ing civilization was a powerful and perpetual
protest against the--abounding iniquities and degradations of Slavery as
practiced by themselves.

Hence, by trickery, by cajoling the People With his, and their own,
assurances that he was in favor of Protection--they secured the election
in 1844 of a Free-Trade President, the consequent repeal of the
Protective-Tariff of 1842--which had repaired the dreadful mischief
wrought by the Compromise Act of 1833--and the enactment of the infamous
Free-Trade Tariff of 1846, which blasted the manufacturing and farming
and trade industries of the Country again, as with fire.

The discovery of the great gold fields of California, and the enormous
amount of the precious metal poured by her for many succeeding years
into the lap of the Nation, alone averted what otherwise would
inevitably have been total ruin. As it was, in 1860, the National
credit had sunk to a lower point than ever before in all its history.
It was confessedly bankrupt, and ruin stalked abroad throughout the
United States.

But while, with rapid pen, the carrying out of that part of the Southern
Conspirators' Disunion programme which related to Free-Trade, is thus
brought again to mind, the other part of that programme, which related
to Slavery, must not be neglected or overlooked. On this question they
had determined, as we have seen, to agitate without ceasing--having in
view, primarily, as already hinted, the extension of Slave territory and
the resulting increase of Slave power in the Land; and, ulteriorly, the
solidifying of that power, and Disunion of the Republic, with a view to
its conversion into an Oligarchy, if not a Monarchy.

The bitterness of the struggle over the admission of Missouri as a Slave
State in 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, was to be revived by the
Conspirators, at the earliest possible moment.

Accordingly in 1836--only three years after the failure of Nullification
in South Carolina, the Territory, of Arkansas was forced in as a Slave
State, and simultaneously the Slave-owning henchmen of the Conspirators,
previously settled there for the purpose, proclaimed the secession from
Mexico, and independence, of Texas. This was quickly followed, in 1844,
by Calhoun's hastily negotiated treaty of annexation with Texas; its
miscarriage in the Senate; and the Act of March 2, 1845--with its sham
compromise--consenting to the admission of Texas to the Union of States.

Then came the War