the United States Minister at the Spanish Court, urging him to counsel peace with the southern republics of America, lest they should aid in freeing Cuba from slavery. Considerations, said Mr. Van Buren, connected with a certain class of our population, made it the interest of the southern section of the Union that no attempt should be made in that island (Cuba) to throw off the yoke of Spanish dependence-the first efforts of which would be the emancipation of a numerous slave population, which result could not but be very sensibly felt upon the adjacent shores of the United States. Again Mr. Van Buren, in writing to A. Butler, the agent of the United States in Mexico, cautioned him to oppose "the baneful spirit of emancipation, designed to be introduced and propagated in the island of Cuba." He thus took ground as the friend of slavery, not only here where the Constitution permits it, but elsewhere, for fear of the indirect influences of foreign emancipation upon the south, the votes of which he was then courting. Anxious to be identified as the " northern man with southern principles," when, in 1835-6 he was spoken of as a candidate for the presidency, the whole country being then agitated with the question of the right of petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, Mr. Van Buren opposed the right of petition, although he admitted the right of Congress to abolish slavery in that District if it chose. The same evil spirit which demanded abolition of slavery in the District, was attempting to excite insurrection in the south by the circulation of incendiary papers. To suppress this evil a bill was, just prior to the election of 1836, introduced into the Senate, while Mr. Van Buren, as Vice-President, was the presiding officer, to authorise postmasters to open the mails and take out any matter relating to abolition, which in their opinion should be of an incendiary character. At the moment of the passage of the bill the Vice-President was not in his seat. The vote was a tie, and Mr. Van Buren, on taking his seat, gave the casting vote in favor of the bill! to establish a censorship of the press in this enlightened country. And why did he do it? Because southern votes were required to make him President, and the south must be propitiated. The votes of the south were secured, and Mr. Van Buren became President of the United States, and in his inaugural followed up his southern principles in a manner which drew from William Leggett, then publishing the Plaindealer, the following reproof: "We wish we could be convinced that it [the inaugural address] is not a cautious, timid, time-serving document, composed at the instance of a cringing spirit, willing To PROPITIATE THE SLAVEHOLDERS at the expense OF JUSTICE AND HUMANITY." The general conduct of Mr. Van Buren, including his subserviency to England in his official acts, which was the cause of his non-confirmation as minister to that power, followed by his sacrifice of the citizens of NewYork in the Canadian affair, raised a storm of indignation, which resulted, when he came before the people for re-election in 1840, in leaving him the votes of but seven states, of which five whereslave states. When, in 1844, Mr. Van Buren, regardless of the fact that the north had rejected him in 1840, of the sixty electoral votes he then received, forty-eight being from slave states, came before the Democratic convention for re-nomination, he thought proper to give indications of a federalist leaning in opposing the territorial march of the country, thus exciting further distrust. His renomination became impossible, and the nominee of that convention received a larger popular vote than did Mr. Van Buren in 1836, when a united party bore him into power. The friends of Mr. Van Buren 1* charged that he lost the nomination through fraud. In making that charge they forget that 1,327,325 freemen voted for what they called a fradulent nominee, when only 763,587 votes were cast for Mr. Van Buren in 1836. If it is fraud for the majority of the people of the United States to elect the man of their choice, then was Mr. Van Buren a victim. The truth would appear to be, however, that the time for reform had arrived; the whole system of New-York corruption had fallen through; the safety fund system was down forever; the corruptions of the old constitution had disgusted the people, and a new organization was necessary. To give stability to a new organization, the government was appealed to, to place in office all those who had enjoyed public emoluments as matter of right under the regency system. This demand was not complied with. In this position, chagrined at the loss of popular favor, maddened at the failure of political intrigue, and thirsting for revenge against those whom they supposed the cause of their defeat, the conspirators dragged the slavery question for the first time in the history of the country into the arena, and made it a rallying point for a discomfited faction. The hypocritical cry of "free soil," no more "slave territory," is that on which this northern party has organized its schemes of disunion, and it pretends to base this upon constitutional right. The evil of slavery has been deplored by all parties, north and south, since the formation of the government; and those states where negroes, either free or in servitude, do not exist, have one and all sought to prevent them settling within their borders. Where hardy pioneers and enterprising settlers have overcome the wilderness, and made prairies smile with the blessings of cultivation, they have one and all sought to prevent the blacks from following, to blight with their presence the new homes of the immigrants. As all the old free states have imposed disabilities upon the free blacks, so have the new free states sought to prevent blacks from coming within their borders. The blacks are upon this continent not by their own fault. The cupidity of England in forcing them upon the United States was the cause of their presence here; and it is a matter of equal regret with both free states or slave states. The whites of the former are not dependent upon the blacks for service, and they have shown a determination that the blacks shall not be dependent upon them for bread. In the south the nature of the industry has thus far kept the blacks employed. But the same anxiety to get clear of negroes which prompted the south to resist the imperial government, prompts the north and west to prevent negroes from occupying the lands at all. Hence, even before the formation of the constitution in 1787, an ordinance was passed, preventing the introduction of slaves into territory north of the Ohio. On that territory now exist the states of Ohio and Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; and as this ordinance adopted by Congress in 1787 sought to prevent slavery from being introduced there, so have those states in their constitutions, sought to prevent free blacks from settling there. The people of Illinois, by an immense majority, last year adopted the following clause of the new constitution : "ARTICLE XIV. The general assembly shall, at its first session under the amended constitution, pass such laws as will effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state; and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this state, for the purpose of setting them free." This desire to exclude blacks from new territory, north and south, has always been strong on the part of the north, which has sought to keep free blacks out of its own states, as well as slaves out of southern states. Since the formation of the government, 17 new states have been admitted into the Union. These give 60 electoral votes from slave states, and 63 from free States. The population admitted as slave states increased from 1,136,332 to 4,442,000, and in free states it rose from 1,443,256 to 5,372,000. The increase has been the largest from free states. At each new accession of territory, this question, in relation to the admission of slaves into the territory, has been renewed in Congressional debates, but it has never before been stirred up as an electioneering instrument. The excitement upon this subject ran highest in 1820, on the occasion of the admission of Missouri into the Union. The state of feeling then, together with the consequences that were apprehended to flow from it, are best expressed in the following letter of the immortal Jefferson: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, dated April 22nd, 1820. I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But the momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not the final sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property (for it is misnamed) is a bagatelle which would not cost me a single thought, if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected gradually; and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadju An abstinence, too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing the state. tors. This certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen of Connecticut should be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state. I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their coun Slave. NEW STATES ADMITTED INTO THE AMERICAN UNION. First Pop. Rep* Date. Census. 1847. Elec. Vote. .1791...154,465....302,000.. 7 1802...230,760..1,860,000..21 1825...147,178....960.000.. 9 Kentucky,....1792...220,955a...855,000..15 Vermont, Tennessee,.. 1793...105,602....950,000..15 Ohio,.... Iowa..... 1812...153,407....470,000.. 5 Indiana, Mississippi,.. 1816... 75,448....600,009.. 4 Illinois,.... 1818... 55,211....735,000.. 5 Alabama,.... 1819...127,901....600 000.. 7 Maine,....... 1820...298,335....600.000..10 Missouri, 1821...140,445....600,000.. 4 Michigan,.... 1835...212,267....370,000.. 3 Arkansas,.... 1836... 97,574....152,000.. 3 Iowa,........1816...130.000....130,000.. 4 Texas,...... 1845...140,000....140.000.. 4 Wisconsin,... 1848...215,000........215,000.. 4 1815... 75,000.... 75,000.. 3 1,443,256 5,372,000 63 Florida, 1,136,332 44,42,000 60 a The population for 1847, is from the estimate of Edmund Burke, Esq., Commissioner of Patents. try, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to be. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by the union than by scission, they would pause before they perpetrated this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high respect and esteem. TH. JEFFERSON. The question was settled at that time by the "Missouri compromise," which provided that in the territory of Louisiana, there should, except in the state of Missouri, be no slavery north of the 36° 30' of north latitude, running to the ocean. This, of course, left open the territory south of that line to southern institutions. On the admission of Texas, that solemn compromise was sought to be violated, but truth and justice prevailed. The position of Mr. Van Buren has now, as we have seen, induced him to adopt this notion of "free soil," as that on which to form a sectional or northern faction, in order to defeat the Democratic party. That we may properly estimate the entire change which the sentiments of that personage have undergone since his rejection by the people of the Union, we compare two letters, one dated March, 1836, and addressed to Aimes and others of North Carolina, in reply to questions as to his views; the other dated June 16th, 1848, and addressed to a meeting of his agents at Utica: MARCH, 1836. "With only a generous confidence on the part of the south, in their brethren of the north, and a firm determination on the part of each to visit, with their severest displeasure, any attempt to connect the subject with party politics, those sentiments cannot be overthrown. All future attempts on the part of the abolitionists to do so, will then only serve to accumulate and concentrate public odium on themselves. That there are persons at the north who are far from concurring in the prevailing sentiments I have described, is certainly true; but their numbers, when compared with the rest of the community, are very inconsiderable; and if the condition of things be not greatly aggravated by imprudence, many of them I have no doubt, will ultimately adopt sounder views of the subject; and the efforts of those who may persist in the work of agitation may be overcome by reason, or rendered inoperative by constitutional remedies. * "In every view of the subject, therefore, it does appear to me, that, although there certainly is, in the present condition of the country in relation to it, sufficient to excite the most serious attention, there is nothing in the state of pubJic opinion in the United States to justify that panic in the public mind, which invariably disqualifies those who partake of it, from our dealing wisely or successfully with the circumstances by which JUNE, 1848. "Our ancestors signalized the commencement of this glorious government of ours, by rescuing from subjection to slavery, a territory which is now covered by five great states and peopled by more than four millions of fieemen, in the full enjoyment of every blessing which industry and good institutions can confer. They did this when the opinions and conduct of the world in regard to the institution of slavery were very different from what it is now. They did so before Great Britain had even commenced those gigantic efforts for the suppression of slavery, by which she has so greatly distinguished herself. After seventyfour year's enjoyment of the sacred 'and invaluable rights of self-government, obtained for us by the valor and discretion of our ancestors, we their descendants are called upon to doom, or if that is too strong a word, to expose to the inroad of slavery a territory capable of sustaining an equal number of new states to be admitted to our confederacy-a_territory in a great part of which slavery has never existed, in fact, and from the residue of which it has been expressly abolished by the existing government. We are called upon to do this at a period when the minds of nearly all mankind have been penetrated by a conviction of the evils of slavery, and are united in efforts for its suppression-at a moment, too, when the spirit of freedom and reform is every it is produced. From abroad we have, I think, some right to expect less interference than heretofore. We shall, I am confident, for some time at least, have no more foreign agents to enlighten on the subject, Recent results here, and the discussions with which they have been attended, cannot fail to attract the attention of the reading and reflecting portion of the foreign public. By these means they will be made to understand our real condition in this respect; and they will know that the unchangeable law of that condition is, that the slave question must be left to the control of the slaveholding states themselves, without molestation or interference from any quarter; that foreign interference of every description can only be injurious to the slave, without benefit to any interest, and will not be endured by any section of our country; and that any interference, coming from the non-slaveholding portions of our own territory, is calculated to endanger the perpetuity, and, if sinctioned by the general government, would inevitably occasion the dissolution of our happy Union." The change is palpable and marked. where far more prevalent than it has ever been, and when our republic stands proudly forth as the great exemplar of the world in the science of free government. "Who can believe that a population like that which inhabits the non-slaveholding states, probably amounting to twelve millions, who, by their own acts, or by the foresight of others, have been exempted from the evils of slavery, can, at such a moment, be induced, by considerations of any description, to make a retrograde movement of a character so extraordinary and so painful? Such a movement would, in my view of the matter, and I say it with unfeigned deference to the conflicting opinions of others, bring a reproach upon the influence of free institutions, which would delight the hearts and excite the hopes of the advocates of arbitrary power throughout the world." It is not to be disguised, that lust of power, the long-continuance in office of professed politicians, living upon the people's money, and claiming public emoluments as a matter of right, have been productive of fearful evils in our national progress; but never in our history has a more daring and reckless scheme of political intrigue been started, than that which has been set up as the frame-work of a northern party, based upon sectional views, and hostile to the general welfare. The framers of our constitution, and the organizers of the glorious Union under which we have prospered, were well aware of the sectional differences which had been finally compromised in the sacred instrument which they gave to the world. In knowing the evils which must necessarily result from disturbing those compromises, and also the proneness of unprincipled seekers after office to lay their worthless hands upon things most sacred to the people as well as to the cause of human liberty, reckless of all consequences, so that a mean and sordid lust for a meretricious notoriety can be temporarily satisfied the statesmen of that period were careful on every and all occasions to enjoin vigilance in guarding the constitution, and the most watchful anxiety for the preservation of the sacred instrument. Washington was peculiarly solicitous on this point. He has told us in his farewell address, that," While experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who, in any quarter, may endeavor to weaken its bonds." The mode most likely to be adopted for this object of "weakening bonds," was clearly perceived to be the formation of parties having " geographical" distinctions. To irritate and renew those heart-burnings, and that supposed incompatibility of interests between sections that had manifested themselves in the formation of the union, but which had finally been soothed, were by the actors in those scenes felt to be the most ready means by which unprincipled politi |