anded on
their shores the same political privileges as those possessed and
intelligently exercised by the farmers and mechanics of New England, the
most enlightened men of their class to be found in the world.

The gradual encroachment of the Southern politicians upon the liberties of
the North, by their unrelaxing influence in Congress and over successive
cabinets and presidents, was not without its effect in stimulating some
resistance on the part of Northern statesmen of sufficient intelligence to
perceive the inevitable results towards which this preponderance in the
national counsels was steadily tending; and I need not remind you of the
rapidity and force with which General Jackson quelled an incipient
rebellion in South Carolina, when Mr. Calhoun made the tariff question the
pretext for a threatened secession in 1832, of the life-long opposition to
Southern pretensions by John Quincy Adams, of the endeavour of Mr. Clay to
stem the growing evil by the conditions of the Missouri compromise, and
all the occasional attempts of individuals of more conscientious
convictions than their fellow-citizens on the subject of the sin of
slavery, from Dr. Channing's eloquent protest on the annexation of Texas,
to Mr. Charles Sumner's philippic against Mr. Brooks of South Carolina.

The disorganisation of the Democratic party, after a cohesion of so many
years, at length changed the aspect of affairs; and the North appeared to
be about to arouse itself from its apathetic consent to Southern
domination. The Republican party, headed by Colonel Fremont, who was known
to be an anti-slavery man, nearly carried the presidential election six
years ago, and then every preparation had been made in the South for the
process of secession, which was only averted by the election of Mr.
Buchanan, a pro-slavery Southern sympathiser, though born in Pennsylvania.
Under his presidency, the Southern statesmen, resuming their attitude of
apparent friendliness with the North, kept in abeyance, maturing and
perfecting by every treasonable practice, for which their preponderating
share in the cabinet afforded them fatal facilities, the plan of the
violent disruption of the Union, upon which they had determined whenever
the Republican party should have acquired sufficient strength, to elect a
president with Northern views. Before, however, this event occurred, the
war in Kansas rang a prophetic peal of warning through the land; and the
struggle there b