to be read out of the party? Read out, sir. That question was settled long ago. On this great vital question he is out of the party.

"I would not say anything unkind to that senator, nor would I say anything uncourteous in the world; but my experience in the country life of New England does present to my mind an illustration which I know he will excuse me if I give it. A neighbor of mine had a very valuable horse. The horse was taken sick, and he tried all the ways in the world to cure him, but it was of no avail. The horse grew worse daily. At last, one of his neighbors said: 'What are you going to do with the horse?' 'I do not know,' was the reply; 'but I think I shall have to kill him.' the other, 'he does not want much killing.' You see, in ordinary times, and on ordinary questions, a little wavering might be indulged; but when it is on one question, and a great vital question, and all Christendom is on the one side, and the northern Democracy on the other, to go over from the ranks of the Democracy to swell the swollen ranks of Christendom, and then ask if he is to be read out!

'Well,' said

"This omission to submit the constitution to the people of Kansas is not accidental. I am sorry to find, as I have found out this session, that the omission to put it in the original bill was not accidental. We have a little light on this subject from a gentleman who always sheds light when he speaks to the Senate-I mean the honorable senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Bigler]. He says that this was not accidental, by any means. He has spoken once or twice about a meeting that was held in the private parlor of a private gentleman. There was a good deal of inquiry and anxiety to know what sort of a meeting that was. The gentleman who owns the house said he did not know anything about it. That is not strange. The hospitable man let his guests have the use of any room they chose. The honorable senator from Pennsylvania said this meeting was 'semi-official.' I do not

know what kind of a meeting that was. I have heard of a semi-barbarous, a semi-civilized, and a semi-savage people; I have heard of a semi-annual, and semi-weekly; but when you come to semi-official, I declare it bothers me. What sort of a meeting was it? Was it an official meeting? No. Was it an unofficial meeting? No. What was it? Semi-official.

'I have never met anything analogous to it but once in my life, and that I will mention by way of illustration. A trader in my town, before the day of railroads, had taken a large bank bill, and he was a little doubtful whether it was genuine or not. He concluded to give it to the stage driver, and send it down to the bank to inquire of the cashier whether it was a genuine bill. The driver took it, and promised to attend to it. He went down the first day, but he had so many other errands that he forgot it, and he said he would certainly attend to it the next day. The next day he forgot it, and the third day he forgot it; but he said, 'to-morrow I will do it, if I do nothing else; I will ascertain whether the bill is genuine or not.' He went the fourth day, with a like result; he forgot it; and when he came home, he saw the nervous, anxious trader, wanting to know whether it was genuine or not; and he was ashamed to tell him he had forgotten it, and he thought he would lie it through. Said the trader to him, 'Did you call at the bank?' 'Yes.' 'Did the cashier say it was a genuine bill?' 'No, he did not.' 'Did he say it was a bad one?' 'No.' 'Well, what did he say?' He said it was about middling-semi-genuine.' I have never learned to this day whether that was a good or a bad bill. They used to say, in General Jackson's time, that he had a kitchen cabinet as well as a regular one. This could not be a meeting of the kitchen cabinet, because it sat in a parlor. It was semi-official in its character also."

The speech closes with the following language in

reference to the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court:

"If the opinions of the Supreme Court are true, they put these men in the worst position of any men who are to be found on the pages of our history. If the opinion of the Supreme Court be true, it makes the immortal authors of the Declaration of Independence liars before God and hypocrites before the world; for they lay down their sentiments broad, full, and explicit, and then they say that they appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rectitude of their intentions; but, if you believe the Supreme Court, they were merely quibbling on words. They went into the courts of the Most High, and pledged fidelity to their principles as the price they would pay for success; and now it is attempted to cheat them out of the poor boon of integrity; and it is said that they did not mean so; and that when they said all men, they meant all white men; and when they said that the contest they waged was for the right of mankind, the Supreme Court of the United States would have you believe that they meant it was to establish slavery. Against that I protest, here, now, and everywhere; and I tell the Supreme Court that these things are so impregnably fixed in the hearts of the people, on the page of history, in the recollections and traditions of men, that it will require mightier efforts than they have made or can make to overturn or to shake these settled convictions of the popular understanding and of the popular heart.

Sir, you are now proposing to carry out this Dred Scott decision by forcing upon the people of Kansas a constitution against which they have remonstrated, and to which, there can be no shadow of doubt, a very large portion of them are opposed. Will it succeed? Will it succeed? I do not know; it is not for me to say, but I will say this, if you force that, if you persevere in that attempt, I think, I hope the men of Kansas will fight,

I hope they will resist to blood and to death the attempt to force them to a submission against which their fathers contended, and to which they never would have submitted. Let me tell you, sir, I stand not here to use the language of intimidation or of menace; but you kindle the fires of civil war in that country by an attempt to force that constitution on the necks of an unwilling people; and you will light a fire that all Democracy cannot quench. Aye, sir, there will come up many another Peter the Hermit, that will go through the length and the breadth of this land, telling the story of your wrongs and your outrages; and they will stir the public heart; they will raise a feeling in this country such as has never yet been raised; and the men of this country will go forth, as they did of olden time, in another crusade; but it will not be a crusade to redeem the dead sepulchre where the body of the Crucified had lain from the profanation of the infidel, but to redeem this fair land, which God has given to be the abode of freemen, from the desecration of a despotism sought to be imposed upon them in the name of perfect freedom' and 'popular sovereignty.'"

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

MR. STEPHENS, of Georgia, has for years been a leading character in the politics of the country, and has been reckoned by all who know him, or of his acts in Congress, as one of the first men which the South has sent into public life. He is a native of Georgia, where he was born in the year 1812. His grandfather, the Hon. Alexander Stephens, was an Englishman and Jacobite, and came to this country about the year 1746. He joined the American Colonial army-was present at Braddock's defeat, and took a very active part in the Revolutionary War, and settled down, after it was over, in Pennsylvania. In 1795, he emigrated to Georgia, and finally settled down on the place now occupied by his grandson -the subject of this sketch-in Taliaferro County. He died on this place, in 1813, at the age of ninety-three. The year before, young Alexander was born, his mother dying while he was an infant. His father was comparatively poor, but was industrious and virtuous, so that he maintained a high reputation in the town of his birth. He died when Alexander was only fourteen years of age, leaving each of