dulate kings, where kings reign. No one
in recent years has been allowed the open expression of opinion or
argument as to the bad effect of a pro-slavery policy on the great
majority of Southern white population. This would bring the offender
within the Southern definition of an 'incendiary,' and the offense would
be heinous. The pro-slavery spirit has always demanded sycophancy where
its strength was great enough to enforce it, and has ever been ready to
invoke the law of force where its theories were contradicted. Even the
fundamental law of the South, contained in Southern State Constitutions
in favor of the 'freedom of speech, and freedom of the press,' is mere
rhetorical flourish, where slavery is concerned. It means that you must
adulate slavery if you speak of it; and woe to the man that gives this
fundamental law any broader interpretation. In its amiable moods, the
pro-slavery spirit is often made to appear the gentleman. In its angry,
jealous moods, it is both a ruffian and an assassin. Mr. Sumner, of the
Senate, once sat for its picture--twice in his turn he drew it--each
portrait was a faithful resemblance.

Had we been exempt from slavery and its influences, it is difficult to
conceive what possible pretense could have been raised up for
revolution. What position could have been taken showing the necessity of
disenthrallment from oppressive government? There would have existed no
element of political discontent that could by any possibility have
culminated in rebellion, aside from the active, jealous, and
unscrupulous influence of slaveholders. Rebellion and treason required
the lead and direction of an ambitious and reckless class; a class
actuated by gross and selfish passions, in disconnection with sympathy
for the masses. It required a class stripped and bereft by habits of
thinking of the spirit of political beneficence, devoid of national
honor, national pride, and national fidelity. Nothing less unscrupulous
would have answered to plot, to carry forward, and to manage the
incidents of the attempted dismemberment of the Union. It required
something worse in its nature than Benedict Arnold susceptibility. His
might have been crime, springing from sudden resentment or imaginary
wrong. The other is the result of thirty years' concoction under adroit,
hypocritical, and unscrupulous leaders. The slaveholders' rebellion has
assumed a magnitude commensurate only with long contemplation of the
subject. Making