ill preserve
these exotics when transplanted in the American soil. The prevailing
elements are not suited to their organization; they cannot be
naturalized and acclimated. This continent, with its peculiar population
and antecedents, has its own political _fauna_ and _flora_, fixed by
nature and destiny, which cannot be utterly changed at the will of any
human authority.

The most wicked and disastrous experiment of the age has been tried upon
the grandest scale. It was a bold undertaking to break up the American
Union, and to arrest the progress of its benign principles. To the great
relief and joy of almost universal humanity, the monstrous attempt is
about to result in disgraceful failure. Yet this prodigious enterprise
of destruction was initiated under the most favorable circumstances,
with the most auspicious promise for its fatal success. The malignant
envy of all the instruments of despotism throughout the whole civilized
world were brought to bear against us for the accomplishment of a work
of stupendous ruin--the annihilation of American nationality, American
power, and American freedom. All the bad, restless, retrogressive
elements of our own population sought alliance with the foreign enemies
of human liberty; and, for the most selfish and detestable of all social
and political schemes, attempted to prostrate the paternal government of
their country, before the expiration of the first century of its
unexampled career. Vast armies of deluded citizens, led by degenerate
sons of the republic--ingrates, educated at her own military
schools--have impiously defied her lawful authority, and sometimes
assailed her with unnatural triumph over her arms; while foreign
capital, subsidized by prospective piratical plunder, has filled the
ocean with daring cruisers to destroy her commerce, and thus to weaken
the right hand of her power. Feathers from the wing of her own eagle
have plumed the arrows directed at her heart; while the barb has been
steeled and sharpened by the aid of mercenary enemies in distant
lands--aid purchased by means of the robberies which have desolated one
half the land. Deep and dangerous have been the wounds inflicted on our
unhappy country through this shameless combination of traitors at home
and enemies of humanity abroad; but she still stands erect, though
bleeding, with her great strength yet comparatively undiminished, and
with her foot uplifted ready to be planted on the breast of her
pros