after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedent, which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect Union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation, to the center."*

But Mr. Adams was not without illustrious authority to sustain him in his opinion in relation to the right of secession on the part of States. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, so familiar to public men, having been received unfavorably by many of the other States, were referred to Mr. Madison for further consideration and defense. In reporting upon them, he said:

"It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that, where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges, in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority, of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The States, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows, of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated, and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition."

"The resolution has, accordingly, guarded against any misapprehension of its object, by expressly requiring, for such an interposition, 'the case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous breach of the Con

* Quoted in the speech of Mr. Benjamin, in U. S. Senate, Dec. 31, 1860.

stitution, by the exercise of powers not granted by it.' It must be a case not of a light and transient nature, but of a nature dangerous to the great purposes for which the Constitution was established."

These threats of secession, and these claims of a constitutional right in a State to secede, coming, as they did, in the first instance, from Northern statesmen, were well calculated, when taken in connection with the hostility existing in the East to the doctrines of free trade, to lead the South to the conclusion that a peaceful separation of the States might be effected, or rather, that it was really desired by the North. The Eastern representative men had so often advocated this right of secession, and its necessity, under certain contingencies, that, we have little doubt, the South, in its recent movements, anticipated no trouble in effecting a dissolution of the Union. Indeed, up to a very recent date, the right of secession by a State, or States, seems to have been held by prominent men on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line.

But this doctrine, often as it has been advocated, never received the assent of the people at large. It was the imputation of secession principles that secured the political damnation of Mr. Webster; and that will now damn every politician that has avowed the sentiment. The question is not whether, in a strict construction of the Constitution, the right of secession may not exist; but the fact is, that the people, almost en masse, cannot be brought to contemplate favorably, even for a moment, the idea that the glorious Union, secured by the bravery and the blood of their fathers, shall ever be destroyed.

(2) Mr. MANN spoke the common sentiment of the North, at large, when he pledged himself and his constituents to the fulfillment of all the compromises of the Constitution. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Preston, though making a strong statement of the alarm produced by the abolitionists at the South, did not present an exaggerated picture of the state of public feeling, in their section

Mr. Webster acted as a secretary of the Hartford Convention, and for this reason, perhaps, more than all others, his friends were always unable to secure for him the nomination to the Presidency. It was constantly urged, as a reason against him, that he could not succeed before the people, because of his connec tion with that band of supposed traitors to the Union.

of the Union, at that moment. The wholesale butchery attending emancipation in St. Domingo was then fresh in the recollections of the people; and the blood that was shed in the Virginia negro insurrection was scarcely yet dry upon her soil. Under such circumstances, none but fanatics, imbued with the rancorous spirit of demons, would have persevered in their attempts to fill the South with incendiary documents. Mr. Buchanan, in presenting the decision of Congress, of 1790, denying any power over slavery by the national legislature, showed conclusively, that the abolitionists, by interfering with slavery in the South, were acting in open violation of the compromises of the Constitution, as interpreted by those who framed it. To suppress the circulation of the incendiary publications of the abolitionists was no more an interference with the rights of the citizen under the administration of General Jackson, than the prohibition of the circulation of secession documents is unconstitutional under that of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Benton, in characterizing as diabolical the documents put in circulation by the abolitionists, made no unjustifiable charge against their authors. His notice of the causes that led to the San Domingo massacre, will serve a good purpose, as casting some new light upon that horrible tragedy.

(3) The appeal of Mr. Grundy to the people of the North, to arrest the progress of abolitionism, before its bitter fruits should come to maturity, was a reasonable request. But there was no legal means at the command of conservative men, by which they could interpose, directly, in the suppression of that movement. One thing only could have been done: the friends of the Union. should have risen in their might, and protested against the doctrines and practices of the abolitionists. They should have spoken out, in thunder tones, the true sentiments of their hearts on the question of their constitutional obligations. But instead of adopting this course, they quietly suffered the fanatical abolitionists to assume a dictatorial position, both in religion and politics, until, emboldened by non-resistance, they imagined the field was won, and they were conquerors.

It was the great error of the conservative men at the North, that they allowed the enemies of the Constitution to give tone to

public sentiment abroad, so as to create the impression that the free States had become thoroughly abolitionized. They are now paying the penalty of their remissness in duty; and when they succeed in restoring the Union, then wo to the fanatic, in future, who shall again dare to plot its overthrow.

Mr. PINCKNEY presents such facts as prove conclusively that the abolitionists were vastly in the minority, at the date of these discussions. But 34,000 persons out of 8,000,000 of population had attached their names to the abolition petitions. Mr. Pinckney was also right in another point. If the South had left the question of the suppression of abolition with the citizens of the North, it would never have attained the gigantic proportions it afterward assumed. But instead of leaving the matter to the North, every few months presented some new case of injury inflicted upon Northern citizens at the South, on account of their supposed abolition sentiments and designs. This, whether a deserved punishment or not, served as fresh fuel for the agitators at the North to feed their expiring fires; and had it not been for this, the abolitionists could never have maintained their ground. But there were conservative men at the South who disapproved of the mob violence used against Northern citizens; and so largely were they in the majority, that if they had used their influence, they could have prevented the scenes that occurred.* The conservative men of the South, therefore, were as much to blame as those of the North; nay, they were more to blame, because, had it not been for the cases of violence there, we could have acted with greater efficiency here. They tied our hands, and then complained of us for not fighting their battles.

*The case of the agents for the sale of "CoTTON IS KING," at Enterprise, Mississippi, early in the year 1860, is one in point. The two young men were arrested, stripped of their clothing, and the tar and cotton standing ready to be applied, while eighty copies of the work were being burned as an abolition incendiary publication. The conservative men had sufficient courage to interpose, and by placing the agents in prison, under the plea of further investigation, thus rescued them from the mob. After eight weeks' imprisonment, they were tried, acquitted, and discharged-it having been determined that the object of the work was to demonstrate the absolute necessity of preserving the Union, as essential to the prosperity and happiness of both sections, and not designed to promote abolition and disunion.

(4) The charge made by Mr. Johnson, of Tennessee, that there existed a deliberate design, on the part of Northern men, to effect a dissolution of the Union, will startle some of our readers on account of its boldness. That such designs existed somewhere, no one can now doubt. But of the section of the Union in which they originated, few perhaps entertained a correct opinion; the facts now drawn out, therefore, must greatly interest the public, and will serve to disabuse the minds of many, in relation to the views they may have entertained heretofore. The opinion of the elder Adams, in 1803-based upon the Louisiana question, then agitated" that he saw no possibility of continuing the Union of the States, and that their dissolution must necessarily take place," is referred to by Mr. Johnson only as a starting point from which to date the opposition of New England to the Union of the States, and their hostility to the institutions of the South. This hostility he found manifesting itself in the Hartford Convention, in the Halls of Congress, by the presentation of abolition petitions, and in the speeches of Mr. J. Q. Adams, in which he, (Mr. Adams,) not only announced his belief that the refusal to receive the abolition petitions would absolve the North from all obligations to the South, but, in case of war, the treaty-making power could declare emancipation.

This power to abolish slavery, in time of war, seems never to have been lost sight of by the abolitionists; and could they but bring on a collision of arms, either civil or servile, their mission would be accomplished. Reader, keep this in mind, and turn back to the quotations from the speeches of Mr. Giddings, which follow those of Mr. Johnson. While admitting that, under the Constitution, the North has no right to interfere with slavery, Mr. Giddings seems to dwell with evident satisfaction upon the fact that, in time of war, slavery could be swept away, as chaff before the wind, in defiance of the Constitution. But he goes further, and insists upon emancipation, by Congress, in the District, notwithstanding that to have a community of free negroes in such a central point as Washington might endanger the safety of slavery in the adjoining States. Nay, more, he urged emancipation in the District for that very reason; thus justifying the