all the Southern States united. Virginia was then the empire
State of the Union, and Rhode Island the least; but great, aristocratic
Virginia furnished only seven hundred more soldiers than little,
democratic Rhode Island. New England furnished more than half the troops
raised during the Revolution; and the great centres of aristocracy in
the Middle and Southern States were the stronghold of Toryism during the
war. Indeed, a glance at the map of the Eastern and Middle States
reveals the fact that the headquarters of the 'peace party' in the
Revolutionary and the present war are in precisely the same localities.
The 'Copperhead' districts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are
the old Tory districts of the Revolution. The Tories of that day, with
the mass of the Southern aristocracy, tried to 'stop the war' which was
to lay the foundations of the freedom of all men. The Tories of to-day
are engaged in the same infamous enterprise, and their fate will be the
same.

Had the Slave Power been united in 1776, we should never have gained our
independence. But it was divided. Every State was nominally a Slave
State; but slaveholders were divided into two classes. The first was led
by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other illustrious aristocrats,
North and South; and, like the Liberal lords of Great Britain, threw
their influence on the side of the people. This party, very strong in
Virginia, very weak in the Carolinas, dragged the South through the war
by the hair of its head; and compelled it to come into the Union. It
also resolved to abolish the Slave Power, and succeeded in consecrating
the whole Northwestern territory to freedom as early as 1790. The
opposition party had its headquarters at Charleston, was treasonable or
luke-warm during the war, and refused to come into the Union without
guarantees for slavery.

The result of the whole struggle was, that the people of the thirteen
colonies, with the help of a portion of their aristocracy, severed the
country from Great Britain, and established a Government by which they,
the people, believed themselves able, in time, to control the whole
Union, and secure personal liberty in every State. For 'the compromises
of the Constitution' mean just this: that our National Government was a
great arena on which aristocracy and democracy could have a free fight.
If the aristocracy beat, that Government would be made as despotic as
South Carolina; if the democracy triumphed