to-night. For the first time in the history of the government, we have
the spectacle of purely sectional parties struggling for the control of
the Federal government, each determined to warp and bend to its own
sectional end, the Constitution and power of the Federal Union. Never
before could patriotic citizens so earnestly lay to heart the counsel of
Washington to avoid the formation of sectional parties.

On the 17th of September, 1796, exactly nine years after he, as
President of the Convention and Deputy from Virginia, had signed his
name to the Federal Constitution, Washington thus addressed his
fellow-citizens:

"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is now dear to
you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your
real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace
abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which
you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that from different
causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many
artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this
truth--as this is the point in your political fortress against which the
batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and
actively (though often covertly and insidiously), directed, it is of
infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of
your National Union to your collective and individual happiness; that
you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to
it,--accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium
of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation
with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a
suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly
frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion
of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now
link together the various parts."

_Fellow-Citizens, the portentous evil which Washington thus deprecated
in his Farewell Address to the people of the United States is now upon
us. I repeat we are in the midst of the crisis of sectional parties. How
shall it be passed, so that the Union shall not fall?_

It seems to me that no man who knows our history, who understands truly
the genius of our people, and who understands also the principles upon
which the Union and the Constitution are based, can fa