before we could abide in steadfast faith of the future. Behold that demonstration in the history of the past year! Time, much time, may be required to crush rebellion; but already we know that the foundations of the Constitution lie deep and solid in the hearts of the people, and that they have the courage and the power to guard and preserve it. Such knowledge is of infinite value. It strengthens the nation's heart more than a thousand victories over foreign foes. From the days of this rebellion we may date the steady onward career of the American people. They have shown that they are fit to be free, that they can govern themselves, and that they can and will defend against every attack the priceless birthright of their free institutions; and in high and unshaken fidelity to the great charge committed to their hands, they have sent forth the irrevocable decree, that, in all the years to come, over every foot of their rightful possessions, East and West, North and South, the STARS AND STRIPES shall wave, the glorious symbol of a Union indivisible, a Constitution imperishable, and a Nation immortal.

SLAVERY'S WAR

UPON THE CONSTITUTION.*

Three-quarters of a century ago, that noble body of American statesmen and patriots, over which the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY presided, completed the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and presented it for adoption by the American people, as a form of Government and a bond of Union which they believed would endure through all future time. It was the first written Constitution ever adopted by any nation; and it has, in the world's judgment, stood, from that day to this, as the noblest monument ever reared by freemen to their own wisdom and patriotism. It has shed upon our country unnumbered blessings, and has afforded a light to other nations struggling into the exercise of self-government. Under its benign sway every expectation of its framers for the good of America and of humanity has been fully realized; and there is not a hope that a patriot could cherish for his country, which would not be more than fulfilled by its continued existence.

* An Address delivered in St. Louis, on the Anniversary of the Constitution, September 17, 1862.

And yet, while there are those still living who lived at the day of its formation, the nation for which that Constitution was made is precipitated into a terrible struggle for its preservation from destruction by its own. children! And it is while the land trembles beneath the tread of armed legions, and the air is rent with the roar of battle for and against the Union it was designed to cement and perpetuate, that we meet to observe as patriots the recurring anniversary of the great step which our fathers took towards making the American Nation what it was and is yet capable of being, the glory of freedom and of the human race.

Under any other circumstances than such as now fill our beloved land with grief and dread, it would be a work of love to trace the history of our Constitution, and endeavor to set forth the great principles which pervade its entire frame; but how could this be done, with the oppressed mind wandering every moment to the fiendish assault upon it now in progress, and swayed continually by alternate hopes and fears, as it follows the shifting scenes and changing tides of the war which is to end in its complete and final vindication or its destruction? It is impossible. The theme most prominent under such circumstances is not the origin and principles of the Constitution, but the origin and principles of the war now waged against it. To that let us then direct our attention.

The American people have reached a point where an overpowering necessity is laid upon them to remove every film from their eyes, and look with perfectly clear and steady vision at what is around and before

them. I have a profound and painful impression, that nothwithstanding all said and written and seen and heard during the last twenty months, there are multitudes everywhere, especially in the border slave States, who have no correct idea of what this war really means, or to what it directly tends. God help them, if this continues much longer.

Light-light upon the motives, aims, and ends of the South in the beginning and the prosecution of this war, is what the people want. You may hurl denouncing generalities at the rebellion forever, and do little good: the people require tangible particulars. You can not feed a starving man on the fumes of a kitchen: he must have food,or die. Supernatural eloquence were but as fumes, if the public mind be not imbued with knowledge of the true character and actual intent of Southern treason. The popular heart answers truth with mighty throbs it answers nothing else so. It may flutter for a while under a transient stimulus, but it is the tremor of weakness. Truth alone makes it strong. I dare not approach it with aught but truth; with that I dare seek its innermost recesses. I intend to speak the truth now. I will speak it here, in this city, face to face with that pestilent element of treachery and treason, which, last year, in the first months of the rebellion, bore so high a head, and which, yet unexpelled, scowls through our streets by day, and, in nightly conclave of the Knights of the Golden Circle, schemes to build an EMPIRE OF SLAVERY over our country's grave!

Frequently as I have spoken of Slavery as connected with this rebellion, it is of that I shall now speak again.

When Cato, ever after his visit to Carthage, ended his every speech with the well-known words, "Præterea censeo Carthaginem esse delendam," it was to impress continually upon Rome that her only safety was in the destruction of her great rival. When, in addressing the people in this crisis, I recur again and again to Slavery, it is because I believe nothing with a more unbidden and resistless conviction, than that Slavery was the one sole cause, and is now the single life-principle and the great sustaining power, of the rebellion; and that the safety of the country demands that the people know and never forget those truths.

So speaking, I refer not to Slavery as a system of domestic labor, nor to any of its ordinary moral, social, or economical aspects, nor to the wrongs, oppressions, sins, and barbarisms which have been laid to its charge. I am on higher ground than that. Passing by every other view of Slavery, I deal with it now only in its relations to the rebellion. It is of Slavery the "peculiar institution," loved more than country by the South of Slavery as the foundation and instrument of aggressive political power-of Slavery as the hotbed of a "social aristocracy," alien in spirit to our free institutions--of Slavery speaking and acting through its perfidious votaries of Slavery in its faithless abandonment of all honor, duty, and patriotism, for the sake of its own advancement-of Slavery plotting treason for thirty years-of Slavery false to country and therefore false to everything-of Slavery the secessionist, the rebel, the traitor, the parricide, the fillibuster, the guerrilla, the demon of destruction,