ep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the
hiding place." Moreover, "because ye trust in oppression and
perverseness, and stay thereon; therefore this iniquity shall be to
you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose
breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the
breaking of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not
spare."

This plea is sufficiently broad to cover all the oppression and
villany that the sun has witnessed in his circuit, since God said,
"Let there be light." It assumes that to be practicable, which is
impossible, namely, that there can be freedom with slavery, union with
injustice, and safety with bloodguiltiness. A union of virtue with
pollution is the triumph of licentiousness. A partnership between
right and wrong, is wholly wrong. A compromise of the principles of
Justice, is the deification of crime.

Better that the American Union had never been formed, than that it
should have been obtained at such a frightful cost! If they were
guilty who fashioned it, but who could not foresee all its frightful
consequences, how much more guilty are they, who, in full view of all
that has resulted from it, clamor for its perpetuity! If it was sinful
at the commencement, to adopt it on the ground of escaping a greater
evil, is it not equally sinful to swear to support it for the same
reason, or until, in process of time, it be purged from its
corruption?

The fact is, the compromise alluded to, instead of effecting a union,
rendered it impracticable; unless by the term union are to understand
the absolute reign of the slaveholding power over the whole country,
to the prostration of Northern rights. In the just use of words, the
American Union is and always has been a sham--an imposture. It is an
instrument of oppression unsurpassed in the criminal history of the
world. How then can it be innocently sustained? It is not certain, it
is not even probable, that if it had not been adopted, the mother
country would have reconquered the colonies. The spirit that would
have chosen danger in preference to crime,--to perish with justice
rather than live with dishonor,--to dare and suffer whatever might
betide, rather than sacrifice the rights of one human being,--could
never have been subjugated by any mortal power. Surely it is paying a
poor tribute to the valor and devotion of our revolutionary fathers in
the cause of liberty, to say that