dent sovereign state. Texas, thus independent and sovereign, sought annexation to the United States. In the very hour when the virtue of a sufficient number of the unprivileged classes was giving way to effect a constitutional annexation of Texas, the president of the United States, with a senate not less subservient to the privileged class, executed a coup d'etat by which that state unlawfully, and in defiance of all precedent, came into the Union under a covenant stipulating that four new slave states might be created out of its territory and admitted as slave states, while, by a solemn mockery, an inconsiderable fragment that lay north of 36o 30' was ostentatiously dedicated to freedom. There remained no other new territory within the United States; and so, by this strange partition of Texas, there was a third final settlement of the pretensions of the privileged class; and it was acquiesced in by the unprivileged class, who thought themselves secure in the old northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787, and equally safe in Kansas and Nebraska by the Missouri compromise.

The public repose that followed the annexation of Texas was of short duration. Mexico resented that offense. A war ensued, and terminated in the transfer of the northern portion of Mexico to the United States. The Mexican municipal laws forbade slavery everywhere, and the new possessions were under that law. Not a whit the less, for that reason, did the privileged class demand either an equal partition, or that the whole should be opened to their colonization with slaves. The house of representatives resisted these pretensions, as it had resisted similar ones before; but the senate seconded the privileged class with its accustomed zeal. So congress was divided, and failed to organize civil governments for the newly acquired Mexican territories, and they were left under martial law. The question raised by the privileged class went down to the electors. The people promptly filled the house of representatives with a majority sternly opposed to the extension of slavery the breadth of a single square mile. They increased the force of the unprivileged class in the senate, while they called to the presidency General Taylor, who, although himself a slaveholder, was committed to non-intervention on the question in congress, and to execute faithfully whatever constitutional laws congress should adopt Under these circumstances, California and New Mexico, youthful communities, practically free from slavery, and uncorrupted by the seductions of

the privileged class or its political organs, hastened to establish constitutions, and apply for admission as free states; while the eccentric population of Deseret, indulging latitudinarian principles equally in matters of religion and of politics, prayed to be received into the Union as a state or as a territory, and with or without slavery, as congress should prescribe. The privileged class remonstrated, and a seditious movement was organized in their behalf in the slaveholding states, to overa we congress, if possible, and to inaugurate revolution if their menaces failed. You all know well the way of that memorable controversy. How eminent men yielded to the menaces without waiting for the revolution, and projected and tendered to the privileged class a new compromise, modeled after the already time-honored compromise of 1820. You all know how firmly, notwithstanding this defection of leaders honored and beloved the house of representatives, and even the senate, repelled the compromise, and how firmly the unprivileged class of freemen throughout the Union demanded the unqualified and unconditional admission of California into the Union, and refused to allot any further territories to the privileged class, for the extension of the system of human bondage. You all remember, too, how in a critical hour the president sickened and died, and how the hearts of congress and of all the people swooned at his grave, and thenceforward all was lost. You remember how the provisional successor of that lamented president with ominous haste accepted the resignation of his cabinet, and committed the seals to a new one, pledged like himself to the adoption of the compromise which the people had condemned; and how at last, after a painful struggle, its adoption was effected. I think, also, that you have not thus soon forgotton the terms of that compromise, the fourth final and everlasting settlement of the conflict between the privileged and the unprivileged classes of this republic. You have not forgotten how the ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery from the region northwest of the Ohio, was left to stand, as an institution too sacred to be even questioned. How the Missouri compromise, which extended that ordinance across the Mississippi, and over all Kansas and Nebraska, was made at once the authority, precedent, and formula, of the new compromise, and even declared to be an irrepealable law forever. How California, which refused to become a slave state, was grudgingly admitted into the Union as a free one. How the hateful and detestVOL. IV.

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able slave auctions were banished from under the eaves of the capitol, quite across to the opposite side of the Potomac river. And how, in consideration of these magnanimous and vast concessions made by the privileged class, it was stipulated that slavery should be continued in the District of Columbia as long as the privileged class should require its continuance. New Mexico, with her free constitution, was superciliously remanded to her native mountains, while, without a hearing, her ancient and free territory was dismembered, and its fairest part transferred to Texas, with the addition of ten millions of dollars, to win its acceptance by that defiant privileged state. You remember how it was solemnly stipulated that Utah and New Mexico, if the slaveholders could corrupt them, should come into the Union, in due time, as slaveholding states; and, finally, how the privileged class, so highly offended and exasperated, were brought to accept this compromise on their part, by a reënactment of the then obsolete fugitive slave law of 1793, with the addition of the revolting features of an attempted suspension of the habeas corpus; an absolute prohibition of the trial by jury; an effective repeal of vital rules of procedure and evidence, and the substitution of commissioners in place of courts of justice, in derogation of the constitution. You all remember how laboriously and ostentatiously this compromise was associated with the time-honored forms and solemnities of the Missouri compromise; how it was declared, not the result of mere legislation, but a contract, with mutual equivalents, by the privileged with the unprivileged classes, irrepealable and even unamendable without perfidy and even treason against the constitution and the Union. You all remember how, notwithstanding your protests and mine, it was urgently, violently, clamorously ratified and confirmed, as a full, fair, final, and perpetual adjustment, by the two great political conventions of the country, representing the whole people of the United States, assembled at Baltimore in 1852; and how the heroic and generous Scott was rejected, to bring into the presidency one who might more safely be trusted to defend and preserve and establish it forever.

Nevertheless, scarcely one year had elapsed, before the privileged class, using some of our own representatives as their instruments, broke up not only this compromise of 1850, but even the compromise of 1820 and the ordinance of 1787, and obtained the declaration of congress, that all these settlements, so far as they were adverse to

the privileged class, were unconstitutional usurpations of legislative power. I do not stop to stigmatize or even to characterize these aggressions. Of what use would it be to charge perfidy, when the losses we deplore have resulted from our own imbecility and cowardice? I do not dwell, as others so often and so justly do, upon the atrocious usurpation of the government of Kansas by the slaveholders of Missouri, nor even on the barbarous and tyrannical code which they have established to stifle freedom in that territory, nor even yet on the fraudulent and nefarious connivance of the president with the usurpers.

Nor will I draw into this picture, already too darkly shaded, the personal humiliations which daily come home to yourselves in the conduct of your own affairs. You are commanded by an unconstitutional law of congress to seize and deliver up to the members of that privileged class their fugitive slaves, under the penalty of imprisonment and forfeiture of your estates. You may not interpose between the armed slaveholder and the wounded slave, to prevent his being murdered, without coming under arrest for treason, nor may you cover his naked and lacerated limbs except by stealth. You have fought twenty years, and with but partial success, for the constitutional right to lay your remonstrances on the table of congress. You may not tell the freed slave who reaches your borders that he is free, without being seized by a federal court, and condemned, without a trial or even an accusation, to an imprisonment without bail or mainprize, and without limitation of sentence. Your representatives in either house of congress must speak with bated breath and humble countenance in presence of the representatives of the privileged class, lest justice he denied to your old soldiers when they claim their pensions, or to your laborers when they claim the performance of their contracts with the government. The president of the United States is reduced to the position of a deputy of the privileged class, emptying the treasury and marshaling battalions and ships of war to dragoon you into the execution of the fugitive slave law on the one hand, while he removes governors and judges, at their command, who attempt to maintain lawful and constitutional resistance against them in the territory of Kansas. The vice-president of the United States and the speaker of the house of representatives are safe men, whom the privileged class can trust in every case. The care of the judiciary of the territories, and even

of the foreign relations, is intrusted in either house to assured supporters of that class. Protection is denied to your wool, while it is freely given to the slaveholder's sugar. Millions of acres of the public domain are freely given to Alabama, for railroads, and even as gratuities, while not a dollar can be obtained to remove the rocks of Hellgate and the sands of the Overslaugh, or the bars in lake St. Clair or those in the mouths of your lake harbors. Canada, lying all along your northern borders, must not even be looked upon, lest you may lust after it, while millions upon millions are lavished in war and diplomacy to annex and spread slavery over Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. Your liberty of speech, where is it? You may not, without severe rebuke, speak of despotism in foreign lands, lest the slave overhear you on the plantations of the privileged class, or the foreign despot visit them in retaliation for your unavailing sympathy. The national flag, the emblem of universal liberty, covers cargoes of slaves, not only in our own view, but flaunts defiance over them in foreign ports. Judges of United States courts, safe under the protection of the president and the senate, charge grand juries in advance of any question, that obnoxious and unequal federal laws are constitutional and obligatory; they give counsel to legislative bodies how to frame laws which they will sustain, instead of waiting to review those laws when enacted. They even convert the writ of freedom to an engine of slavery, and they pervert the power of punishing irregularities committed in their presence into the machinery of a tyranny as odious as that of the star chamber. The privileged class in Virginia imprison your seamen in their ports, in retaliation for the independence of your executive authorities; and you are already in a doubtful struggle for the right to exclude the traffic in slaves from your own borders.

I will only ask, in concluding this humiliating rehearsal, whether there is not in this favored country a privileged class; whether it does not stand on an enduring foundation; whether it is not growing stronger and stronger, while the unprivileged class grows weaker and weaker; whether its further growth and extent would not be, not merely detrimental, but dangerous; and whether there is any hope to arrest that growth and extension hereafter, if the attempt shall not be made now? The change, that has become at last so necessary, is as easy to be made as it is necessary. The whole number of slaveholders