rrevocable_" by any act or decree of Congress! So were we
endeavoring to bulwark and balustrade our slave-system about, in
the name of a Christian Republicanism, when it was struck by the
lightnings of a righteous retribution, and the world is rid of it
forever. And our old nationality went down in the ruin. Now we
are divided, distracted, deranged in currency, commerce,
diplomacy, with State and Federal liabilities resting on the
people, amounting to not less than six thousand millions of
dollars, not to speak of current expenditures which are also
appalling; with a President whose weakness finds no parallel but
in his wickedness, with a Secretary of State who has become his
full counterpart in both, and a Senate too cowardly, or too
corrupt, to impeach the one or to seek the removal of the other!

For more than two years we have been attempting to restore the
fragments of our once boasted Union. With the history and
experience of forty centuries shining back upon us, so far we
have failed. And under any existing or proposed policy we shall
fail. By all the claims of justice and righteousness, we deserve
to fail; for we are still defying those claims. The son of Priam,
a priest of Apollo, was commissioned to offer a sacrifice to
propitiate the god of the sea. But the offering not being
acceptable, there came up two enormous serpents from the deep and
attacked the priest and his two sons who stood with him at the
altar. The father attempted to defend his sons; but the serpents
falling upon him, enfolded him and them in their complicated
coils, and strangled them to a terrible death. Let this
government beware. The very union proposed will only bind and
hold us together as in the deadly folds of a serpent more fearful
than all the fabled monsters of the past! And so, hitherto,
republics are no exception to the general law. Rickets in
infancy, convulsions in childhood, or premature rheumatisms, have
brought the nations of history to untimely deaths. Material
interests may flourish, and nations grow great and powerful, make
wars and conquests, and rule the world. The ancients did all
this, but where are those haughty omnipotences now? Charlemagne
did but little less, and in half a century his magnificence was
brought to nought. Spain survived a l