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SPEECH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 CAUSES OF THE RE15ELLI0N 
 
 Support of the President's Plan of Pacification, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 LEGISLATURE OF MARYLAND, 
 
 AT ANNAPOLIS, 
 
 Cn the 2Sd of JcbTbUary, 1^-6 J/.. 
 
 BALTIMORE: 
 PRINTED BY SHERWOOD & CO. 
 
 18 6 4:. 
 
u',^' " 
 
 Q- 
 
 K 
 
 j6 
 
S P" E E C H 
 
 Fellow Citizens : — 
 
 The President's recent message manifests liis continued 
 solicitude for* your interests. He says : 
 
 " Tlie movements by State action for emancipation in 
 "several of the States, not included in the emancipation 
 " proclamation, are matters of profound gratulation. And 
 " while 1 do Aot repeat in detail what I have heretofore so 
 " earnestly urged upon this subject, my general views and 
 " feelings remain unchanged ; and I trust that Congresswill 
 " omit no fair opportunity of aiding those important steps 
 '' to a great consummation." 
 
 This is a renewed effort to redeem the pledge given in 
 his emancipation proclamation and in a former message 
 to Congress, to exert all his power to indemnify every 
 loyal citizen for losses of slaves sustained from the acts of 
 the Government in prosecuting the war. The proclama- 
 tion of amnesty appended to the late message extends the 
 fienefit of the indemnity proclaimed previously to that 
 white class once embarked in the secession cause, but that 
 now abandons it and takes the oath of loyalty and adhe- 
 sion to the Constitution, the leaders of the rebellion only 
 excepted. This is more than a pardon ; not only does the 
 President spare the lives of the unfortunate dupes of con- 
 spirators, but he restores them their property. 
 
 Another indulgence is granted by the late proclamation 
 to the victims of the fraud and artifice, or what has been 
 far more prevalent, the secretly-embodied military power 
 
of the contrivers of the rebellion. It is the invitation to 
 participate again as brethren in the Government on re- 
 suming- relations of sincere loyalty to it. 
 
 A third advance looks to the perfect restoration of State 
 rights in tlie Union, by means of the loyal popular suf- 
 frage within the several States, thus recognizing tlicir 
 constitutions as existing and obligatory in everything but 
 in that feature which made the war — and which the war 
 lias for the most part obliterated — slavery. Even as to 
 slavery, its subjects — who as freedmen are brought into 
 new relations with the States — are remitted to the States, 
 the President promising to support '^ any provisions which 
 " may be adopted by such State government in relation to 
 '' tlie i'recd people of such State, which shall.recognizc and 
 " declare their permanent freedom, provide for tlieir educa- 
 "■ tion, and whicli may yet be consistent as a temporary ar- 
 "raiigement, with their present condition as a laboring, 
 '' landless, and homeless class." 
 
 These clauses manifest a willingness to refer the changes 
 in State constitutions relating to slavery, wliich the war 
 resulting from it shows to be necessary to the people and 
 States most affected. This harmonizes Avith the great 
 principle on wliicli the Government rests. If the Presi- 
 dent's benign <and patriotic suggestion be received with 
 favor by tlie friends of free government, bound up in the 
 Union, and based on the grand, all-pervading principle of 
 the Declaration of Independence, it will become evident 
 to all the world that there is an innate vital power in our 
 Constitution that can heal the worst disorders to which 
 it might be subjected. 
 
 It is our duty now to put to shame the advocates of mon- 
 archy, oligarchy and aristocracy. The majesty of a great, 
 free people is invoked to achieve this great work. The 
 nation is appealed to by the President to sanction, by its 
 co-operation, the design which with him is but suggestion. 
 
 The man at the head of the Republic vaunts no military 
 prowess as a substitute for the nation's will. Tie is no 
 
Cromwell. Congress is no military council. We have 
 no Carnot to organize victory. The Grovernment embodies 
 the will of a free people, and that imparts an impulse 
 through faithful representatives that renders the Republic 
 irresistible in a good work. Tlie suppression of the re- 
 bellion and the elimination of slavery irom tliis country 
 is the herculean labor before it. Its accomplishment will 
 convince the nations that popular suffrage is the true sov- 
 ereignty, whether to wield the sword against those who 
 defy it or to heal the wounds it is compelled to inflict in 
 asserting its authority. I hope you will bear with me 
 while bringing under review the series of steps which 
 have brought us to the issues presented in the President's 
 plan of pacification to show the wisdom of the plan, and 
 that the patriots of all parties sliould unite in giving 
 effect to it. 
 
 Nothing was more conspicuous throughout the struggle 
 of the colonies with G-reat Britain than the stern devotion 
 of the founders of the Government to the public good. 
 They sacrificed all personal and party considerations to 
 subserve it. This simple feeling, this instinct of the 
 heart, created this glorious empire of freedom. It will re- 
 establish it on more enduring foundations. 
 
 Monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, are different modes of 
 the same thing. It is monopoly by a few of the rights of 
 the many to appropriate their labor. It was not against 
 the forms of government that our forefathers rose in resist- 
 ance to the mother country. On the contrary, the hearts 
 of the people were full of loyalty even to a king until 
 they found him to be a tyrant. 
 
 The most striking manifestation of the king's tyranny 
 is thus portrayed in the original of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence : 
 
 " He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, 
 " violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the 
 " persons of a distant people who never offended him, cap- 
 '* tivatin'gthem, and carrying them into slavery in another 
 " hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transpor- 
 
" tation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprohiiim of 
 ''Infidel Powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of 
 " Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where 
 ''MEN' should he hought and sold, he has prostituted his 
 " negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to pro- 
 " hihit or to restrain this execrable commerce, and that this 
 " assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished 
 " die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms 
 " among us, and to plirchase that liberty of which he has 
 " deprived them, by murdering the people on Avhom he also 
 " obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed 
 " against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he 
 " urges them to commit against the lives of another." 
 
 But this " piratical warfare against human nature " 
 had its origin, not in the personal character of the British 
 king. It sprung from that sjjirit of monopoly which has 
 ever, and will forever, animate arbitrar}'' power. The 
 European potentates had learned, as the first principle of 
 kingcraft, that he who commanded the labor of a nation 
 became its master. Hence that monstrous usurpation so 
 strongly marked with the reprobation of Jefferson and 
 his colltagues in the original draft of the Declaration of 
 Independence. The monarchs of England and Sj)ain, re- 
 solved on keeping tlicir colonies in absolute subjection, 
 looked to a monopoly of tlie African slave trade as the 
 means of enforcing it. 
 
 The treaty of Utrecht stipulated, says Bancroft: 
 " For the Spanish world in the Gulf of Mexico, on the 
 "Atlantic, and along the Pacific, as well as for the English 
 " colonies, that her Britannic Majesty (by persons of her 
 " appointment,) was the exclusive slave trader." " Eng- 
 " land extorted the privilege of filling the New World with 
 " negroes, as great prolits were anticipated from the trade. 
 " Philip v., of Spain, took one quarter of the common 
 " stock, agreeing to pay for it by a stock note. Queen Anne 
 "reserved tu herself anotlier quarter, and the remaining 
 " moiety was to be divided among her subjects. Thus did 
 " the sovereigns of England and Spain become the largest 
 
" slave mercliants in the world. Lady Masliain promised 
 '' herself a share of the profits, but Harley, (prime minis- 
 " ter,) who had good sense, and was most free from avarice, 
 " advised the assignment of her Majesty's portion of the 
 " stock to the South Sea Company. 
 
 " Controlling the trade in slaves, who cost nothing but 
 '' trinkets, and toys, and refuse arms, England gained by 
 '^ the sale of the children of Africa into bondage in Amer- 
 " ica, the cajiital which built up and confirmed a British 
 " empire in Hindostan. Tlie political effects of this traffic 
 " were equally perceptible in the West Indies. The mer- 
 ^'cantile system, of which tlie whole colonial system was 
 " the essential branch, culminated hi tlie slave trade, and in 
 " the commercial jjolicy adopted with regard to the chief pro- 
 " duce of slave labor." 
 
 Here is the clue to the conspiracy of kings Avhich made 
 negro slavery its fulcrum. It is an instinctive fact tliat 
 the conspiracy of the slaveholders — the oligarchs in the 
 South — against the free Governments of this continent, 
 originated in the same passions, avarice, and ambition, 
 looking to territorial conquest and political power, and 
 negro slavery was alike the instrument of both. No fact 
 could more strongly elucidate the immense force which the 
 absolute control of a system of slavery, though wielding 
 a mass of the lowest caste of laborers, may exert over 
 greater numbers of amiddle order not soconcentrated under 
 a single will. The monopoly wrested by England from 
 Spain made the monarch of the latter kingdom dependent 
 on the former, as a joint stock -holder in the slave trade 
 with a company of her merchant princes, sharing their 
 scandalous profits in a merchandise wliich was to debase 
 the Spanish provinces into lit subjection to suoli a master. 
 And the liistorian also tells us how the British throne, 
 although its occupant did not approjtriate the mercenary 
 products of the slave trade asstento to herself, but gave 
 them to her great trading companies, fostered through the 
 gains of their monopolies the conquest they were destined 
 to achieve for Enirlaud in India, Africa, and the South 
 
8 
 
 Seas. Meantime the source of these gains — the sale of 
 the negroes in the American colonies — was encouraged by 
 the whole force of the parliamentary and royal antliority 
 and influence. All the efforts of the colonies, by legisla- 
 tive enactments or otherwise, to stop the establishment of 
 the slave system were vetoed by the king, and public 
 opinion was invoked by declarations of Parliament " that 
 " the trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the 
 "kingdom and the colonies," and for that purpose, by 
 statute, ''the ports of Africa were laid open to English 
 " competition," the statute expressly declaring that " the 
 " slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain;" and 
 the bench of judges, " Holt and Pollexfen, and eight other 
 "judges, in pursuance of an order of council, giving their 
 " opinion that negroes are merchandise, and that therefore 
 " the act of navigation Avas to be extended to the English 
 " trade in them to the exclusion of aliens." The Crown 
 encouraged the trade not only by orders to the colonial 
 Groveruors, such as " the royal instruction of Queen Anne 
 "to the Governor of New York and New Jersey to give 
 " due encouragement to merchants, and in particular to 
 " the Royal African Company of England," but by pre- 
 miums to purchasers, land being given to emigrants " on 
 " condition that the resident owner loould keep four %igroes 
 ^^ for every hundred oxres." South Carolina, even, as late 
 as 1760, united in the common efforts of the colonists to 
 stop the increase of slavery ; but Bancroft says : 
 
 "She only gained abuse from the English ministry. 
 ' Great Britain, steadily rejecting every colonial restric- 
 ' tion on the slave trade, instructed the Governor, on pain 
 ' of removal, not to give even a temporary assent to such 
 ' laws ; and but a year before the prohibition of the slave 
 ' trade by the American Congress in 1776, the Earl of 
 ' Dartmouth illustrated the tendency of the colonies, and 
 ' tlie policy of England, by addressing to a colonial agent 
 ' these memorable Avords : 'We cannot allow the colonies 
 ' ' to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so bene- 
 ' ' ficial to the nation.' " 
 
The result of this systematic policy — building up a 
 slave empire in the New World in furtherance of Great 
 Britain's commercial ambition is thus summed up by 
 Bancroft : 
 
 ^' For the century previous to the prohibition of the 
 '' slave trade by the American Congress in 1770, we assume 
 " the number imported by the English into tlie Spanish, 
 " French and English West Indies, as well as the English 
 " continental colonies, to have been, collectively, nearly 
 " three millions, to which are to bo added more tlian a 
 " quarter of a million purchased in Africa and tlirowji 
 " into the Atlantic on the passage. The gross returns 
 " to English merchants for the whole traffic in tliat num- 
 "• her of slaves may have been not far from four hundred 
 " million dollars." 
 
 Well, Avhat was Great Britain's commercial policy Avhich 
 slavery as adjunct was to consummate? Mr. Bancroft 
 explains it in a paragraph based on documentary proof, in 
 these words : 
 
 " The white man emigrating became a dangerous free- 
 " man. It was quite sure that the negroes of that cen- 
 " tury Avould never profess republicanism ; their presence 
 " in the colonies increased dependence. This reason was 
 " avowed by a British merchant in 1745, in a political 
 " tract entitled — ' The African Slave Trade — the Great 
 " ' Pillar AND Support of the Briti-sh Plantation Trade 
 "'in America.' Were it possible for white men to an- 
 " swer the end ol negroes in planting, (it is there con- 
 " tended,) our colonies would interfere with the manufac- 
 " tures of these kingdoms. In sucli a case, indeed, we 
 " might have just reason to dread the prosperity of our 
 " colonies ; but Avhile we can supply them abundantly 
 " with negroes we need be under no such apprehension. 
 " Negro labor will keep our British colonies in due sub- 
 " serviency to the interest of their mother country ; for 
 " while plantations depend only on planting by negroes, 
 " our colonies can never prove injurious to British manu- 
 " factures, never become independent of their kingdom." 
 
10 
 
 Such was the Britisli policy as associated with slavery. 
 It is simple and consistent. The grand monopoly of the 
 slave trade increased its navigation, increased its commerce 
 with Africa and all European dependencies in the two 
 Americas, increased its planting and other agricultural 
 interests everywhere ; the negro lahorer doing the work 
 in the colonics, thus saving for home industry the peasan- 
 try of the British Isles, that would otherwise emigrate, 
 and become dangerous freemen. Tliis slave system thus 
 retarded the growth of the distant plantations hy that 
 hardy Anglo-Saxon yeomanry, which it was feared would 
 soon acquire the independent spirit of the New World, 
 that would endanger the supremacy of the mother country, 
 rivalling her in arts, in arms, in commerce, and every 
 species of enterprise. 
 
 The monopoly thus gained by merchants over Africa, 
 glutted hy tlie profits of the " merchandise," in the shape 
 of men transplanted to America, inspired their ambition 
 to extend it over the East Indies ; and the result was the 
 conquest of Hindostan, by the intrigues, corruption, com- 
 jnercial bargainings, sanctioned by treaties entered into 
 with tlie native princes, and upheld by the diplomacy and 
 arms of England ; a monopoly which steadily excluded 
 from the East India possessions white emigrants ; a policy 
 also adopted by our southern slaveholders. 
 
 Tliis was the thriving attitude of England's slave pol- 
 icy, when the Congress of the Colonies passed the act of 
 prohibition in 1776, and Jefferson and his compeers charac- 
 terized it in the Declaration of Independence with stronger 
 terms of reproach against the king than any other in its 
 category of wrongs — that long list of ''repeated injuries 
 and usurpations, oil having in direct object the estahlishment 
 of an absolute tyranny over these States." 
 
 Is it not amazing, that the slave States, having up to 
 the hour of pronounced independence made war on the 
 slave trade, and the Power tliat compelled submission to 
 its aggravated mischiefs, should recoil from its denuncia- 
 tion in that great State paper, Avritten expressly to sum 
 
11 
 
 up the grievances sufforetl under t]ic Grovernnient it was 
 designed to renounce as the only mode of deliverance from 
 them ? No sooner was the paper read, than South Caro- 
 lina and Greorgia, then, as more recently, instinctively the 
 prompters of the action of the South, when ii (juestion of 
 slavery is involved, ohjected to the scathing clause — -and 
 why? " A change came o'er the spirit of their dream." 
 When the slave trade and slavery were instruments in the 
 hands of the king, they saw them plied as a vast monop- 
 oly to amass wealth and power for those having the con- 
 trol, and to reduce to dependence those who were ohliged to 
 buy and live under the monopoly. The inhabitants of con- 
 tinents and the markets of continents were under its sway. 
 Slavery and the slave trade, under the management of a 
 foreign Power, was a curse, but under the management of 
 the masters of South Carolina and Georgia, promised 
 much to avarice and ambition. The whole South soon 
 perceived that an oligarchy of slaveholders could easily per- 
 sonate the king, and profit by the lessons of the monopoly 
 he established. How well they have ap[)lied and improved 
 upon the precedents of their royal master, to which we 
 have adverted, a glance at their course after they had ex- 
 punged from our Ilagna Charta the passage provided to 
 insure the extinction of the slave ^trade and slavery, will 
 show. 
 
 The first step of the slaveholders after assuming the 
 royal prerogative in reference to slavery, was the demand 
 to set aside the Congressional interdict against the slave 
 trade. This was enforced by threats of dissolving the 
 Union, so necessary to the establishment of our free infant 
 institutions. A new lease had to be granted to tlie slave 
 trade, to save the Government from rebellion at its birth. 
 Their next requisition was, that the political pou-er over 
 free men and free institutions, should be compounded with 
 their domestic institution, asserting arbitrary authority 
 over the African slaves among us. This, too, was con- 
 ceded, as the price of unity and peace. The slave power 
 acquired a constitutional right to representation in Con- 
 
12 
 
 gress, for two-fiftlis of the persons it held in bondage. 
 Thus endowed with the new political faculty of importing 
 and breeding a population to legislate for the nation, the 
 master-class in the South readily asserted the character of 
 a privileged class. The capitalists, monopolizing the 
 lands and the labor adequate to their cultivation, at 
 once reduced the non-slaveholders to entire dependence 
 upon them. They became tenants-at-will on the great do- 
 main of the privileged order, and, although indulged with 
 the right of suifrage, in effect it was but a choice between 
 individuals of the same order, the invariable result being 
 the election of all the higher functionaries, and the legis- 
 lators, State and National, from that class, which, having 
 command of the labor and land of the South, had also 
 command of the votes of those who held their livings of 
 them. Hence, the State and Congressional representation 
 of the South, really represented the class consisting of 
 some three hundred thousand persons, whose interests re- 
 quired that the seven millions of the whites, equally de- 
 pendent upon tlieiii, but lessck^sely allied upon mercenary 
 considerations, than the four millions of the black caste, 
 should, for security and convenience, be held under the 
 same law of passive obedience. With great art and suc- 
 cess, the two southern castes of laborers have been 
 played off against each other for this purpose ; and with like 
 skill the southern chivalry, acting in concert, upon the 
 instinct of cemented interest, have, though a minority, 
 by holding the balance of power between the two great 
 parties of the free Stato^, contrived to carry their plans 
 for control in the national as well as the State govern- 
 ments. 
 
 The ambition of liolding a vast domain — tlie spirit of 
 all despotism for aggrandizement — soon succeeded to tlie 
 indulgence of the slave owners in the prerogative w^iich 
 had again and again been denied to the king by acts of 
 local legislation — that of filling the country with slaves. 
 It was at the threshold insisted that the whole territory 
 south of Ohio should be resigned to slavery. The acqui- 
 
13 
 
 sition of Louisiana was its next conquest ; then Florida 
 and Texas followed ; and when part of Mexico, where 
 slavery had been abolished, was annexed, the Union A^as 
 put in hazard to compel the restoration of this royal insti- 
 tution to hold that wide region in abeyance for settlement 
 by the masters of the South. California, although knock- 
 ing at the door of Congress with her free constitution in 
 her hand, was denied admittance but on a compromise 
 making the rest of the Mexican acquisition accessible to 
 slavery. This struggle for territory on the part of the 
 privileged proprietaries of the institution was not to ob- 
 tain room for its occupation. Vast regions were already 
 held vacant by the black laborers, that like the dog in the 
 manger could not use that from which it excluded the 
 only species of emigration that could be relied on to turn 
 it to account. 
 
 But the privileged order of cliivalry liad on political 
 considerations an eagerness for expansion that was insati- 
 able. The paucity of their numbers rendered it necessary 
 that extensive spaces sliould be consecrated to slavery, to 
 make States with sparse po})ulations to create Senators, 
 and to i)ut distance between tlie species of emigration they 
 cherished and that of tlie intelligent free race that 
 threatened the power that reposed upon it. The battle 
 which this power had fought for Missouri and won, result- 
 ing in a pacification fixing a northern limit, beyond wliich 
 slavery was not to pass, although for a quarter of a century 
 exulted in as a slavery triumph, securing all that was de- 
 sirable to the South, became a mortification when Kansas 
 was o])enedup to emigration preparatory to admission into 
 the Union. It presented another temptation like that of 
 Missouri to the spirit of southern ascendency. The Mis- 
 souri com})act which excluded slavery li'om Kansas was 
 violated under the corrupt influence exerted through bar- 
 gains fm- the Presidency with Pierce and Buchanan — suc- 
 cessively tlie candidates nominated and elected by the man- 
 agement of the chivalry for the purpose of its surrender. 
 The strategy failed. The South was defeated in the war 
 
14 
 
 it waged for Kansas. It was defeated notwithstanding 
 official frauds and perjuries were perpetrated in aid of 
 violence to secure its submission, and altliougli the schemes 
 were assisted by all the art and influence of the two per- 
 fidious Presidents engaged to effect it. 
 
 It was this first repulse to the ambition of that privileged 
 order, by long indulgence made arrogant, followed by the 
 election of President Lincoln, pledged to resist the further 
 encroachment of slavery in territory wliere freedom was 
 established, that hurried into birth the long-brooded-over 
 revolt against the Republic. Mr. Buchanan's nomination 
 to the Presidency liad been obtained from the South by the 
 solemn pledge, made in his name, by his Attorney Gren- 
 eral, Mr. Black, to the southern delegation in convention : 
 
 " Wliither thou goesf, I icill go ; ivhcre thou lodgest, I iciU 
 " lodge ; tliy i^eople shall he my ijeople, and thy God my God." 
 
 The conspiracy against the Union was well understood 
 by Mr. Buchanan long before this vow was made to its 
 principal authors. Its decisive overt act, in violation of 
 the Missouri compact and the seizure of Kansas, was then 
 flagrant, and this scriptural adjuration was to mark, with 
 signal force, his adhesion to the treason ; and he was not 
 found false to this fellowship. His whole term in the 
 Presidency rendered the Government an instrumentality 
 in the hands of its enemies. Their most unscrupulous 
 agents were made heads of Departments, and when war 
 was openly proclaimed by the thunder of cannon on Fort 
 Sumter and trailing the flag of the country in its dust and 
 ashes, it was found that the free States of the Union had 
 been disarmed, the Navy dispersed in distant seas, the 
 officers of the Army corrupted to surrender themselves 
 and it, the South filled Avith munitions of war withdrawn 
 from the loyal section, and the forts, ports, mints, cus- 
 tom-houses, all opened up to the conspirators, who had 
 prepared in secrecy under the knighthood of the Golden 
 Circle a force to take'possession of them, and at the same 
 time the State governments to supplant by a military 
 jurisdiction that of the United States over the whole south- 
 
15 
 
 ern region wliich the nation had conquered from Great 
 Britain and purchased from France and Spain. Mr. Bu- 
 chanan, to prove his faith to his allies who thus trium})li- 
 ed through his perfidy over the Grovernment, gave them in 
 his last message to Congress most efficient " aid and com- 
 fort," enforcing, by executive authority, the dictum that 
 the United States had no constitutional power to " coerce " 
 the restoration of the rights or property of which it had 
 been stripped. And he remained faithful to tliem to the 
 end. After the retirement of Greneral Cass from the Cabi- 
 net, wdio withdrew because he considered the refusal on 
 the part of the President and his Cabinet to maintain 
 Fort Sumter against the rebels an overt act of treason, an 
 agreement was entered into with the enemy in furtherance 
 of the object of tliat treason. Buchanan's administration 
 actually stipulated with that of Davis for an armistice 
 which afforded time to the latter to accomplish his de- 
 sign, and this was officially signed by the respective Sec- 
 retaries on the part of the contracting Cabinets. But this 
 betrayal by the Executive of the United States would have 
 produced a short-lived success had it not been supported 
 by the two standing armies kept on hand by the chivalry 
 of the South — armies that are the offspring of that pecu- 
 liar institution to which the order itself owes its birth. 
 The antagonism of the black and white castes of laborers 
 of the South creates the double forces which maintain the 
 oligarchy over both. The antipathies between the Papists 
 and Protestants of Ireland is the strength of the English 
 vice-royalty over the island. Tlie apprehensions of negro 
 equality on the part of the non-slaveholders renders them 
 fanatically devoted to the designs of that class whose am- 
 bition and mercenary interests proclaim a war to prevent 
 the emancipation feared as a transformation, elevating the 
 blacks and degrading the whites. The slaves, disciplined 
 to obedience, and in the presence of a soldiery composed of 
 that stern class that held the lash over them from infan- 
 cy, and now armed for their destruction on a hesitating 
 look, make an embodied force of stout, acclimated, skill- 
 
16 
 
 fill pioneers, willing tliougli unpaid, and proud of the 
 change from the fields of the plantation to those of the 
 camp. These are the men that threw up the batteries 
 that struck the colors of Fort Sumter, the men who dug 
 the rifle pits and made and partly manned the redoubts 
 which broke our first army at Bull Run, the men that 
 created the fortifications at Richmond, Charleston, Savan- 
 nah, Mobile, Port Hudson, Vicksburg. They constitute 
 the army of the trenches, while every man of their breth- 
 ren left in the crops at home sends and supports a white 
 substitute to fight the battles in the field. Can any one 
 deny the share the negro has in creating the armies of the 
 Soutli, when it is known that the military government 
 there has ordered grain to be cultivated there as the exclu- 
 sive crop, and has conscripted the slaves of the planters to 
 work them under military overseers when the owner has 
 refused the office, and that nevertheless, famine stares 
 their soldiers in the face? But for the slaves everywhere 
 pressed to provide against these deficient supplies, the 
 ranks of the rebel army would be thinned to make bread 
 for the families at home and the remnant of their comrades. 
 It was even the boast of the nuUifiers in the early time of 
 their intimidation that their institutions, like the Spar- 
 tans', enabled them to make every freeman a soldier. 
 
 Slavery was thus to become the sure foundation of their 
 republic, and it is, we see, the basis of the despotic mili- 
 tary rule which subjects the South under a dictator, and 
 sheds the blood of the North in torrents, to defend itself 
 and the whole Union against the frenzied ambition of the 
 chivalry that hoped to make cotton king over the cabinets 
 of Europe, and the negro institution the throne of a king 
 over this Continent. It was in this spirit that it sent out 
 its fillibusters in Cuba, in Central America, and sought 
 an alliance with a revolutionary party in Mexico, to restore 
 tlie reign of slavery in that republic. It was in this view 
 that Toombs, Avho apes the oratory of Mirabeau, in con- 
 vulsing the South, announced that it would make " ^Ae 
 " Gulf of Mexico its ma^e dausum," and " call the roll of its 
 
17 
 
 ^^ Slaves on Bunker Hill. ' ' The maniac is now fettered, but 
 if he had broken our army at Antietam or Gettysburg, 
 could our unarmed farmers and citizens have arrested him 
 in his way to Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York, 
 Avith an armj^ flushed with victor}', and bearing the arms 
 and spoils of ours ? Might he not have bribed mobs like 
 that which held our emporium for tlirce days in terror, to 
 take the arms won from us in the fl.elds of battle, and join 
 him in the plunder and conflagrations of our cities? 
 
 I have not made this recapitulation of the causes origi- 
 nating, and the consequences flowing from the bloody re- 
 bellion that shakes our country, to embitter animosities on 
 either side. My effort is to expose to view the rooted evil, 
 which 7nust he extracted, if ice would relieve the imfion from 
 its convidsions. Slavery, as a great element of society, 
 makes slaves of all associated with it, by the passions it 
 inflames: the masters, b}^ the ambition it inspires — the 
 masses, with which it mingles, by the deadly contagion it 
 spreads in a thousand forms. It is marked in the Decla- 
 ration of Independence as the most virulent poison instilled 
 by the king, to enfeeble for subjugation, the people on 
 whom he made war, and it has proved the most putent in- 
 gredient that could be employed for the dissolution of the 
 fabric of free government, which withstood the king's 
 attempt. If the virtis he infused, wliicli was strong 
 enough amid the enthusiasm for new-born freedom, to 
 stifle tlie voice of the Declaration of Independence, de- 
 nouncing slavery, and has kept the free Government — the 
 liard-earned. prize of the revolutionary war — in tremor 
 ever since, is it now, when it has been poured out with 
 tlie nation's blood in the fratricidal war, it forced on the 
 country, again to be admitted into the system ? 
 
 What patriotic party will sanction such a suggestion? 
 The people of the slave States will repudiate slavery, when 
 the duress of the rebellion is removed. Missouri and 
 Western Virginia have already formally renounced' it, 
 and the recent votes of Delaware, and our own dear Mary- 
 land, manifest their purpose to renounce it at once. In 
 2 
 
18 
 
 Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, the indi- 
 cations are also decisive. The proclamation of the Presi- 
 ident to deprive the enemy of this greatest element of 
 power, this sinew of war exerted at all points, has an- 
 nounced the extinction of slaver}'-, as essential to the suc- 
 cess of the measures he has been compelled to adopt to 
 conquer a peace for the Union. The armies of the Re- 
 public are on the march to accomplish the aims which 
 have been submitted without reserve to the decision of 
 public opinion, and they have the support of the people's 
 suffrage. What, then, is the duty of all who are sensible 
 that the war is an inevitable evil, from which there 
 is no safe or honorable deliverance, but by supporting 
 with united strength and counsels the Chief Magistrate, 
 to whose conduct the issue is committed, and. in whose 
 avowed designs the nation has voted its confidence? Are 
 ■ there any Avho Avould rescind the votes of the border States, 
 and re-establish slavery therein ? Are there any who 
 would annul the proclamation to reinvigorate the insti- 
 tution so skillfully plied to instigate the war, and so 
 essential to provide the means for its prosecution? 
 
 The Democratic party of the North Avas seduced to 
 countenance the measures of the southern oligarchs, pre- 
 paratory to the war against the Union, under the idea that 
 they were designed as mere menace, and were really con- 
 servative. The event has shown that the whole policy of 
 the dominant class in the South, has been war for absolute 
 dominion in the slave States — war to extend the despotic 
 system on which it built, at home and abroad. Is this the 
 conservatism to which Democracy anywhere should lend 
 itself? liulwer, though a Tory, has this aphorism in 
 one of his late pajiers : " A true conservative policy for a 
 ^'naiion is the policy of jn-ogress ; " and he gives his conserv- 
 ative friends the admonition that "resistance to progress 
 " is destructive to conservatism." The Democracy was in 
 its better day a progressive party. Would it not be an 
 advance backwards to restore the slave institution to the 
 position it has lost in being used during the greater part 
 
19 
 
 of a century, covertly at first, but now in open rebellion, 
 to destroy the free Government by which it had been tolc- 
 erated, only in the hope it would have been gradually 
 thrown off, under the influence of public sentiment? 
 When the masters of millions of slaves have boldly pro- 
 claimed .slavery the best basis of government, and founded 
 on it the military despotism they have set up within the 
 jurisdiction of the United States, with the avowed purpose 
 of superseding its authority, what friend of the Union — 
 what friend of free government — can hesitate to strike 
 down that system which endangers both? The plea that 
 slavery is a local institution, not to be dealt with by Fed- 
 eral authority, was universally admitted to be true, till 
 that institution engendered a rebellion which, by an ad- 
 mission equally universal, seriously imperils the existence 
 of the national Government. It could not be called a 
 Government, if, in virtue of the right of self defence, com- 
 mon alike to Governments and individuals, under such 
 circumstances it could not destroy its enemies. 
 
 It is absurd to consider the war now raging as one meant 
 to draw a line between coterminous nationalities. It is a 
 war in the bosom of one nationality, of a people of the 
 same race and language, on an arena bounded by the lakes, 
 the ocean, the Gulf, and the great tributary streams that 
 unite and insulate and mark it as the domain of one great 
 Government. It is a war of principle and for dominion. 
 If the dynasty founded on the slave system triumphs, it 
 will give law to the continent. If it fails, as fail it must, 
 unless the tendency of the age becomes inverted, there is an 
 end of slavery among civilized nations. What a humili- 
 ating contrast is presented for the new world in the attempt 
 of Jefferson Davis and his coadjutor rebels striving to fet- 
 ter their poorer and more ignorant fellow-citizens in the 
 chains of their four millions of negro slaves ; while the 
 Autoc^'at of the Eussias proclaims the freedom of forty mil- 
 lions of serfs, delivering them from the yoke of a haughty 
 nobility and his own right of seigniory, and establishing 
 them as freeholders ! 
 
20 
 
 Our would-be nobility of slave creation has thrown down 
 the gage of battle for tlie slave system against the free 
 system of government. When the batteries at Charleston 
 poured their hot shot into the fortress built and armed and 
 manned by the nation to protect that city from foreign 
 invasion, under which it had twice fallen, it signified a 
 war of fire and sword against the nationality founded by 
 our forefathers to secure the liberties for which our coun- 
 trymen fought and conquered. The Democracy of the 
 North rose as one man with the Kepublicans, in whose 
 hands tlie elections had placed the Administration, to de- 
 fend the cause of freedom and the Union. The Democ- 
 racy then saw the conflict in which this act involved the 
 country in its true aspect. Every step in its progress 
 proves that it was a war waged for military supremacy on 
 the side of the assailants — for the liberty and nationality 
 it secures on the other. Foreign kings and emperors are 
 invoked to join with the conspirators in making a wreck 
 of the Republic, and share in the advantages to be derived 
 from its ruin.- Pirates, bearing the flag of the rebellion 
 and fitted out under the auspices of wealthy speculators, 
 looking for remuneration in the plunder of our commerce, 
 disgrace the civilization of the age by robberies and con- 
 flagrations on the high seas. In such a war — a war for 
 freedom on one side and slavery on the other — no perma- 
 nent peace can be patched up. To endure, there must be 
 submission to the Grovernment as constituted by our fath- 
 ers, or as it v/ould be constituted by Mr. Davis and his 
 military adherents. Any compromise or partition treaty 
 would give but a breathing spell for fresh preparations for 
 a renewed struggle. 
 
 May we not hope, as there is no escape from an issue so 
 forced ui)on us, that the Democracy of the North will, as 
 at the threshold of the war, be found with the great majority 
 of the constituency of the loyal States, zealously battling for 
 the right, which every patriot, of whatever party, holds to be 
 with the Government of the Union ? It has taken the stand 
 that the extinction of the slave institution is essential to 
 
21 
 
 save the Union, and perpetuate the Government which it 
 has put in jeopardy. The armies of the Union fight to make 
 prisoner of tliis giant of the war on the side of our adver- 
 saries. Once withdrawn from them, he takes from tliem 
 the motives and the means of continuing the conflict. 
 
 The partisan who may thwart tlie brave men tliat risk 
 their lives in battling for a consummation alike patriotic 
 and humane, will, on the return of the maimed veterans 
 to their homes, covered witli laurcds and honorable scars, 
 liide his diminished head in obscurity forever. 
 
 In ordinary contests of opinion between parties, the 
 utmost vi]"ulence of expression is soon forgiven and for- 
 gotten. But w^hen war strikes the country, the man who 
 withholds support to the soldiers who offer their lives in 
 its defense, or disables their efforts by words or acts favor- 
 ing the cause of the enemy, never recovers its confidence. 
 What was the fate of the public men who took sides v/ith 
 England in the war of the Kevolution, or that of 1812? 
 
 The political convulsions of 1798-'99, ending in the 
 election of Mr. Jefferson, was characterized by more bit- 
 terness, with a party frenzy more intense, tlian wlien blood 
 flowed in battles on the field. But the ill spirit vanis'ied 
 like the spectre of a morning's dream, wlien Mr. Jefferson 
 rose to the nation's chief honor, and the country Avas re- 
 lieved of the apprehensions of the loss of the election 
 made by tlie people. The struggle had been on one side 
 to consolidate the Federal pov/er, and by construction, 
 give it the tone and tendency of the British Government ; 
 on the other, to assert State rights and popular sovereignty, 
 by strict adherence to the republican model presented in 
 the Constitution. This, fairly construed, embraced the 
 opinions of botli contending parties. Tliey were recon- 
 ciled in the admirable inaugural address, wliicli allayed 
 partisan fury in its assertion of what Avas true of the great 
 body of the people : " We are all Beptiblicams — all Feder- 
 " ALS. ' ' It may be truly said noiv, speaking the sense of the 
 masses of our countrymen, "We are all Republicans — all 
 " Democrats." Exclude the conspirators and the slave in- 
 
22 
 
 stitution, which they have shaped into a glut to split the 
 Union ; exclude the conspirators, and those whom slavery- 
 has made their slaves, and our countrymen are at this 
 moment ''all Democrats — all Republicans"^ — asserting 
 popular sovereignty, the right of self government, the 
 rights of the States, the nationality of the Union— all de- 
 fined, balanced, checked, and bound together in the re- 
 publican form of government inherited from our fathers. 
 May it be perpetual ! 
 

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