446 
 

 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A.KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
THE BORDER STATES: 
 
 
 THEIR 
 
 POWER AND DUTY 
 
 PRESENT DISORDERED CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. JOHN P., KENNEDY, 
 
 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. P. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1861. 
 
 1 
 
THE BORDER STATES 
 
 THEIR 
 
 POWER AND DUTY 
 
 THE PRESENT DISORDERED CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. JOHN P. KENNEDY. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1861. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
THE BORDER STATES, 
 
 THE country is now, or, from all the tidings that reach us, 
 must soon be compelled to accept the fact that South Caro 
 lina has seceded from the Union. 
 
 Whatever may be the right of secession, it is about to 
 become a practical fact. South Carolina has announced her 
 purpose, as far as it is in her power, to dissolve the Union. 
 Other States belonging to that series which has lately assumed 
 the designation of the Cotton States as expressive of a pecul 
 iar affinity in interest and policy are likely to follow her ex 
 ample. Alabama, which is, in some sense, the offspring and 
 pupil of Carolina, has shown herself already too eager to pre 
 cipitate herself into revolution to leave us any hope that she 
 will hesitate to array herself on the side of her teacher. 
 Perhaps we may still find some encouragement to a better 
 augury, in the good sense and prudence of Georgia and the 
 other States which have not been wholly possessed and fevered 
 by that extraordinary contagion of frenzy which Carolina has 
 spread through the lowlands of the South. But I confess my 
 fears. The signs are against it. The chances are for this 
 event is not under the control of the sober judgment and wise 
 estimate by which all matters of State should be directed 
 the chances are that passion will rule the hour, and that the 
 revolution will move onward, swayed by the same rash impulses 
 as those in which it originated. 
 
 We of the Border States, therefore, cannot too soon take 
 counsel together, touching our own interest and duty in the 
 new condition of affairs which is about to be forced upon us. 
 
 K/R73Q48 
 
The question that now concerns us is What position are we 
 to assume in the beginning of the strife; where are we to 
 place ourselves at the end of it ? 
 
 Is it not very obvious that Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Missouri, North Carolina, and Maryland cannot, with any 
 respect for their own dignity, with any regard for their own 
 welfare, or with any security for their own peace, suffer them 
 selves to be dragged into that track of revolution and civil 
 war, of wild experiment and visionary project into which 
 Carolina is endeavoring to force them ? These States are 
 quite able to determine for themselves what griefs they suffer 
 and what redress they require : they want no officious coun 
 selor nor patronizing friend to tell them what it becomes them 
 to do, either for the maintenance of their own honor or the 
 promotion of their own advantage; they can hear with quiet 
 scorn the taunt that they " have placed the Union above the 
 rights and institutions of the South" and hold at what it 
 deserves the offensive rebuke "that no Southern State intent 
 on vindicating her rights and preserving her institutions would 
 go into conference with them."* 
 
 Every substantial hope of. a successful issue out of the afflic 
 tions of the country, produced equally by the wickedness of 
 Northern fanaticism, and the intemperate zeal of secession, 
 depends upon the calm and earnest wisdom of the Border 
 States. That they will be true to the duties of the crisis, no 
 one who has studied their character can for a moment doubt. 
 
 However the lowland States may now slight their counsels 
 and disparage their patriotism, it is a most weighty and sig 
 nificant truth, for the consideration of the leaders of the pro 
 jected revolution, that the Border States are at this time the 
 most authentic representatives of the conservative power of 
 the Union. Their various and equal relations to the North, 
 
 * See the Charleston Mercury of November 19, where this language 
 is held to Yirginia and the other Border States, in the editorial headed 
 "Southern Conference too late." 
 
the South, and the West, their social organization for the sup 
 port of every interest connected with good government and 
 permanent peace, their internal strength, and, above all, their 
 healthful tone of opinion toward the preservation of consti 
 tutional right and resistance against wrong, point them out as 
 the safest and best arbiters in the present difficulties of the 
 country. Whatever there is of real vigor in the slaveholding 
 communities, exists in them and is derived in greatest degree, 
 by others, from their sympathy and alliance. Without them, 
 we may affirm, that no confederacy of Slave States, at all 
 worthy of respect and consideration as an independent power, 
 can possibly be formed. 
 
 The attempt, whenever made, will speedily prove itself to 
 be a most unhappy failure. 
 
 The Border States have a better right to claim a hearing, 
 just now, than any other member of the Union. Indeed, until 
 they have spoken, it would almost seem to savor of an unbe 
 coming officiousness on the part of any other State to put 
 itself in the van to raise an outcry of wrong or to dictate the 
 measure of remedy. 
 
 While these States have always manifested a just and be 
 coming sensibility to their rights, connected with the employ 
 ment of slave labor, and have shared in the common indigna 
 tion of the South against the malignant hostility of certain 
 sections of the Northern people; while they have been the 
 chief and almost only sufferers from the inroads of organized 
 abolitionists, who have stealthily abstracted their slaves in 
 numbers whose value may be reckoned at little less than a 
 million of dollars a year ; while, indeed, it may be said, that 
 these States are the only portions of the slaveholding region 
 which have any direct, immediate or definite interest, worthy 
 of special consideration, in the vexed questions touching the 
 present or the future of slavery in the United States that is 
 to say, in the question of emigration to the territories, the 
 rendition of fugitives, and the organization of new States 
 they have, nevertheless, shown themselves in all contingencies, 
 
6 
 
 the confident and considerate assertors of their rights in the 
 mode ordained by the Constitution, and at all times the deter 
 mined friends of the Union. They have never yet felt an 
 aggression which they did not believe more effectively to be 
 repelled by the due exercise of the power of the government, 
 than by retreat before the aggressor and resort to a covert 
 revolution that seeks to legalize its action by taking the name 
 of secession. 
 
 They certainly cannot be expected now, with the painful 
 conviction which passing events are creating in their minds 
 that the Union itself is the chief grievance which stirs the 
 hostility of those who are most active in raising a banner of 
 revolt, and that the assaults upon the property of slaveholders, 
 of which they, the Border States, have so much cause to com 
 plain, are but the pretext to cover a concealed design of por 
 tentous mischief they cannot be expected now, with such a 
 ^.conviction, to renounce the wisdom of their accustomed trust 
 in the law, and allow themselves to be persuaded or beguiled 
 into a desertion at once of the Constitution which they have 
 always respected, or of the Union which they have always 
 revered. Their course is too plainly marked out to them by 
 the incidents of the day to admit of any such fatal aberration 
 as that. They are not blind to the fact that the present crisis 
 has been forced upon the country with a haste that allowed no 
 halt, chiefly because its contrivers feared the sound of that 
 voice from the Border States, which they knew would speak 
 peace to the troubled waves in strife, and would reach the 
 heart of hosts of loyal citizens in the very bosom of the com 
 motion, citizens, alas! now bereft of their loyalty by the 
 force of the tempest of revolution that has swept over them. 
 If thus Carolina and her comrades are lost all is not lost. 
 There is space for arbitrament still left which may at least 
 secure an opportunity for mediation, and I would hope an 
 eventual settlement that may, perhaps, include even those who 
 are at present the most resolute in their recusancy. Carolina 
 now repeats defiantly that all chance of her return is gone 
 
forever. I would fain believe that affairs may be conducted 
 into such a channel as Jx> awaken in her a better view of her 
 own future. 
 
 It is very important that the country should consider the 
 true character of the danger that threatens it. The public 
 mind is sadly at fault upon this point. There has been a 
 singular concurrence of accident and design to lead even sen 
 sible and observant men off from the perception of the real 
 causes of this disturbance ; and a not less singular exhibition 
 of practiced skill in the address with which the popular masses 
 in the region of the commotion have been enlisted in an enter 
 prise of the scope and consequences of which they had neither 
 the leisure to examine nor the temper to comprehend. 
 
 The public for the most part believe that the impending 
 revolution grows out of the organization of the Republican 
 party, and that the recent election presented the culminating 
 point at which that organization could no longer be endured 
 with safety to the Southern States. 
 
 Unfortunate as that election is, not only in its results, but 
 in all the stages of its progress from the day of the Chicago 
 Convention down to that of its consummation unfortunate 
 for the tranquillity of the country, and for the predominance 
 it has given to certain men and certain political sects it is 
 not less unfortunate for the opportunity it has afforded to the 
 accomplishment of designs long nourished, which have been 
 held in suspense only to await a juncture favorable to their 
 success. 
 
 The graver and more thoughtful portions of the community 
 have recognized with no little pain, the steady growth in some 
 sections of the South, for many years past, of a disposition 
 in the leaders of Southern opinion to undervalue both the 
 strength and the beneficence of the Union. It belongs to the 
 school of doctrine of which South Carolina is the head, to 
 imbue the people with the idea that the State Sovereignty has 
 the first claim to the allegiance of the citizen, and that no 
 more is due to the National Sovereignty than may be found 
 
8 
 
 not incompatible with this superior duty ; that to support the 
 State, right or wrong, in whatever demand it may make in 
 conflict with the Federal authority, is the natural and most 
 proper exhibition of a becoming State pride. 
 
 This school has also been the source of certain theories 
 touching the structure and aims of our government, which, 
 although founded, as we conceive, on mistaken views both 
 of the facts of its history and of the necessary conditions 
 upon which alone any government of a population so exten 
 sive as ours is practicable, could not but lead in time to angry 
 dissension and inveterate sectional prejudice. 
 
 Conspicuous among these theories are two which have taken 
 a deep hold upon the Southern mind. To their influence we 
 may trace no small amount of the discontent which has weak 
 ened the attachment of some of the Southern States to the 
 Union; and which has also led to the large acceptance they 
 have given to the efficacy and lawfulness of that extreme 
 measure which Carolina now proposes as the proper remedy 
 for the evils which threaten her in common with all other 
 slaveholding States. 
 
 The first of these theories asserts that the Federal Govern 
 ment was constructed on the basis of an equilibrium of power 
 between the Free and Slave States, which equilibrium was 
 designed to be forever preserved in all the vicissitudes of the 
 future. The failure to preserve it is consequently regarded as 
 a violation of a fundamental compromise. 
 
 The second is that which affirms all import duties to be an 
 exclusive tax upon the Planting States, by .virtue of which 
 they are burdened with the charge of the entire support of 
 Government. 
 
 I might add to these, that other theory from the same school, 
 and equally questionable, which conceives the ever-present 
 and effective remedy for all real or fancied griefs to exist in 
 the doctrine of a lawful right of secession. 
 
 Without stopping to debate the soundness of these several 
 tenets, I refer to them as presenting the real germs of the dis- 
 
9 
 
 content which has been smouldering at the heart of Carolina 
 for years, and as suggesting the true explanation of that phe 
 nomenon which puzzles the whole nation at this day, the 
 activity, namely, and apparent supererogatory zeal with which 
 Carolina has first, and before all her sister States of the South, 
 flung herself into the arena to vindicate them by revolution 
 and destruction of the Union. 
 
 These teachings have been long silently undermining her 
 attachment to the Federal Government, and have at last 
 wholly obliterated in her that sentiment of reverence for the 
 Union which our forefathers inculcated, with a religious 
 earnestness, as the foundation of American Nationality. 
 
 It is a fact of common observation that the present genera 
 tion of public men in Carolina have been educated in ominous 
 familiarity with the thought of disunion., It has been the toy 
 of their childhood, the weapon of their age of active life. It 
 has gathered edge and strength in a long and petulant quar 
 rel with the National Government. It has, at last, taken 
 visible shape in the instant, defiant act of secession. 
 
 Carolina frankly avows the Union to be an obstruction to 
 her prosperity. That is not the sentiment alone of to-day. 
 It has, for years past, been her earnest conviction that the 
 Federal Government, administered on the principles most ac 
 cordant with the wishes of a large number of the States, is 
 not compatible with her welfare. She, therefore, thinks she 
 has a right to retire from the compact and assume the position 
 of an independent nation. 
 
 She, moreover, thinks that it is altogether consistent with 
 her duty to her sister States with whom she has had no 
 ground of quarrel, to propagate her own discontent among 
 such of them as she may deem useful to her project, and by 
 persuasion, solicitation, and convention, to lure them out of 
 the Union into alliance with herself. 
 
 The short compend of these claims is expressed in the 
 postulate a right, at her pleasure, to dissolve the Union. 
 

 10 
 
 / 
 
 Every one has heard and read how pertinaciously she has 
 argued this right in every forum open to her service. 
 
 Persuading herself that she has this right, to he used 
 whenever she thinks proper, she deduces from it, quite logi 
 cally, the right to meditate over every problem of possible 
 contingencies which might, in the evolution of events, be 
 turned to her advantage. As for instance, whether she 
 would not thrive better if certain prohibitions of the Consti- 
 i tution were removed ? Would it be to her benefit to make 
 Charleston a free port? to negoitate a commercial treaty 
 with England? with France? to make a new Confederacy 
 within the territory of the Union ? to open and re-establish 
 the African slave-trade ? a hundred such questions which 
 she may deem fit to- consider and determine while she re- 
 / mains a member of the Confederacy and the objects of 
 which, if she cannot accomplish them in the Union, she 
 thinks it unreasonable to be denied the privilege of accom 
 plishing by secession from the Union. 
 
 I would not willingly misrepresent Carolina much less 
 speak in derogation of her really high and admirable quali 
 ties of character. There is no community of the same size, 
 I believe, in the world that has produced a larger share of 
 distinguished men. There is no society in the United States 
 more worthy of esteem for its refinement, its just and honor 
 able sentiment, and its genial virtues. 
 
 The men of Carolina are distinguished by the best quali 
 ties of attractive manhood. They are brave, intelligent and 
 frank. They speak what they think, and they mean what 
 they say. They are the last people in this Union we should 
 desire to part with notwithstanding their strange insulation 
 of opinion, their exclusive philosophies, and, what they must 
 pardon us for thinking, their political sophisms ! 
 
 In these sundry meditations of theirs, they have long since 
 
 struck upon one or more of the conclusions which I have 
 
 ; hinted above the opinion, namely, that they would do better 
 
 in a Southern Confederacy than in the Union made by their 
 
11 
 
 forefathers. And having come to that conclusion, they have 
 wrought themselves to the sober or rather, let me say, the 
 vehement conclusion that they are the most oppressed people 
 of Christendom. 
 
 In 1832, their oppression existed in the unhappy fact that 
 the Government persisted in continuing a policy originally 
 supported, if not demanded, by Carolina herself, which was 
 founded upon the most approved economical science of that 
 day, and the practice of all enlightened nations, the en 
 couragement of the domestic industry of the country. As a 
 remedy for this grief, they proposed secession and dissolution 
 of the Union but not being unanimous in that conclusion, 
 they resorted to the milder process of nullification. 
 
 How many times since that, they have determined to dis 
 solve the Union, it would be tedious to enumerate. But, in 
 1851, their grievances grew so intolerable, through the admis 
 sion of California into the Union, with a constitution made 
 according to its own view of what was best for it, that all the 
 altars were lighted up once more with an unusual conflagra 
 tion of the never-dying flames of liberty and independence. 
 
 What was the extent of suffering then, and what the 
 peculiar gravamen of that day, we may learn from their own 
 oracles. 
 
 In order that I may speak from the book, I will quote some 
 passages almost too long, but still so full of matter that I 
 am unwilling to shorten them, from the chosen and authentic 
 expounder of Southern opinion The Southern Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
 In an article of the October number of 1851, entitled, 
 "South Carolina, her present attitude and future action," 
 from the sum of much grave advice touching revolution, and 
 hinting, among other things, at the passage of bills of attainder 
 and the use of the axe, I extract the following exposition of 
 wrongs and suggestions of remedy : 
 
 "But the people of South Carolina," says the reviewer, "have 
 not yet entirely forgotten the angry feelings growing out of the 
 
12 
 
 war of the Revolution. Well, then, let them read over the 
 Declaration of Independence, and compare the wrongs recited 
 there, with those we now endure. What was the actual grievance 
 then? What is it now ? Then they augured misgovernment at 
 a distance. Now, the evil is upon them, and tenfold greater 
 evil than the most far-seeing politician of that day anticipated 
 from British tyranny. One, and but one of the luxuries of the 
 rich was taxed not more than five per cent. Now, every neces 
 sary of life which she does not produce at home, is taxed at an 
 average rate of not less than thirty per cent. Then Old Eng 
 land claimed the right to exact from her a portion of the revenue 
 necessary for the support of the British Empire, while the amount 
 expended for the benefit of South Carolina very far exceeded all 
 that she was called on to contribute. Now, New England re 
 quires her together with a few of her uncomplaining and acquies 
 cent sisters to furnish the whole revenue of the Union, no part 
 of which comes back to them, except in the shape of bribes to 
 such as are willing to sell themselves into the service of their 
 enemies, for Texas scrip and the emoluments of office." 
 
 ******* 
 
 "She (Massachusetts) was wronged. She was outlawed 
 
 and her port of Boston was shut. We took up arms in her 
 quarrel. It was hardly our own. But we made it our own. It 
 was for her that our Moultrie, Marion, Pickens, and Sumpter 
 fought in defence of our firesides, against an enemy whom our 
 zeal in her behalf brought upon us. From Ninety-Six to Charles 
 ton our country is full of monuments of our efforts in her cause. 
 It was for her the gallant Hayne died a felon s death ; and the 
 requital of that sacrifice is, to threaten the like doom to his 
 descendants should they be as bold in defence of our own rights 
 as he was then in defence of hers. We separated ourselves from 
 Old England because the port of Boston was shut up. Should 
 we now separate ourselves from New England, we hear from Bos 
 ton itself that the port of Charleston is to be shut up." * * * 
 
 After this, we have a glimpse of the remedy proposed for 
 these oppressions. 
 
 "What is there at this day antagonistic between the interests 
 of Great Britain and those of South Carolina ? Is not each the 
 consumer of all the other s productions, reciprocally? Is not 
 their relation like that of the sexes, each necessary to the other ? 
 And shall South Carolina, like the Circassian slave, continue shut 
 up in the harem of a brutal and sordid tyrant, when a generous 
 lover is waiting to make her his honored wife, and to establish 
 
13 
 
 her in wealth and comfort and freedom and all the dignity of a 
 Christian matron?" 
 
 ******* 
 "With all her professions of friendship Massachusetts 
 hates England with an inextinguishable, because an interested 
 hatred. They are rivals in commerce. They are rivals in 
 manufactures. An especial object of rivalry is the commerce of 
 the Southern States, and hence Massachusetts does all she can 
 to keep alive their old animosities and to prevent the growth of 
 any sympathy between us and England. Hence she excites the 
 impertinent clamors of English abolitionists. What for ? Can 
 they interfere with our institutions ? No. They can but make 
 us angry." * * * * * 
 
 It is a mistake, as we may gather from what follows, to 
 suppose that England is really opposed to slavery. Her pro 
 fessed aversion to it is a mere stratagem to allay her own 
 discontents. Her object is to keep her own workpeople 
 quiet, by inducing them to believe that the world contains 
 more wretched beings than themselves. 
 
 -"They (her West India possessions) have become a 
 
 burthen to her. They continually harass her with well-founded 
 complaints and demand some indemnity in the way of protection 
 to their sugar in the English market. But this is oppressive to 
 her people at home, and especially to the manufacturing opera 
 tive, -to whom coarse sugars are a necessary of life. To recon 
 cile him to this, nothing so ready as an appeal to his sympathies 
 with his brother slave on this side of the Atlantic; and he, poor 
 wretch, shut up in the work-house, the factory or the mine, 
 readily believes that the condition of the negro slave must be 
 a lower depth in that lowest deep" 1 with the horrors of which 
 he is so familiar." 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 "Let but South Carolina, even alone, set up for herself, 
 
 and establish such commercial relations with Great Britain as 
 would be best for both parties, how long would it be before Great 
 Britain would see her interest in permitting and encouraging 
 and aiding Jamaica and her other West India Islands, to form 
 one State, and Demerara another, and to enter into confederacy 
 with South Carolina?" 
 
 And as a matter of course, a new slave-trade from America 
 would be established by the aid of England in this hopeful 
 project. 
 
14 
 
 "Getting slaves from the continent, they would need no more 
 protection, and all clamor about slave-grown sugar would cease 
 forever. Entering the ports of England under a moderate revenue 
 tariff, the sugar would find its way to the operative at half its 
 present price, and the poor woman, wasted and worn by her twelve 
 hours of unceasing toil, would not be obliged to deny herself the 
 cheering influence of her indispensable cup of tea her only lux 
 ury and not her least necessary." 
 
 It is with such food as this that the mind of warm-hearted, 
 impulsive, credulous Carolina is fed to nurture this project of 
 disunion ! 
 
 Extravagant as this declamation may appear to a calm 
 reader, capable of estimating, at their true value, the happy 
 certainties that belong to the present and the future of a 
 State in the American Union, and the dreadful uncertainties 
 that impend over separation, even in its most hopeful reckon 
 ing, it nevertheless expresses the views and expectations of 
 that portion, at least, of the community in which it is uttered, 
 who have been allowed " to instruct the Southern mind and 
 fire the Southern heart" for the momentous struggle which 
 is now inaugurated in South Carolina. In that aspect it is 
 worthy of special notice at this time. 
 
 It demonstrates what I have already intimated, that the 
 secession movement is not the suddenly inspired project of the 
 present day ; that it does not grow out of the events of the 
 recent canvass and election^ nor even primarily out of that 
 agitation of slavery, which constitutes the flagrant cause of 
 disturbance in the Border States. 
 
 If we analyze this paper we shall see that the aggressions 
 of the Northern States upon the peaceful employment of 
 Southern labor, is scarcely referred to at all: that the real 
 and predominant grievance complained of is found in the old 
 question of taxation. The support of the government by im 
 ports, regulated to the revenue standard, is presented as an 
 abuse tenfold more oppressive than all the tyranny that led 
 to the revolution of seventy-six. The State of South Caro 
 lina and her few uncomplaining sisters are represented as 
 
15 
 
 groaning under the intolerable burthen of paying the whole 
 revenue of the Federal Government and getting nothing in 
 return. This is a repetition of the grief of 1832, when the 
 country was mystified with that most inscrutable of all revela 
 tions, "the forty bale theory," and which so far prevailed 
 in the philosophy of the National Councils, as finally to 
 secure the triumph of what is claimed to be the free trade 
 adjustment of 1846, which adjustment, it seems now, is no 
 more satisfactory than the protective system it displaced. 
 
 It is also worthy of note, that the rabid abolitionism of 
 England, of which so much has been said of late in the way 
 of denunciation, and which, in fact, is quite as mischievous 
 to Southern peace as the fanaticism it encourages in New 
 England, is regarded not only as harmless, but even as not 
 standing in the way of a most cordial alliance with Great 
 Britain. The reviewer actually apologizes for this little in 
 discretion in the expected ally, and treats it with a temper 
 of good sense which might be commendably adopted in regard 
 to the same transgression at home "can they interfere with 
 our institutions ? No. They can but make us angry." 
 
 We have a further exposition of the policy of disunion, in 
 the imagination of a Southern Confederacy composed of 
 Jamaica, and other British West India Islands, and Dem- 
 erara or, I suppose, the reviewer meant British Guiana on 
 the South American continent to which may now be added, 
 as a more recent development of the grandeur of the con 
 templated republic, the conception of similar accretions em 
 bracing Cuba, San Domingo, Mexico, and perhaps Central 
 America. This Confederacy, if we mistake not the signifi 
 cance of many ill-suppressed hints from indiscreet friends, is 
 to be rendered still more magnificent and bountiful of bless 
 ings, still more attractive to the contemplation of mankind 
 by the aid of a productive commerce in African slaves, which 
 seems to be not the least winning feature in the project. 
 
 These are the fervid dreams of the contrivers of disunion. 
 For such fantasies as these, our great Republic, the matured 
 
16 
 
 product of so much thought and suffering, is to be rent asunder, 
 just at the era when we fondly imagined it to have risen to 
 that height in the estimation of mankind which gave it an 
 assured position among the proudest empires of history. For 
 such impracticable conceits as these, it is to be resolved into 
 discordant fragments whose perpetual jars may illustrate the 
 saddest moral of blighted hopes the world has ever known ! 
 
 We might bear this melancholy lot with submissive patience, 
 as the chastisement of offended Heaven, if we could believe 
 there was any cause to give it the semblance of an unavoid 
 able affliction: if, indeed, it did not spring from the merest 
 wantonness of a temper engendered by too much prosperity 
 or ingratitude to God for blessings too profusely bestowed 
 to be valued. 
 
 There is something in the time and, jn the pretext chosen 
 for this great work of mischief that peculiarly provokes re 
 mark. The pretext is the general agitation of the Southern 
 mind by the Northern triumph over slavery. What quarrel 
 there is that grows out of this, is, as we have affirmed, the 
 just and proper quarrel of the Border States. That quarrel 
 does not necessarily, and most probably would not, lead to a 
 breach of the Union. Firm remonstrance and wise counsel, 
 aided by that strong attachment to the government, which, 
 both North and South, lives in the heart of millions of con 
 servative men may bring a truce, which, indeed, is already 
 begun, auspicious to reflection and the settlement of all 
 these differences. It is no difficult matter in this breathing 
 space, when considerate citizens are brought face to face with 
 honest purpose of peace, to frame an adjustment in which 
 future repose and sufficient pledge against the renewal of 
 strife may be obtained. 
 
 It is just at such a time as this in the interval when reason, 
 judgment, and fraternal affection are beginning to infuse a 
 benignant influence over the disturbed mind of the country 
 that the master-spirits of the new Confederacy rush to the 
 verge of the gulf and drive their maddened partisans to the 
 
17 
 
 dreadful leap that makes recall impossible. They pursue 
 their desperate course without a moment s pause, neither 
 looking back, nor taking breath; deaf to all entreaty of 
 friends, and blind to all sights but the visions that rise in the 
 distant prospect. There they behold their Arcadia, with its 
 phantoms of untold wealth, its free ports, its untaxed com 
 merce, its illimitable cotton fields, its flattering alliances, its 
 swarms of reinforcement from the shores of Africa. To reach 
 this promised land, the only condition of the enterprise is to 
 press forward with fiery haste and outrun the speed of the 
 peace-makers. 
 
 In 1851, Carolina pursued her scheme of secession as reso 
 lutely as she does at this day, and only failed through the 
 prudence of those who refused to accompany her. Her pur 
 pose was as ripe then, her hopes as high, as now. Yet, at 
 that epoch there was no fear of a Republican President.; 
 There was then no question of intervention or non-interven- ; 
 tion, no debate of equal rights in the territories, no Kansas, 
 no John Brown. In the absence of all these, she had nothing 
 but California and the Compromise to disturb her repose. 
 Yet her sufferings, as she declared, were too intolerable to be 
 borne. Let her speak for herself. It was the Union she 
 could not endure. " Welcome as summer showers to the sun- 
 parched earth" (was the wail of her Quarterly of that time) 
 "welcome as heaven s free air to the heart-sick tenant of a 
 dungeon, would come to us the voice of freedom, the word, 
 the deed, which would tend to burst our bonds, and in earnest 
 faith contribute to the disruption of this proud fabric (once 
 beautiful, but now rotten to the core) which, under the name 
 of Union, threatens to crush us beneath its unholy power." 
 
 We cannot believe that this complicated tissue of extrava 
 gant projects, of fancied ills, of illusory imaginations, has 
 taken any absolute hold upon the judgment of the really 
 sound intellect of Carolina. The many wise and patriotic 
 men, who have adorned the councils of the nation as well as 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 of the State ; the many whom we know in private life, dis 
 tinguished for good sense, clear perception of duty and the 
 highest order of ability, forbid the belief that, when this ex 
 traordinary tempest of passion shall subside, they will not be 
 at hand to lead back the State to the path into which her 
 true renown and her best interests invite her. We are aware 
 of the bewildering force of popular excitement lashed into 
 fury by the eloquence and the arts of ambitious leaders ; how 
 irresistibly it seizes upon impressible and ardent natures, how 
 strangely it, sometimes, overmasters the discretion of the 
 wise. But we also know that, in the very highest rage of its 
 sweep, it is never without an earnest and silent dissent in the 
 bosoms of grave and interested spectators who dare not, or, 
 in the hopelessness of a hearing, will not even whisper a re 
 monstrance against the heady current of the multitude. They 
 abide their time. We believe that at this moment, there is 
 in Carolina many a sad and watchful citizen anxiously await 
 ing the day when the collapse of this overstrained ardor shall 
 present an occasion to speak a word for the Union and for 
 the stricken fortunes of the State, without fear of that stern 
 and angry derision which now compels him to hold his peace. 
 But I leave this topic to recur to the question, What is 
 the proper duty of the Border States, looking to the contin 
 gencies of this unhappy strife? 
 
 Obviously they cannot, in the present circumstances, cast 
 their lot with Carolina. They cannot adopt either her pas 
 sion or her policy. They can go into no confederation of the 
 lowland States, organized on the principles and motives 
 which they have so much reason to fear now direct and stimu 
 late the ambition of Carolina. Then let them say so at once. 
 Let them say to her and to those who may unite their for 
 tunes with hers, that, deeply deploring a separation which 
 they would make every just or generous sacrifice to avert, 
 a separation that is forced upon them by a profound convic 
 tion that it is the only expedient left open to them to guard 
 
19 
 
 against still greater evils they must submit to it as the 
 inevitable destiny of their position. 
 
 The Border States have their own welfare to protect, their 
 own injuries to redness. They believe that both of these may 
 be accomplished within the Union. They have no issue with 
 any section of the Union, but that which springs from the 
 hostility engendered in the minds, and manifested in the 
 public action, of certain portions of the Free States. They 
 have no hopes or fears which may not be encouraged or 
 quieted by the lawful and orderly administration of the con 
 stitutional powers of the Federal Government. They regard 
 that government as the wisest scheme that can be devised for 
 the rule of this nation. They can never abandon it until ex\ 
 perience shall convince them that it is no longer capable to 
 resist its perversion by faction, or to protect the rights of 
 every State and citizen. 
 
 That experience they have not yet had. 
 
 They acknowledge that in the resolution of the Union into 
 fragments, which may be the possible result of the present 
 disturbances, a contingency may be presented to them in 
 which they will be compelled to choose their own lot. 
 
 Their first and greatest desire is to avert that contingency 
 and to restore peace and universal concord among the whole 
 sisterhood of States. 
 
 Supposing these to be the sentiments of the Border States, 
 which, from every authentic indication, I cannot doubt, I 
 venture to suggest for their consideration, 
 
 The expediency, as a preliminary measure, of holding, at 
 an early day, an informal Conference to be conducted by one 
 or more distinguished citizens from each of the Border States, 
 and from such of the other Southern States as may be 
 opposed to secession in the present state of affairs these to 
 be selected by the Executive of each State for the purpose 
 of determining on a course of joint action to be recommended 
 to the adoption of the whole number. 
 
20 
 
 To such a conference I would submit the following propo 
 sitions : 
 
 1. The propriety of making an earnest appeal to the seced 
 ing States to retrace their steps and await the result of the 
 measures proposed for the establishment of general harmony : 
 with a declaration that if this appeal be unsuccessful, they, 
 the Border States, will be compelled to decline entering into 
 a Southern Confederacy as now proposed by South Carolina 
 and her allies in secession. 
 
 2. That if the secession of South Carolina be followed by 
 that of Alabama or any other State, and a serious breach of the 
 Union be thus established, it will then be incumbent on the 
 Border States and the other Southern States concurring with 
 them, to take measures for their own security, by demanding 
 from the Free States a revisal of all topics of complaint be 
 tween them and the Slave States, and the adoption of such 
 stipulations on both sides as shall be satisfactory to each for 
 the determination and protection of Southern rights, and for 
 the restoration of harmony. 
 
 These stipulations would, of course, become the subject of 
 a negotiation with the Free States : a negotiation which should 
 be conducted in a frank and conciliatory spirit, through such 
 agencies as the parties may arrange. 
 
 I think it would be just to both parties, and would be likely 
 to meet the general approval of the country, to direct these 
 stipulations to the following points: 
 
 The re-establishment of the Missouri line and its extension 
 to the Pacific, as an easy, practicable mode of settling the 
 territorial question on a basis "with which the people are 
 familiar. 
 
 The adjustment of the question of the rendition of fugitive 
 slaves : 
 
 By such modifications of the provisions of the act of Con 
 gress on that subject, as shall remove every reasonable objec 
 tion to it, compatible with its efficient adaptation to its pur 
 pose: and by an agreement on the part of the Free States, 
 
21 
 
 to execute it in good faith, and to repeal all laws heretofore 
 passed with a view to its obstruction: 
 
 This, coupled with an engagement, in case any State should 
 find itself unable, by reason of the repugnance of the people 
 to the execution of the law, to deliver up the fugitive then, 
 to be allowed and required, by way of alternative, to make a 
 just indemnity to the owner, under such regulations as may 
 be devised. 
 
 The settlement of the question in regard to the admission 
 of New States on the foundation at present adopted, of leav 
 ing each territory to form a State Constitution in accordance 
 with its own wishes. 
 
 Finally, a pledge to be given by the Free States to exert 
 their influence, as far as possible, to discourage discussions of 
 slavery in a tone offensive to the interests of the slaveholding 
 States; and to endeavor to procure legislative enactments 
 against preparations for assault on the peace of these States, 
 either by individuals or organized bodies. 
 
 If there be any of the provisions proposed in these stipula 
 tions which may require an amendment of the Constitution 
 an agreement should be made to propose and support it. 
 
 3. If these stipulations can be obtained then the Border 
 States and concurring States of the South, which have not 
 seceded, shall retain their present position in the Union. 
 
 But in the adverse event of these stipulations, or satisfac 
 tory equivalents for them, being refused, the Border States 
 and their allies of the South who may be disposed to act with 
 them, will be forced to consider the Union impracticable, and 
 to organize a separate Confederacy of the Border States, with 
 the association of such of the Southern and Free States as 
 may be willing to accede to the proposed conditions. 
 
 4. When this programme of action, or such substitute for 
 it as the Conference may devise, shall be adopted, it should 
 be submitted, through the respective Executives of the States 
 represented in the Conference, to the people of each, to be 
 acted upon in a General Convention of those States, called 
 
22 
 
 by the direction and appointment of their several Legis 
 latures. 
 
 5. That pending the whole course of this proceeding, the 
 Border States and those concurring with them shall engage 
 to prevent, by all the means in their power, any attempt on 
 the part of the Federal Government or of any State or States 
 to coerce the seceding States by armed force into submission. 
 
 It may be a proper subject for such a Conference, as I have 
 proposed, to consider whether it would not be useful, in any 
 event even in that of the single secession of South Carolina, 
 before any other State shall have followed her to oifer the 
 Border States as mediators in the present unhappy differences, 
 and to endeavor to procure, for the benefit of all, the stipula 
 tions I have described above, or some other pacific arrange 
 ment of the same character and object. 
 
 If the Border States can be brought into combination in 
 the manner pointed out by those propositions, it is easy to 
 perceive that they must immediately become the masters of 
 the position from which the whole national controversy is most 
 likely to be controlled. They will not only hold the general 
 peace in their hands, by their authority to persuade an absti 
 nence from all attempts at coercion; but they will also be re 
 garded and respected on all sides, as the natural and appro 
 priate medium through which the settlement of all differences 
 is eventually to be obtained. 
 
 By taking the ground, at the earliest moment, that they 
 cannot unite in the scheme of the Southern Confederacy, and 
 that, if separation should, at last, after all efforts to avert 
 it, be imposed upon them by an inexorable necessity from 
 which there is no escape, they will be compelled to construct 
 a Confederacy of their own, in which they may be able to 
 associate with themselves, perhaps, the whole body of the 
 Middle and Western States. If they, the Border States, shall 
 firmly and dispassionately take this ground, such a determi 
 nation cannot but suggest to the seceding States the gravest 
 
23 
 
 motive to pause in their meditated career, and to await an 
 opportunity for further conference and debate. It will then 
 be for these States to inquire with more deliberation than they 
 have yet given to the subject, what will be the strength and 
 capacity for self-support of a Confederacy unsustained by the 
 power and resource of such communities as those which de 
 cline the alliance. When that question conies to be seriously 
 discussed by them it will present many new and momentous 
 considerations which have not yet been canvassed. 
 
 The popular notion of a united South is but an impracti 
 cable fancy. A united South is a more uncertain problem 
 than even the support of the present Union under the diffi 
 culties that now surround it. 
 
 I think it will appear to any careful explorer of the sub 
 ject, that if the fifteen States south of Mason and Dixon s 
 line were to enter into a Confederacy among themselves, such 
 an organization would speedily prove itself to be more pro 
 ductive of dissension than the present Union has been during 
 the last twenty years. 
 
 The policy prefigured by the seceding States is in many 
 points wholly repugnant to the views and interests of the Bor 
 der States. 
 
 These latter could never be reconciled to be made accom 
 plices in the disgrace and guilt of a restoration of the slave- 
 trade, they would never undertake to face the indignation of 
 Christendom which would arise upon its revival much less 
 would they agree to involve themselves in the expense and 
 burthen of the wars that it would inevitably provoke. 
 
 The Border States would scarcely less endure the commer 
 cial system, so often and conspicuously insisted on by Carolina 
 and her comrades in secession, by which free ports are de 
 manded and the consequent necessity of a public revenue 
 resting upon direct taxation. 
 
 They could not be persuaded into that expansive policy of 
 annexation and conquest which has dazzled the imagination 
 of the South and tormented the ambition of its people, in 
 
24 
 
 persistent forays upon neighboring States and perpetual 
 schemes of acquisition. 
 
 The Border States exhibit within their area a representa 
 tion of almost every interest and pursuit in the Union. They 
 are thriving and vigorous communities, with most prolific re 
 sources for every species of industry. Their agriculture fur 
 nishes an abundant supply of the sustenance of life, with 
 a large surplus for external commerce. The region occupied 
 by these States embraces also a wide area adapted to the cul 
 ture of hemp and flax, tobacco and cotton. It abounds in 
 mineral wealth, in water power, in pasturage, in cattle, sheep, 
 horses, in all the elements of the most diversified manufac 
 turing industry. Its healtful climate, its robust population, 
 and its cheap means of livelihood are singularly favorable to 
 the growth and prosperity of the mechanic arts, the multipli 
 cation of villages, and the gradual increase of thrifty and 
 industrious workmen in every department of handicraft in 
 variably the best indications of the progress of a State to 
 wealth and power. 
 
 Beginning at the Cities of Baltimore, Richmond and Nor 
 folk on the Atlantic, and extending over a broad domain 
 studded with flourishing inland towns, it ends at the City of 
 St. Louis on the Missouri, presenting throughout the series 
 every facility for a wide and profitable commerce, already 
 furnished with railroads, canals, and navigable rivers. 
 
 Here are all the elements necessary to the organization of 
 the polity of a first-class power. In extent of territory, in 
 resource, in population, it may take rank among the master 
 States which, in any new combinations of the fragments of 
 our once happy Union, broken by the madness of faction, 
 may hereafter be gathered from the wreck. 
 
 In the worst event that may happen, therefore, greatly as 
 every old-fashioned lover of the Union may deplore the neces 
 sity for such a work, here are the ready materials for the con 
 struction of a new nation able to protect the welfare of its 
 people, secure their peaceful pursuit of happiness, and furnish 
 
25 
 
 a safe refuge to all who may flee to it to escape the disorders 
 and distractions of the time. 
 
 It is a sad speculation which forces us to the computation 
 of the resources of any section of our present Union, with a 
 view to the exhibition of its capacity for independent exist 
 ence; but when the vision of a united South is conjured up to 
 our contemplation, as a possible or impending reality, we are 
 compelled to face and question it. 
 
 I have therefore looked at the character of the Border 
 States, to show how incompatible their interests are likely to 
 prove with the policy which is deemed essential to other 
 sections of the South. It must be apparent from even this 
 brief examination, that communities of such different pursuits, 
 and marked by such variant conditions, would scarcely find, in 
 political alliance with the projected Southern Confederacy, 
 that harmony of interests which is essential to the prosperity 
 of both. 
 
 The four or five States now reputed to be nfost likely to 
 enter into compact with Carolina may be described as chiefly 
 representing one vast cotton field. The whole region embraced 
 by them is, in all physical quality, if we except Georgia, 
 thoroughly homogeneous. Its business is planting. It has no 
 mechanic art and but few manufactures. Its rural inhabitants 
 are divided between numerous proprietors of the soil and their 
 slaves the proprietors, in great degree, migratory, the slaves 
 stationary thus necessarily creating, in many locations, a 
 great preponderance of slave population. Its productions are 
 singularly valuable as one of the most indispensable wants of 
 mankind, and readily exchangeable into money. This ex 
 change is made through an active factorage that has built up 
 prosperous cities and created a large commerce. So far as 
 this commerce is concerned with the planting region, it is re 
 duced into a simple system of transactions in the great staple 
 of the country a commerce without variety of resource, and 
 too dependent upon the accidents of a single product and the 
 vicissitudes of season, to support a costly mercantile marine, 
 
26 
 
 and which is therefore compelled to seek its transportation 
 from foreign and friendly sources. Such a commerce, we must 
 perceive, is peculiarly exposed, not only to damage, but utter 
 overthrow by the occurrence of war. In its overthrow, the 
 whole resource of the country is destroyed. This is the com 
 mon and inevitable weakness of all merely agricultural coun 
 tries. 
 
 If Louisiana, shaken from her balance by the fervor of the 
 moment, could be persuaded to join this Confederacy, she 
 would contribute, it is true, not only another resource in her 
 product of sugar, but a great commercial mart of command 
 ing importance in the trade of the world. It might neverthe 
 less be questioned whether even so valuable an acquisition as 
 this would, in the end, turn out to be a permanent accession of 
 strength. The prosperity of the City of New Orleans is so 
 essentially united with the fortunes of the West in fact, so 
 entirely dependent upon them as to suggest many possibili 
 ties of collision, both on the part of the city and State, with 
 the policy of the government to whose control they would 
 have surrendered themselves. Indeed, with the obvious mo 
 tives for hesitation, which must occur to the intelligent judg 
 ment of Louisiana, against the wisdom of entering into the 
 proposed Confederacy, it is scarcely to be presumed that she 
 may be seduced, even by the passionate solicitations of her 
 present anger against Northern aggression, into a measure, in 
 its best aspect, so doubtful ; in its apparent probabilities, so 
 rash. 
 
 She cannot slight the consideration that the adverse pos 
 session of a great seat of trade at the mouth of the Missis 
 sippi may furnish in the future, as it has done in the past, a 
 fruitful source of quarrel between the power that holds it and 
 the numerous commonwealths upon the banks of the river and 
 its tributaries, which now claim its free and uninterrupted use, 
 together with its depots, at all times and in all contingencies ; 
 that there is no form of agreement or treaty which can afford 
 complete and invariable protection to this enjoyment ; none 
 
27 
 
 that would probably be regarded as an adequate equivalent 
 for the surrender of the right which has been acquired by 
 purchase out of the common treasure, for the benefit of these 
 claimants. 
 
 Will not these reflections suggest a pregnant inquiry 
 whether the defence of this mart by a confederacy foreign to 
 the claimants may not prove a charge too costly to be com 
 pensated even by the unquestionably great advantages of such 
 a possession ? Does it presignify no danger that, in the vex 
 atious emergencies of future years, there may be provoked a 
 new motive in Louisiana, for secession from a confederacy that 
 is to be built upon a full recognition of that doctrine ? In view 
 of these possibilities and many others that experience may 
 bring to light, may we not assume that Louisiana will pru 
 dently weigh the question of her own permanent peace and 
 prosperity before she takes the step to which she is now in 
 vited? Will it not be equally well for the new Confederacy to 
 deliberate upon the point whether such a possession may not 
 be as much a source of weakness as of strength ? 
 
 Looking back to the elements with that notable exception 
 to which I have already adverted which are expected to 
 compose this Confederacy ; to its people and pursuits, and the 
 peculiar character of a large portion of its population ; to its 
 deficiency in mechanic art, its defective supply of the staff of 
 life ; to the influence of its climate ; to its entire destitution 
 of the means to build and man ships, and to many other dis 
 abilities which will occur in any review of its resources, we 
 cannot but think that this fancied New Atlantis, which has so 
 possessed the imagination of its votaries, will, upon trial, 
 prove itself to be the most defenceless, and, in a significant 
 sense, the weakest of independent nations. 
 
 It may have some hope of rising above this condition by 
 the accession of the State of Georgia. If that vigorous com 
 monwealth, in an hour of blindness to its own happy destiny 
 in this Union, should fall into the fatal error of joining in this 
 alliance, it will be, as every one must admit, a constituent of 
 
28 
 
 real strength in the Confederacy. Georgia would then arise 
 to the unenviable supremacy of being the only solid and 
 trusty support of the whole fabric. She has already, under 
 the auspices of a Union which has conferred nothing but 
 blessings upon her, advanced beyond all her compeers of the 
 South, to the position of a truly powerful and commanding 
 commonwealth. Surely, before she takes this fatal step, she 
 will meditate over the prosperity of her admirable effort in the 
 establishment of manufactures, her multiplying towns and vil 
 lages, her fertile and healthy uplands, her rapid growth in 
 peaceful arts, and her thousand capabilities of ever-varied in 
 dustry, and anxiously and coolly weigh the question, whether 
 she should put all these in jeopardy by submitting them to the 
 domination of such a policy as the new Confederacy will offer 
 her. But if, in full view of these admonitions, she chooses to 
 be led into the first movement toward this combination, may 
 we not hope that in a calmer moment than the present she will 
 retrace her steps, and once more place her better destiny under 
 the guardianship of the Stars and Stripes the only symbol 
 worthy of her fortunes and her hopes ? 
 
 Georgia has not yet left us. Let us trust to the clear judg 
 ment and earnest patriotism of her hosts of friends to the 
 Union, and to the eloquent and manly counsel of her sons, 
 that she will move with more deliberate pace, and in company 
 with more temperate comrades, along the path of conciliation 
 and trial, before she ventures to lend a hand to the demolition 
 of the government under which she has grown to her present 
 stature. And if that day of destruction must ever come, let 
 her be found among the ruins, with kindred congenial to her 
 own nature, employed in the task of gathering the fragments 
 of our broken Union together for reconstruction and renewal 
 of its ancient harmony. 
 
 Texas is looked to as a component of the new Confederacy. 
 Her lot, if dissolution be a settled fact, and a general sauve 
 quipeut should compel her to decide upon her whereabout, I 
 presume, would be once more to raise her banner of the Lone 
 
29 
 
 V 
 
 Star. She is a young nation, quite able to take care of her 
 self. She exists as a portion of the American Union by a 
 simple resolution of Congress. A dissolution repeals that act 
 and remits her to her original position. She becomes again 
 a detached and independent power ; and, in that event, may 
 wisely judge it to be her true policy to accept the position and 
 maintain it. We have yet no proof that she has so soon be 
 come weary of the Union which, but a few years gone by, she 
 so eagerly sought, and which has, in that short interval, heaped 
 almost fabulous treasures into her lap. On the contrary, what 
 proof we have presents her in the attitude of a hopeful friend 
 of peace. We pray that she may prove steadfast to the 
 admonitions of the wise and true-hearted hero whom she has 
 honored with the highest gifts she has had to bestow ! 
 
 This is a brief survey of the materials which, in the sad 
 event of the disruption of our Confederacy, many suppose 
 may be moulded into a united South. It exhibits two divi 
 sions of the present slaveholding States separate, not hos 
 tile but divided from each other by nature and incompatible 
 conditions, impossible to be brought into harmonious alliance 
 under any system of political organization founded upon the 
 basis of what are deemed the essential and peculiar interests 
 of either. 
 
 I have endeavored to demonstrate my conviction that with 
 whatever caution or friendly spirit of compromise they might 
 begin the experiment of Confederation, they would infallibly 
 lapse into antagonisms through the collision of which their 
 association would soon be reduced to a mere political form, as 
 impotent to hold them together as our present Union is likely 
 to prove under the doctrines which one of the divisions I have 
 mentioned above has already proclaimed and adopted as the 
 indispensable condition of its alliance. 
 
 Among many topics of discussion which would arise in the 
 course of that experiment, there is one which would certainly 
 loom into fearful proportions as a source of constantly increas 
 ing discontent. It is exemplified in our present history, and 
 
30 
 
 / 
 
 would find even a more acrimonious revival in the progress of 
 
 the supposed new alliance. 
 
 The tendency of nearly all perhaps I might say of the 
 whole of the Border States, in considerable portions or sec 
 tions of each, must be under any form of organization 
 whether in the present Union or out of it ; whether pursuing 
 their own welfare united with the whole South, or in a Con 
 federacy of their own toward the increase of free labor by 
 immigration and settlement, and to a correlative gradual 
 diminution of slave labor. That process is marked out for 
 them in the future, as it has been in the past, by the irre 
 sistible law of their nature. It is an onward force which 
 derives its vigor from the stimulus of interest, and is both 
 the issue and the exponent of the prosperity of the community 
 itself. In the grain-growing portions of these States, this 
 process will be more rapid; but, even in the planting por 
 tions, though slower and perhaps for a time imperceptible, 
 its influences will be felt. As population increases and the 
 competition of labor becomes more intense, these States must 
 expect a continuance of the same partial and progressive 
 i mastery of free over slave labor which is now visible in many 
 . local divisions of their own area, and which has been slowly 
 ! and steadily converting slave into free States from the date 
 of the Revolution down to the present time. Maryland, 
 portions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri are moving 
 onward to the final condition remote but certain of free 
 labor communities. That movement may be greatly acceler 
 ated by extrinsic forces. The enhancement of the value of 
 slaves draws this labor from a less productive to a more pro 
 ductive region from the wheat to the cotton field. The 
 depreciation of the value has, to some extent, a similar 
 effect. By impoverishing the owner, it compels a necessity 
 to sell, and the purchaser is most likely to be the agent or 
 factor of the cotton planter. In either case the gradual de 
 crease of slavery in the farming region I use this designa 
 tion in opposition to the planting is the constant result. 
 
31 
 
 The establishment of the slave-trade would not be without 
 its effect in the same direction. It would create disgust in 
 many against slavery itself, and thus lead to emancipation. I 
 These contingencies are entitled to consideration as causes 
 which, in the lapse of time, may operate more or less actively 
 upon the interests, habits, and sentiments of the Border 
 States to produce not only a sharp diversity of views and 
 policy, but also dissension and conflict between them and 
 other sections of the South. They would grow to be reck 
 oned as unfriendly to the South, or, in the current phrase of 
 of our day, "unsound" on the question of Southern insti 
 tutions. They would thus be regarded with a growing dis 
 like, and, in the end, put to the ban of extreme Southern 
 opinion, under the odious and comprehensive appellation of 
 abolitionists. 
 
 Not in this question alone would be found a source of 
 jealousy and division. Political ambition would contrive 
 many pretexts for quarrel, and parties would vent their 
 discontents in threats of secession and new combinations. 
 Disunion would find a terrible precedent in the example of 
 the present time, and grow to be the familiar and frequent 
 threat, and often the actual deed of disappointed States. 
 Mr. Jefferson long ago described this very condition of 
 things. His words now reach us with solemn warning, as 
 counsels sent to their erring sons from the sanctuary of our 
 departed fathers. 
 
 " In every free and deliberating society," he says, in a letter to 
 John Taylor, in the year 1798, "there must, from the nature of 
 man, be opposite parties and violent discussions and discords; 
 and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other 
 for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is 
 necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the 
 proceedings of the other. But if, on a temporary superiority of 
 the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, 
 no Federal Government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of 
 the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut we break the 
 Union, will the evil stop there ? Suppose the New England 
 States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? Are we not 
 
32 
 
 men still, to the South of that, with all the passions of men ? 
 Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania and Virginia party arise 
 in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be dis 
 tracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will one 
 party have in their hands, by eternally threatening each other, 
 and unless they do so and so, they will join their Northern neigh 
 bors ! If we reduce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, 
 immediately the conflict will be established between the represent 
 atives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into 
 their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men 
 who will not quarrel with one another, is a thing that never yet 
 existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town 
 meeting or a vestry; seeing that we must have somebody to 
 quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for 
 that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others. 
 
 ****** 
 
 A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, 
 their spells dissolved, and the people recovering tlteir true sight, 
 restoring their government to its true principles." 
 
 We may commend both the philosophy of these extracts 
 and the prophecy with which they end, to the sober medita 
 tion of all who think the evils of the day incurable. 
 
 It is proper for me to say here that the propositions I have 
 submitted as the foundation of a settlement, to be urged by 
 the Border States, are but selections from the many sugges 
 tions which have in various forms been lately thrown before 
 the public. I have selected these, not only because I think 
 them altogether just, in view of the rational demands which 
 both North and South are entitled to make upon each other, 
 but also because they seem to have met a larger concurrence 
 from the conservative portions of the people, on both sides, 
 than any others that have been brought into discussion. A 
 temperate debate of these propositions and their recommend 
 ation by the authority of a grave and influential convention 
 of eminent citizens representing the moderate conservative 
 opinion and the most important interests of the country 
 which I do not doubt greatly preponderate in both sections, 
 and are quite able to outweigh and overmaster all the leaders 
 and followers of the ultraisms of both would, it strikes me, 
 
33 
 
 command, at once, the assent of the most authoritative mass of 
 citizens, and gradually bring into submission, if not concur 
 rence, the whole disturbing force which now distracts the 
 public peace. 
 
 The advantage which the Border States hold in this contro 
 versy is very manifest. As I have said before, they are the 
 masters of the position and may control the events of the 
 future. It is in their power to isolate those portions of the 
 Union which are most violent and reckless in driving the 
 country to extremes, and thus give them occasion to perceive 
 that they are to find no support out of the circle of their own 
 impetuous allies. They have, also, the power to give, even 
 to these, a strong assurance that every fair and just com 
 plaint they are entitled to make shall be redressed by satis 
 factory arrangements which they, the Border States, will 
 demand, and will most assuredly procure. The North will 
 listen to their demands and meet them in honorable confer 
 ence, with a temper of conciliation which it would be hope 
 less to expect from a conference representing the more excited 
 and exacting portions of the South. We have proof of this 
 temper furnished every day in the Northern journals. The 
 abolitionists proper, the firebrands of the North, have lost 
 their influence and would have no share in any movement 
 toward a settlement. The truth is, that by far the greater 
 number of the people of the Free States are awakened to a 
 new perception of the danger which has been produced by 
 the violent assaults of the North upon the South, in which 
 they themselves have more or less participated without dream 
 ing of the bitter injuries they were inflicting upon the public 
 peace and the integrity of the Union. They have listened to 
 evil counselors and have been led away by the inflammatory 
 philosophies of their own ambitious leaders. They see this 
 now, although they have not seen it before; and in this 
 awakening of their minds to the reality of the crisis, they are 
 ready and willing to make every proper concession for the 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 restoration of present tranquillity and for protection against 
 future disturbance. They are thus fortunately able and 
 well inclined to drop, henceforth and forever, this offensive 
 and detestable agitation of slavery, which they now perceive 
 to be a real and dangerous grievance. 
 
 Our purpose should be to negotiate with this class of men. 
 It can be only effectually done by the Border States. A 
 General Convention of all the States would, inevitably, pro 
 duce more bickering and confusion in the present state of 
 affairs. Even a General Convention, as has been proposed, 
 of all the Southern States, with a view to their own course of 
 proceeding, would be attended with the same difficulties. It 
 would run the risk of being converted into a theatre of angry 
 debate upon extreme propositions, and would be as likely, as 
 the Charleston Convention in May, to be broken up by the 
 secession of discontented members who could not get all they 
 asked. A Convention of the Border States would have no 
 difficulty of this kind. They would be harmonious, just and 
 reasonable in their views, and firm in meeting the real evils of 
 the time, by offering and demanding a full and adequate 
 remedy for them. 
 
 This would be their position in the first efforts toward 
 peace and permanent security. If they succeed in obtaining 
 a just settlement; the seceding States could not resist the 
 necessity of acquiescing in such a settlement, and of returning 
 to the Union. As they calmed down into a cooler mood, and 
 brought their unclouded judgment to a consideration of the 
 case, they would cordially approve and support the settlement, 
 and the whole country would thus receive an incalculable 
 benefit from the present commotion. It would be a great and 
 happy purification of the morale of the country, and we 
 should all rejoice that the crisis has been turned to such good 
 account. 
 
 But if this service, proffered by the Border States, should 
 unhappily fail to produce these results, in this first stage of 
 the process of pacification, they would still occupy a ground 
 
O f 
 
 GO 
 
 not less important and beneficial in the second and more re 
 mote phase of the quarrel. 
 
 Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding 
 all efforts to prevent it, be forced upon us by the obstinacy 
 and impracticability of parties on each side the case would 
 still be far from hopeless. The Border States, in that event, 
 would form, in self-defence, a Confederacy of their own, 
 which would serve as a centre of reinforcement for the recon 
 struction of the Union. The attraction of interest and good 
 brotherhood would instantly become effective to draw to this 
 nucleus, one by one, every State in the Confederacy. A 
 beneficent power of gravitation would work with irresistible 
 energy in bringing back the dislocated fragments. New York, 
 !New Jersey, and Pennsylvania would be among the first to fall 
 in. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, perhaps all the Western States, 
 would be unable to resist the tendency toward this centre, 
 and would come into cohesion with an utter abjuration of all 
 those fancies and follies which have been engendered by the 
 slavery question. And when it was seen that North and 
 South could thus unite on a basis perfectly free from the dis 
 turbance of these old questions, the more moderate of the 
 seceding States Georgia especially, if she be one of them 
 would come to the acknowledgment that their true interests 
 directed them to the same reunion. Last of all, the most 
 ultra States of the secession movement would obey the same 
 law of attraction, and, once more, after a lapse of weary trial 
 and profitable experience, we should see the Union recon 
 structed by the healthful agency of the Border States. 
 
 Those who have carefully noted the progress of political 
 opinion for more than thirty years past, and marked the 
 tendency of its teaching, toward the adoption of certain 
 distinctive theories of government having reference to sup 
 posed geographical interests, have been able to predict the 
 certainty of a convulsion that, sooner or later, would present 
 an inevitable necessity for a reconstruction, or, at least, a re- 
 
36 
 
 consideration and explicit determination, of the principles 
 upon which the Union is to be preserved. 
 
 The present ferment is but the verification of this pre 
 diction. 
 
 If wisely handled, as I have shown, it may be productive 
 of inestimable good. If allowed to solve its problem under 
 the guidance of the fierce instincts and rash counsels of those 
 who have first assumed its direction, it will become the source 
 of an "Iliad of woes" not to the present generation alone, 
 but to many generations hereafter. 
 
 The time and the occasion, therefore, demand the most 
 free and full examination of the causes, open and concealed, 
 which are shaking the loyalty of the people and turning men s 
 thoughts toward disunion. 
 
 I have endeavored in these pages to demonstrate that there 
 are other and more secret discontents in our condition than 
 those which grow out of the slavery question. 
 
 While we painfully perceive and feel that the action of the 
 Northern States on that question, and, still more, the wicked 
 fanaticism of individuals and sects in preaching hostility to 
 the peace of the South, have kindled in the mind of the 
 whole population of this division of the United States a pro 
 found and just indignation against this wanton spirit of aggres 
 sion which, if not arrested, we have long been conscious, 
 would surely lead to a rupture of the Union, it is also a 
 matter of deep concern that we should apprehend and notice 
 the fact that there are other disturbing forces operating upon 
 sections of the South perhaps in some degree owing their 
 vitality to the alienation produced by the slavery agitation, 
 but now apart from it and looking to other subjects, which 
 have grown to be seriously hostile to the harmony of our 
 united system of government. My aim has been to bring 
 these into view, as well as the more pervading topic of dis 
 content, in order that, in the attempt to restore peace and 
 confidence, which is practicable through the settlement of the 
 slavery dispute, we may not be misled by the clamor of those 
 
37 
 
 to whom such a settlement would be but the frustration of a 
 cherished design. The dissatisfaction of this class of agita 
 tors must be left to the cure of time. There is no mode of 
 treating it but to let it alone, consigning it to the good sense 
 and right reason which it has to encounter at home. 
 
 It will, doubtless, be received as a bold assertion, when I 
 say that the slavery question, as one for political cognizance 
 in the United States, presents the most futile subject for 
 legislation or administrative policy, perhaps, within the 
 whole range of measures consigned to the notice of govern 
 ment. 
 
 It cannot be controverted that the whole power of the 
 Federal Government is inadequate to change the condition of 
 a single slave within any State of the Union. Nor can any 
 combination of party, with all the aids which the apparatus of 
 government may afford, with all the temper of proscription 
 and intolerance that fanatical zeal may beget, with all the 
 concurrence of sectional State legislation, ever be able to 
 make a successful invasion of the rights of the smallest of 
 the Slave States. Such an attempt would meet the instant 
 resistance not only of the whole circle of those States, but 
 with the resistance of three-fourths of the people of the whole 
 country. That parties and individuals may threaten irre 
 pressible conflicts and undying hostility, is true. But, as to 
 acting upon such threats, the Constitution renders them as 
 powerless as children. 
 
 And in regard to slavery in the territories although there 
 may be ground on which the Government may claim to con 
 trol it, I affirm that, as a practicable policy, no exercise of 
 that power, in the present actual condition of the domain 
 possessed by the nation, can either force the establishment of 
 slavery into a territory ungenial to it, nor keep it out of one 
 adapted to its employment. I mean, that there is no motive 
 of interest to take slavery, as a permanent thing, to a region 
 where it is unproductive ; nor any motive, either political or 
 philanthropic, to forbid its transfer to the region where it is 
 
38 
 
 essential to the interests of production. At this time we 
 have no territory in which there is any possibility of raising 
 the question, but if we should obtain one in a planting region, 
 it would be settled from the population of the slaveholding 
 States without a notable opposition from any section of the 
 Union. 
 
 The agitation of slavery, therefore, notwithstanding its 
 engrossment of the country and the odious prominence it has 
 assumed, is, after all, but a parade of idle and mischievous 
 debate. It lives upon the incessant ministration of stimu 
 lants supplied by small declaimers in quest of notoriety. It 
 is, in the present generation, a moral epidemic which has 
 seized upon whole districts, like St. Anthony s Dance in the 
 fourteenth century. The fancy of getting up "a great abomi 
 nation," in order to turn it to account as a topic of popular 
 preaching, is as old as the first consecrated cobbler. Nor is 
 it at all a new thing to set up a popular sin to be extirpated 
 by law. Many quack politicians have been wasting their 
 energies for years, upon the abortive attempt to legislate 
 peaceable families into the disuse of spirituous liquors, by 
 bringing alcohol into platforms and making parties upon it : 
 but alcohol has gained the day and the Maine Liquor Law 
 has become a dead letter. The world laughs at this prodi 
 gality of ineffectual zeal. May we not learn to treat with 
 quiet scorn the more malignant but still impotent ebullitions 
 of the sanctimonious vanity of New England? 
 
 In truth, slavery has not, in itself I mean African slavery 
 as now existing in the United States the condition for any 
 vehemently honest indignation against it; nor, on the other 
 side, for any vehemently honest affection for it. It is simply 
 a very appropriate and necessary agent in the interests of 
 civilization, where it is; and would be, generally, a very 
 wretched thing where it is not. The wrath that is stirred 
 against it, and the patriarchal beauty that is claimed for it, 
 are both the offspring of excited imaginations. African 
 slavery, in this country, at least, is, for the most part, a clear 
 
39 
 
 gain to the savage it has civilized. Whatever it may be to 
 others, it has been a blessing to him. It is also clearly a 
 blessing to Massachusetts, and to England, France, Germany. 
 But, it is a very doubtful blessing to the master who has 
 charged himself with the solicitude of supporting, employing, 
 and caring for the slave; it is, at best, but a mixed and 
 greatly diluted blessing to him. Strange, that those who 
 enjoy the unmixed blessing of sharing the profits of slavery, 
 should be the rancorous conspirators against the peace of him 
 who takes all its burthens and hazards upon himself! 
 
 The true solution of all this extravagance is, that the im 
 portance given to the questions evolved by the slavery 
 excitement, is the mere artifice of politicians. Our slavery 
 would have slept quiet under the surface of society, until the 
 day of its appointed term, if it had not been found service-/ 
 able as a figure for the arena of politics. Unfortunately, it 
 is a topic of singular capability for either a discourse in the 
 pulpit or a speech upon the stump; the most fruitful for 
 exaggeration, the most sensitive for alarm. It has proved 
 to be a "drawing" theme for sensation parsons in pursuit of 
 popularity; for sensation politicians in pursuit of the Senate; 
 for speculative editors who are anxious to increase their sub 
 scription lists by means of pious politics and cheap philan 
 thropy. It has shown itself capable of converting atrabi 
 lious tradesmen into governors, legislators, and judges; and 
 of lifting up innumerable apprentices, journeymen, colpor 
 teurs and pedagogues to the elevation of shining lights in 
 the Conventicle. It has fired the soul of many a cross-road 
 orator of the "sunny South" with indignant and eloquent 
 wrath against universal Yankeedom ; and given birth to 
 scores of conventions and thousands of resolutions, to expound 
 the Constitution on the theory that its authors did not know 
 what they were about. 
 
 Then, again, it has furnished to strong-minded women, who 
 have declared their independence of the petticoat, an occasion 
 for an equally heroic abnegation of the prejudice of color, and 
 
40 
 
 so to bring both pantaloons and amalgamation into their bill 
 of rights. 
 
 It has over and over again supplied a conclave of crazy 
 fanatics, in the orgies of their anniversaries, with an oppor 
 tunity to denounce the Union as a covenant of hell, and the 
 Bible and the Constitution as a double curse to mankind. It 
 has, on the other hand, wrought the remarkable effect of 
 diverting hot-headed young politicians from their news 
 papers to the study of the Scriptures, to find texts in the 
 Pentateuch and the Epistles of Paul, to convict the whole 
 North of the iniquity of blaspheming the " divine institu 
 tion." 
 
 It has done all this and a thousand times as much, but it 
 has never yet succeeded in establishing a single point for 
 which it has professed to contend, nor accomplished a single 
 result at which slavery would not have sooner arrived, if left 
 to the silent evolution of its own destiny; always except 
 ing, from this denial of its doings, that solitary achieve- 
 men in which its success has been perfect the opening of 
 a Pandora box of murder, rapine, implacable hatred and 
 revenge. 
 
 It has made and defeated Presidents, cabinets, and diplo 
 matists, has got up wars and annexations, built and destroyed 
 platforms; but it has been utterly impotent to arrest the 
 steady increase of slave labor, or its transfer to whatever 
 region it has been found profitable to remove it. So far from 
 promoting lawful emancipation, or checking either the growth 
 or productiveness of slavery, it has wholly arrested the first, 
 and has witnessed the augmentation of the value of the slave 
 and the profits of his work a hundredfold since the agitation 
 began. 
 
 These are the chief triumphs, and these the failures of a 
 slavery agitation of thirty years, conducted by men claiming 
 to be intellectual, conscientious, and stricken with a conviction 
 that it is the great and paramount duty of the age to reform, 
 what they have wrought themselves to believe, the damning 
 
41 
 
 sin of a nation. For this, clergymen who think they have "a 
 mission," spouters who think themselves orators, and politi 
 cians who think themselves statesmen, have gone on laboring 
 all these thirty years, in the same ceaseless and fruitless rou 
 tine of sermons, philippics, conventions, and discourses ; vex 
 ing the heart of the South with vulgar vituperation and insult, 
 and ruffling the temper of Congress with silly petitions to do 
 impossible things, showered, in endless profusion of repetition, 
 from the kitchens and primary schools and factories of New 
 England. 
 
 So far as the agitation kept within the limits of this phase 
 of its career, it was comparatively harmless. It could only 
 provoke, but could not sting. In the language of the re 
 viewer I have quoted above: "It could but make us angry." 
 The South, indeed, are to blame for their loss of temper 
 under this provocation ; as that really afforded the assailants 
 the only gratification they had. It would have been wiser 
 to treat it as more self-possessed nations are accustomed to 
 treat the extravagancies of fanatacism ; as we ourselves, in 
 deed, now treat Mormonism, or free love, or the nonsense of 
 Fourierism. 
 
 But the agitation in the last few years has become venom 
 ous. It has directed its activity toward disunion and destruc 
 tion of the government. Finding that the pretence of con 
 scientious regard for law, and action within the pale of the 
 statutes cramped its benevolent designs, it changed its tactics 
 and entered into a more congenial career devoting its energy 
 to a plot for illegal and even treasonable disturbance, by en 
 listing companies and providing facilities for stealthy abduc 
 tion of slaves, by provoking servile insurrection, and by 
 armed incursions against the peace of communities within 
 the slaveholding region ; while, at the same time, it solicited 
 and won the co-operation of many States to this organized 
 plan of felony, so far as to obtain from them the passage of 
 laws to nullify the provision of the Constitution and the stat 
 utes of the National Legislature for the recovery of the fugi 
 tives which might escape or be abducted from the South. 
 
42 
 
 This is the second and now existing phase of the agitation. 
 Could any sensible man in the North suppose, that a union of 
 our States was at all possible, if this system of assault and 
 disturbance were recognized and sustained by any respectable 
 or authoritative opinion in the Free States? Could any one 
 imagine, that if such a system of annoyance should receive 
 the sanction of legislative bodies, of conventions representing 
 a predominant power in any State, of religious communities, 
 of parsons holding a grade above an insane fanatic, of profes 
 sors of colleges, lawyers, merchants or gentlemen of any 
 weight in society in short, of any portion of Northern society 
 that might be regarded as the exponent of the common opinion 
 of the community and not inevitably and inexorably force 
 upon the whole South, not only the desire, but the duty to 
 retire from a compact of union with all such States as fostered 
 such an agitation ? Between independent nations, such pro 
 vocations would be the instant and just cause of war, and no 
 nation, with the power to protect its own peace and honor, 
 would hesitate to vindicate itself in that way. 
 
 This later scheme of aggression presents the first earnest 
 and effective movement toward disunion, which has been made 
 outside of the seceding States. The Free States which have 
 encouraged, or co-operated in, this scheme, may claim what 
 ever credit there is, in being the first to set the ball of dis 
 union in motion. The Border States, though the chief suf 
 ferers from these attacks, have been loyal to the Constitution 
 and Union, when these agitators have been recreant. 
 
 When the Republican party was organized in the bosom of 
 this agitation, and abstract and useless speculations, touching 
 the control of slavery by the Federal Government, were 
 brought into the political field by both parties, to heighten 
 and embitter the feud between the two sections; when all 
 the prestige and power of organized political forces predomi 
 nant in the popular vote of the Union, were enlisted in battle 
 array against the South ; when a President and Vice-Presi- 
 dent, contrary to all previous usage, were selected from the 
 
43 
 
 same section to represent it ; and when this new embodiment 
 was heralded to the country, with proclamation that its pur 
 pose was the administration of the Government toward the 
 enforcement of the theory of an irrepressible conflict with 
 slavery, until every vestige of it should be banished from the 
 Republic; and that the aid of a higher law than the Constitu 
 tion should be sought for the ratification of the act, was 
 there not enough to propagate a wide and fearful alarm 
 throughout the whole South for the safety, not only of its 
 property, but of its very existence? 
 
 The systematic abduction of slaves, through organized 
 Northern agencies, is already sequestering not much less than 
 a million of Southern wealth every year. The final consum 
 mation of this movement to the destruction of slavery, would 
 be the sequestration of one or two thousand millions of that 
 wealth. It would be to turn several States back into a jungle 
 for wild beasts. It would be to paralyze the industry and 
 subtract one-half from the comforts of Europe and America. 
 Is it at all wonderful that now, when that party has succeeded 
 and has elected its President, that the alarm of the South 
 should be increased, and that the Southern States should feel 
 that a crisis had been forced upon them which is to determine 
 whether we can have a Union in peace or peace without a 
 Union ? 
 
 These are the true sources of alarm to the South, and these 
 the questions which the people there earnestly believe they 
 have to solve. 
 
 If it were really true that the whole North were united in 
 this scheme of aggression, then, indeed, the case would be 
 hopeless. Hundreds of thousands in the South the great ma 
 jority of the people believe this to be so. But, it is not true. 
 Happily, it is not true. The belief is the delusion by which\ 
 the Southern mind has been cruelly abused: abused by 
 credulous and ardent politicians ; by selfish demagogues ; by 
 a prejudiced, and, sometimes, by a wicked press ; by the poli 
 ticians of party, who hope to find in the wreck of society \ 
 
44 
 
 \ 
 
 something serviceable to the reconstruction of their power. 
 
 No, it is not true that these are the purposes of any portion 
 of the Free States, worthy of a moment s consideration as 
 a force to influence the current of government. Three- 
 fourths I might say nine-tenths of the people of the Free 
 States are as guiltless of any imagining against the rights of 
 the South, or its peaceful enjoyment of its own pursuits, as 
 the people of the South themselves. Any one acquainted 
 with the real opinion of the North will say, that the masses 
 in those States are profoundly unconscious of the tendency 
 of the doctrines of which they have heard so much, toward 
 any serious assault upon the South. Their prurient tastes 
 have been fed to plethora, with stories of the barbarism of 
 slavery ; and, naturally enough, they believe that it is a very 
 bad thing ; but as to meddling with it, further than going to 
 hear a lecture upon it by the Rev. Mr. Pepperpot, and to 
 feast upon his spiced flummery, they have not the least wish 
 or purpose. As to dissolving the Union for it! they open 
 their eyes to an incredulous stare, and won t, even now, be 
 lieve that there is a man in the United States so insane as to 
 dream of such a thing. 
 
 To the conception of all this mass, constituting the whole 
 real power of the Free States, the Republican party and the 
 Republican President are but the regular successors to the 
 administration of the government which, in their belief, is to 
 be conducted in the old fashion of attending to the business 
 of the country, to the preservation of the Union, and to 
 giving as much content as possible to every section and every 
 interest in the country. 
 
 They are quite ready I speak now of the people, and not 
 of the politicians ; the latter have already proved themselves 
 to be Incapables, and the matter will have to be taken out of 
 their hands these masses are now quite ready to make any 
 arrangements, constitutional or conventional, which may be 
 found necessary for peace. They will come to any reasonable 
 agreement upon intervention or non-intervention, squatter 
 
45 
 
 or non-squatter sovereignty, protection or non-protection of 
 slavery in the territories, without the attempt to unriddle 
 these jargoms, that may be found requisite for the restora 
 tion of good temper and good will among the States. They 
 will do anything to save the Union on principles adapted to 
 make it perpetual. It will not be three months before that 
 will be the whole creed of the Republican party. Let the 
 South be assured of this. 
 
 The first duty of conciliation lies on the side of that party. 
 Let the North dismiss its obstinacy and its silence, and come, 
 with its customary shrewdness, to doingthe fight thing. Get 
 slavery out of that gigantic and tenacious conscience of theirs, 
 which is such a voracious absorbent ^of other people s sins, 
 and fill its place with Christian charity, and love of its neigh 
 bor, and other forgotten virtues, and we shall then find some 
 returning sunshine. But let the Free States everywhere, and 
 the sober, reflective, and honest men in them, understand, that 
 the old Union is an impossibility unless the agitation of 
 slavery is brought to an end. 
 
 There is nothing in the election of Mr. Lincoln which may 
 now be regarded as an obstacle to this pacification. With 
 whatever apprehension many may have allowed themselves to 
 anticipate, from that election, the inauguration of a policy 
 which would be one of continual exasperation, it is very evi 
 dent, now that the election is over and the views of the new 
 President are becoming known through the best accredited 
 organs of the party he represents, that there is no reason to 
 fear his administration will not be conducted with a salutary 
 and becoming respect for the rights and interests of every 
 portion of the country. Indeed, from the date of the nomi 
 nation of Mr. Lincoln, the presages of political events have 
 all been favorable to a better hope of the future, than we 
 might gather from the pernicious zeal and intemperate pro 
 clamation of those who assumed to be the leading champions 
 and most authentic expounders of the principles of his party. 
 
 His nomination was both a surprise and a disappointment 
 
46 
 
 to what may be termed the most demonstrative portion of the 
 Republican party. He was selected as the more eligible can 
 didate, in the belief that he would attract a support from States 
 and large masses of the people who were not willing to adopt 
 the extreme views upon which his rival for the nomination was 
 put forward. And in the eventual trial he was elected, in 
 great part, by a vote representing rather an opposition to the 
 democratic, than a concurrence with the distinctive and excep 
 tionable principles of the Republican party. In other words, 
 Mr. Lincoln was both nominated and elected by what may be 
 called the moderate, "conservative division of the Republican 
 party. And it is now claimed for him and apparently with 
 his own approbation that he stands before the people of the 
 United States unembarrassed by the extreme pretensions which 
 were set up for the party in the canvass ; and that he will 
 enter into office not only with the determination, but with the 
 desire to render his administration one of impartial justice to 
 the South. 
 
 There is at least a good omen in this, and the strongest 
 motive for an appeal to the South to wait for more explicit 
 demonstration of the policy of the coming administration. 
 
 If the seceding States, in their zeal for a separate confed 
 eracy, are not willing to wait for this demonstration, it will 
 be justly regarded by the world as a confession that the revo 
 lution in which they have embarked has only been promoted, 
 but not originated, by the event upon which they have here 
 tofore placed its justification. 
 
 If they are not willing to wait, the Border States will not 
 be shaken from their resolves to wait and avail themselves of 
 every favorable incident that may be turned to the account of 
 peaceful adjustment. 
 
 Upon the new President will then devolve the responsibility 
 of bringing the influence of the government, and the weight 
 of his own admonition and example, to the duty of defining 
 and determining (if that be not successfully done by his friends 
 before his inauguration) the pledges which his party are dis- 
 
47 
 
 posed to give for the permanent establishment of friendly 
 relations between the two sections of the Union. We have 
 no reason to doubt that Mr. Lincoln s influence to this end 
 will be propitious to peace. It will then be seen, that in the 
 position assumed by the Border States in their firmness, jus 
 tice, and dignified bearing throughout this controversy they 
 will have become the authoritative and controlling power to 
 devise and establish the foundations of a secure and durable 
 settlement, with every provision for the preservation of South 
 ern rights which the seceding States themselves could reason 
 ably demand. 
 
 BALTIMORE, December 17, I860, 
 
,. ,-v- 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRA! 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT, 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall 
 
 . .. 
 
 Mtu/j .5.0 
 
 a 8 
 
 
 
 MM 16 
 FB 
 
 71 s 4PM5f 
 
 LD 21A-407r<,-4, 63 
 (D647lslO)476B 
 
 LD 21A-50m-8, 5f 
 (C8481slO)476B 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley