can abolitionists, are working for and seeking to bring about— the triumph of the party of emancipation for the negro slavesis gained, the result will be the dissolution of the Union, and all the monstrous evils and frightful convulsions which such a revolution must bring on the whole Anglo-Saxon race. We shall not suffer alone. The British nation would lose something besides cotton. They would lose their only natural ally and friend, and would gain, instead, an implacable, inexorable enemy. All parties in America, however much they might hate and harm each other, would all join in hating and harming England, and its aristocracy as the real agitators of evil against us, which they have been, and the instigators of destruction to our institutions. The tortuous and hypocritical policy of their government in relation to Spain and the slave trade, allowing, ay, assisting that weak kingdom to keep up the trade for Cuba, while denouncing our government to the world as slaveholding; all the mean shifts to cast odium on us, and prevent our acquisition of Cuba,* which, if we had acquired, would at once and forever have put an end to the slave-trade, and all need of the fleets on the African station-these things, and hundreds of other provocations, will be brought out, like the writing on the wall, and the cry of vengeance on England would ring through our land like the clarion of battle. Nor would the people of America, even when denationalized, be a weak foe. We should be a nation of fillibusters, as there would be no power in the Constitution to control the people, or stop offences when the Union was once broken. Two millions of natural born warriors, in whose hands the rifle and revolver are familiar as playthings of childhood, who love excitement and glory, and are possessed with the idea that they shall lead the world; stop such a people, in their full, steam-impelled career of prosperity and development, by a stumbling block that shall break their march, humble their pride, cloud their sky, and rend their banner of stars into shreds of motley, and then cry to them, "Peace! peace! be still!" As easily might we stop the * It is truly lamentable that Great Britain and the United States should be obliged to expend such a vast amount of blood and treasure for the suppression of the African slave trade; and this when the only portions of the civilized world where it is tolerated and encouraged are the Spanish islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. WASHINGTON, May 19, 1860. JAMES BUCHANAN. eruption of Vesuvius by waving a feather fan, or calm the stormy sea by singing "Hail Columbia.". No, no! those who are working to open the flood-gates of disunion and the waters of strife in our midst need look well to their footing, lest the cataract overwhelm them in its furious rapids or in its fearful fall. Occasions will not be wanting. England is envied or hated by all the world, except America. We are her only true ally. If she make us her foe, she would indeed be isolated. The Czar of the North may wish to make a long arm over China and strike at British power in India; American volunteers would be ready. The "radical emperor" may like to try his experiment of "equality"-universal suffrage-in England; thousands on thousands of volunteers from the humbled republic of the west would rejoice to join in crushing and humbling that arrogant oligarchy which had, by its machinations, always sought to disgrace our institutions before the world, and work our ruin. The Irish element in America has now an hereditary and distinctive hatred towards England, that time and distance does not seem to eradicate. But this is like latent heat compared with the lightning's red bolt to the hot whirlwind of rage that would, if our Union was destroyed, impel American enmity towards England. The result of Mr. Jefferson's dogmas, if carried out, in letter and spirit, is the leveling of society down to the lowest strata. This was exemplified by the French Jacobins of 1792. In our republic we had no privileged orders, therefore no war was instituted on classes. Our motto was, build upward. This tendency raised all; and while the Constitution was sacredly adhered to, all was safety and prosperity and progressive improvement. But as soon as this compact of justice between the States was undermined and violated by the anti-slavery faction, drawing its doctrines from these dogmas, their destructive tendency was manifested. The great prosperity of the South, and the ease in which the rich planters are supposed to live, have had much influence in bringing out the bitter abolition spirit of envy at the North, which loves to style the slaveholders "aristocrats," whom it is right to put down and destroy. A popular leader has the following sentiments in one of his late speeches. He was arguing the right of the negro slave to be set free at once, even by violence, if necessary, and complaining that it was only color which restrained this vengeance-it could be done : * Wendell Phillips. "If you will give me four millions of white slaves, and let me argue their case to the democrats of the northern States, because there is, rightfully or not, such a hatred of wealth, such a hatred of aristocracy, in the Saxon of the northern democrat, that there is nothing he would like better than to strangle them both in his right hand and his left. Put a rich corporation before a jury of poor men, and no matter whether the corporation has justice on its side or not, they will have no verdict. With that element we could kill the system, if it were not for the hatred of the negro." These sentiments were applauded by his abolition hearers, thus showing that no sense of justice governs their doctrines. Another leader, a republican member of Congress from Massachusetts, thus enunciated his ideas: "When we shall have elected a President, as we will, who will not be the President of a party, nor of a section, but the Tribune of the people, and after we have exterminated a few more miserable doughfaces from the North, then, if the slave Senate will not give way, we will grind it between the upper and nether millstones of our power." Observe, it is power, not right, that these agitators want; and then destruction is to begin. The destruction of the black slave as surely as that of his white master is in the anticipated result of this forced abolition. The eminent New York Senator* has said: "The interests of the white race demand the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you [his anti-slavery supporters] to decide." The republican Legislature of Minnesota wanted to prohibit free negroes from emigrating into that State. The principal abolition paper of Minnesota says: "If the South desire to drive away their free negroes, let other asylums be sought for them than this State. The free negro population of the North numbers about 250,000, and a more worthless class, one less capable of benefiting either itself or the community, unless compelled to labor, does not exist on the continent." Now, while really hating the negro, as we have shown, and having no purpose of doing him good, these worshipers of the dogmas are urging on their followers to break up and destroy those just and conservative conditions of our Constitution which preserve our national Union. Would they hesitate to level or destroy every institution that stood in the way of their " 'power' or interest" or ambition? 66 "We have got money, aristocracy, negrophobia-that is, the slave power. It is the organized government of the Union; against it you have got the public * William H. Seward. opinion. Well, two centuries ago, New England struck off from Old England, with certain ideas of the Puritans-leveling ideas of universal suffrage, and so forth. We have gone ahead until to-day with Massachusetts a free State. England remains with the same ideas, and with the aristocracy, wealth, titles, institutions, the House of Lords, the Church; and she is about a hundred years behind Massachusetts."* The abolitionists of Old England are zealously aiding the abolitionists of New England. In return, the latter may, by and by, help the ten millions of white slaves in the former country to such equality as shall be equivalent to negro emancipation here. Revolutions are not harmless playthings. To equalize Old England and Massachusetts would require a revolution. We come, then, to the conclusion. The clergy of America, as well as those of Britain, have not done their duty, or such false ideas respecting the relations of master and servant or slave would never have become popular in the churches. The Bible, if read and taught in its clear commands, its plain statements of facts and duties, would have exposed those false assumptions of infidel philosophy and transcendental philanthropy, which have darkened the mind and now lead astray many earnest Christians. Unbelievers could never have broken up parishes, divided religious societies, destroyed the usefulness of so many pastors, by inducing them to leave the preaching of the Gospel for the struggle of political abolitionism. These evils have come upon our country because Christians have not done their duty. * Wendell Phillips. The real aim of this abolition philosophy is disobedience to all law, divine and human, as disclosed in the conventions of these disciples of the dogmas. At the "Woman's Rights Convention," held in New York city, May 11th, 1860, the following resolutions, among others, unfit for publication here, were offered by one of the progressive members: "Resolved, That all men are created equal; and all women, in their natural rights, are the equals of men, and endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. "Resolved, That any constitution, compact, or covenant between human beings, or even between God and human beings, that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it would be not only a right but a duty to abolish it." Wm. Lloyd Garrison, the original leader and great apostle of abolitionism, not only supported the resolutions-which were adopted-but he offered the following, to strengthen the doctrine of personal independence. God has no right to make laws for an abolitionist, according to this resolution. "Resolved, That the rights of woman are co-equal and co-eternal with the rights of man, being based upon human nature, and, therefore, not to be determined nor circumscribed by an appeal to any book in the world, however excellent that book may be." THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 101 Is it too late? None can limit the mercy of God. Our republic has seemed chosen as an instrument in promoting the advent of the "good time" when "righteousness and peace shall meet together.' The poor and oppressed of all Japhetic peoples have here found welcome, safety, improvement, and citizenship. The negro savage, an ignorant slave from the land of Ham, has here been protected, taught, and christianized, and has increased from thousands to millions; doing good wherever he is held in his capacity of servant, as God ordained, and thus being fitted to do good to his black slave brethren when the time shall come for his work in his own heathen land. But we can never reach the goal by running the wrong way; nor can we make midnight morning by putting forward the clock. If the negroes here and in Africa are ultimately to be freed, then God, in His own good time, will open the way. There is no need that white men should do the work of devils in maligning and murdering their own brothers, according to race, in order to hasten the day of negro emancipation. Hitherto the greatest advantages enjoyed by the black race have resulted from slavery in America, as exemplified in the comparison of Liberia and its president with Dahomey and its king. Let us, then, take the BIBLE as our guide, in this conflict of sectional strife. It is the only platform of principles that will withstand the shock of all selfish combinations. Let us sustain the Constitution, as it was made, in good faith and equal justice to every section, and the Union as it is- -a compact that demands strict obedience to the requirements of the Constitution from each and every State, or there can be no Federal Union. May we not trust that there are enough good men, conservative, patriotic, Christian men, in our land, who love their country, and "their whole country," to save us from the dangers of that sectionalism against which the warning voice of Washington is yet sounding in our ears? Every man who believes his Bible and loves his country should now come forward, and, by voice and vote, by pen and prayer, work for the Constitution and the Union. The sentiment of our national poet is the true gauge of American patriotism : "Thou too sail on, O Ship of State, |