THE PEACEFUL REMEDY.

THERE is one notable feature in the attitude of the South. The cry of disunion comes, not from those who suffer most from Northern outrage, but from those who suffer least. It comes from South Carolina and Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, whose slave property is rendered comparatively secure by the intervention of other slaveholding States between them and the free States, and not from Delaware, and Maryland, and Virginia, and Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri, which lose a hundred slaves by abolition thieves where the first-named States lose one. Why are not the States that suffer most, loudest in their cry for disunion? It is because their position enables them to see more distinctly than you do, at a distance, the fatal and instant effects of such a step. As imperfect as the protection which the Constitution and laws give to their property undoubtedly is, it is better than none. They do not think it wise to place themselves in a position to have the John Browns of the North let loose upon them, with no other restraints than the laws of war between independent nations construed by reckless fanatics. They prefer to fight the abolitionists, if fight they must, within the Union, where their adversaries are somewhat restrained by constitutional and legal obligations. No, sir; Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia do not intend to become the theatre of desolating wars between the North and South; Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri do not intend that their peaceful channels of commerce shall become rivers of blood to gratify the ambition of South Carolina and Alabama, who at a remote distance from present danger cry out disunion.

The South has all along had a peaceful remedy and has it still. What ought to have been the preventive, must now be the remedy. Should Lincoln, in November next, secure a majority of the electors, patriotic men, North and South, without waiting for his inauguration, irrespective of party lines and throwing aside all minor considerations, must band together for the triple purpose of preventing any attempt to break up the Union, checking the Republican party while in the ascendant, and expelling them from power at the next election. Let the toast of General Jackson, "The Federal Union-it must be preserved," become the motto of the party, while strict construction of the Constitution and a jealous regard for the rights of the States shall be its distinguishing principle and unwavering practice. Let the Constitutional principle be adopted of no legislation by Congress

over the Territories, or throw aside altogether the mischiev ous issues in relation to them, of no practical utility, gotten up by demagogues and disunionists, as means of accomplishing their own selfish ends. Let them inflexibly refuse to support, for any Federal or State office, any man who talks of disunion on the one hand or "irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery" on the other. Throw aside all party leaders except such as "keep step to the music of the Union" and are prepared to battle for State rights under its banner. Be this your "platform;" let the South rally upon it as one man, and I would pledge all but my life, that at least one-half of the North will join you in driving from power the reckless assailants of your rights and your institutions.

How much more hopeful and cheering is a prospect like this than the contemplation of standing armies, grinding taxes, ruined agriculture, prostrate commerce, bloody battles, ravaged countries, and sacked cities. This continent, like the Eastern world, is destined to have its "Northern hives." Shall its swarms be repressed by the strong hand of the States united, or are they, by a dissolution of the Union, to be let loose on our South, like the Goths and Vandals upon Southern Europe? True, their blood might, in that event, fertilize your desolated fields, but your institutions, like those of the Roman Empire, would sink to rise no more.

Hon. Amos Kendall, 1860.

TRIBUTE TO THE SUPREME COURT.

MAY it please your honors, this may be the last time that this Court will sit in peaceful judgment on a Constitution acknowledged and obeyed by all. God, in his providence, and for our sins, may, in his inscrutable wisdom, suffer the folly and wickedness of this generation to destroy the fairest, noblest fabric of constitutional freedom ever erected by man. Its whole history, fom the first moment of its operation even to the present hour, bears evidence of its unrivalled excellence. Our country, our whole country, has, from the first, pros pered under it, and because of it, with a rapidity, and in a manner, before or since, unknown to the nations. That prosperity vindicates the wisdom and patriotism of its good and great founders. Is this prosperity now to cease? Is it now to be dashed to the earth? Are the hopes of civilized man the world over, now to be blasted? Are we to become the jest, the scorn, the detestation of the people of the earth?

Are all memory and reverence for the great dead, whom living we admired and adored, to be now forgotten? Is all gratitude for the mighty, trying struggles of our fathers now to end? Are the warnings, the parting warnings of the peerless man of all this world, now to be disregarded and despised? Is the country of Washington, consecrated by his valor, wisdom, and virtue, to freedom and peace, now to be converted into a wild scene of disorder, fraternal strife, bloodshed, war? May heaven in its mercy forbid! May it stay the arm of the madman, arrest it in mid career before it strikes the fatal, parricidal blow. May it give time for reason and patriotism to resume their sway! May it remove the delusions of the misguided, strengthen the efforts of the patriotic, impart heavenly fire to the eloquence of the faithful statesman; silence, by the universal voice of the good and true men of the nation, the utterances of treason now tainting the air and shocking the ear of patriotism, and the whinings of imbecility now discouraging and sickening the honest public heart! May it, above all, rekindle that fraternal love which bound us together by ties stronger, infinitely stronger, than any which mere government can create, during the whole of our Revolutionary struggle, and has since cheered us on in our pathway to the power and renown which have made ús, until now, the wonder and admiration of the world!

But if all shall fail us, and ruin come; if chaos, worse than chaos, is to be our fate, the spirits of those who have departed, and the survivors who have administered justice in this tribunal, in the general wreck and wretchedness that will ensue, will be left this consolation: that their recorded judgments, now, thank God, the rich inheritance of the world, and beyond the spoiler's reach, will, till time shall be no more, testify to the spotless integrity, the unsurpassed wisdom, the ever bright patriotism, of the men who, from the first, have served their country in this temple, sacred to justice and duty, and to the matchless wisdom of our fathers, who bequeathed it and commended it to the perpetual reverence and support of their sons, and remain a never dying dishonor and reproach to the sons who shall have plotted or permitted its destruction.-Hon. Reverdy Johnson, 1860.

THE PRICE OF PEACE.

WHAT is the use of our discussing on this side the chamber, what we would be satisfied with, when nothing has been offered us, and when we do not believe that we will be per

mitted to retain even that which we now have? If the two senators from New York, the senator from Ohio, the two senators from Illinois, the senator from New Hampshire, the senators from Maine, and others, who are regarded as representative men; who have denied that, by the constitution of the United States, slaves are recognized as property; who have urged and advocated those acts which we regard as aggressive on the part of the people;-if they will rise here and say in their places that they desire to propose amendments to the constitution and beg that we will vote for them; that they will, in good faith, go to their respective constituencies and urge the ratification; that they believe, if these Gulf States will suspend their action, that these amendments will be ratified and carried out; that they will cease preaching "the irrepressible conflict;" and if they will assure us that abolition societies shall be abolished; that abolition presses shall be suppressed; that abolition speeches shall no longer be made; that we shall have peace and quiet; that we shall not be called cut-throats, and pirates, and murderers; that our women shall not be slandered; these things being said in good faith, the senators begging that we will stay our hand until an honest effort can be made, I believe that there is a prospect of giving them a fair consideration.

Unless the newspapers have given a false account of the fact, your President elect, a few months before his nomination, was a kind of abolition lecturer, speaking at one hundred dollars a lecture, throughout the country, exciting the people against us. We say to the northern States: You shall not that is the word I choose to use, and I reflect the feeling and determination of the people I represent when I use it-you shall not permit men to excite your citizens to make John Brown raids, or bring fire and strychnine within the limits of the State to which I owe my allegiance. You shall not publish newspapers and pamphlets to excite our slaves to insurrection. You shall not publish newspapers and pamphlets to excite the non-slaveholders against the slaveholder, or the slaveholders against the non-slaveholders. We will have peace; and if you do not offer it to us, we will quietly withdraw from the Union and establish a government for ourselves, as we have a right under the constitutional compact to do; and if you then persist in your aggressions, we will leave it to the sovereign States to settle that question,

"Where the battle's wreck lies thickest,

And death's brief pang is quickest.”

And when you laugh at these impotent threats, as you regard them, I tell you that cotton is king!

Hon. Louis T. Wigfall, 1860.

THE CORDON OF FREE STATES.

THE great ground of complaint has narrowed itself down to this: that, as a people, we desire to surround the slave States with a cordon of free States, and thereby destroy the institution of slavery: to treat it like a scorpion girt by fire. Suppose that circling slavery with a cordon of free States were a cause of separation, and therefore war with us; is it not just as much so with anybody else? It is no greater crime for a Massachusetts man or an Oregon man to circle, girdle, and thereby kill slavery, than for a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or a Mexican. It is as much a cause of war against France, or England, or Mexico, as against us.

Circle slavery with a cordon of free States! Why, if I read history and observe geography rightly, it is so girdled now. Which way can slavery extend itself that it does not encroach upon the soil of freedom? Has the senator thought of that? It cannot go North, though it is trying very hard. It cannot go into Kansas, though it made a convulsive effort, mistaking a spasm for strength. It cannot go South, because, amid the degradation and civil war and peonage of Mexico, if there be one thing under heaven they hate worse than another, it is African slavery. It cannot reach the islands of the sea, for they are under the shadow of France, that guards their shores against such infectious approach.

Nay, more. We of the northern and western States are the only allies you have got in the world. It is to us that, in the hour of your extremest trial, you are to look for sympathy, for succor, for support. You have with us what you call a league; what you call a compact; what we call a united government, by which we are bound, in some points of view, to recognize your institution, and to afford you support in the hour of your danger. Why, sir, if your slaves revolt, if there be among you domestic insurrection-God grant the hour may never come!—we are called upon by our constitutional obligation to march to your support; and, though there be nothing worse than to fight in a servile war, unless it be to suffer in one, we of the North, when that hour shall arrive, will march to sustain you, our brethren, our kindred, the people of our race, with all our power.