ay, if it yet be possible, the
bloody hand of fanaticism. Raise your eloquent voices once more for
equality and fraternity, for justice and union. If it prove in vain, as
alas! it will, keep firm at least to your principles and your faith;
work without ceasing as a leaven of good in your infatuated communities;
infuse into the contest before us some chivalric element, worthy of
yourselves and of us, which, if the worst comes, shall mitigate the
horrors of war, and hasten the returning blessings of peace. When we
think of you in the future, we will forget the violence of individuals
and the disloyalty of State governments; we will forget the calumnies of
Sumner and Phillips and Giddings, the blasphemies of Emerson and Cheever
and Beecher, and the vile stings and insults of the aiders and abettors
of thieves and assassins; we will willingly forget them all, and entwine
you tenderly in our memories and affections, with the immortal friends
and compatriots of our own revolutionary sires--with Otis and Warren,
and Hancock and Putnam, and Wayne and Hamilton and Franklin. And in the
fearful troubles which may come also upon your fragment of this
dismembered nation, may the sign of our covenant be found upon every one
of your door-posts, to ward off the destroying angel from your favored
and happy homes!

Southerners! In this great crisis which involves the welfare of the
present and the future, let us be united as one man. Let us survey the
whole question in all its bearings, immediate and prospective. Let us
act calmly, wisely, bravely. Let us take counsel of our duty and our
honor, and not of our danger and our fears. Let us invoke the guardian
spirit of ancestral virtue, and the blessing of Almighty God. Let us
remember that, although precipitancy is a fault, it is better, in a
question so vital as personal and national independence, to be an age
too soon than a moment too late. If we succeed in establishing, _as we
shall_, a vast, opulent, happy and glorious slave-holding Republic,
throughout tropical America--future generations will arise and call us
blessed! But if it be possible, in the mysterious providence of God,
that we should fail and perish in our sublime attempt, let it come! Our
souls may rebel against the inscrutable decree of such a destiny, but we
will not swerve a line from the luminous path of duty. With our hands
upon our hearts we will unitedly exclaim, let it come! The sons and
daughters of the South are