l their troubles, and the
ladies of South Carolina showered presents and caresses on the brutal
assailant of Mr. Sumner. In 1856 the North endeavoured to elect a
President who though fully recognising the right of the South to its slave
property, was opposed to its extension in the territories. The North were
defeated, and submitted almost without a murmur to the result. On the
present occasion the South has submitted to the same ordeal, but not with
the same success. They have taken their chance of electing a President of
their own views, but they have failed. Mr. Lincoln, like Colonel Freemont,
fully recognises the right of the South to the institution of slavery,
but, like him, he is opposed to its extension. This cannot be endured.
With a majority in both houses of Congress and in the Supreme Court of the
United States, the South cannot submit to a President who is not their
devoted servant. Unless every power in the constitution is to be strained
in order to promote the progress of slavery, they will not remain in the
Union; they will not wait to see whether they are injured, but resent the
first check to their onward progress as an intolerable injury. This, then,
is the result of the history of slavery. It began as a tolerated, it has
ended as an aggressive institution, and if it now threatens to dissolve
the Union, it is not because it has anything to fear for that which it
possesses already, but because it has received a check to its hopes of
future acquisition."

* * * * *

SECESSION CONDEMNED IN A SOUTHERN CONVENTION.

SPEECH

Of the Hon. A.H. STEPHENS, made at the Georgia State Convention, held
January, 1861, for the purpose of determining whether the State of Georgia
was to secede. Notwithstanding this remarkable speech of an extraordinary
man, the Convention decided on secession. Mr. Stephens was afterwards
elected Vice President of the so-called Confederacy. This distinction
shows the estimate of his powers, and adds force to the deliverance, the
prophetic declarations of which are now being fulfilled to the letter.

This step (of secession) once taken, can never be recalled; and all the
baleful and withering consequences that must follow, will rest on the
convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our
lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will
inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvests