strike-probably knew as little about it as Senator Douglas himself. Shall we stop making war upon the South? We never have made war upon them. If any one has, he had better go and hang himself and save Virginia the trouble. If you give up your convictions and call slavery right, as they do, you let slavery in upon you-instead of white laborers who can strike, you'll soon have black laborers who can't strike.

I have heard that in consequence of this "sectional warfare," as Douglas calls it, Senator Mason, of Virginia, had appeared in a suit of homespun. Now, up in New Hampshire, the woolen and cotton mills are all busy, and there is no strike they are busy making the very goods Senator Mason has quit buying! To carry out his idea, he ought to go barefoot! If that's the plan, they should begin at the foundation, and adopt the well-known "Georgia costume," of a shirt-collar and pair of spurs.

It reminded him of the man who had a poor, old, lean, bony, spavined horse, with swelled legs. He was asked what he was going to do with such a miserable beast-the poor creature would die. "Do?" said he. "I'm going to fat him up; don't you see that I have got him sealfat as high as the knees?" Well they have got the Union dissolved up to the ankle, but no further!

All portions of this Confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry "John Brown invasion." We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield

the guards of liberty in our State constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted-there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!

The "Union" arrangements are all a humbug -they reverse the scriptural order, calling the righteous, and not sinners, to repentance. Let us not be slandered or intimidated to turn from our duty. Eternal right makes might; as we understand our duty, let us do it!

Slavery the Snake in the Union Bed.

SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONN. MARCH 6, 1860.

Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of New Haven: If the Republican party of this nation shall ever have the national house intrusted to its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national housekeeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up, whatever difficulties may arise, in the way of its administration of the government, that party will then have to attend to: it will then be compelled to attend to other questions besides this question which now assumes an overwhelming importance -the question of slavery. It is true that in the organization of the Republican party this question of slavery was more important than any

other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present. The old question of tariff-a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national housekeeping to all time; the question of management of financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the public domain; how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well settled, and of making there the homes of a free and happy people— these will remain open and require attention for a great while yet, and these questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has the control of the government. Yet just now they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do not purpose to detain you upon these topics, or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity shall come. For whether we will or not, the question of slavery is the question, the all-absorbing topic, of the day. It is true that all of us—and by that I mean not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people here and elsewhere-all of us wish this question settled; wish it out of the way. It stands in the way and prevents the adjustment and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national housekeeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled; and the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority are able to accomplish the common object.

In the beginning of the year 1854, a new policy

was inaugurated with the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever put an end to the slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly augmented. And this, too, although from the day of its introduction its friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise down to the time of the Lecompton bill, in which it was not predicted that the slavery agitation was just at an end; that "the Abolition excitement was played out," "the Kansas question was dead," "they have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled"? But since the Lecompton bill, no Democrat within my experience has ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped. They themselves do not pretend now that the agitation of this subject has come to an end yet. The truth is that this question is one of national importance, and we cannot help dealing with it; we must do something about it, whether we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating. It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as

closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in earnest and really settled. And one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude.

There have been many efforts to settle it. Again and again it has been fondly hoped that it was settled, but every time it breaks out afresh, and more violently than ever. It was settled, our fathers hoped, by the Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay settled. Then the compromises of 1850 were declared to be a full and final settlement of the question. The two great parties, each in national convention, adopted resolutions declaring that the settlement made by the compromise of 1850 was a finality-that it would last forever. Yet how long before it was unsettled again? It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged more furiously than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since.

These repeated settlements must have some fault about them. There must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose for which they were designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault-that inadequacy is, but we may perhaps profit by past experience.

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question. They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary, so evanescent. Look at the magnitude of this subject. One sixth of our population, in round numbers-not