ont, 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-resulting 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 p