d a place in the family of nations as the
legitimate child and foremost champion of Human Freedom--was fast
sinking into the loathsome attitude of foremost champion and most
conspicuous exemplar of the vilest and most iniquitous form of
Despotism--that which robs the laborer of the just recompense of his
sweat, and dooms him to a life of ignorance, squalor, and despair.

But

'The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make whips to scourge us.'

For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered
slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the
accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential
to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and
formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations
we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and
now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against
that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered
and undone.

Who can longer fail to realize that 'there is a God who judgeth in the
earth?' or, if the phraseology suit him better, that there is, in the
constitution of the universe, provision made for the banishment of every
injustice, the redress of every wrong?

'Well,' says a late convert to the fundamental truth, 'we must drive the
negro race entirely from our country, or we shall never again have union
and lasting peace.'

Ah! friend? it is not the negro _per se_ who distracts and threatens to
destroy our country--far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from
Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because
California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor
stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on
Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been
convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro--it
is by injustice to the negro--that our country has been brought to her
present deplorable condition. Were Slavery and all its evil brood of
wrongs and vices eradicated this day, the Rebellion would die out
to-morrow and never have a successor. The centripetal tendency of our
country is so intense--the attraction of every part for every other so
overwhelming--that Disunion were impossible but for Slavery. What
insanity in New-Orleans to seek a divorce from the upper waters of her
superb river! What a