THE BORDER STATES, 
 
 THEIR POWER AND DUTY IN THE PRESENT DISOR- 
 DERED CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY.
 
 43
 
 THE BORDER STATES, 
 
 THEIR POWER AND DUTY IN THE PRESENT DISOR- 
 DERED CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY.
 
 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 
 Carolina 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 expres- 
 sive of a peculiar affinity in interest and policy are likely 
 to follow her example. Alabama, which is, in some sense, 
 the offspring of Carolina, her pupil and admiring disciple, 
 has shown herself already too eager to precipitate herself 
 into revolution to leave us any hope that she will hesi- 
 tate 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 con- 
 fess 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.
 
 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 
 themselves 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 counsellor nor patronizing friend to tell 
 them what it becomes them to do, either for the mainten- 
 ance of their own honor or the promotion of their own ad- 
 vantage; they can hear with quiet scorn the taunt that 
 they "have placed the Union above the rights and institu- 
 tions of the South " and hold at what it deserves the offen- 
 sive 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 
 afflictions of the country, produced equally by the wicked- 
 ness 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 
 significant truth, for the consideration of the leaders of 
 the projected 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, the South and the West, their social organization 
 
 * See the Charleston Mercury of November 19, where this language is held to 
 Virginia and the other Border States, in the editorial headed "Southern Con- 
 ferencetoo late."
 
 for the support of every interest connected with good govern- 
 ment and permanent peace, their internal strength, and 
 above all, their healthful tone of opinion towards the preser- 
 vation of constitutional 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 con- 
 federacy of Slave States, at all worthy of respect and con- 
 sideration 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 
 unbecoming 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. 
 
 Whilst these States have always manifested a just and 
 becoming sensibility to their rights, connected with the 
 employment of slave labor, and have shared in the common 
 indignation of the South against the malignant hostility of 
 certain sections of the Northern people ; whilst 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, whilst, indeed, it may be 
 said, that these States are the only portions of the slave- 
 holding 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 emigra- 
 tion to the territories, the rendition of fugitives, and the 
 organization of new States they have, nevertheless, shown 
 themselves, in all contingencies, the confident and considerate 
 assertors of their rights in the mode ordained by the Con- 
 stitution, and at all times the determined 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 slave- 
 holders, of which they, the Border States, have so much 
 cause to complain, are but the pretext to cover a concealed 
 design of portentous 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 per- 
 suaded or beguiled into a desertion at once of the Constitu- 
 tion 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 con- 
 trivers feared the sound of that voice from the Border States, 
 which they knew would speak peace to the troubled waves of 
 strife, and would reach the heart of hosts of loyal citizens 
 in the very bosom of the commotion, citizens, alas, now 
 bereft of their loyalty by the force of the tempest of revo- 
 lution 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 to 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 tault upon this point. There has been a 
 singular concurrence of accident and design to lead even 
 sensible and observant men off from the perception of the 
 real causes of this disturbance; and a not less singular 
 exhibition of practised skill in the address with which the 
 popular masses, in the region of the commotion, have been 
 enlisted in an enterprise, 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 result, but 
 in all the stages of its progress from the day of the Chicago 
 Convention, down to that of its consummation unfortunate 
 for the tranquility 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 commu- 
 nity have recognized with no little pain, the steady growth 
 in some sections of the South, for many years past, of a dis- 
 position, 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 Sov- 
 ereignty has the first claim to the allegiance of the citizen, 
 and that no more is due to the National Sovereignty than 
 may be found 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 extensive as 
 ours is practicable, could not but lead in time to angry dis- 
 sension and inveterate sectional prejudice. 
 
 Conspicuous amongst these theories are two which have 
 taken a deep hold upon the Southern mind. To their influ- 
 ence we may trace no small amount of the discontent which 
 has weakened 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 vicissi- 
 tudes of the future. The failure to preserve it is conse- 
 quently regarded as a violation of a fundamental compro- 
 mise. 
 
 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. 
 
 1 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 
 discontent which has been smouldering at the heart of Caro- 
 lina for years, and as suggesting the true explanation of that 
 phenomenon 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 gene- 
 ration 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 quarrel with the National Government. It has, at 
 last, taken visible shape in the instant, defiant act of seces- 
 sion. 
 
 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 
 accordant 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 amongst 
 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. 
 
 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 be 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 
 2
 
 10 
 
 would not thrive better if certain prohibitions of the Consti- 
 tution were removed? Would it be to her benefit to make 
 Charleston a free port? to negotiate 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 whilst 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 accomplishing 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 insula- 
 tion 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 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-
 
 11 
 
 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 
 admission 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 
 conflagration of the never dying flames of liberty and inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 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, amongst 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 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 ten fold 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 necessary of life which she
 
 12 
 
 does not produce at home, is taxed at an average rate of not 
 less than thirty per cent. Then Old England 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 requires 
 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 out- 
 lawed 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 Charleston 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 Neiv England, we hear from Boston 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, recipro- 
 cally? 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 her in wealth and
 
 13 
 
 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 
 professed aversion to it is a mere stratagem to allay her own 
 discontents. Her object is to keep her own work people 
 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 operative, to whom coarse sugars are a neces- 
 sary of life. To reconcile 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' 
 ivith the horrors of which he is so familiar." 
 
 ******* 
 
 "Let but South Carolina, even alone, set up for her- 
 self, 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
 
 14 
 
 Islands, to form one State, and Demerara another, and to enter 
 into confederacy with South Carolina f ' ' 
 
 And as a matter of course, a new slave trade from America 
 would be established by the aid of England in this hopeful 
 project. 
 
 "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 luxury 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 cairn 
 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 analyse 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
 
 15 
 
 question of taxation. The support of the government by 
 imports, 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 
 Carolina and her few uncomplaining sisters are represented 
 as 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 
 revelations, "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 apologises for this little 
 indiscretion 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 inter- 
 fere 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 Guyana on 
 the South American continent to which may now be added, 
 as a more recent development of the grandeur of the contem- 
 plated republic, the conception of similar accretions embrac- 
 ing 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
 
 16 
 
 blessings, still more attractive to the contemplation of man- 
 kind 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 Eepublic, the matured 
 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 amongst 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 
 unavoidable affliction : if, indeed, it did not spring from the 
 merest wantonness of a temper engendered by too much pros- 
 perity or ingratitude to God for blessings too profusely be- 
 stowed to be valued. 
 
 There is something in the time and in the pretext chosen 
 for this great work of mischief that peculiarly provokes 
 remark. The pretext is the general agitation of the South- 
 ern 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 govern- 
 ment, which, both North and South, lives in the heart of 
 millions of conservative 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 ad- 
 justment in which future repose and sufficient pledge against 
 the renewal of strife may be obtained.
 
 17 
 
 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 par- 
 tizans to the 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 sight's but the visions that rise 
 in the distant prospect. There they behold their Arcadia, 
 with its phantoms of untold wealth, its free ports, its un- 
 taxed commerce, 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 intol- 
 erable 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 
 3
 
 18 
 
 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 
 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 ahility, forhid the belief that, when this 
 extraordinary 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, some times, overmasters the dis- 
 cretion 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 spec- 
 tators who dare not, or, in the hopelessness of a hearing, will 
 not even whisper a remonstrance 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 awaiting 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 
 passion 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 conviction
 
 19 
 
 that it is the only expedient left open to them to guard 
 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 redress. 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 
 constitutional 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 experience 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 amongst 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. 
 
 To such a conference I would submit the following 
 propositions :
 
 20 
 
 1. The propriety of making an earnest appeal to the 
 seceding 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 unsuc- 
 cessful, 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 between 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 
 Congress on that subject, as shall remove every reasonable 
 objection to it, compatible with its efficient adaptation to its 
 purpose: and by an agreement on the part of the Free 
 States, 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
 
 21 
 
 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 
 leaving each territory to form a State Constitution in accord- 
 ance 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 slave- 
 holding 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 
 by the direction and appointment of their several Legislatures. 
 
 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.
 
 22 
 
 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 
 offer the Border States as mediators in the present unhappy 
 differences, and to endeavor to procure, for the benefit of all, 
 the stipulations I have described above, or some other pacific 
 arrangement 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 abstinence from all attempts at coercion ; but they will 
 also be regarded and respected on all sides, as the natural 
 and appropriate 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 deter- 
 mination cannot but suggest to the seceding States the 
 gravest 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 decline the alliance. When that question 
 comes to be seriously discussed by them it will present many
 
 23 
 
 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 
 difficulties that now surround it. 
 
 I think it will appear to any careful explorer of the subject, 
 that if the fifteen States South of Mason and Dixon's line, 
 were to enter into a Confederacy amongst 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 
 Border 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 
 persistent forays upon neighboring States and perpetual 
 schemes of acquisition. 
 
 The Border States exhibit within their area a represen- 
 tation of almost every interest and pursuit in the Union. 
 They are thriving and vigorous communities, with most pro- 
 lific resources for every species of industry. Their agriculture 
 furnishes 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-
 
 24 
 
 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 
 manufacturing industry. Its healthful climate, its robust 
 population and its cheap means of livelihood are singularly 
 favorable to the growth and prosperity of the mechanic arts, 
 the multiplication of villages and the gradual increase of 
 thrifty and industrious workmen in every department of 
 handicraft invariably 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 rail roads, 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 amongst 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 
 necessity for such a work, here are the ready materials for 
 the construction of a new nation able to protect the welfare 
 of its people, secure their peaceful pursuit of happiness, and 
 furnish 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 shew how incompatible their interests are likely to 
 prove with the policy which is deemed essential to other
 
 25 
 
 sections of the South. It must be apparent from even this 
 brief examination, that communities of such different pur- 
 suits, and marked by such variant conditions, would scarcely 
 find, in political alliance with the projected Southern Con- 
 federacy, that harmony of interests which is essential to the 
 prosperity of both. 
 
 The four or five States now reputed to be most 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, migra- 
 tory, the slaves stationary thus necessarily creating, in many 
 locations, a great preponderance of slave population. Its pro- 
 ductions are singularly valuable as one of the moat indis- 
 pensable wants of mankind, and readily exchangeable into 
 money. This exchange is made through an active factorage 
 that has built up prosperous cities and created a large com- 
 merce. So far as this commerce is concerned with the 
 planting region, it is reduced into a simple system of trans- 
 actions 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, 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 common and inevitable 
 weakness of all merely agricultural countries. 
 
 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 never- 
 theless be questioned whether even so valuable an acquisition 
 4
 
 26 
 
 as this, would, in the end, turn out to be a permanent acces- 
 sion 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 
 possibilities 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 motives for hesitation, which must occur to the 
 intelligent judgment of Lousiana, 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 aggres- 
 sion, 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 unin- 
 terrupted use, together with its depots, at all times and in 
 all contingencies: that there is no form of agreement or 
 treaty which can aiford complete and invariable protection 
 to this enjoyment: none 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 vexatious emergencies of future years, there may be pro- 
 voked a new motive in Louisiana, for secession from a con- 
 federacy 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 prudently weigh the question of her own
 
 27 
 
 permanent peace and prosperity, before she takes the step to 
 which she is now invited ? 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 excep- 
 tion, 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 des- 
 titution of the means to build and man ships, and to many 
 other disabilities 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 vota- 
 ries, 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 
 commonwealth, 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 real strength in the Confederacy. 
 Georgia would then arise to the unenviable supremacy of 
 being the only solid and trusty support of the whole fab- 
 ric. She has already, under the auspices of a Union 
 which has conferred nothing but blessings upon her, ad- 
 vanced beyond all her compeers of the South, to the posi- 
 tion 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 establish- 
 ment of manufactures, her multiplying towns and villages, 
 her fertile and healthy uplands, her rapid growth in peace- 
 ful arts, and her thousand capabilities of ever- varied industry, 
 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
 
 28 
 
 to be led into the first movement towards 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 
 judgment 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 Star. She is a young nation, quite able to take care 
 of herself. 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 posi- 
 tion and maintain it. We have yet no proof that she has 
 so soon become 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
 
 29 
 
 may be moulded into a united South. It exhibits two divi- 
 sions of the present slaveholding States separate, not 
 hostile but divided from each other by nature and incom- 
 patible conditions, impossible to be brought into harmo- 
 nious alliance under any system of political organization 
 founded upon the basis of what are deemed the essential 
 and peculiar interests of either. 
 
 I have endeavoured 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. 
 
 Amongst 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 con- 
 stantly increasing discontent. It is exemplified in our pre- 
 sent history, and would find even a more acrimonious revi- 
 val 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 
 sections 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 towards 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 1 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,
 
 30 
 
 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 
 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 Kevolution 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. 
 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. 
 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 
 reckoned as unfriendly to the South, or in the current 
 phrase of our day, "unsound" on the question of Southern 
 institutions. They would thus be regarded with a growing 
 dislike, 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.
 
 31 
 
 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 men still, to 
 the South of that, with all the passions of men ? Immedi- 
 ately 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 neighbors ! If we reduce our Union to Virginia 
 and North Carolina, immediately the conflict will be estab- 
 lished between the representatives 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 their 
 true sight, restoring their government to its true principles."
 
 32 
 
 We may commend both to 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 proper settlement, to be 
 urged by the Border States, are but selections from the many 
 suggestions 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 con- 
 currence from the conservative portions of the people, on 
 both sides, than any others that have been brought into dis- 
 cussion. A temperate debate of these propositions and their 
 recommendation 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, command, at once, the assent of the most 
 authoritative mass of citizens, and gradually bring into sub- 
 mission, if not concurrence, the whole disturbing force which 
 now distracts the public peace. 
 
 The advantage which the Border States hold in this con- 
 troversy 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-
 
 33 
 
 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 
 towards 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 
 dreaming of the bitter injuries they were inflicting upon the 
 public peace and the integrity of the Union. They have 
 listened to evil counsellors 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 con- 
 cession for the restoration of present tranquility and for pro- 
 tection 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, 
 produce 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 demand- 
 ing a full and adequate remedy for them.
 
 34 
 
 This would be their position in the first efforts towards 
 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 return- 
 ing 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 
 not less important and beneficial in the second and more 
 remote phase of the quarrel. 
 
 Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding 
 all efforts to prevent it, to 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 
 reconstruction 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 irresisti- 
 ble energy in bringing back the dislocated fragments. New 
 York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would be amongst the 
 first to fall in. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, perhaps all the 
 Western States, would be unable to resist the tendency 
 towards 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 per- 
 fectly free from the disturbance of these old questions, the 
 more moderate of the seceding States Georgia especially, if 
 she be one of them, would come to the acknowledgment
 
 35 
 
 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 reconstructed 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, towards 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 
 reconsideration 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 fall examination of the causes, open and concealed, 
 which are shaking the loyalty of the people and turning 
 men's thoughts towards 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. 
 
 Whilst 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 profound and just indignation against this wanton spirit of 
 aggression which, if not arrested, we have long been con- 
 scious, would surely lead to a rupture of the Union, it is also
 
 36 
 
 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, hut now apart from it and looking to other sub- 
 jects, 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 discontent, in order that, in the attempt to restore 
 peace and confidence, which is practicable through the settle- 
 ment of the slavery dispute, we may not be misled by the 
 clamor of those to whom such a settlement would be but the 
 frustration of a cherished design. The dissatisfaction of this 
 class of agitators 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 appa- 
 ratus of Government may afford, with all the temper of pro- 
 scription 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.
 
 37 
 
 And in regard to slavery in the Territories although 
 there may be ground on which the Government may claim 
 to control it, I affirm that, as a practicable policy, no exer- 
 cise of that power, in the present actual condition of the 
 domain possessed by the nation, can either force the estab- 
 lishment of slavery into a territory un genial 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 essential to the interests of production. 
 At this time we have no territory in which there is any pos- 
 sibility 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 abo- 
 mination," 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 
 prodigality of ineffectual zeal. May we not learn to treat 
 with quiet scorn the more malignant but still impotent ebul- 
 litions of the sanctimonious vanity of New England ? 
 
 In truth, slavery has not, in itself I mean African slavery
 
 38 
 
 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 civi- 
 lization, 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 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 
 importance 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- 
 throphy. It has shown itself capable of converting atra- 
 bilious 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
 
 39 
 
 wrath against universal Yankeedom ; and given birth to 
 scores of conventions and thousands of resolutions, to ex- 
 pound the Constitution on the theory that its authors did not 
 know what they were ahout. 
 
 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 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- 
 ment 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 hundred fold since the agitation 
 began.
 
 40 
 
 These are the chief triumphs and these the^ failures of a 
 slavery agitation of thirty years, conducted by men claiming 
 to he intellectual, conscientious and stricken with a convic- 
 tion that it is the great and paramount duty of the age to 
 reform, what they have wrought themselves to believe, the 
 damning sin of a nation. For this, clergymen who think 
 they have "a mission," spouters who think themselves ora- 
 tors, and politicians who think themselves statesmen, have 
 gone on laboring all these thirty years, in the same ceaseless 
 and fruitless routine of sermons, conventions and pam- 
 phlets vexing the heart of the South with vulgar vitupera- 
 tion 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 fanaticism ; 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 
 venomous. It has directed its activity towards disunion and 
 destruction of the Government. Finding that the pretence 
 of conscientious 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 disturb- 
 ance, by enlisting companies and providing facilities for 
 stealthy abduction of slaves, by provoking servile insurrec- 
 tion, and by armed incursions against the peace of commu- 
 nities within the slaveholding region : whilst, at the same 
 time, it solicited and won the co-operation of many States to
 
 41 
 
 this organized plan of felony, so far as to obtain from them 
 the passage of laws to nullify the provision of the Constitu- 
 tion and the statutes of the National Legislature for the 
 recovery of the fugitives which might escape or be abducted 
 from the South. 
 
 This is the second and recent 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 respecta- 
 ble 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 a crazy 
 fanatic, of professors of colleges, lawyers, merchants or 
 gentlemen of any weight in society in short, of any por- 
 tion of Northern society that might be regarded as the expo- 
 nent 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 provocations 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 towards disunion, which has been 
 made outside of the seceding States. The Free States which 
 have encouraged, or co-operated in, this scheme, may claim 
 whatever credit there is, in being the first to set the ball of 
 disunion in motion. The Border States, though the chief 
 sufferers from these attacks, have been loyal to the Constitu- 
 tion 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 
 6
 
 42 
 
 the prestige and power of organized political forces predom- 
 inant in the popular vote of the Union, were enlisted in 
 battle array against the South ; when a President and Vice- 
 President, contrary to all previous usage, were selected from 
 the same section to represent it ; and when this new embodi- 
 ment was heralded to the country, with proclamation that its 
 purpose was the administration of the Government towards 
 the enforcement of the theory of an irrepressible conflict 
 with slavery, until every vestige of it should be banished 
 from the Kepublic ; and that the aid of a higher law than 
 the Constitution 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 a million of 
 Southern wealth every year. The final consummation of 
 this movement to the destruction of slavery, would be the 
 sequestration of two or three 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 th ousands 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
 
 43 
 
 a prejudiced and, sometimes, by a wicked press; by the poli- 
 ticians of party, who hope to find in the wreck of society 
 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, towards 
 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 Kev. 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 wont, even now, 
 believe 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 busi- 
 ness 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 them- 
 selves 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,
 
 44 
 
 squatter or non-squatter sovereignty, protection or non-pro- 
 tection of slavery in the territories, without the attempt to 
 unriddle these jargons, that may be found requisite for the 
 restoration of good temper and good will amongst the States. 
 They will do any thing 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 doing the right 
 thing. Get slavery out of that gigantic and tenacious con- 
 science of theirs, which is such a voracious absorbent of 
 other people's sins, and fill its place with Christian charity, 
 and love of its neighbor, and other forgotten virtues, and 
 we shall then find some returning sunshine. But let the 
 Free States every where, 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 them- 
 selves to anticipate, from that election, the inauguration of 
 a policy which would be one of continual exasperation, it is 
 very evident, 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 nomination 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 proclamation 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 
 to, what may be termed, the most demonstrative portion of
 
 45 
 
 the Republican party. He was selected as the more eligible 
 candidate, 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 exceptionable principles of the Republican 
 party. In other words, Mr. Lincoln was both nominated 
 and elected by what may be called the moderate, conserva- 
 tive division of the Republican party. And it is now 
 claimed for him, and apparently with his own approba- 
 tion, 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 con- 
 federacy, are not willing to wait for this demonstration, it 
 will be justly regarded by the world, as a confession that the 
 revolution in which they have embarked has only been pro- 
 moted, but, not originated by the event upon which they 
 have heretofore 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 responsi- 
 bility 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 disposed to give for the permanent establishment of 
 friendly relations between the two sections of the Union.
 
 \ 
 
 46 
 
 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, justice and dignified bearing throughout this con- 
 troversy, they will have become the authoritative and control- 
 ing power to devise and establish the foundations of a secure 
 and durable settlement, with every provision for the preserva- 
 tion of Southern rights which the seceding States themselves 
 could reasonably demand. 
 
 MARYLAND, December 17, 1860. 
 
 EBRATUM. On page 32, first line, "we commend both to," strike out "to."
 
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