aceful South and sought
to lay it waste with fire and sword and servile insurrection. You have
murdered Southern men who have dared demand their rights on Northern
soil. You have invaded the borders of Southern States, burned their
dwellings and murdered their people. You have proclaimed John Brown, the
criminal maniac who sought to murder innocent and helpless men, women
and children in Virginia, a hero and martyr and then denounced _us_ in
your popular meetings, your religious and legislative assemblies as
habitual violators of the laws of God and the rights of humanity! You
have exerted all the moral and physical agencies that human ingenuity
can devise or a devil's malice employ to heap odium and infamy upon us
and make the very name of the South a by-word of hissing and of scorn
throughout the civilized world--"

He paused overcome with emotion and lifted his hand to stay the burst of
applause from the galleries.

"We have borne all this for long years and might have borne it many more
under the assurance of our Northern friends that such fanaticism does
not represent the true heart of the Northern people. But the fallacy of
these promises and the folly of our hopes have been too clearly proven
in the late election. The platform of the political party on which you
have swept every Northern State and elected a sectional President is a
foul libel upon our character and a declaration of open war on the lives
and property of the Southern people.

"In defiance of the Constitution which protects our rights your mob has
decreed the confiscation of three thousand million dollars' worth of our
property. If we claim the protection of our common law, your mob
solemnly burns the Constitution in your public squares and denounces it
as 'an agreement with Death and covenant with Hell.' We appeal to the
Supreme Court of the Republic and when its Judges unanimously sustain
our position on every point, your mob cries:

"'Down with the Supreme Court of the United States!'

"You have not only insulted us as unchristian and heathen, you have
proclaimed that four million ignorant negroes but yesterday taken from
the savagery of cannibal Africa are our equals and entitled to share in
the solemn rights of American citizenship. Your declaration is an open
summons that they rise in insurrection with the knife in one hand and
the torch in the other.

"Your mob has declared the South outlawed, branded with ignominy,
consigned to execra