ivine ordinance--and that Southern non-slaveholders, even, are
prosperous and elevated just in proportion to the number of slaves owned
by their neighbors.

Not such, sir, were the "speculations" of the fathers of the Republic;
nor is the world to be deceived by such assumptions. Decree and carry
out what non-intercourse you will; surround yourselves with barriers as
impassable as the Chinese wall, or the great gulf between Dives and
Lazarus, still the evidences of your condition will exist on the
imperishable pages of history, in the records left by the mighty and
venerated dead; and the attempt to establish the belief that slavery is
a universal blessing will be received but as an aggression upon the
credulity of mankind.

Forty years ago, a slave Territory applied for admission to the Union as
a State. The friends of freedom objected that its reception would be
contrary to the policy of our Government. "Admit it," it was urged,
"with its present Constitution, and we will consent to a line of
demarkation, north of which slavery shall never pass." This was solemnly
agreed to before the whole world; and this compact, forced upon the
country by the slave power, was claimed by it as a great triumph of
slavery. Men at the North felt that this was a great aggression, a great
outrage upon freedom; yet, to give quiet and restore harmony, they
submitted, consoled by the national pledge that slavery should be
extended no further, and believing that the nation might joyously look
forward to long years of happiness and repose. But despotism is ever
restless and grasping; but twenty-five years rolled by--a very short
period in the life of a nation--ere Texas was admitted to the Union,
that slavery propagandists could have a wider field for their
operations. As everybody foresaw, war ensued; and the best blood of the
nation fattened the soil of Mexico. More than two hundred millions of
treasure were expended, and many thousand valuable lives sacrificed. All
over this land, "the sky was hung with blackness;" "mourning was spread
over the mountain tops." Territory enough was obtained to make four
large States, well adapted to the productive labor of human chattels,
and this territory was blackened over with slavery. Such a triumph ought
to have satisfied the most grasping of the friends of this "peculiar
institution;" but the world should have known that nothing short of
universal dominion would satisfy the slave owner and slave bre