THE
HE present aspect of American poli-

tics invites reflection and calm discussion. The issues which have formerly divided our people into two great parties have passed, or are rapidly passing away. Upon no single question of present practical moment can either the whig party or the democratic party be rallied in unbroken phalanx. The life of their organizations is gone. The age presents new issues, in comparison with which the old shibboleths fade into insignificance; and, under new banners, with new devices, the yeomanry of the country are rallying. We have arrived at a stand-point in history when it behooves every patriot man to pause and reflect. The living present imposes the weightiest responsibilities; the past is teeming with instruction; and the future is radiant with hope. Three-quarters of a century bound the horizon of the former, but the piercing eye of faith seeks, in vain, a limit in the long vista of the latter. Yet, to the more despondent, there are shades and shadows ahead. Meridian light does not illumine every footprint of the future. America, however, expects every man to do his duty; and if we are but true to the sacred trust He has devolved upon us, our confidence is strong that in His own good time the Spirit of our fathers' God will move above the troubled waters with creative power, evolving light from darkness.

The old political parties of our country are just now thoroughly disorganized. The necessity for new issues, and a rearrangement of the elements of warfare, is manifest to the most casual observer. Hence, the rapid progress of a secret society which has recently made its appearance among us, and for which its more sanguine friends anticipate, at no distant day, a controlling influence in the counsels of the Confederacy. So far as we can gather its objects, the organization rests upon a single idea of federal policy. The amendment of the naturalization laws, so as to require a longer residence in the applicant for the rights of American citizenship, seems to be their only distinctive political suggestion. They may accomplish this, though we doubt it. Whether they do or not, the VOL. IV.-41

organization, we are satisfied, will be ephemeral in existence, and abortive in result. We readily admit the excessive provocation which animates their efforts. The indecent and habitual intrusion of popery, as a political element, into all our elections of late years, naturally suggests the proscription of its adherents and sympathizers; and the disgusting truckling of our political aspirants to the prejudices of our alien population, indicates the propriety of a counterpoise element at the polls. The Know-Nothings have already exercised a salutary influence, to some extent, in developing the genuine American sentiment of our people -a sentiment which both parties, from prudential considerations, have concurred in suppressing. Were they content to maintain a secondary position, this influence might be extended and perpetuated; but, in aspiring to the control of the State and Federal Governments, they seal their early ruin. We do not make issue with them upon the propriety of their proposed change in the naturalization laws. But that will not suffice to accomplish the end they have in view. Many of the States confer the elective franchise upon resident aliens prior to their naturalization. That may or may not be a violation of the Constitution, but it clearly indicates that the concurrence of all the State Governments in the legislation suggested, is essential to its success. presume, the most sanguine KnowNothings dare not hope for contemporaneous success in each of the thirty-one States of the Confederacy. Their actual strength is already, we believe, vastly over-estimated, and will diminish, we are satisfied, as rapidly as it has arisen. The spell of mystery with which their proceedings are invested is potent for temporary effect. Curiosity will introduce among them many whose reason they might in vain address. So soon, however, as the charm of novelty is dissipated, there will be numerous desertions from their ranks; and so there should be, as long as their secresy is maintained. The obvious impropriety of secret political societies is a burden under which no principle of public policy, however wise, can stagger into

We

success. The disorganization of the party may be anticipated at no very distant day, and with the disorganization will come a recoil disastrous to its upholders now. Popery will gloat over the abortion as her triumph. The foreign vote will be ten times as exacting as it has ever been; and KnowNothingism will see the evils she professes it her mission to remedy, enhanced and perpetuated by herself.

The present aspect of the slavery agitation seems to present a much more probable basis for permanent party strife. The elements of anti-slavery appear inclined to harmonize their differences, and concentrate their strength for one grand and persevering assault upon the vested rights of the South. With the instinct of self-preservation, her sons are preparing to ignore past differences, and unite for the conflict. With a front unbroken, save here and there by a single traitor, they await the shock. Come when it may, or how it may, the South is practically a unit at last.

The institution of African slavery existed in nearly all of the States at the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution. It was even then so thoroughly interwoven with their domestic polity, that the entire and absolute control over the subject was reserved to themselves. We need not say that all the powers of the Federal Government are derived by grant from the States, and that the entire grant is contained in the provisions of the Federal Constitution. In that instrument we look in vain for any grant or any covenant divesting the individual States of their inherent rights to regulate the whole subject as in their wisdom may seem most expedient. three clauses refer to the subject. One was a compromise in the apportionment of representation between the Slave States and the Free States; another contains the explicit and solemn covenant for the return of fugitive slaves; and the third empowers the Federal Government, after 1808, to prohibit the African slave trade. Contemporary history, in confirmation of the pregnant negative of the grant, informs us that more extensive powers were carefully and cautiously avoided.

But

The inquiry may well suggest itself here-how, under these circumstances, the question ever intruded into the arena of federal politics? Certainly the South never brought it there; and no less certainly its introduction indicates

bad faith somewhere. But of this more anon. There it is: to that extent the aggression is complete.

Early in their colonial history, slavery was introduced into the colonies. The mother country-that same England which so recently received the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with open arms -encouraged the importation of slaves from Africa, and in spite of the protests and remonstrances of the colonies fastened the system upon them. In Virginia, and perhaps in other colonies, the legislatures essayed to prohibit the traffic; but in every instance the negative of the Royal Governor interposed to protect it. The preamble to the first Constitution of Virginia enumerates this among other prominent causes of complaint against the King of England-provoking her repudiation of his rule. When the independence of the colonies was established, the prohibition of the African slave trade was still with her a favorite measure of policy, and, in the formation of the Federal Constitution, she desired to empower and require the new government to place the traffic under the ban of law. But to this Massachusetts and New York demurred. With the exclusion of European competition they reckoned upon a monopoly of the profits of the trade, and earnestly opposed its suppression. With the aid of South Carolina and Georgia, they extorted a respite for twenty years. The predominant sentiment of the Slave States called for the immediate abolition of the traffic, and that sentiment ought to have been respected. Even then, however, the South 'was not permitted to regulate her domestic institutions for herself. For nearly one quarter of a century she was forced to receive into her bosom a population she then believed an enemy to her peace, and an impediment to her prosperity. New England avarice fastened upon her that institution, for the existence of which New England fanaticism now makes war against her. Abolition never grew upon New England soil till the year that doomed her favorite traffic had passed: but, in a few fleeting years thereafter, it was a tree of sturdy growth. The slave trade was suppressed in 1808. In 1814, the Hartford Convention denounced the slave power of the South, and suggested a crusade against the compromises of the Constitution.

We readily admit that the general sentiment of the colonies, during the revolutionary era, was adverse to sla

very; and nowhere did that sentiment prevail more extensively than in the South. With that devotion to abstract principle which has ever characterized her, Virginia, in donating an empire to the Confederacy, exacted a covenant for the perpetual exclusion of her own institutions. An impression almost universally existed that slavery was to be but temporary in its duration. The slave States cheerfully assented to the antislavery provisions of the ordinance of 1787. Their policy was the immediate prohibition of the foreign trade, and the number of slaves among them was not more than sufficient to supply their own pressing demands. Had importation from abroad then ceased, abolition might have been practicable and easy. But that twenty years of respite did its work effectually. Day by day and hour by hour the anti-slavery statesmen of the South saw their hopes decay. The destiny of the South was fixed against her will. Sister States, who had repudiated slavery as an incubus upon them, and professed to regard slave-holding as a violation of the "perennial principles of right," ignored their professions, and for filthy lucre's sake, imposed slavery upon. her, perpetuating among her people the "sin" of the slaveholder and the "misfortune" of the slave.

Abolitionism claims to be the party of progress. So did Jacobinism, and with equal propriety. The one as little as the other conceals the features of the ass under the skin of the lion. Robespierre and Saint Just were as loud in their protestations of loyalty to the principles of '76 as Garrison and Sumner; and, if not as honest, were quite as rational. The American Jacobins are not unlike their French prototypes. Blood and carnage, fraternal discord, and civil war are as rashly courted now as in 1793. They differ in this respect, however: the madmen of France evoked a storm to spend its fury in their own midst. The fanatics of America sow the seed of strife abroad, and gloat in coward malignity over the anticipated triumph of a servile insurrection, from the hazards of which distance protects them. The one no less than the other ridicules the teachings of experience and revelation. The God of the Bible is not the God of equality, and Abolitionism rejects him as disdainfully, if not as openly, as Jacobinism. The infidel spirit of this anti-slavery crusade is at once its damning crime and the unerring index

of its failure. The printing-press. with which Voltaire designed to overthrow the Bible, is now publishing its words of life and truth to a world of sin and death. Man may not with impunity thrust himself against the bosses of Jehovah's buckler. Anti-slavery directly impugas either the wisdom or benevolence of our Saviour, for its interpolations into the inspired code of morals prosume the inefficiency of his morality to accomplish the end for which it was designed. Abolition preachers of our day profess to believe themselves recreant to duty, if they fail to denounce slavery at a distance. The Son of God lived and moved in a slaveholding country and a slaveholding age, and from his sacred lips slavery never received a single rebuke. If they be right, could he have been the God-man? Some short time since, a friend was discussing the Maine liquor law with an ultra temperance man, and in the course of conversation he adverted to the miracle at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. The prompt reply was, “I have always regarded that the greatest indiscretion Jesus ever committed." The shocking blasphemy of the expression is a key to the radical principle of more than one ism of the day. It is the vain effort of human pride to amend the work of divine wisdom. The spectacle of foolish man thus passing judgment upon his God, and pronouncing him incompetent for the accomplishment of his holy purposes, and assuming them for himself, will, when properly considered, yet awaken in all sections of our country a public sentiment that will sweep the God-defying empiricism from among us with the besom of destruction. We do not pretend to impute infidelity to all abolitionists. Many of the best of our northern brethren, we know, have been misled into their ranks by names and abstractions. Slavery, as it exists in the South, is not known to a fraction of the people of the North. Misrepresented and distorted as it has been, we have, perhaps, reason for congratulation in the existence of any class among them willing to do us justice. We speak now of the creed, and not of its professors. It is a legitimate offshoot from that school of sentimental piety that assumes to try the mysteries of the Godhead by the standard of human comprehension, consistently denying the divinity of the Saviour and the inspiration of the Bible. In the pulpits of that faith it finds an appropriate place. The heresiarchs of

Socinianism do their master's work as effectually, if not as openly, in preaching abolitionism, as they do in preaching Unitarianism. But its intrusion into the Christian pulpit is a very different affair. Abolition has nothing in consonance with its high and holy mission. The unwary watcher on the walls of Zion who tampers with the monster is recreant to his trust, and false to his Master. If, as a Christian, his heart recoil not from the serpent; if, as a citizen, the possible calamities of disunion and civil war have no terrors for him, let him, in his individual capacity, speed on the hellish work; but, in the name of a common Christianity and a common manhood, we have a right to demand that he profane not the Christian pulpit. In the uncompromising

consecration of the sacred desk to its heaven-ordained work is the hope of a lost and ruined world. When the passions of earth intrude there, society trembles to its centre, and devils revel at the prospect. Hell will hold a carnival when the genius of abolition furls her wings in triumph over the "broken and dissevered fragments of a once glorious Union;" but if, amid her dark abodes, some messenger from this world could proclaim the universal prostitution of the pulpit, the walls of Tophet would ring with even a wilder joy.

Had the States never formed a Confederacy, this abolition war could never have assumed a threatening aspect. The North would not have ventured to encourage an agitation, the inevitable effect of which would have been continual war with her neighbors. But protected, as she has been, by the existence of a bond of apparently permanent union, a fanatical crusade against us has been in open and shameless contempt of the covenant fostered and encouraged. It originated in no morbid affection for the slave. In its beginning, as it is now in its meridian, it was purely and exclusively a question of political power. The war of 1812 had been initiated under the auspices of a Southern President, and with the cordial co-operation of the Southern members of Congross. New England bitterly opposed the war; and upon that question the leaders of the old Federal party, then in a state of decadence, hoped to rally once more a successful party. Many of the then prominent expectants of the Presidency were Southern men. The Democratic party were in power, and its policy and affiliations were mainly Southern;

hence the Federal policy of arousing a sectional feeling-a policy which first found open expression in the treasonable resolves of the Hartford Convention. The suggestion there was to amend the Federal Constitution, so as to deprive the South of the representation of threefifths of her slaves. But the managers of the Hartford cabal mistook their strength and over-shot the mark. The stench of treason attached itself to their deliberations, and sank every participant in them to "a political damnation so deep that the hand of resurrection never did reach them." Their suggestion was obviously impracticable, inasmuch as it could only be accomplished by the aid of several of the slave States. It was enough, however, to indicate the gathering of the storm, which in a few years burst with all its fury upon a peaceful and happy people. Missouri was about completing her territorial pupilage, and asked permission to form a State constitution preparatory to her admission into the Union. As a component part of the territory of Louisiana, it was slave territory when we acquired it, and so it had continued. Her application was objected to, unless she would assent to repudiate her Southern institutions and abolish slavery, as a preliminary to her admission. The passions and prejudices of the people of the North were roused by the most inflammatory and insidious appeals, until the whole body of the Northern representation in Congress ranged themselves in solid phalanx. The principle asserted was most odious to the South, and at war with the whole spirit of the Constitution. In vain did she demand the warrant for prescribing terms to the incipient State, and especially for stigmatizing her and hers by exacting as the condition of admission the repudiation of an institution interwoven into her social polity. The Federal Government is the creature of the States. All her powers are derived by express grant, and are limited in their character. Constitution confers upon Congress the right to admit new States; but, when admitted, they stand upon a footing of perfect equality with the original thirteen. Theoretically, Ohio and Kentucky, California and Florida are as much the creators of the General Government as Virginia or New York. The essential principle of the Constitution is, entire and absolute equality among all the States. If Congress can impose terins,

The

then every new State may come in upon a different footing. From one she may exact an obligation to admit negro suffrage —another she may require solemnly to repudiate this or that construction of controverted clauses of the Constitution. To-day she may impose slavery upon one, and to-morrow she may demand its abolition in another. There is no limit outside of the express provisions of the Constitution to the discretion of Congress. The Constitution does not profess to define the powers of the State; in express terms it provides that, "the powers not delegated to the United States by itself, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people." The anti-Missouri heresy, however, proceeds upon the principle that all powers and rights not expressly granted or reserved to the State-such as the equality of representation in the Senate may be prohibited by Congress to the new State. The United States are required to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, but it is a form only, when its institutions and laws are modelled to accommodate the will of others than the governed. Where is the grant of power necessary to enforce the observance of the terms? Suppose a State admitted this year upon the condition of abolishing slavery convenes a new convention next year and re-establishes it. What then? Can Congress resolve her out of the Union? Can the General Government abolish slavery in her limits? If not, of what avail was the original restriction. Surely, if that was constitutional, the framers of that instrument would have provided some means to enforce the observance of her faith by the covenant-breaking State.

A bill was originated in the House of Representatives, authorizing the people of Missouri to form a constitution and State government, and after the insertion of a provision abolishing slavery, passed by the House against the unanimous vote of the Southern representatives. In the Senate, upon motion of Mr. Thomas, of Illinois, the prohibition clause was stricken out, and in lieu of it was inserted the so-called Missouri Compromise, which was nothing more, nor less, than a prohibition of slavery for all future time in the territory outside of the limits of Missouri and north of her southern boundary, accompanied with a provision for her admission on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatsoever. As an alternative

proposition to the other, the Southern men, generally, sustained the compromise proposed by Mr. Thomas, and with the aid of a few conservative men from the north, passed it through both Houses of Congress. There has latterly been considerable discussion as to the paternity of this measure, and the responsibility of its adoption has been variously imputed to the North or the South, as best suited the temporary purposes of the writer or speaker. It is not, however, we think, a subject for difference. The North certainly imposed upon the South the alternative, and the South as certainly accepted the compromise in preference to the prohibition. We do not consider this, however, a matter of vital moment at this date. It is, in our judgment, a plain and palpable usurpation of power, and we regret that the South ever did accede to it. Then was the appropriate time to meet the aggression, if not successfully elsewhere, at the point of the bayonet and the muzzle of the cannon. Resolute and unyielding resistance then would have strangled the monster in its cradle. In pursuance of the act of Congress, the people inet, adopted a Constitution, and organized a State government. When Congress reassembled, the Senate promptly passed a resolution declaring Missouri a member of the Confederacy. In the House, however, it encountered most vehement opposition. The compromise made the year previous was openly repudiated, and Missouri refused the admission to which the public faith was plighted. Exception was taken to a clause in her Constitution, empowering the legislature to prohibit the emigration of free negroes; and upon this pretext her entrance into the Union was resisted. A similar provision existed then in Massachusetts, and at this day in Indiana and Illinois. The true objection was elicited upon a proposition of Mr. Mallory, of Vermont, to amend the resolution, by inserting, as a preliminary to her admission, a requisition upon Missouri to alter her Constitution and abolish slavery. Upon the call of the ayes and noes, 61 representatives from the North voted aye, and but 33 no. The former compromise was repudiated by the House, and new concessions were demanded. Upon motion of Mr. Clay, a joint committee of 23 on the part of the House, and 7 on the part of the Senate, was appointed to consider the subject. They reported a resolution providing for