n to secede, and thus dissolve the
Union. They saw they must agitate some other issue to unify the South
more thoroughly and justify Disunion. On looking over the whole field
they concluded that the Slavery question would best answer their
purpose, and they adopted it.

It was doubtless a full knowledge of the fact that they had adopted it,
that led Jackson to make the declaration, heretofore in these pages
given, which has been termed "prophetic." At any rate, thenceforth the
programme of the Conspirators was to agitate the Slavery question in all
ways possible, so as to increase, extend and solidify the influence and
strength of the Slave power; strain the bonds uniting them with the Free
States; and weaken the Free States by dividing them upon the question.
At the same time the Free-Trade question was to be pressed forward to a
triumphal issue, so that the South might be enriched and strengthened,
and the North impoverished and weakened, by the result.

That was their programme, in the rough, and it was relentlessly adhered
to. Free-Trade and Slavery by turns, if not together, from that time
onward, were ever at the front, agitating our People both North and
South, and not only consolidating the Southern States on those lines, as
the Conspirators designed, but also serving ultimately to consolidate,
to some extent--in a manner quite unlooked for by the Conspirators
--Northern sentiment, on the opposite lines of Protection and Freedom.

The Compromise Tariff Act of 1833--which Clay was weak enough to
concede, and even stout old Jackson to permit to become law without his
signature--gave to the Conspirators great joy for years afterward, as
they witnessed the distress and disaster brought by it to Northern homes
and incomes--not distress and disaster alone, but absolute and
apparently irreparable ruin.

The reaction occasioned by this widespread ruin having brought the Whigs
into power, led to the enactment of the Protective-Tariff of 1842 and
--to the chagrin of the Conspirators--industrial prosperity and plenty to
the Free North again ensued.

Even as Cain hated his brother Abel because his sacrifices were
acceptable in the sight of God, while his own were not, so the Southern
Conspirators, and other Slave-owners also, had, by this time, come to
hate the Northern free-thinking, free-acting, freedom-loving mechanic
and laboring man, because the very fact and existence of his Godgiven
Freedom and higher-result