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spinners of Massachusetts, the stevedores of New York, the miners of Pennsylvania, Pike's Peak and California, the wheat-growers of Indiana, the cotton and the sugar planters on the Mississippi, among the voluntary citizens from every other land, not less than the native born, the Christian and the Jew, among the Indians on the prairies, the contumacious Mormons in Deseret, the Africans free, the Africans in bondage, the inmates of hospitals and alms-houses, and even the criminals in the penitentiaries, rehearse the story of your wrongs and their own, never so eloquently and never so mournfully, and appeal to them to rise. They will ask you, "Is this all?" you more just than Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more humane than Jefferson ?" "What new form of government or of union have you the power to establish, or even the cunning to devise, that will be more just, more safe, more free, more gentle, more beneficent, or more glorious than this?" And by these simple interrogatories you will be silenced and confounded.

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We are perpetually forgetting this subtle and complex, yet obvious and natural mechanism of our constitution; and because we do forget it, we are continually wondering how it is that a confederacy of thirty and more states, covering regions so vast, and regulating interests so various of so many millions of men, constituted and conditioned so diversely, works right on. We are continually looking to see it stop and stand still, or fall suddenly into pieces. But, in truth, it will not stop; it cannot stop; it was made not to stop, but to keep in motion-in motion always, and without force. For my own part, as this wonderful machine, when it had newly come from the hands of its almost divine inventors, was the admiration of my earlier years, although it was then but imperfectly known abroad, so now, when it forms the central figure in the economy of the world's civilization, and the best sympathies of mankind favor its continuance, I expect that it will stand and work right on until men shall fear its failure no more than we now apprehend that the sun will cease to hold his eternal place in the heavens.

Nevertheless, I do not expect to see this purely popular though majestic system always working on unattended by the presence and exhibition of human temper and human passions. That would be to expect to enjoy rewards, benefits and blessings, without labor, care and watchfulness-an expectation contrary to divine appointment. These are the discipline of the American citizen, and he

must inure himself to it. When, as now, a great policy, fastened upon the country through its doubts and fears, confirmed by its habits, and strengthened by personal interests and ambitions, is to be relaxed and changed, in order that the nation may have its just and natural and free developments, then, indeed, all the winds of controversy are let loose upon us from all points of the political compass-we see objects and men only through mazes, mists, and doubtful and lurid lights. The earth seems to be heaving under our feet, and the pillars of the noble fabric that protects us to be trembling before our eyes. But the appointed end of all this agitation comes at last, and always seasonably; the tumults of the people subside; the country becomes calm once more; and then we find that only our senses have been disturbed, and that they have betrayed us. The earth is firm as always before, and the wonderful structure, for whose safety we have feared so anxiously, now more firmly fixed than ever, still stands unmoved, enduring and immovable.

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NOTE THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN 1856.-In 1855-6 the state of the country was hardly less disturbed than in 1860-1. Threats of rebellion and secession abounded in congress and in the southern states. The following extract is from a speech made by Mr. Seward in the senate March 12, 1856:

"My own idea is, that there is no necessity for violence or civil war; and that, if prudence and moderation be exercised in congress, this great question, like all others, will finally reach its settlement without disturbing the peace of the country, or endangering the safety of the Union; but, at the same time, it is not conducive to such a settlement of it to add anything more to the terrors which impend over the settlers in Kansas. I suppose, from what I hear in these reports, that the people of Kansas will be here as a free state, and will appear by senators in congress authorized to present their constitution. When they come it will be a question to be settled here, and not elsewhere. Let me say, by way of caution, that he was a wise man who remarked that it is the misfortune of mankind that just on those occasions on which the greatest calmness and reason are most neccssary, those are just the occasions on which calmness and reason are most likely to be forgotten.' For my own part, I propose to remain cool-to meet this question here, in this place, on its own merits; and, if I can, to secure the admission of the state of Kansas into this Union under the constitution which she has adopted, and which she is preparing to submit for our acceptance."

NOTE TO PAGE 637. —John Brown. Alexander Hamilton said of André: "Never, perhaps, did any man suffer death with more justice or deserve it less." Ed.

SECESSION

NOTE THE NEW ENGLAND DINNER.-The annual festival of the New England society of New York was held at the Astor House on the evening of the 21st of December, 1860. Mr. Seward had declined a courteous invitation to the dinner and his letter of declination had been read at the table. Happening, however, to arrive at the Astor House about eleven o'clock that evening on a hurried return from Auburn to Washington, he was literally forced into the company as they were about to break up. The secession movements in the south occupied the thoughts of everybody. Mr. Seward had reasons for prudence and even reticence which were unknown to the public. His speech excited the deepest interest. Although not made in the senate it properly finds a place here in connection with those delivered in that body on the same subject.

THESE are extraordinary times, and extraordinary events are transpiring in our day, and it was men of New England, who lived in a period only two or three times as long ago as the length of the life I have lived, I remember that these men of New England invented the greatest political discovery of the world—a confederation of republican states in America. The first confederation of republican states in America, was the invention of men of New England. The great discovery after having been in successful operation through many years in the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and Connecticut and New Haven, and after having been sanctioned by the wisdom and experience of Dr. Franklin-came ultimately to be adopted by the people of the thirteen British colonies of this continent south of the river St. Lawrence. It has been reserved for our day and for this very hour to witness an invention of another kind -of an opposite nature-by a portion of our countrymen residing south of the Potomac.

The Yankees invented confederation-the people of South Carolina have invented secession. The wisdom of the latter is to be tried against the experience of the former. At first glance it exhibits this singularly anomaly—a state which has, in the senate of the United States, two seats, a state consisting of seven hundred thousand peo

ple of all conditions, and of whom two hundred and seventy-four thousand are white, having two seats in the senate of the United States, equal to the representation of any other state in the Union, and having six members in the house of representatives, each of them paid three thousand dollars a year out of a treasury to which they contribute a very small part-going out of the Union to stand by itself, and to send to the congress of the United States three commissioners, to stand outside of the bar and negotiate for their interests, and be paid by themselves, instead of two senators and six representatives in congress-equal members with all the representatives in the confederacy. This is the experiment which is to be tried. Whether states of North America will find it wise to refuse to occupy seats within the halls of congress of the United States, to be paid by the United States for going there, and to exercise the powers conferred upon them as such representatives, or in lieu of that send commissioners to present their claims, will be seen in the sequel. This is the latest political invention of the times. I must say to you that I do not think it is likely to be followed by many other states on this continent, or to be persevered in long, because it is manifestly very much inferior to the system which already exists. The state of South Carolina desires to go out of the Union, and just at the moment I am going back to Washington for the purpose of admitting Kansas in. I venture to say further that for every state on this continent which will go out of the Union and stay out, there stand ready at least two states on this continent of North America who will be glad to come in, and take their places with us. They will do so for this simple reason, that every state on this continent must be a democratic or republican state. You gentlemen from New England don't like to hear the word democratic always, therefore I use the word republican. No republican state on this continent, or any other, can stand alone; and the reason is a simple one. So much liberty, so much individual independence, so much scope for rivalry and emulation, are too much of freedom for any one state, standing singly, to maintain. Therefore, it is, as you have seen, that the moment it was thought there was to be a break in this great national confederacy, you began to hear at once of secession, not only in South Carolina, but also in California-secession in New England, and last, the secession of New York city and Long Island from the state of New York. Admit the right to dissolve this

American Union, and there is no one state which may not choose new associations for either advantage or safety. Renewing perpetually the principles of secession, we shall go on until we are brought into the condition of the people of Central America.

Republican states are like sheaves in the harvest field; put them up singly and they are liable to be blown down by every gust of wind. Stack them together and they defy the fiercest storms; and so you have seen that these thirteen republican states fell under the conviction, severally, that they could not stand alone, and so the thirteen came together. What under Heaven kept the state of Michigan, the states of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Louisiana --what kept each of these states from setting up in themselves state independence. Nothing, but the conviction that no one could stand alone, and so each claimed the right to be united to the other republican states of this continent. So it was with Texas. She was independent-why did she not remain so? You know how much it tried us to admit her into the Union, but it tried her much harder to stay out so long. Why is not Kansas content to remain out? Simply because of the sympathy and interest which require that all republican states on this continent shall be one. Let South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, or any other state go out, and while she is rushing out you will see Canada and all the Mexican states attempting to rush in. It is the system discovered by our fathers—it is all concentrated in those three words, "E Pluribus Unum." There is no such thing as one separated from the many in republican states. And now one word concerning the anomalous condition of our affairs-produced by this frenzy of some of the American states to secede from the Union. It has taken the American people and the world by surprise? Why has it taken them so by surprise? Only because it is unwise and unnatural. It is wise that all the republican states of this continent should be confederated. It is unwise that any of them should attempt to separate, and yet it ought not to have taken us by surprise. Whoever could have imagined that a machine so complicated, so vast, so new, untried as this confederated system of republican states, should be exempt from the common lot of states which have figured in the history of the world? A more complex system of political government was never devised, never conceived, among men. How strange it is, how unreasonable it is, that we should be surprised that a pin may occasionally drop

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