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though the blacks are usually as much debarred from the right of suffrage in the North as in the South.

§ 11. The remedy which can alone restore fraternal harmony.

The people, like other sovereigns, are so little accustomed to hear truth, that to a portion of them the foregoing remarks may seem strange; but the time is arrived when the whole truth should be told, that our citizens, never acting intentionally wrong, may know what is due to their virtue and patriotism. They will not learn it from partisan leaders, who, in speaking of even the late Compromise Measures, seem more intent on apologizing for abandoning the Wilmot proviso, (some law of God having superseded it, they say,) than by wholesomely inculcating the usurpation of its infliction. To thus doubt the patriotism and wisdom of the people is an old error, and will not medicate the wounds we have inflicted in fraternal bosoms. In vain, also, are our protestations of love for the Union, unless we show our love by not obstructing the Fugitive Slave Law, by refraining from all debates in Congress offensive to any constituency, and from all Congressional discrimination between slave States and free, in regard to present territory, or future acquisitions.

§ 12. The conclusion.

Politicians who excite each other in Congressional debate, are prone to mistake for public feeling what is only an effect of their own position. The people of the North cared nothing last winter what terms of compromise should be concocted, so long as the terms would restore peace; and they care nothing now for the respective measures, except as they shall prove effectual towards harmony. In truth, the North had, last winter, no surrenders to make,

but a relinquishment of their own unwarrantable interference with the domestic relations of other men, as free as themselves, and as capable of self-government. If these views impute too much good sense to the North, and especially if we are not prepared for such a reversal of our conduct as is urged in the foregoing leaves, we are not equal to the exigency of the times, or to live under a Confederate Government such as no preceding people ever enjoyed. The South, even now, show a placability (as they have during our whole period of encroachments) which nothing can cause but a great love for the Union. We may, therefore, under a persistence in our errors, enjoy a truce for a season, but no enduring union. With the restoratives herein recommended, and a strict construction of the Constitution in all new legislation, we may safely expect long years of internal tranquillity. Geographical divisions, which constitute "the madness of the many for the gain of a few," will fade away. No causes will exist for rejecting new confederates, by local jealousies in regard to the balance of sectional strength; and we may diffuse the blessings of our system illimitably, Canada-ward or Mexicoward, to the advantage of ourselves, and the happiness of others. In the language, therefore, of inspiration, (and no language is too sacred,) placed before you this day are good and evil. Choose ye.

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OUR POLITICAL DISORDERS AND THEIR REMEDY.*

§ 1. The abolition of slavery most people suppose would exempt our Union from discord; but the Canadas wrangle as fiercely about the location of their capital as we do about slavery. If Mason and Dixon's Line separated Romanism from Protestantism, the divisions would antagonize about religion; and the same would occur if Mason and Dixon's Line divided old school Presbyterianism from new school, orthodox Quakers from Hicksites, teetotalism from free-drinkism. The first contentions of our Union related to the difference in size and population of the different States, and when Washington warned us against sectional agitations, slavery was a Northern institution as much as a Southern. Were the North and the South to separate, neither division would remain long without antagonistic agitations, just as every State has its intestine contests, every neighborhood its feuds, every family its heart-burnings. Our sectional antagonisms were as savage as they are now, before the existence of Kansas; before Sumner was knocked down; before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; before the new Fugitive Slave Law. What we shall antagonize about at any given moment, will depend on circumstances; but when we deem any particular subject the cause of our trouble, we are mistaking for a cause what is only an effect of man's organization. So Millerism, Spiritualism, Clairvoyance, Table-tippings, cause not the insanity which a man of any such belief evinces. They are only the occasions which excite insanity in persons organically predisposed thereto; hence the people who be

* Published in 1856.

came insane on Millerism, become insane on Spiritualism, Table-tippings, and kindred excitements that successively arise; and the men inordinately antagonistic as abolitionists, were equally violent as anti-Masons, pioneer stage men, anti-Sunday mail men, Native Americans, Mainelawists and Know-Nothings. When any new excitement is commencing, men's antecedents can foreshadow who are to become its proselytes, and the degree of extravagance each will exhibit.

§ 2. Another of our difficulties is the sectional organization of Congress, no Senator or Representative being eligible thereto, except of the State in which he lives, and practically as a champion of its prejudices or interests for a protective tariff, or against-for or against internal improvements, war, peace, the acquisition of new territory, &c. During our Mexican war, a Senator imprecated on our invading troops, that they should be greeted with bloody hands and hospitable graves; a speech which endeared him to his State, though morally treason to the Confederacy. No President has ever been made from the great orators of Congress; the eloquence which makes. them idols of a locality detracting from their general availability. Every interest is represented in Congress except the interest of the whole; hence the army, navy, fortifications, and other Federal objects, are the last that can gain attention. But the most disturbing effect of the sectionalism of Congress is man's combativeness. If we see a casual street fight of two dogs, we instinctively sympathize with one in preference to the other, or side against both in favor of peace. Nothing is more common on such occasions, than a general melee among the spectators—the partisans of one dog knocking down the partisans of the other, and the friends of peace knocking down the partisans

of both the contestants. We need not wonder, therefore, that the meeting of every Congress is the signal for agitation over the whole Confederacy, in relation to grievances of whose existence we were not previously aware, till we become in a ferment of artificial excitement, which changes. its object as Congressional gladiatorship flashes upon us hourly from the electric telegraph.

In the infancy of physical knowledge, eclipses portended some national calamity, but experience has manifested they are but necessary results of the independent revolutions. of the celestial bodies; so in the infancy of our Republic, we deem every sectional strife portentous of a dissolution of the Union, but we may find they are but necessary results of the independent individuality of the States of our Confederacy. Under an unrestrained liberty of speech and of the press, like ours, the French Empire could not exist a month. Probably our States may in time become equally schooled to bear the sectional agitation of Congress, so that it will become as little disturbing as the license of the press, which no man is so inflammatory as to much heed..

Lovett

§ 3. Another of our difficulties is, conflicting notions respecting our nationality. Slavery is a reproach to our nation says one man, while other persons insist that Southern. slavery is as little a reproach to New-York as the slavery of Morocco. The disputants differ little in their estimate of slavery, but they estimate differently our nationality. The ancient philosopher, who tried to find which was the heap in the separate grains of a bushel of wheat, might be equally puzzled to find the United States; for he would find only Massachusetts, New-York, Vermont, &c. In view of this peculiarity, De Tocqueville has well remarked that the United States is a government, not a nation-an

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