erate the negro, lost
their own freedom."

Have we rightly comprehended the fearful import of those words, _the
Africanization of the South_? According to the present rate of increase,
in fifty years the negroes of these States will amount to twenty
millions. Suppose them to be restricted to their present arena. Suppose
them in addition to be free. Imagine the misery, the crime, the poverty,
the barbarism, the desolation of the country! The grass would grow in
the streets of our cities, our ships would rot in their harbors, our
plantations would become a wilderness of cane-brakes. The re-subjugation
of the negro, or the extermination of one race or the other would be
inevitable, and in any event our children would be beggared with an
inheritance of woe. Let us swear upon the altar of God, that as
Christians and citizens we will resist to the death the first step which
might lead us towards this awful abyss!

If the Republican party is permitted to get into power, the
Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it will be sure. Their
leaders already boast to applauding multitudes that the heel of the
North is at last on our necks. When the power, the patronage, the
prestige of the federal government are wielded against slavery; when
Southern men take office under it, and first apologize and then approve;
when a free-soil sentiment gradually percolates through the South
itself; when the brightness of Southern honor is tarnished, and the
integrity of Southern opinion destroyed, what will be, what must be the
inevitable result? Nothing hasty or violent will be attempted. The
iniquity will be accomplished under the forms of the present
Constitution. Remember that the coins of Nero bore the image of the
Goddess of Liberty, and that a perverted Constitution is the choicest
instrument of tyranny. Lulled by pleasant narcotics, we will pass from
dreams of security, into the sleep of death. Or if we rouse ourselves at
last, and reach out for our fallen thunderbolts, we will be found, like
Sampson, blind and helpless, and they will make sport of our misery. The
silken cords with which they bind us now, will change to iron fetters in
our moment of revolt.

The precedent alone would be fatal. Shall we submit to an administration
which received not a single vote in ten of our States? We could not be
represented in its cabinet, nor in any foreign mission, for what
Southern gentleman of proper sensibilities would accept offi