throw of the Government for years past. Their conduct at the Charleston Convention proved that unmistakably. Their object in breaking up the Convention was to throw the election into the hands of the Republicans, so that they might have a pretext for disunion. (Cheers.) The action now taken was not with any view of subjugation, but merely to maintain law and order and to support the Government. They were engaged in working out the great problem of popular Government. It was long thought that the people could not govern themselves, but they had shown the practicability of it. The Government was placed in a position of great danger; but if they passed through this ordeal, they will more clearly and gloriously prove the success of popular Government. (Cheers.)

SPEECH OF PROFESSOR MITCHELL.

four States of the Union as a nation, and though the | people of any one of those States were disposed to change the character and form of the Government, yet that would not annul the contracts entered into by them with the General Government, or with the other States throughout the General Government. They possessed Constitutional methods of changing the form by which their contracts with the General Government should be fulfilled. There was no way of dissolving the contracts except by mutual consent (cheers) or by fulfilling these contracts. So the Southern States might, if they pleased, alter and change the form of their Constitution; but if they desired to retreat from their association with the North and West and East, they must present their grievances to the people of all the States, the people themselves being the only tribunal to decide the question involved. They must present their griev ances to the people, and the people, after being duly Professor MITCHELL was introduced, and, fired convened, would, through the legitimate officers, pro- with nervous eloquence and patriotism, he infused ceed in a legal, Constitutional manner, to change that the same spirit into his auditors. He spoke as folConstitution; and they must abide their time, and lows:—I am infinitely indebted to you for this evimust wait till that process has been gone through. dence of your kindness. I know I am a stranger They could not dissolve their union with these States among you. ("No," "No.") I have been in your -they could not be allowed to bring that evil upon State but a little while; but I am with you, heart and the country. He concurred with a previous speaker, soul, and mind and strength, and all that I have and that many of these Southern demagogues were mis- am belongs to you and our common country, and to led. They had looked to New York with her 30,000 nothing else. I have been announced to you as a Democratic majority to back them up in their traitor- citizen of Kentucky. Once I was, because I was ous designs; but they little knew the heart of the born there. I love my native State, as you love great Democracy. They underrated your honesty, your native State. I love my adopted State of Ohio, they underrated your nobility of character. The men as you love your adopted State, if such you have; that they hoped would aid them, will in thousands but, my friends, I am not a citizen now of any and tens of thousands march to the defence of the State. I owe allegiance to no State, and never did, capital. As a citizen and as a Democrat he had and, God helping me, I never will. I owe allegiance labored hard against the election of the powers that to the Government of the United States. A poor be. He had labored as hard as his humble ability boy, working my way with my own hands, at the age would permit, to prevent the election of Mr. Lincoln; of twelve turned out to take care of myself as best but, so help me God, as a citizen and as a lover of I could, and beginning by earning but $4 per month, my country, I will defend his administration so long I worked my way onward until this glorious Governas he holds his seat. (Loud cheers.) He held that ment gave me a chance at the Military Academy at they were not only all bound to support the Presi- West Point. There I landed with a knapsack on my dent and the Constitution and the confederacy of back, and, I tell you God's truth, just a quarter of a these States as expressed through the State Legisla- dollar in my pocket. There I swore allegiance to the tures by every man who has exercised the right of Government of the United States. I did not abjure suffrage; they were bound to support the party that the love of my own State, nor of my adopted State, succeeded to office. Were these men to enter into but all over that rose proudly triumphant and prethe political arena with a chance of winning and none dominant my love for our common country. And at all of losing? By the very fact that they had ex- now to-day that common country is assailed, and, ercised the right of suffrage made them bound to alas! alas! that I am compelled to say it, it is submit to the decision of the majority. (Cheers.) assailed in some sense by my own countrymen. My It was a great insult to say that they were threatened father and my mother were from Old Virginia, and by a band of desperadoes who underrated their char- my brothers and sisters from Old Kentucky. I love acter and endeavored to bring them down to their them all; I love them dearly. I have my brothers own level. Short speeches were now called for. and friends down in the South now, united to me by They were called upon to support the Constitution the fondest ties of love and affection. I would take and to maintain the President in his call, and to urge them in my arms to-day with all the love that God upon him the knowledge of the fact that he will have has put into this heart; but if I found them in arms, a million of men, if necessary, to carry out the Gov- I would be compelled to smite them down. ernment and to punish the traitors who would raise have found officers of the army who have been edutheir traitorous swords to overturn it. The true way cated by the Government, who have drawn their supto deal with the crisis was to nip the treason in its port from the Government for long years, who, when bud, by sending forth such a body of soldiers as called upon by their country to stand for the Constiwould paralyze those men with terror. That was the tution and for the right, have basely, ignominiously only way. The South had had months to arm, and and traitorously either resigned their commissions, they had been collecting arms for years past. It was or deserted to traitors, rebels, and enemies. What not because they were defeated at the late election means all this? How can it be possible that men they should become dissatisfied, and attempt to break should act in this way? There is no question but up the Government. ("That's so," and cheers.) one. If we ever had a Government and ConstituThose base connivers, those traitors who had assailed tion, or if we ever lived under such, have we ever the flag of the Union, had been plotting the over-recognized the supremacy of right? I say, in God's

You

Mr. HAVEMEYER, on taking the chair, made a few brief remarks, observing that in the course of his life he never had supposed that he would be called upon to perform the duty which all present were called upon to perform this day.

Mr. Havemeyer then introduced the Rev. Mr. PRESTON, who read a short prayer.

Mr. Witthaus was called upon to act as Secretary of the meeting, and a list of Vice-Presidents was read and adopted.

The resolutions were then read by Mr. RICHARD WARREN, and were adopted by a unanimous vote. During these proceedings the crowd in the square, fronting the stand, had augmented by tens of thousands, and the greatest degree of enthusiasm prevailed everywhere. The excitement increased at the appearance of Major Anderson on the platform, accompanied by Messrs. Simeon Draper and Police Superintendent Kennedy. The gallant Major was introduced to the Germans by Mr. Draper. The first speaker introduced was Mr. Coddington, and while he was speaking, Captain Foster and Dr. Crawford, the Surgeon of Fort Sumter, arrived on the platform. They were introduced by Mr. Warren, and were received with vociferous cheers. These gentlemen, as also Major Anderson previously, soon left the stand, and the speaker was permitted to proceed with the discourse.

SPEECH OF DAVID S. CODDINGTON.

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shock of George the Third's cannon, shudder in the presence of this spectre, when they thought how the infant republic might be cast away upon its bleak and milkless breast? Then it was a thin, skulking, hatchet-faced ghost. At last, fed upon the granaries of Northern and Southern fanaticism, it has come to be a rotund, well fed, corpulent disaster. Southern passion may put on the war-paint; Southern statesmanship may attempt to organize a pique into an empire, to elevate a sulk into a sacrament, by marrying disappointment to revolution, and reducing a temporary constitutional minority into a hopeless organic political disaster. They may even propose in solemn convention to abolish the Fourth of July, and throw all its patriotic powder into the murderous arsenal of fratricidal conflict; but they cannot, except through self-destruction, permanently disrupt our nationality. Talk of the wise statesmanship of the South! Had they allowed Kansas to become a free State they would have been in possession of the national government at this moment. Although the repeal of the Missouri Compromise awoke the North from its deep sleep upon the slave question, yet the most economical outlay of prudence would have continued them in possession of the government for an indefinite future. Then Mexico would have been possible, without the awful leap which copies her morals without the possibility of possessing her territories. South Carolina once lived upon a potato to rout a king, and she is fast going back to that imFELLOW-CITIZENS:-The iron hail at Fort Sumter mortal vegetable, in order to crown a fallacy. Our rattles on every Northern breast. It has shot away republicanism means the whole nation, or it means the last vestige of national and personal forbearance. nothing. Together, the parts temper each other; A loaf of bread on its way to a starving man was asunder, the aristocracy of the slave power makes split in two by a shot from his brother. You might equality a myth, and the free radical North less safely saturate the cotton States with all the turpentine of democratic. If Abraham Lincoln has inaugurated a North Carolina; you might throw upon them the crash; if George Washington is to be no longer vast pine forests of Georgia, then bury the Gulf known as the successful contender for a combined storm's sharpest lightning into the combustible mass, and self-regulating nationality; if Bishop Berkeley's and you would not redden the Southern horizon with star of empire has crumbled away into belligerent so angry a glow as flashed along the Northern heart asteroids, and we are to fall, like Cæsar, at the base when the flames of Fort Sumter reached it. To-day, of this black Pompey's pillar, we shall at least go into bewildered America, with her torn flag and her bro- this holy battle for the Constitution, with no law ken charter, looks to you to guard the one, and re- broken and no national duty unfulfilled. We have store the other. How Europe stares and liberty not stolen a single ship, or a pound of powder, or a shudders, as from State after State that flag falls, and dollar of coin to sully the sacred tramp with which the dream breaks! Hereafter Southern history will patriotism pursues robbery and rebellion. All the be as bare as the pole from which the sundered pen-ills of the South could have been remedied within nant sinks, and treason parts with the last rag that concealed its hideousness. I know how common and how easy it is to dissolve this Union in our mouths. Dangerous words, like dangerous places, possess a fearful fascination, and we sometimes look down from the heights of our prosperity with an irresistible itching to jump off. This spectre of disunion is no new ghost, born of any contemporary agitation. For years it has been skulking semi-officially about the Capitol. Through the whole range of our parliamentary history every great question, from a tariff to a Territory, has felt its clammy touch. Did it not drop its death's head into the tariff scales of '33, hoping to weigh the duties down to a conciliation level? did it not shoot its ghastly logic into the storm of '20, and frighten our soundest statesmanship into that crude calm called the Missouri Compromise? did it not sit grinning upon the deck of all our naval battles, hoping to get a turn at the wheel, that it might run the war of 1812 upon a rock? did it not stand up upon the floor of the first Congress and shake its bony fingers in the calm face of Washington? and did not our fathers, who stood unmoved the

the Constitution-all their wrongs righted by the victory of future votes. Shall I tell you what secession means? It means ambition in the Southern leaders and misapprehension in the Southern people. Its policy is to imperialize slavery; and to degrade and destroy the only free republic in the world. It is a fog of the brain and a poison at the heart. Dodging the halter, it walks in a volcano which must explode whenever the tempestuous shock of Northern invasion shall render slavery impossible. The day that Southern statesmanship turned pirate, Southern slavery lost its last hold on Northern forbearance. God forbid that servile war should ever be on our consciences; but what power could restrain the frenzied passion of continuously provoked multitudes, when the taste of blood has brutalized their march? We have not come here to talk about any man's party creed. We have not come to seek the falling fruits of patronage, but to save the beautiful and wide-spreading tree upon which all our blessings grow. Party and partyisms are dead; only grim, black powder is alive now. Who talks of Tammany or Mozart Hall? Who haunts the coal

allow a mean jealousy of another portion, a little more wealthy and populous, to so hurry it on into rebellion, not against us, but a common Government and a common glory, to which both are subject and both should love. Does not each State belong to all the States, and should not all the States be a help and a guide to each State? Louisiana's sugar drops

on Fifth-avenue nod its head amicably to whatever cotton receipts its bills? Over-pride of locality has been the scourge of our nationality. When our thirty-one stars broke on the north star, did not Texas, as well as Pennsylvania, light up the bleak Arctic sky? When the old flag first rose over the untouched gold of California, did not Georgia and New York join hands in unveiling the tempting ore? Virginia has seceded and carried my political fathers with it-Washington and Jefferson. The State has allowed their tombs to crumble, as well as their principles. Outlaw their sod! Who will dare to ask me for my passport at the grave of Washington?

SPEECH OF FREDERIC KAPP.

hole or the wood-pile, when our souls' fuel is on fire | for flag and country? Did not Washington fight seven years, break ice on the Delaware, break bones and pull triggers on Monmouth field, send ten thousand bleeding feet to where no blood ever comes, and pass from clouds of smoke to archways of flowers -for what? That States should defy their best guardian, which is the nation, insult history and make re-into Ohio's tea-cup; and should not every palace built publicanism impossible? Here, in this city of our love and pride, this cradle of the civil life of Washington, where despotism sheathed its last sword and constitutional liberty swore its first oath; where steam first boiled its way to a throne, and art and commerce and finance, and all the social amenities marshalled their forces to the sweet strain of the first inaugural-here, where government began and capital centres, is the sheet anchor of American loyalty. Nothing so disappoints secession as the provoking fidelity of New York to the Constitution. From the vaults of Wall-street, Jefferson Davis expected to pay his army, and riot in all the streets and in all towns and cities of the North to make their march a triumphant one. Fifty thousand men to-day tread on his fallacy. Gold is healthy, gold is loyal, gold is If I understand you rightly, Mr. President, your determined; it flows easy, because the war is not to object in inviting German speakers to this large subjugate or injure any one, but to bring back within meeting is to prove by their addresses that in respect the protecting folds of the Constitution an erring and to the present crisis there is no difference of opinion rebellious brother, a brother whom we have trusted in any class of our population, that a unanimity of and toasted, fought with side by side on the battle feeling prevails in the hearts of all citizens, adopted field, voted for at the ballot-box, showered with as well as native, and that the same just and honor after honor upon his recreant head, while that patriotic indignation swells the breast of every lover brother was poisoning the milk in his mother's breast, of his country against the unscrupulous traitors who striking a parricidal blow at the parental govern- are trying to set up a government of their own by ment which has protected and prospered us all as no perjury, theft, and plunder. It has often been said, and people were ever so prospered and protected. Here- I am sorry to confess not without some share of truth, tofore, in our differences, we have shouldered ballots that wherever there are two Germans together there instead of bayonets. With a quiet bit of paper in are three different opinions among them. I am, our hands we have marched safely through a hundred however, happy to tell you that is not so in the face battles about tariff, bank, anti-liquor, anti-rent, and of the danger which now threatens to break up the all those social and political questions about which a national government. I see around me old German free people may amicably differ. If slavery cannot democrats and republicans-men belonging to every be appeased with the old life of the ballot, depend variety of parties, at home and in this country. upon it the bayonet will only pierce new wounds in the past differences are forgotten, and as long as the its history. We have heretofore kept all our lead present crisis will last, I am sure all will unanimously moulded into type, that peaceably and intellectually co-operate for the same end, namely:-for the preswe might enter the Southern brain, until passion and ervation of this great republic, which is as dear to precipitation have forced us to melt down that type the Germans as to any other men. Although I am into a less friendly visitor. Kossuth says that bayo- not authorized to speak for others, I feel confident nets think; and ours have resolved in solemn conven- that I do but express the sentiments of every German tion to think deeply, act promptly, and end victo- in this country when I say that we are unaniriously. Do you wonder to-day to see that flag fly-mously for the adoption of the most energetic means ing over all our reawaked national life, no longer monopolized by mast-head, steeple, or liberty-pole, but streaming forth a camp signal from every private hearthstone, breaking out in love pimples all down our garments, running like wild vine flowers over whole acres of compact anxious citizens? Why has that tender maiden turned her alabaster hands into heroic little flagstaffs, which, with no loss of modesty, unveils to the world her deep love of country? Do you see that infant show off its playthings, tottering under rosettes and swathed in the national emblem by foreboding parents, who would protect its growth with this holy talisman of safety? Do you see, too, those grave old citizens, sharpened by gain-seeking, and sobered with law-expounding, invade their plain exterior with peacock hues, which proclaim such tenacity to a flag that has fanned, like an angel's wing, every form of our prosperity and pride? It seems hard for philosophy to divine how any section of the country, so comprehensively prosperous, could

But

against the fiendish attempts of our common foe. Fellow-citizens, let us not deceive ourselves; the present struggle requires prompt action and powerful means to overcome it. The stronger we prepare ourselves, the better we shall be able to defeat the purposes of the enemies of this Union, and who are at the same time the enemies to the cause of universal civilization and liberty. The internecine war now raging here is not only a private affair of America; it is a question of the highest importance to the whole civilized world, which expects that we will crush anarchy in its inception. We have to prove that civil liberty, with all its blessings, is not only an experiment-not a mere passing state of political being, which lasts only so long as it is not assailed either by a military or the slaveholder's despotism, but that it a power self-sustaining, and interwoven with our natures and with our whole national existence. Liberty is precarious, and we would not be worthy of it unless we have sense and spirit enough