my own speeches, it can not be denied that it is nearly allied. to one, and I leave it to time and the present day to show whose counsel and whose course would have "saved the household."

But what am I to think of the man who would publicly and semi-officially denounce me for what I had said, and, before the words were cold that fell from his lips, borrow my views, and, as nearly as possible, my language on this very point, in one of his written communications, where possibly it might help him to use it, but which at a later day found its way to the public press? This I leave to the better judgment of an impartial public. But to return from this digression.

THE PRESIDENTIAL QUESTIONS OF 1856.

The time for the nomination in 1856 rolled on, the Democratic Convention met in Cincinnati, the two great actors in the Nebraska swindle were set aside-Pierce and Douglas were both defeated; they had only served, like poor puss, to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the monkey to eat. Mr. Buchanan, who was understood to have been opposed to the disturbance of the Missouri Compromise (though then abroad), was nominated; and thus was a triple swindle perpetrated by the Democracy: they first cheated the country, and then cheated both of the principal instruments they had employed for cheating the people. Poor Douglas made all the amends he could for his folly, and struggled hard to get out of the meshes into which his Southern friends and allies had entangled him, but if he had lived to the age of Methusaleh, he could not have recovered his former position.

The more miserable Pierce was left, as it were, to rot upon his own dunghill in New Hampshire; his name has

scarcely ever been called in the South since, and he has no place in the confidence, the affections, or respect of the North. So much for politicians suffering themselves to be seduced from the path of rectitude by an overweening ambition. Mr. Fillmore, the " model President," as he had been almost universally termed by the Democracy, after his defeat for the nomination in 1852 by General Scott was nominated by the American party, but was nowhere in the

race.

The Republican party nominated John C. Fremont as their standard-bearer. During tho progress of the campaign, the prospects of his election were so encouraging as to render his success next akin to certainty, and it was thought the last Presidential card of Democracy had been played, and the trick, as they thought, would be trumped by this newly-organized party of Republicans; and at once the cry went up with much more than its usual force "that it was necessary to elect a Democrat to save the Union."

The Richmond Inquirer put forth an editorial, from which the following is an extract: "Let the South present a compact and undivided front. Let her show to the barbarians that her sparse population offers little hopes of plunder; her military and self-reliant habits, and her mountain retreats little prospect of victory; and her firm union and devoted resolution no chances of conquest. Let her, if possi ble, detach Pennsylvania and Southern Ohio, Southern Indiana, and Southern Illinois from the North, and make the highlands between the Ohio and the Lakes the dividing line. Let the South treat with California, and, if necessary, ally herself with Russia, with Cuba, and Brazil."

Mr. Preston Brooks, the nephew of Senator Butler, upon whom, as his colleague, the mantle of Calhoun seemed to have fallen loosely for the moment, in a speech made to the

people of South Carolina, said, " As to his own position, he was now, as he was in 1851, a co-operation disunionist. He thought.it best to dissolve the government under which we now live; but, in doing this, there was a difference of opinion as to the means to be employed. He believed that something was due to our sister Southern States, who had the same interest at stake as we that we should be prepared to act with them and to wait on them. . . . . . The great question of the Presidency would be settled, and if on the second Monday of November next it shall be found that Fremont is elected, he thought our course was plain. It is his deliberate opinion that we should then, on the 4th of March next, march to Washington, seize the archives and the Treasury of the government, and leave the consequences to God."

The then governor of this state (the Unwise IIenry A.), maddened by an insane and devouring ambition to be doing something that would keep his name in all men's mouths, seized upon these indications of what he considered to be the public feeling, and, perhaps, what he knew to be the general sentiment of the leaders of the party to which, in the premature decline of his manhood, he had allied himself, and was disposed to make himself superserviceable in any capacity, set himself to work to organize and officer the militia of the state, and called a meeting of all the govern ors of the Southern States to meet him at Raleigh, for the purpose of organizing a force to march to Washington, seize upon the archives and the Treasury of the government, and "leave the consequences to God" or the devil, as it is clear he was the master in whose service they were employed. Governor Adams, of South Carolina, was the only one who met him, and thus this scheme was at once played out. The sensible and reflecting leaders had concluded

that the time was not yet, or that it was better to wait the result of the election, as there might still be time enough to prevent the inauguration of Fremont in the event of his election.

To all this, which I cited in a note to my African Church speech in 1856, I called the attention of the people in the following language:

"Let what may happen after this to involve us in civil commotion and disunion, no man of the Democratic party can plead as an excuse his ignorance of the mischief he was perpetrating by acting with a party whose objects are thus plainly disclosed, not by their enemies, but by themselves. "Let the people read and reflect before they vote.

"If any public press had dared to utter such sentiments as these at any time before the Calhoun party obtained a foothold in the South, the walls of his building would have been torn down, his type thrown into the river, and the author himself would have received a coat of tar and feathers, and have been driven beyond the pale of civilized society; and now they are permitted to cast the odium from themselves by the silly and childish attempt to fasten Black Rcpublicanism and Abolitionism on all who do not foster and encourage their infamous doctrines."

Here, then, was another warning that I gave the people as to the designs of their leaders, and I was again denounced for that.

But this threat to break up the government so far operated on the timid men of Pennsylvania, together with the use of money freely contributed in New York and expend ed in the Keystone State, secured the election of Mr. Buchanan, and thus was the revolution staved off four years, which it is now manifest they were then earnestly bent on bringing about, rather than surrender their power and sub

mit to a full investigation and exposure of all the atrocities they had committed in the last five-and-twenty years. True, the people were not prepared for such an issue, nor were they in 1861; yet, if they suffered themselves to be bullied into it now as they did, why would not the same routine of operations have served the purpose then?

But "the handwriting was on the wall," and it was clearly foreseen that this was the last expiring effort of Democ racy, and that this was the last Democratic President to be elected; and they at once went to work and cleared the deck for action, and from that time to the day of secession the country has been kept in a constant state of turmoil and commotion. It was expedient, if not necessary, to familiarize the public mind to the idea of disunion, as they thought, and it was still more necessary to keep the mind of the South in a frenzied stato of excitement on the subject of slavery, and of the injustice, inequality, and wrong of not being permitted to extend it to the territories, from which it had been expressly excluded by the founders of the gov ernment in 1787, and, still more recently, actually excluded by their own legislation in 1820.

THE ATTEMPT TO MAKE KANSAS A SLAVE STATE.

The next step taken by the Southern Democracy was the attempt to force slavery into the Territory of Kansas-for what purpose? it may be asked. It was considerably beyond the slaveholding region of the United States, where neither the soil nor climate were adapted to slave labor, and where the insecurity of the property would have deterred any rational man from carrying his slaves; why, then, were emigrant-aid societies gotten up in the Southern States, private and public subscriptions raised, large appropriations made by the state Legislatures from their public treasuries