e earth. She has contributed to the support of the
Juggernaut, and has forced the Chinese at the point of the bayonet to
eat opium. Do you forget that she ruined the capitol in this city, and
blew it up, in 1814? I do not deny her virtues, but I do not care to
follow her example.

Our fathers said slavery was strictly a State institution, and they
would not meddle with it by the Constitution. Their doctrine is true
now. The Union cannot be preserved if we interfere with the
institutions of the States.

I will not stop to refer to the Missouri Compromise, or the
compromises of 1850 and 1854. I will only say that the North
understood these to settle the slavery question, and professed to
agree not to meddle with slavery hereafter in the States. But the cry
of freedom was raised, and its new apostles, during the last campaign,
went through the land preaching destruction to slavery. What did they
mean but that slavery was to be assailed at every possible point? This
doctrine was involved in their platforms, and advocated in their
speeches. They collected all the bad things ever said about slavery,
whether true or untrue, and published them. The purpose to assail the
institution was everywhere owned.

I wish to say a word about the Territories. What great harm would be
done if all the Territories were thrown open to slavery? By the
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, they are open
already. But in the greater part of them slavery cannot exist at all.
New Mexico has a slave code. So have the Cherokee and other Indian
tribes; and yet slavery does not and cannot flourish among them. It
cannot make head against the obstacles which oppose it, and yet you
will attack it even there. If you do so, civil war is inevitable.

But what mischief is done if slavery does go into the Territories? It
will not add another to the degraded race of Africans. It is a
blessing to the slave if he may be permitted to go with his master
into these new Territories. In the old slave States he is compelled to
work in gangs under the whip of a driver, with no one to look after
his health or comfort. Take him into one of these new Territories, and
there are one hundred white men and women to protect each individual
of his race, and to see that he suffers no wrong. It is a blessing to
take him out of the plantation gangs, and to place him in a new
country. Then why not let him go there and live in peace? Your zeal to
exclude slavery f