/SS-i THE 'MANIFEST DKSTINY' or TUB AMERICAN UNION. Rf;rKlMKl) P'ROM THE A\ KSTMINSTER REVIEW, N E ^^' Y O K K : PriJL[idity under grievous oppressions on one hand, and illegal attemjits to ob- tain relief on the other, and steadily persevere in con- stitutional ap})lications to recover their just righrsand liberties, they think they may promise themselves suc- cess.' What could be less like revolution than this? Yet there stands a significant entry in the diary of John Adams, when he had been listening to James Otis — ' At home with my family, thinking.' Even after the Boston Massacre, as it was called, when five lives were lost in a collision between British sol- diers and American citizens, the avowal of a desire to continue subject to British government is found in records of all public meetings ; though the grow- ing particularity^ may perhaps suggest that the idea of separation was becoming more familiar. In 1771, Dr. Franklin said that the seeds of disunion were being sown : but even he did not perceive that it was nearer harvest than seed-time. Even when the people were incited to emulate the courage and faith of their f.ith?rs, Avho ' made a settlement on bare creation,' being not afraid of poverty, but disdain- ing slavery, all resistance was to be conducted ' un- der the shield of the British Constitution, and in strict adherence to their charter.' Towards the close of 1773, when night fell oq a day of trouble and vague portents, a mother and her young chil- dren, in the neighborhood of Boston, listened for the return of the head of the household, who was later than usual. His wife helped him off with his coat, and brought his slippers ; and when the children were gone to bed, she showed her husband how well it was that it was none but herself who took charge of his shoes. They were full of tea ! But for this, even she would never have known so much as one of the fifty men who, with coats wrong side out, and covered faces, threw the tea into the dock. But this couple were as far as any one else from dreaming that they were helping to enact a revolu- tion, though they were within three years of the Declaration of Independence ! It now began to be agreed, it is true, ' that if they would maintain their rights and liberties, they must fight for them' : and they did fight for them so soon as the spring of 1775 ; but it is on record that the citizens who ral- lied and marched the militia after the skirmishes of Lexino-ton and Concord, and the women who nursed the wounded, had, even then, no notion that they were in the middle of revolution. They were as ready as ever to start back from the word ; and they went on supposing, as they had done for fifteen years, that matters would be accommodated, and that they and their children should live and die under their charters, as their fathers had done before them. They were then actually the nucleus of the dreadful com- et, while they declared that their atmosphere was too gloomy for them to see far, but that such a thing as a comet was certainly nowlicre within ken. Our readers are by this time making comparisons, no doubt, bctwtx^n tlic incidcntflandfo('lin|:plK'lonping to tlio first Amcricun ri'Voliitiuu, and tliow wliich hiivo fur soiiu! timo jiast, and with |HTjM'tijal in- croasin;; fort'o and rh'anuss, indicate*! ai second. Wo bolievc wo have the nnans ol shviifited hy the lessons of their fatliers as to 1k» fully awan^ of their real p»sition, thou has broiif^ht to- gi'thcr in a statement aliuo^t as alanniii;^ to the Kn;;- lish jiiililic, who can say what tiny h-il about American destinies, as to Americans, who cannot, under their present circumstaiues, emjl<»y t (joal freiHlom of sj)eech. A few lines will indicate sometliiiiy the attention of the world l)ein<; fixed upon their case ; the false pre- tences of all dishonest parties have been continu- ously exposed ; the Church, the judiciary, the legis- latures, and all leading nun in each dejiartment, have been tested, and their true quality exhii>itcd. The worldlincss of the commercial North has been rebuked as eff -etually as the despotism of the slave- holding South : the whole country has been roused to a sense of the approaching crisis ; and, while the field has been cleared for the conflict, the slave pop- ulation has been deterred from insurrection. Be- fore 1832, when the first abolitionist spoke bis first word, the slave insurrections averaged twelve in a year ; whereas, from 1832 to 185G, there was no insurrection whatever. The slaves were aware that their cause was in better hands than their own, and they waited patiently till, in the course of the elec- t'nm of last year, Southern men themselves impru- dently identified the success of Fremont with the ab- olition of slavery, and thus, according to their own confession, made themselves answerable for a partial rising. Even so bare a recapitulation as we have given of the services of the abolitionists may be welcome to the readers of Mr. Chambers's latest work, as opening some prospect of a good and hap- py issue where to hiui all appears perplexing and desperate. The ten righteous men, having wrought for so long, may save the city yet. Before we survey the recent transactions of the respective sections and States of the Union, it may 12 be well to denote the various parties concerned in the existing struggle and its issue. We do not mean to waste any space in describing the political parties wliose very denominations are a ludicrous puzzle to strangers. Such parties rise and disap- pear like bubbles on a turbulent stream ; so that they are hardly worth a strTlnger's attention in or- dinary times. But, at present, scarcely any of them appear to exist. The current of events is too strong for them ; the times are too grave for political skir- mishing ; and the whole people are massed in sec- tions characterized ])y distinctions which cannot be admitted and discussed in a day. The leading sections are the North and the South, of course ; but it is a mistake to suppose that the division of the men is as clear as the distinction of the policy. The South has a policy ; and as it is a slaveholding policy, the very small body of slave- holders usurps the title of the Southern section. Of the 27,000,000 of inhabitants of the United States, less than 350,000 are slaveholders in any sense ; and it is computed that, of these, not more than 1000 are indoctrinated and zealous slaveholders. Of whom, then, docs the so-called ' South ' really con- sist? There arc, as we have said, 350,000 slave- holders ; and if their connections of every sort are included, the entire oligarchy cannot consist of more than 2,000,000. Then there are, at least, 4,000,000 slaves. The slaves being double the number of the rulino- class is a formida])le circumstance in itself ; and it becomes (»r proportionate importance to learn what tlie remaining element is. That element it has been the policy of the South to keep out of view, and till lately it has succeeded : but the last census revealed the fact that the ' mean-white ' population of the South — the non-slavcholding whites — consti- 13 tuto no less than Pcvcn-tenths of tlio wliolo fn-e pop- ulation of tin' t^lavo StntcH. In tin' ' Ilintory of Anu'iicjvn t'oin promises,' this class ol' inhabitants is thus described : — •"Wherever plnvcry exists, labor becomes, of course, n ba(l2;e of deprndation. In America, no class — not even the slaves — are so utterly de<:raded ns tlic whites, >vho, in slave States, b.ave no proj erty, and nuist live by work or thel't. 'Jhe ])lanters arc always tryini; to fjet rid of them, as daii^crons and vexatious nci<;h- bors ; and these ]>oor wretehes — the descendajits, for tlic most ])art, of the jTond colonists of two centuries ai^fo — are redu<'efl to sell their last foot of land, and l)e driven forth to live wbere tliey can. They arc re- ceivers of stolen i^oods from phmtations, aiul tralKck- ers in bad whiskey, doinj:j no honest work that tliey can avoid, and being employed by nobody who can get work done by any other hands. Few of thera can read ; most of them drink ; and the missionaries report tV.em as savage to an un]Miralleled degree, — many haviiig never heard of God or of Jesus Christ. Of this class are the " .*^and-hillers," the " Clay-eat- ers," and other fearful a. normal classes of residents in the slave States. Strangers hear, in visits to the plar.tations, of these ♦• mean-whites" as the supreme nuisance of the South, but are led to supjjose that they are a mere handful of ])eoi)le, able to do a good deal of mischief by tampering with and corrupting the slaves. The la^t census, however, reveals the tre- mendous fact, that these •' mean-whites " are seven- tenths of the whole white population of the slave States." — p. 29. The renders of Mrs. Stowe's ' Dred ' need no fur- ther representation of the mode of life of these peo- ple ; and the facts of their position, — their num- bers, poKSi^ssions, occupations, and social standing, — are exhibited with fullness and precision in Mr. Olmsted's work on ' The Seaboard Slave States.' Here, then, we liave the three classes which con- stitute the population of the South : — 1st. The owners of property and their families, comjKJSed of a small caste of 2,(HH),0()0 of persons ; 2d. Their 14 slaves, now more than double the number of the ol- ij^archj ; and, 3d, the poor whites, wlio have nei- ther property nor power to labor, and who outnum- ber the other two classes together. Till very rc- C3ntly, these were literally all : for free negroes are excluded from slave States by law and usage, and in fact ; and white Libor cannot co-exist with black. But the eagerness of the Southern oligarchy to ex- tend the area of slave States has led to the unex- pected issue of slavery being stopped in its spread to the south west by the intervention of a substantial industrial body of immigrants. Mr. Olmsted's vol- ume on ' Texas ' informs us that the number of Germans in that State, at the beginning of the pres- ent year, is computed at 35,000, ' of whom about 25,000 are settled in the German and half-German counties of Western Texas.' ' Among the Germans of the "West (of Texas) we met not one slave-owner; and there are not probably thirty among them all who have purchased slaves. The whole capital of most of them lies in their hands ; and with these, every black hand comes into tangible and irritating competition. "With the approacli of the slave, too, comes an implied degradation, attach- ing itself to all labor of the hands. The planter is by no means satisfied to find himself in the neighborhood of tlie German. lie is not only by education uncon- genial, as well as suspicious of danger to his property, already somewhat precariously near the frontier, hut finds, in his turn, a direct comi)etition of interests, which can be readily comprehended in figures. The ordinary Texan wages for an able field-hand are $200. The German laborer hires at $150, and clothes and insures himself. The planter for one hand must have paid $1,000. The German with this sum can hire six hands. It is here the contact galls.' — A Journey through Texas, p. 432. The reader of Mr. Olmsted's charming narrative of liis experience among the German settlers will need no arguments to convince him that any conflict between free and tsl.ivc labor on tliat fair litld must issue in the defeat of the latter. Mr. Ohnsted sjiys : 'I have licon thus ]iarticular in describing the con- dition and attitude of tlic (icrmans, as the ixisition in "ivliicli foitvnie lias placed them, in the very line of advance of slavery, is ])eculiar ; and, po far as it bears upon the (luestions of the continued extension of c(jt- ton limits, the cajjacity of whites for independent a<^- riculturc at the South, and the relative piofit and vigor of free and slave labor, is of nati )nal interest.' —p. 4i0. ITiTe, then, is a fourth element of Southern pop- ulation, small at present, but steadily inen'asing, and admirably placed for driving back slavery from the south-western frontier. The planters fear and hate this element ; the negroes love it, as far as they recognise it ; and the ' mean-whites ' hardly know ■what to make of it. The Germans, meantime, have no liking for any of the three classes of neigh- bors. How are the 17,000,000 of the North massed in regard to political questions? Their numbers alone ■would seem to give them power to carry any point in which they believed the welfare of the Republic to be involved ; and when it is remembered that the suflVage is buna fide in the Northern States, while in the South three fifths of the slaves count as vot- ers by a constitutional fiction, strangers may well wonder how it is that the freemen of the North, be- ing much more than double the number of those of the other section, permit any conflict which can en- danger their country. Hitherto, it seems to have been the business (;f the slaveholding aristocracy to govern the Eepublic for their own purposes, in vir- tue pf their compact organization, their strong and united will, and their acconjplishments as men of letters and leisure ; whereas the freemen of the North 16 have had only a negative policy with regard to the great subject on which the South has a positive one ; and the Ticxt great question, that of protection and froe-trade, is one which is supposed to render the commercial and manufacturing portion of tlie Re- public dependent on the producing section, — the merchants and manufacturers on the cotton-growers. Hence, mainly, it is, that the vast body of free, in- dustrious and prosperous inhabitants of the Union are regarded only as a party, and a subordinate par- ty, in the p(»litical history of the country. It is obvious that whenever the f vestige of the governing party is shaken, and the bulk of the free population is fairly roused to honest political exertion, the Constitution of the United Statcsmay become what- ever they choose to make it, l)y means peaceable in proportion to the preponderant force of numbers. But they are not roused to honest political exertion ; and hence it is tliat, though the Southern oligarchy are deteriorated in a1)ility, degraded in morals, and brutalized in manners, as a necessary consequence of a protraction of slave institutions into an age too advanced for them, their al)l('r and more civilized fellow-countrymen of the North are involved in a revolutionary struggle, instead of carrying their government up to tlie head of the free governments of the world. This immense population, which lives in subservience to half a million of fellow-citi- zens, consists of hundreds of thousands of merchants, millions of land-owners, innumeraVde clergy of all denominations, multitudes of other professional men, large corporate bodies of manufacturers, and crowds of individual producers in all crafts. The only part of the 17,000,000 of the North not includ- ed in this mass of freemen are the two classes of im- migrants and free colored people. The latter are 17 few, though inoro numorous tli:in tho shivolioMors. They are somewhat under hall" a uiillion, antl they have no political weight at present, except in an in- direct way, hy their political conipetcncy and rights being one of the questions of the controversy. Till quite recently, the full inipt)rtance of the immigrant element of the population was not recognised, though the slave States have manifested a growing j<'al- ousy of the labor-power by which the su])eriority of the North in wealth and prosperity has been creat- ed. The formation of the Know-Nothing party — a Southern device — was the first great recognition of the vital importance of the foreign industrial cle- ment, — being neither more nor less than an admis- sion tiiat slavery and immigration could not co-exist in the Republic. A similar testimony was afforded when, on the disappearance of the Know^-Xothing party, some Southern governors and legislatures opened the fresh project of a renewal of the African slave trade. The Northern States have borne the Rime testimony by the formation of the Emigrant Aid Societies ; the object of which is not so much the keeping up of the supply of laborers in the old States, as the settlement of fresh territory, — at once preventing the extension of slavery over new soil, and giving the benefit of the increase of pro- duction to the commercial North, instead of the ag- ricultural South. This important body of citizens — the European element — consists chiefly at present of Germans, whom we have just seen actually turn- ing back the tide of slavery on its remotest frontier, and who afford a good rampart on the Northern frontier, — in Illinois, Indiana, and the back of Pennsylvania and New York. The distinctive and highly useful characteristic of the Germans is, that they are commonly capitalists and laborers in one. 18 So are thellungiarians, Belgians, Dutch and Swedes,' while the Irish afford an clement more resembling the slave labor of the South than any other that can be found in the free States. The wliolo body is, in combination, one of vast and growing consequence. Lastly, there is the very small body of Abolition- ists, properly so called. In number, probably much under one in a thousand of the citizens, standing outside of political life and action altogether, and combined by no other bond than that of hostility to an institution which every body about them osten- sibly condemns, they make no show to account for their importance. We do not include under the term any political party which assumes any conve- nient portion of their doctrine ; because it is clear to all impartial persons that the great problem now harassing the Republic cannot be solved by the as- cendancy of any political party. We are, therefore, classing the Free-Soil party, and every other tran- sient embodiment of the great difficulty, with the general mass of the Northern population ; and when we speak of the Abolitionists, we mean the perma- nent, small, active, agitating anti-slavery body, to which the South attributes all its woes, and which really is answerable for the critical condition of the question at this day. There is no truth in the Southern accusation, that the Abolitionists tamper with the slaves, or countenance violence in any form, or under any pretence. The great majority of them are non-resistants, and moral means are their only weapons ; but they are, as tlie Slave Power says, the antagonistic power by which the destinies of the Republic have been pledged to a principle, as in the days of their fathers, and at whose instigation the conflict must be carried through, and the fate of the nation decided. They 19 arc the actual rcvolut ionizers of the Republic, wliilo for the most part pi'aco-nu'n in the doctrinal sonso oi' the term. The dilTfrence between them and tho amateur peace-men of some European soeictifs in, that they do not consider the shedding of hlood tho greatest of evils, l)ut simply an inexpedient method of prosecuting their aim ; and thus they arc not bound to ' cry peace where there is no peace,' but will not cease to aji-itate while tiio wron*; is unrcc- tified ; and, at tlie same time, their mode of pro- cedure is of inealeulahle value where the solution to be apprehended is that of servile war on the one hand, and a military despotism on the other. These, then, are the sections of the population, North and South, among and by whom the second great American revolution is to be wrought out. AVhat ha^ been done up to this time? What is doing now? By what phenomena are we justified in speaking of American affairs as in a revolutiona- ry state at this moment? We will cast a glance round that great circle of grouped sovereignties, and see wliat social symptoms are exhibited from point to point within the frontier. For the history of the question on which the fate of the Union hangs, we have no room ; and we cannot do better than to re- fer our readers to the sketches offered in the works of Mr. Chambers and Mrs. Harriet Martineau. The economical condition and much of tlie social char- acter of the slave States are fully and most ably ex- hibited in Mr. Olmsted's two volumes. The very high quality of lx)th these books of Mr. Olmsted sustains the eminent reputation of American trav- els, — a branch of literature in wliich our cousins of the Northern States excel most otlier men ; and we should enjoy the task of justifying our admiration in this case by a full review of Mr. Olmsted's works ; 20 but our immediate object is to mark the revolution- ary indications of the country and time. A brief and cursory survey of existing affairs will, we think, convince all observers that to deny that the Ameri- can Republic is, and has long been, passing through a revolution, is to be very like the inexperienced generation who heard the firing at Lexington and Concord, and saw the tea shot into the harbor, with- out any notion that the colonies had cut themselves adrift from the mother-country. The survivors of the founders of the Republic be- lieved — we now see how wisely — that the first move in the second revolution was made in 1820. Thought- less persons wondered at the solemnity of their lan- guage ; but time is fully justifying it. In 1787, when there was a distribution of lands belonging to Virginia, the establishment of slavery on new terri- tory' was prohibited ; and nobody called in question the power of the National Congress of that day to impose such a prohibition. During the thirty fol- lowing years, there was no dispute on the point ; and it was with dread and surprise that, in 1819, the venerable statesmen of the Revolution began to apprehend the course which the South is following out at this moment. It was on the occasion of the Missouri Compromise that the doubt was insinuated whether Congress could impose conditions on the admission of new States into the Union. In the ' History of American Compromises,' we find an account of the emotions excited by an anticipation of what we are seeing now : — ' The pn^hibition of slavery on the distribution of the Virginia lands in 1787 proves that the power was no matter of doubt at that time ; yet it was now contested, in the teeth of as many as survived of the very men who had made the Constitution, and dis- tributed tho lands. The conflict was fierce ; and it 21 embittcrctl the latter days of the patriots who yet f^ur- rivcd— Juffersoii, Jay, Adams, ^larslinll, and inrlccd all the old politiial heroes. '• From the battle of lUin- ker Hill to the Treaty of Paris," says Jeffirson to Adams, •• we never liad so ominous a question. 1 thank (rod I shall not live to witness its issue." Again, after the eompromise — " This momentous cjucs- tion, like a tire-bell in the ni^^ht, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the l^nion. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only — not a tinal sentence. A geog;raplueal line, coineidinj; with a marked princi- ple, moral or political, once conceived and held up to the anjjjry passions of men, will never be obliterated ; and every new irritation will mark it deejier and deeper." Jay wrote — '• I concur in the opinion that slavery ousht not to l>e introduced nor permitted in any new .States ; and that it ouj^ht to be gradually diminished, and tinally abolished, in all of them." The most cautious of politicians, Judge Story, never threw himself into any great public (luestionbut once, and tliis was the occasion. II(; spoke in public on behalf of the absolute prohibition of slavery, by ex- press Act of Congress, in all the Territories, and against the admission of any new slaveholding State, except on the unalterable condition of the abolition of slavery. He grounded his argument on the Declar- ation of Independence and on the Constitution of the United States, as well as on the radical princii)le of Kepublicanism. "When the result was trembling in the balance, and the issue seemed to depend on the votes of six waverers, Judge Story predicted a settle- ment by compromise — a present yielding to the South, on conditi(jn tliat it should be for the last time; this •' last time," however, involving the admission of the two waiting States, whose climate and ])roductions afforded an excuse for slavery, to which Mi^souri could not pretend. A short and pregnant sentence, in a letter of Judge Story's, shows that a new light had begun to break in upon him at Washington, which might make liim glad of such a eompromise, as a means of gaining time for the preservation of the Union. After relatisig the extraordinary pretensions of the South, he concludes tlius: — " 15ut of tliis say but little; I will talk about it on my returii : but our friends in general are not ripe for a disclosure of the great truths respecting Virginia policy.' 22 For thirty-seven years, the great constitutional question has come up again on all marked occasions, and under many phases, till the present year, when all the conditions of revolution are fulfilled, and there appears to he no escape from the alternative of an overthrow of the original Constitution of the Republic, or its preservation by means of a separa- tion of the States. To this issue the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott seems to have brought the great controversy, which may be briefly thus described. In the original draft of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, there is a paragraph which was struck out as unnecessary. It charged George III. with the crime of the slave trade, among the other offences there set forth in solemn order. Mr. Chambers saw this document in the rooms of the American Philo- sophical Society at Philadelphia ; and he naturally considers it ' the greatest archaeological curiosity ' that he saw in the country. When that paper was drawn up, slavery existed in all the States ; but its abolition was so near and certain in many of them, and the universal dislike of it appeared to be so strong, that even the far-sighted Franklin believed that it would soon be got rid of, with other mis- chiefs imposed by the connection with England. We have Lafayette's testimony, (given in grief at the bad spirit which had grown up between 1776 and 1830,) that during tlie revolutionary war, there was no distinction between the blacks and the whites as soldiers and citizens. Soldiers of the two races bivouacked together, eating out of the same dish, as well as fighting side by side : and in the towns, the free colored men were citizens, in every sense as good as the whites. Even so late as 1814, nearly the same position was held hy the black soldiers, as is 23 proved by Ocnoral Jackson's addrosa to them a few weeks before the ])attle of New Orleans. ' As sons of freedom,' the General wrotii, ' you are called upon to defend our most inestimable blessing. As Amer- icans, your country looks with confidence for a val- orous support,' Sec. In a subsequent address, tho recognition of the citizenship of the negroes was as amjde as possible. ' When on the banks of tho Mobile,' he says, ' I called you to take up arras, in- viting you to partake the perils and glories of your white fellow-citizens, I expected much from you,' Sec. When the Americans began to govern them- selves, therefore, and for long after, the condition of the negro race was this : Those who were slaves were rapidly obtaining freedom by the abolition of slavery in Sbitc after State ; all importation of ne- groes was for))idden after 1808 ; and the emanci- pated slaves became citizens iu the fullest sense of the term. While the eradication of slavery was supposed to be thus proceeding in the settled States, the institution was excluded from new territory by express provision, as in the case of the distribution of the Virginia lands, under the compact of 1787. The mischief and disgrace of the institution were charged upon Great Britain, fairly and sincerely ; and there was more or less reason for the excuse of inherited crime up to 1820, when the Missouri Compromise destroyed it, by unnecessarily introduc- ing slavery into the State of Missouri, where it was not justified by circumstiince of climate, or any over[)owering expediency whatever. Still, it was the practice to speak of slavery as an evil and a dis- grace, and to cast the blame of it on England which introduced it, till the repeal of the Misriuuri Com- promise in 1855, by which the institution was adopted as the substantial policy of theKepublic, to 24 the support of which every State of the Union should be pledged. American ambassadors in Europe, and the entertainers of European travellers in the United States, were wont to speak plaintively and depre- catingly of the misfortune they had inherited from the mother-country. But for seven years paut — we may say for thirty-seven years past — the excuse has been invalid ; and now the nation, if judged by the action of the federal government, proclaims to the world that ' slavery is the corner-stone of the Re- public,' as Governor M'Duffie of South Carolina declared it to be, when few had courage to make such an avowal. It was in a continental or national Congress — the last — that the prohibition to introduce slavery into new territory was passed in 1787 ; but the acts of that Congress were sanctioned and adopted by the Federal Congress, without dispute or demur, for a long course of years. We have seen how great was the shock to the surviving statesmen of the Revolu- tion when the right of that Congress to rule the conditions of new States was brought into question in 1820. The controversy was suspended by a com- promise, which, by excluding slavery from all terri- tory north of a certain line, licensed it in all ter- ritory south of that line. Ten years after that com- promise, the Abolitionists began to see how^ fearful were the condition and prospects of their country, if slavery should continue to impoverish the soil of half the States, and to undermine the liberties and cor- rupt the morals of the whole ; and they have worked devotedly, and made the most magnanimous sacri- fices, during the intervening quarter of a century, to revolutionize their country by moral agitation, with a steady avoidance of political movement, in order to intercept the last fatal result of a servile war, bringing on a total national overthrow. 25 Though there •wore more signs of political dis- turbance prior to 1850 than wo have space U) detail — such as the suppression of tho right of petition to Congress, the violences inflicted with impunity on the Abolitionists, and the prostitution of the n)ail service, — there was a sufficient external quiet and decorum preserved to cover up the wounds of the Republic from foreign observation, and to excuse timid or indifferent citizens from appearing to see that any thing was wrong. The warnings of the Abolitionists were troublesome and vexatious ; the rebukes of Dr. Channing were smiled at as coming from a mere divine, who could be no judge of prac- tical affairs. The legislation of 1850 was a thunder- clap to many who had been apathetic before ; but its portentous character was not estimated till the broad tokens of revolution were displayed in the leading State of the Union. They might not be recognised as revolution, any more than the pouring out of tea and of blood on a former occasion : but they were something so serious as to rouse and pre- pare the general mind for the yet more critical man- ifestations of the present day. When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, there were about 9000 persons of color in Massachusetts. — Within three days after its passage was known, for- ty of them were in flight for Canada, though le- gally protected by the Constitution of the sovereign State in which they were living. One day in May, 1854, the old Faneuil Hull in Boston rang with speeches which were as revolutionary as any which had ever been uttered there before, on occasion of the arrest of Burns, a fugitive slave, whose liberty was guaranteed by the laws of the State, while an- nihilated by the new federal law. Nothing can bo more revolutionary than a direct collision between 2 26 a law of the Union and a law of any State ; and nothing can be more absolutely opposed than those laws in the present ease. The court-house at Bos- ton was surrounded by a chain ; and soldiers were marched through the streets, under the apprehen- sion of a rescue of a kidnapped slave. Tlie free colored people plied a battering-ram against the door of the court-house, and obtained entrance. The alarm-bell of the city conveyed news of the tu- mult to the shipping in the harbor, and the villages around. The affrighted claimant of the negro would have gladly backed out of his enterprise, and taken the price of the man whicli was offered by the authorities ; but orders from Washington forbade him to withdraw, as the President was resolved to bring the dispute to an issue on this case. During the interval of two days before the trial, all inter- est in other bul^iness was suspended. From every pulpit on the Sunday, prayers were requested ' on behalf of a brother in sore distress.' In the re- motest parts of the State, handbills were circulated, imploring the yeomanry to repair to Boston, and see the issue. ' Come, but this time with only such arms as God gave you.' Multitudes came; and those who remained at home, organized township meetings, where resolutions of the strongest charac- ter were passed. As the pleadings in the court- house were drawing to a close, cannon were planted in the square, the military lined the way to the har- bor, and a small steamer skulked about there, try- ing to find a place at some wharf. This showed what the result was to be. The citizens were not prepared to resist it ; and their want of concert and preparation has been bitterly mourned by them ever since. What they could do at the moment, they did. Twenty thousand of them lined the foot-pave- 27 ment, to give their greeting to the fettered black as he was marched down to the harhor. The shops ■were shut, the balconies were filled ])y women in mourning ; and at the moment when the doom was pronounced, the flags of the Union and of the State were lowered, hung with l)laek. There were thn.'e B,)unds strangely mingled during that march. The bells were tolling ; and there was one carriage — the gun which the artillery drew. Another sound completely overpowered l)()th, — an ear-piercing hiss from the entire population, and loudest from the merchants assembled on the steps of the Exchange. Burns was carried off by means of the unconstitu- tional submission of the authorities. While w^e write, we find that one of them. Commissioner Lor- ing, has at length undergone retribution for his con- duct on the occasion. He braved public opinion, at the time and afterwards, in reliance on the support of the President and the Cabinet ; he ignored all demands that he should resign ; he strove to appear unmoved by gifts of purses, containing ' thirty pieces of silver ' ; and he, no doubt, trusted to wear out his enemies by passive endurance of their scorn. But they had all his perseverance, and a better cause. They did not choose that a man should hold ofl&ce after having decided against the laws of his State, when those laws were in collision with new enactments of Congress declared unconstitutional by the best lawyers in the country ; and they have never ceased to work at the deposition of Loring from his office of Judge of Probate. He w^as dis- placed in May last.* * So it was understood in Boston as elsewhere ; but Governor Gardner has a second time undone the work of the Legislature, and refused to remove Judge Loring. 28 As far as the man Burns himself was concerned, it mattered little, for he had become too dangerous, by means of his extraordinary experience. He could not be allowed to converse with slaves, or even with their owners, in the South : he was pres- ently released, for a small sum, and he is now happi- ly employed in selling books in the lobbies of the Senate House in Ohio. As for the State in which Buch things were done, no rational observer would suppose that any community could settle down into acquiescence after such a demonstration, without a removal of grievances ; and Massachusetts is, in fact, outside the pale of the Union at this moment, in company with several other States, as we shall pres- ently see. It is not possible for us to give a continuous nar- rative of the events, the successive steps, by w^hich the results of the acts of 1850 have deepened into the present revolutionary crisis. We have exhibited one instance of the working of the laws which re- pealed the Missouri Compromise ; repealed it, not for the sake of restoring the old faith in the powers of Congress, and the old restrictions on slavery, but in order to subject the whole Union to the control of the Southern section, and to throw down the re- maining barriers by Avhich free labor was protected. The picture of Boston, in wrath and mourning, on the day of the rendition of Burns, is a fitting fron- tispiece for the disclosure of the actual condition of all the States. President Buchanan said, in his Inaugural Ad- dress on the 4th of last ^larch, that the question of the power of Congress to fix tlie conditions of ad- mission to the Union was before the Supreme Court, and would presently be decided there. Meantime, the President plainly intimated his own opinion, 29 that Congress liad no such power. "NVitliin forty- eight hours, the (IceisiiMi w:ih given, — five judges of the ^supreme Court delivering the eunclusion imtiei- pated by the President, and two dissenting from it. Chief Justiee Taney was a Maryhmd hvwyer, onco ehiquent at tlic bar on the guilt and misery of slavo institutions, and on the indignation due to Great Britain for subjecting his country to the ciirac. Ho obtained his great rise in life by services rendered to Presiil.'nt Jackson in the bank crisis. He was ap- pointed Secretary of the Treasury, and then intro- duced into the Supreme Court as Associate Judge. On the death of Chief-Justice Marshall, all tho world looked for the succession of Judge Story to the office, entitled, as he was, to it, on every possi- ble ground. The Catholic slaveholder, Taney, was, however, appointed ; and from that time, (nearly a quarter of a century since,) the Southern politicians have used their opportunities well in obtaining a hold over the great instrument of the federal judici- ary. The founders of the Republic stretched a point, for the sake of steiidiness and security, in the case of the Judiciary as well as of the Senate. They de- creed that the judge?; should not be elected, but ap- pointed for life, under the safeguard of impeach- ment. But perseverance in improving vacancies may serve almost as well as the elective method when party purposes are to be served ; and the South now holds as secure a majority in the Su- preme Court, as if it had beaten the North in tho clecti(m of judges. Its pet judge, Taney, has now precipitated the conflict which the new President hoped to defer for four years. No one will under- take to say that the appointment of Judge Story would have saved the State from collisions, or ma- terially altered the case. It is not every man who 30 is born a hero, and Joseph Story never advanced pretensions to a valor which he did not feel. On the contrary, he eased his mind by avowing, in pri- vate intercourse, that his apprehensions of the con- sequences of any action on any side in the sectional question sealed his mouth, and paralyzed his hands. After the crisis of the Missouri Compromise, he never (as his son informs us in vol. i. p. 360 of his ' Life and Letters,'.) came forward in public on po- litical matters ; and if such was his course of si- lence and non-committal in his own State, it is not likely that he would have stemmed a stronger cur- rent of opinion at Washington. He never did as Associate Judge, and we have no reason to suppose that he would in the more conspicuous seat from which he was injuriously thrust aside. After this long term of office, Chief-Justice Taney has immor- talized his old age by the judgment in the case of Dred Scott, which, whether recalled or allowed to stand, will, in all probability, be renowned hereaf- ter as the occasion, though not specifically the cause, of the outbreak of the second great American Rev- olution. Dred Scott is a negro, who supposes himself to be about fifty-five years of age. He was born in Virginia, and was taken by his master to St. Louis when he was a young man. Being purchased by an army surgeon, named Emerson, he accompanied this new master in his professional removals ; and in one instance, lived for two years in that North- western territory which was made exempt from sla- very for ever by the Act of 1787. Unaware of hav- ing thus acquired his liberty, he offered to buy him- self and his family of tlie widow of Dr. Emerson. The lady refused ; he was advised to claim his liber- ty ; and tlie proceedings have dragged on for ten 31 years, during which interval, Mrs. Emerson has married again, her present husband Ixinn; a citizen of Massacluisetts, and heartily disposed to estahlish the liberty of Dred Scott, for which he has spared no effort and no cost. The trustee of his wife has, however, had complete control of the suit. Durinj; the uncertainty of the case, and while he waH left to do pretty mueh as he pleased, Dred Scott's two daughters esea})ed — probably into Canada. There can be little doubt that he will be released, as Burns was, on account of his dangerous antecedents; and he is, at all events, sure of good usage, from the eyes of the world being fixed on his case.* lie him- self says, with the complacency belonging to slave- ry, that he could make thousands of dollars by trav- elling through the country, and merely saying who he is. The judges (five out of seven present) went so much further than was necessary in the judgment they pronounced, that it is evident that they seized the occasion for establishing the supremacy of the Southern policy, at the outset of a new presidential term. The decision embraced five points; whereas the first was enough for the case before them. The points are these : — 1st. That negroes and people of color are not cit- izens ; and that, as a consequence, Dred Scott could not come into court. This, if true, settled Dred Scott's business, and that of four millions of his race, natives of the United States. 2d. That slaves are property, in the same sense as * Since the above was written, intGlHsion niw^t take; phicc, sliowing whether or not the two kinds and degrees of eivili- zation could combine for political action. The out- rage on Mr. Sumner was the explosion wliich no many were looking for ; and the world in general seems to think that the question is pretty nearly settled. The South at large sui)porte