ce at its
hands? The South would be unrepresented at home or abroad. She would
have received a blow, politically, socially and morally, which would
ensure her destruction. This is precisely what Seward, Beecher and
Greeley are aiming at. We are to be coaxed, cheated, legislated out of
our rights and liberties. What cannot be achieved by trickery, will at
length be attempted by force. The most hateful feature in the despotism
which threaten us is its religious element. If we are outraged because
the Constitution is violated and broken, what shall we say of those
hypocrites or madmen who have perverted the Word of God to the most
detestable purposes of man!

The true test of statesmanship, according to Burke, is to preserve and
improve, not to abolish and destroy. We apply this to the institution of
slavery, and are willing to accord it to the existing Union: Have we
exhausted our Constitutional remedies? Is not the Republican party
powerless for injury, and may we not anticipate a thorough reversion of
Northern judgment? These questions, and others like them, have been met
and answered a thousand times by the able leaders of the South. Nothing
but the speedy and universal uprising of the Northern people in behalf
of State rights and Southern equality can preserve the Union. They have
committed the aggressions, let them make the overtures. Is this miracle
to be expected, and are we to await credulously its accomplishment?
Compromises and compacts, the temporary make-shifts of politicians and
philanthropists, will be useless. With what ingenuity the most sacred
compact may be perverted, with what facility the most perfect compromise
may be broken! You may put a new piece on the old garment, but the rent
will be made worse.

The fact is, the Constitution is dead, for it carried with it the seeds
of its own dissolution. The Union has achieved its mission; the last
page of its history is written, and it may be safely deposited in the
glorious archives of the past. The genius of Anglo-Saxon liberty, when
she emigrated to these shores, bore twins in her bosom and not a single
birth. The Northern race, bold, hardy, intelligent, proud and free, will
receive into its embrace the heterogeneous spawn of European
civilization, and mold it to its own shape, and prepare it for its own
destiny. The Southern people are brave, courteous and gentle, credulous
and forbearing--loving friends, chivalrous enemies and good masters, to
whose s