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these matters. We know that we can defend ourselves against such outrages as this; against the forays of men who may attempt to get up servile war among us; we hope we can defend ourselves against all the hazards to which we may probably be exposed; but it becomes a much graver question to say, how we are to deal with the subject if we become convinced that such attempts find support not only in the sympathy of the great mass of the North, but in contributions that may be actually raised for their assistance."

Mr. DOUGLAS, Jan. 23, 1860: “Without stopping to adduce evidence in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harper's Ferry crime was the matured, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, explained and enforced in their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially of their leaders in and out of Congress.

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"The great principle that underlies the organization of the Republican party is-violent, irreconcilable, eternal warfare upon the institution of American slavery, with a view to its ultimate extinction throughout the land. Sectional war is to be waged until the cotton fields of the South shall be cultivated by free labor, or the rye fields of New York and Massachusetts shall be cultivated by slave labor."

SYMPATHY WITH BROWN.

The admirers of JOHN BROWN made a distinction between his acts and his character, the means he employed and the end which he aimed at. The acts and the means they condemned, while his character and the end he aimed to accomplish they seemed to approve and admire. It appears that he spent some years in Kansas, where, being possessed by an evil spirit, he perpetrated acts which were denominated murder, theft, and robbery. "It cannot be disguised that the Northern heart sympathized with BROWN and his fate because he died in the cause of what they call liberty." On the day of his death bells were tolled in many places; cannon fired; prayers were offered for him as if he were a martyr; he was placed in the same category with Paul and Silas, for whom prayers were made by the

Church; churches were draped in mourning; a motion was made in the Senate of Massachusetts, "that, in view of the fact that this was the day on which JOHN BROWN was sentenced to be hanged, the Senate do now adjourn." The motion was lost; the vote being 8 to 11. There were twenty absentees, who shirked the question. There was also a strong sympathy in the House for BROWN, though that, likewise, by a large majority refused to adjourn. It was moved in the House, "that for the great respect we have for the truthfulness and faith that JOHN BROWN had in man and his religion, and the strong sympathy for the love of liberty (the avowed principle of Massachusetts) for which he is this day to die, this House do now adjourn." Massachusetts elected, as governor, a man who presided at a meeting assembled to express sympathy for BROWN. What was true of the general sentiment in favor of BROWN in portions of Massachusetts, was true of many localities elsewhere in the Free States. This sectional sympathy at the North increased the sectional jealousy at the South.

PERSONAL LIBERTY BILLS.

The effect of "personal liberty bills," was to throw obstructions in the way of carrying out the provisions of the Constitution for the restoration of fugitive slaves to their owners.

States which prohibit their officers and citizens from aiding in the execution of the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850: Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island.

States that deny all public edifices in aid of the master: Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont, Rhode Island.

States that provide defence for the fugitive: Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Vermont, New York, Michigan.

States which declare the fugitives free, if brought by their masters into the State: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire. State that declares him to be free absolutely: New HampSee Report of the Committee of the

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Legislature of Virginia in 1860.

EXTRACT FROM A PERSONAL LIBERTY BILL OF VERMONT.

"Every person who may have been held as a slave, who shall come or who may be brought into this State, with the consent of his or her alleged master or mistress, or who shall come or be brought, or shall be in this State, shall be free.

"Every person who shall hold, or attempt to hold, in this State in slavery as a slave, any free person, in any form or for any time, however short, under the pretence that such person is or has been a slave, shall, on conviction thereof, be imprisoned in the State prison for a term not less than five years, nor more than twenty, and be fined not less than $1,000, nor more than $10,000."

Mr. WEBSTER, in his seventh of March speech, spoke as follows: "I will allude to other grounds of complaint of the South, and especially to one which, in my opinion, furnishes just foundation of complaint, and that is, that there has been found at the North among individuals, and among legislatures, a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties, in regard to the return of persons bound to service, who have escaped into the free States. In that respect the South, in my judgment, is right, and the North wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the Constitution which says to these States, that they shall deliver up fugitives from service, is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article."

Mr. WEBSTER, in his speech at Capon Springs, Virginia, in 1851, said: "I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact. A bargain broken on one side, is broken on all sides."

IS SLAVERY A MERE CREATURE OF LOCAL LAW?

Judge STORY, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the decision in the Prigg case, declared that slavery is a mere creature of local law. This opinion became fashionable at the

North. But the same eminent judge, in 1827, wrote to Lord STOWEL, that he fully concurred with him in his decision, in which he says that slavery "never was in Antigua the creature of law, but of that custom which operates with the force of law." Lord STOWEL, in that decision, in effect says, that "the slave who goes to England or to Massachusetts, from a slave State, is still a slave, that he is still his master's property; but that his master has lost control over him, not by reason of the cessation of his property, but because those States grant no remedy by which he can exercise his control." An invention is in the highest sense the property of the inventor, and a work, of its author, but their rights of property cannot be enforced unless there are patent laws and copyright laws. In barbarous countries, the rights of property exist, though they cannot be enforced by law.

Judge MCLEAN, in the Prigg case, said: "But the inquiry is reiterated, Is not the måster entitled to his property? I answer that he is. His right is guaranteed by the Constitution: and the most summary means are found for its enforcement in the act of Congress." The right of property in slaves exists under the Constitution. In the history of the rights of property, it appears that these rights have existed prior to any written law, and were protected by common law. "The current suggestion that slave property exists but by local law is no more true of this than it is of all other property. In fact, the European socialists, who in wild radicalism (including the Assignation doctrine) are the correspondents of the American abolitionists, maintain the same doctrine as to all property, that the Abolitionists do as to slave property. He who has property, they argue, is the robber of him who has not. And the same precise theory of attack at the North upon the slave property of the South, would, if carried out to their legitimate, necessary, and logical consequences, and will, if successful in this, their first stage of action, superinduce attacks on all property, North and South."-CALEB CUSHING.

"In the treaty with Great Britain formed in 1782, stipulations were entered into that prisoners on both sides shall be set at liberty, and his Britannic Majesty shall, with all convenient speed, and without causing any distinction or carrying away any negroes or other property of the American inhabitants, &c.,"

signed by RICHARD OSWALD, B. FRANKLIN, JOHn Jay, Henry LAURENS. Thus the two nations recognized the right of property in negroes.

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In the treaty of 1814, there is a similar provision in regard to "slaves and other property." This treaty was signed by GAMBIER, HENRY COULBOURN, WILLIAM ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, J. A. BAYARD, HENRY CLAY, JONATHAN RUSSELL, ALBERT GALLATIN. If such men could thus recognize the right of property in slaves, why should not others?

"It is historically well known, that the object of this clause in the Constitution relating to persons owing service and labor in one State escaping into another, was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property in every State of the Union, into which they might escape from the State whence they were held in servitude."-Judge STORY, 16 Peters' Reports, p. 540.

NORTHERN ABOLITION AND DISUNION SENTIMENTS.

Mr. LINCOLN addressed a speech to the Republican State Convention assembled in Illinois in June, 1858, of which the following is an extract:

"In my opinion it (the slavery agitation) will not cease until a crisis shall have reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in a course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States-old as well as new, North as well as South."

In his Rochester speech in 1858, Senator SEWARD tells us "that the States must all become free, or all become slave; that the South, in other words, must conquer and subdue the North, or the North must triumph over the South, and drive slavery from its limits."

"It is an irrepressible conflict," he says, "between opposing

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