clusions at which I have arrived on this momentous matter. I shall now proceed to state, as succinctly as I can, the considerations by which I have been led to them. I maintain, then, in the first place, that the war has had its origin in slavery, and in support of this statement I appeal to the whole past history of the United States, and to the explicit declarations of the Confederate leaders themselves. What has been the history of the United States for the last fifty years?. It has been little more than a record of aggressions made by the power which represents slavery, feebly and almost always unsuccessfully resisted by the free States, and culminating in the present war. The question at issue between the North and the South is constantly stated here as if it was the North which was the aggressive party, as if the North had been pursuing towards the Southern people a career of encroachment and oppression which reached its climax in Mr. Lincoln's election, and as if the act of secession was but an act of self-defense forced upon a people whose measure of humiliation was full. Now the facts of the case are precisely the reverse of all this. It is not the North but the South which virtually for the last half century has been the dominant influence in the nation (hear). Southern men, and the nominees of Southern men, have filled the Presidential chair. Southern men have monopolized the offices of the State, represented the country at foreign Courts, and guided the policy of the nation (hear). The whole course of domestic legislation in the United States, from the year 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was passed, down to the year of its repeal, and from its repeal to the latest act of Mr. Buchanan's Government, has been directed to the same end - the aggrandizement of Southern interests and the consolidation of the slave-power (hear). Such as its domestic policy has been, so also has been its foreign policy in the annexation of Texas, in the conquest of half of Mexico, in the lawless attempts on. Cuba, in the invasion of peaceable States in Central America, in the defense of the slave trade against British cruizers. Everywhere the same aggressive spirit has been at work, employing now intrigue, now violence, now making filibustering raids, now waging open war, but always in favor of the same cause-Slavery.

PROGRESS OF THE SLAVE INSTITUTION.

This has been the history of the United States for the last half-century. Observe with what results. In 1790, three years after the nation was established, the Slave States comprised 250,000 square miles; in 1860 that area had grown to 851,000 square miles. In 1790 the entire number of slaves in the United States was less than three-quarters of a million; in 1860 that number had increased to upwards of 4,000,000 (hear, hear). Such has been the material progress of the Southern institution. Still more striking has been its progress as a political and social power (hear, hear). When the nation was founded slavery was dying out in the North, and was regarded as doomed in the South. It was tolerated, no doubt, in consideration of the important interests which it involved, but tolerated with shame. Its very name was excluded from the public documents, and the thing itself was absolutely prohibited from all places in which it was not already established, and branded as at variance with the fundamental principles of the republic. Such was the position of slavery when the Union was founded; what is its position when the Union is dissolved? It is no longer treated with mere local toleration, as an exceptional, tabooed system. It claims a free career over the whole continent, and aspires to be the basis of a new order of political fabric, and boldly puts itself forth as a model for the imitation of the world. The struggle, therefore, which now convulses America is not the struggle of an oppressed people rising against their oppressors, but

the revolt of a party which has long ruled the great Republic, to retrieve by arms a political defeat the rising of the representatives of a principle which for half a century has been steadily aggressive, to cement a long series of triumphs by a last effective blow (hear, hear).

OBJECTS OF THE SOUTH.

I have said that the purposes of the Southern revolt is to establish a new system of government, of which slavery is to be the basis. This statement is, I am aware, vehemently denied in this country, but on this point I must ask you to decide for yourselves between the declarations of the Confederate leaders and those who on this side of the Atlantic advocate their cause. I hold in my hand a paper of much significance; it is entitled "The Philosophy of Despotism," and is from the pen of an eminent Southern, the Hon. L. W. Spratt, of South Carolina, a man who has taken a prominent part in the transactions of the last few years, and who is now editor of the Charleston Mercury, one of the most influential, if not the most influential paper in the South. He represented Charleston in the celebrated South Carolina Convention, which gave the first watchword of secession, and the confidence which was reposed in him by the people of South Carolina was shown in his selection as one of the committee appointed by that State to set forth its views before the Convention which subsequently met in the South. Mr. Spratt, occupying this position, may, I think, state the views of the South with some authority. Let us hear then, what, according to Mr. Spratt, is the purpose of the South :

This,

"The South," he states, "is now in the formation of a Slave Republic. perhaps is not admitted generally. There are many contented to believe that the South, as a geographical section, is in mere assertion of its independence; that it is instinct with no especial truth-pregnant of no distinct social nature; that for some unaccountable reason the two sections have become opposed to each other; that for reasons equally insufficient, there is disagreement between the peoples that direct them; and that from no overruling necessity, no impossibility of co-existence, but as mere matter of policy, it has been considered best for the South to strike out for herself and establish an independence of her own. This, I fear, is an inadequate conception of the controversy. The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections, for between such sections merely there can be no contest; nor between the people of the North and the people of the South, for our relations have been pleasant, and on neutral grounds there is still nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together, and practise yet in intercourse, with great respect, the courtesies of common life. But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the North and the other at the South. Society is essentially different from Government as different as is the nut from the bur, or the nervous body of the shell fish from the bony structure which surrounds it; and within this government two societies had become developed, as variant in structure and distinct in form as any two beings in animated nature. The one is a society composed of one race, the other of two races. The one is bound together but by the two great social relations of husband and wife and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, and parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies in its political structure the principle that equality is the right of man; the other that it is the right of equals only. The one embodying the principle that equality is the right of man, expands upon the horizontal plane of pure democracy; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right of man, but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a social aristocracy. Such

are the two forms of society which had come to contest within the structure of the recent Union. And the contest for existence was inevitable. Neither could concur in the requisitions of the other; neither could expand within the forms of a single government without encroachment on the other. Slavery was within the grasp of the Northern States, and forced to the option of extinction in the Union or of independence out, it dares to strike, and it asserts its claim to nationality and its right to recognition among the leading social systems of the world. Such, then, being the nature of the contest, this Union has been disrupted in the effort of slave society to emancipate itself."

The object of the South is to found a Slave Republic - a Republic which has taken to itself the rounded form of a social aristocracy. But, before leaving this subject, there is one point on which I would wish you to hear the opinion of Mr. Spratt. It is with reference to the position taken by the Confederacy on the slavetrade. We all know that the Montgomery Convention, in drawing up the Constitution, introduced a clause prohibiting this trade. There are people in this country desirous to regard this as conclusive as to the views of Southern leaders on this subject. But in the history of the Southern people, and all the circumstances under which this constitution was drawn up, I confess I for one have considerable doubts as to the bona fide character of these prohibitions, and these have not been removed by the speculations of Mr. Spratt. "Then why adopt this measure?" says he. "Is it that Virginia and the other Border States require it? They merely require it now, but is it certain they will continue to require it? It may be said," he continues, "that without such general restriction the value of their slaves will be diminished in the markets of the West. They have no right to ask that their slaves or any other products shall be protected to an unnatural value in the markets of the West. If they persist in regarding the negro but as a thing of trade, a thing which they are too good to use, but only can produce for others' uses, and join the Confederacy, as Pennsylvania or Massachusetts might do, not to support the structure, but to profit by it, it were as well they should not join, and we can find no interest in such association." And then, referring to what was well understood by the prohibitory clause, the power to conciliate European support, Mr. Spratt says:-"They (the European States) will submit to any terms of intercourse with the slave republic in consideration of its markets and its products. An increase of slaves will increase the market and supply. They will pocket their philanthropy and the profits together." Further he says:-"I was the single advocate of the slave-trade in 1853; it is now the question of time." So far from the representative man of the leading Secession State, South Carolina, the exponent of the philosophy of Secession. I will only ask you to listen to one authority more. It is the Vice-President of the Southern Confederation, Mr. A. H. Stephens. "The ideas entertained at the formation of the new Constitution were that the enslavement of the African race was foreign to the laws of nature,that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. Our new Government is founded on exactly opposite ideas. Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the sacred truth that the negro is not one with the white man-that subordination to the superior race is his native condition. Thus our Government stands the first in the world based upon this great philosophical and moral truth. This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, has become the chief corner-stone in our new edifice." We are told by the advocates of a recognition of the South in this country that we need not be deterred from this course by the consideration that the South is a slave power. "A slave power!" they exclaim : "Was not the United States a slave power? Are not Spain and the Brazils slave powers, and why should

6

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

we become fastidious now?" This is the position taken by the admirers of the South in England, but not that taken by the Southerners themselves. "Our new Government," says the Vice-President of the Confederacy, "is founded on exactly opposite ideas. This is the first Government in the history of the world based upon this great philosophical and moral truth." Slavery has before existed, but has never before been taken as the corner-stone of an empire, as set forth by its own VicePresident. The South shelters slavery, and constitutes itself undeniably the one slave power in the world. I say this, that the present convulsion has existed in the exigencies of slavery, and that the struggle which succeeded is a consequence of slave policy. A year or two ago I should have thought that, having established this, I should have certainly established my case; but really it seems to me that a singular change has passed over the minds of my countrymen upon this subject. I do not mean to say that there is any considerable number of persons in this country or present audience who regard slavery with positive favor, but I do say that public feeling on this subject is not what it used to be. I find a disposition among public men and influential organs of public opinion to palliate this aspect of the case. A tone of apology is taken towards slavery to which British laws have not been accustomed. "The negroes," says the Saturday Review, in a recent number, "hav been slaves for centuries. They are used to slavery, and for the most part contente.l with it. They are plentifully fed-the food is cheap; and they are well housed, as race-horses and hunters are housed in this country, because they are costly chattele. They are as well clothed as the time requires. In a word, the majority of them have no grievance whatever, except in the fact that they are slaves - a grievance which they think not worth speaking of, and one which few of them are thoughtful enough to feel." In other words, four millions of the African race, -a race capable, -as we know from the testimony of competent witnesses of their condition in the West Indies, from the result of the negro schools in New England, and from occasional instances which come under our own observation, not merely of feeling the obligation to perform the duties of rational creatures, but of receiving a very considerable amount of intellectual information,-four millions of these people, at least capable of human discrimination, have, under the system of the South, been reduced to the condition merely of simple brutes. This is the cool admission of a writer • who seeks, in the description I have quoted, to conciliate public favor towards the institution he thus describes. But my present hearers will, I doubt not, disclaim the morality of the Saturday Review. Public sentiment on this, as on many other subjects, is not yet linked to the original and advanced opinions of that enterprising paper (applause). Well, it is important to know the extreme point which the wave has yet touched; and if opinion has not reached the length of the passage I have quoted, I think most candid persons will admit that it has at least been moving in that direction. Do we not hear on all hands that negroes are well cared for, that the men of the South are a chivalrous set of men, and that the system is a patriarchal one? A disclaimer is introduced, but then and there we are warned against being carried away by old-fashioned enthusiasms. But what is the character of slavery as it exists? It is a system under which men and women, boys and girls, are exposed, like cattle in the market-place, to be bought and sold. It is a system under which a whole race of men are deprived of all the rights and privileges of rational creatures, and consigned to a life of toil, in order that another race may live in idleness. It is a system under which we are told the negroes are perfectly contented, but from which they are constantly escaping, in spite of blood-hounds and man-hunters. Call it a paradise if you will, but it is one from which its denizens escape to the Dismal

Swamp, it is one which, if once left, no negro is anxious to regain (applause). Under this system the human being convicted of no crime may, in strict conformity to the law, be flogged at the discretion of his fellow man, who may kill him with the lash without enduring any penalty, for the murder. Under this system human beings may be, as they have been in several instances, burned alive. All property is for the negro contraband. Knowledge is made a penal offence. The marriage tie is not in legal recognition, and is regarded with no practical respect. Nay, it is worse than this, for the laws permit fathers to enslave and sell their own children; and there are fathers in the Southern States who practically avail themselves of this law. De you doubt this? Account, then, for the mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons, many of them scarcely darker than Europeans, who form a large proportion of the slaves born in the South? From what source is that white blood blended in their veins but from the men who commit their own flesh and blood to the charge of the overseer, or, worse still, to the slave-dealer? This is an aspect of things which I would have passed by, but in the present state the effects are too serious to be blinked at by the people of this country, who achieved renown by freeing themselves from this curse.

"CHIVALRY" OF THE SOUTH.

We hear much in these times of the "chivalry" of the South. The Southerners, we are told, are gentlemen, and on this ground are contrasted favorably with the North. I shall certainly not deny that the wealthier classes of the South possess in a high degree those qualities which the principle of caste tends to engender-pride, courage, loyalty to the interests of their order, capacity for Government, and perseverance in a fixed course of policy. Nay, even as regards the chivalry and gentility -things about which our notions generally are somewhat vague-I shall not undertake to say that the South does not possess them. I only ask you to remember that the chivalry and gentility of the Southern is not incompatible with the systematic appropriation of the fruits of another's labor, with laying the whip over the shoulders of women, with acts which called down on Marshal Haynau the indignation of the London draymen (hear, hear), with turning one's own flesh and blood to pecuniary profit, or, to give a practical illustration, with such deeds as that committed by a Southern gentleman on the person of Mr. Sumner. Mr. Sumner is one of the few public men of the United States who, in moral character and intellectual attainments, is worthy to take his place among the scholars, orators, and statesmen of Europe. In 1856, when opposing the introduction of slavery into Kansas, he made in the Senate of the United States one of the most powerful speeches ever delivered in a deliberative assembly, and in this speech he denounced the policy of the slave power in language plain and outspoken, but which did not pass what in this country is considered the legitimate limit of parliamentary debate. How did the chivalrous South take its revenge? Two days afterwards, as Mr. Sumner was sitting at his desk, engaged in writing a letter, with his head bent over his paper, he was approached by Mr. Brooks, a representative of South Carolina, who said, "I have read your speech; it is a libel on the South;" and forthwith, while the words were yet passing from his lips, and before Mr. Sumner could rise from his seat, he commenced a succession of blows on his bare head with a heavy cane. Mr. Sumner was stunned, and fell to the floor. His assailant stood over him and continued the assault. Blow after blow fell upon his defenceless head. There were senators of the South present, and one from the North, Mr. Douglass, of Illinois, a Democrat, and a close ally of the South, but there was no interference. One old man, indeed, did interfere a little towards the close, but for that little he was threatened with chastisement on the