinced that it would ultimately end in the abolition of slavery throughout the whole of America. He knew that the Texans would do much, as regarded the abolition of slavery, if Mexico could be induced to recognize their independence.