of our fathers must go down in the dust, never again to
rise.

Can the enemies of the United States, at home or abroad, suppose that
these vital questions can ever he yielded? That the nation can
voluntarily abdicate its authority, confess the failure of its work for
three quarters of a century; permit all the purposes of its creation to
be utterly thwarted, and tamely and basely surrender all those hopes of
a glorious destiny, which we have ever been taught to cherish as the
goal of our unexampled freedom? The Southern people have been the sport
of many delusions and infatuations; but the belief of these incredible
and impossible suppositions, is the crowning folly of them all. These
restless and daring men occupied the fairest region of the globe, with a
virtual monopoly of the cotton culture. The unexampled increase of the
cotton trade and manufacture, if it had not filled their coffers with
unbounded wealth, had at least given them lavish returns for the labor
of their slaves and enabled them to live in unlimited profusion. That
under such a system they should have little provident care, but should
indulge unbounded confidence in the future, was natural enough, for they
conceived their prosperity, which cost them so little labor or anxiety,
to be in its nature permanent. When, therefore, they saw gradually
approaching the certain downfall of their power, they could not
understand that this was the result of natural causes, but attributed it
to the malignant enmity of the Government. A social organization, so
agreeable, so full of pleasures and advantages, conferring not only ease
and luxury, but also station and authority, must necessarily be right in
itself, and worthy of every effort and every sacrifice to perpetuate it.
What was the Government of the United States, that it should presume to
erect itself as an obstacle to the progress of this rich and powerful
organization? Was not the whole fabric of human industry dependent on
it, and would not foreign nations be compelled by the very helplessness
of their starving people to sustain and defend it? Why should there be
anything sacred in the institutions of the country, when they evidently
tended, by their spirit and operation, to overthrow the power of
slavery? Washington was weak, with all his goodness; Jefferson was a
demagogue; Madison had not forecast enough to see the necessary results
of his political combinations. We have grown wiser; then let us sweep
awa