South Carolina to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779 there were built in these yards twentyfive square-rigged vessels, besides a great number of sloops and schooners, to carry on our coast and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven-fold. No man can for a moment believe that our ancestors intended to establish over their posterity exactly the same sort of government they had overthrown. The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution-a limited free government-a government limited to those matters only which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States. By no other arrangement would they obtain free government by a constitution common to so vast a confederacy. Yet by gradual and steady encroachments on the part of the people of the North, and submission on the part of the South, the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away, and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. rule South by the tariff and slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things. The Constitution of the United States was an experiment. The experiment consisted in uniting under one government different peoples, living in different climates, and having different pursuits of industry and institutions. It matters not how carefully the limitations of such a government be laid down in the Constitution, its success must at least depend upon the good faith of the parties to the constitutional compact in enforcing them. It is not in the power of human language to exclude false inferences, constructions, and perversions in any constitution; and when vast sectional interests are to be subserved, involving the appropriation of countless millions of money, it has not been the usual experience of mankind that words on parchment can arrest power. The Constitution of the United States, irrespective of the interposition of the States, rested on the assumption that power would yield to faith-that integrity would be stronger than interest; and that thus the limitations of the Constitution would be observed. The experiment has been fairly made. The Southern States, from the commencement of the Government, have striven to keep it within the orbit prescribed by the Constitution. The experiment has failed. The whole Constitution, by It is not at all surprising, whilst such is the the constructions of the Northern people, has character of the Government of the United been swallowed up by a few words in its preStates, that it should assume to possess power amble. In their reckless lust for power, they over all the institutions of the country. The seem unable to comprehend that seeming paraagitations on the subject of slavery in the dox, that the more power is given to the GenSouth are the natural results of the consolida-eral Government the weaker it becomes. Its tion of the Government. Responsibility fol- strength consists in its generality and limitalows power; and if the people of the North tions. have the power by Congress "to promote the general welfare of the United States " by any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail and overthrow the institution of slavery in the South? They are responsible for its continuance or existence, in proportion to their power. A majority in Congress, according to their interested and perverted views, is omnipotent. The inducements to act upon the subject of slavery, under such circumstances, were so imperious as to amount almost to a moral necessity. To make, however, their numerical power available to rule the Union, the North must consolidate their power. It would not be united, on any matter common to the whole Union-in other words, on any Con stitutional subject-for on such subjects divisions are as likely to exist in the North as in the South. Slavery was strictly a sectional interest; if this could be made the criterion of parties at the North, the North could be united in its power, and thus carry out its measures of sectional ambition, encroachment, and aggrandizement. To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but, that being done, the consolidation of the North to To extend the scope of its power over sectional or local interests, is to raise up against it opposition and resistance. In all such matters the General Government must necessarily be a despotism, because all sectional or local interests must ever be represented by a minority in the councils of the General Government having no power to protect itself against the rule of the majority. The majority, constituted from those who do not represent these sectional or local interests, will control and govern them. A free people cannot submit to such a Government. And the more it enlarges the sphere of its power, the greater must be the dissatisfaction it must produce, and the weaker it must become. On the contrary, the more it abstains from usurped powers, and the more faithfully it adheres to the limitations of the Constitution, the stronger it is made. The Northern people have had neither the wisdom nor the faith to perceive, that to observe the limitation of the Constitution was the only way to its perpetuity. Under such a Government there must, of course, be many and endless "irrepressible conflicts" between the two great sections of the Union. The same faithlessness which has abolished the Constitution of the United States, will not fail to carry out the sectional purposes | States cannot be safe in subjection to non-slavefor which it has been abolished. There must holding States. Indeed, no people ever expect be conflict; and the weaker section of the Union to preserve their rights and liberties unless they can only find peace and liberty in an independ- are in their own custody. To plunder and opence of the North. The repeated efforts made press where plunder and oppression can be by South Carolina, in a wise conservatism, to practised with impunity, seems to be the natarrest the progress of the General Government ural order of things. The fairest portions of in its fatal progress to consolidation, have been the world have been turned into wildernesses, unsupported, and denounced as faithless to the and the most civilized and prosperous commuobligations of the Constitution by the very men nities have been impoverished and ruined by and States who were destroying it by their anti-slavery fanaticism. The people of the usurpations. It is now too late to reform or North have not left us in doubt as to their restore the Government of the United States. designs and policy. United as a section in the All confidence in the North is lost in the South. late Presidential election, they have elected as The faithlessness of half a century has opened the exponent of their policy one who has opena gulf of separation between them, which no ly declared that all the States of the United promises or engagements can fill. States must be made free States or slave States. It is true that amongst those who aided in his election, there are various shades of anti-slavery hostility. But if African slavery in the Southern States be the evil their political combinations affirm it to be, the requisitions of an inexorable logic must lead them to emancipation. If it is right to preclude or abolish slavery in a Territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States? The one is not at all more unconstitutional than the other, according to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. And when it is considered that the Northern States will soon have the power to make that Court what they please, and that the Constitution never has been any barrier whatever to their exercise of power, what check can there be in the unrestrained counsels of the North to emancipation? There is sympathy in association, which carries men along without principle; but when there is principle, and that principle is fortified by long-existing prejudices and feelings, association is omnipotent in party influences. It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing among them had existed when the Constitution was framed. There was then no tariff-no negro fanaticism. It was the delegates from New England who proposed, in the Convention which framed the Constitution, to the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, that if they would agree to give Congress the power of regulating commerce by a majority, they would support the extension of the African slave trade for twenty years. African slavery existed in all the States but one. The idea that they would be made to pay that tribute to their Northern confederates, which they had refused to pay to Great Britain; or that the institution of African slavery would be made the grand basis of a sectional organization of the North to rule the South, never crossed their imaginations. The union of the Constitution was a union of slaveholding States. It rests on slavery, by prescribing a representation in Congress for three-fifths of our slaves. There In spite of all disclaimers and professions, is nothing in the proceedings of the convention there can be but one end by the submission of which framed the Constitution, to show that the South to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery the Southern States would have formed any Government at Washington; and that end, diother Union; and still less that they would rectly or indirectly, must be the emancipation have formed a Union with more powerful non- of the slaves of the South. The hypocrisy of slaveholding States, having a majority in both thirty years-the faithlessness of their whole branches of the Legislature of the Government. course from the commencement of our union They were guilty of no such folly. Time and with them-show that the people of the nonthe progress of things have totally altered the slaveholding North are not and cannot be safe relations between the Northern and Southern associates of the slaveholding South under a States since the Union was established. That common government. Not only their fanatiidentity of feelings, interests, and institutions cism, but their erroneous views of the prinwhich once existed, is gone. They are now ciples of free government, render it doubtful divided between agricultural, and manufactur- whether, separated from the South, they can ing, and commercial States-between slave maintain a free government among themselves. holding and non-slaveholding States. Their Brute numbers with them is the great element institutions and industrial pursuits have made of free government. A majority is infallible them totally different people. That equality in and omnipotent. "The right divine to rule in the Government between the two sections of kings" is only transferred to their majority. the Union which once existed, no longer exists. The very object of all constitutions, in free We but imitate the policy of our fathers in dis- popular governments, is, to restrain the majorsolving a Union with non-slaveholding confed-ity. Constitutions, therefore, according to their erates, and seeking a confederation with slaveholding States. Experience has proved that slaveholding theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. None ought to exist, but the body politic ought simply to have a politi cal organization, to bring out and enforce the will of a majority. This theory may be harmless in a small community having an identity of interests and pursuits, but over a vast State still more over a vast Confederacy, having various and conflicting interests and pursuitsit is a remorseless despotism. In resisting it, as applicable to ourselves, we are vindicating the great cause of free government, more important perhaps to the world than the existence of all the United States. Nor, in resisting it, do we intend to depart from the safe instrumentality the system of government we have established with them requires. In separating from them we invade no rights-no interest of theirs. We violate no obligation or duty to them. As separate, independent States in convention, we made the Constitution of the United States with them; and, as separate independent States, each State acting for itself, we adopted it. South Carolina, acting in her sovereign capacity, now thinks proper to secede from the Union. She did not part with her sovereignty in adopting the Constitution. The last thing a State can be presumed to have surrendered is her sovereignty. Her sovereignty is her life. Nothing but a clear, express grant can alienate it. Inference should be dumb. Yet it is not at all surprising that those who | have construed away all the limitations of the Constitution, should also by construction claim the annihilation of the sovereignty of the States. Having abolished all barriers to their omnipotence by their faithless constructions in the operations of the General Government, it is most natural that they should endeavor to do the same towards us in the States. The truth is, they having violated the express provisions of the Constitution, it is at an end as a compact. It is morally obligatory only on those who choose to accept its perverted terms. South Carolina, deeming the compact not only violated in particular features, but virtually abolished by her Northern confederates, withdraws herself as a party from its obligations. The right to do so is denied by her Northern confederates. They desire to establish a despotism, not only omnipotent in Congress, but omnipotent over the States; and as if to manifest the imperious necessity of our secession, they threaten us with the sword, to coerce submission to their rule. confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses with a population four times greater than that of the whole United States, when they achieved their independence of the British empire-with productions which make our existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it—with common institutions to defend, and common dangers to encounterwe ask your sympathy and confederation. Whilst constituting a portion of the United States, it has been your statesmanship which has guided it in its mighty strides to power and expansion. In the field, as in the cabinet, you have led the way to its renown and grandeur. You have loved the Union, in whose service your great statesmen have labored, and your great soldiers have fought and conquerednot for the material benefits it conferred, but with the faith of a generous and devoted chivalry. You have long lingered and hoped over the shattered remains of a broken Constitution. Compromise after compromise, formed by your concessions, has been trampled under foot by your Northern confederates. All fraternity of feeling between the North and the South is lost, or has been converted into hate, and we of the South are at last driven together by the stern destiny which controls the existence of nations. Your bitter experience of the faithlessness and rapacity of your Northern confederates may have been necessary to evolve those great principles of free government, upon which the liberties of the world depend, and to prepare you for the grand mission of vindicating and re-establishing them. We rejoice that other nations should be satisfied with their institutions. Self-complacency is a great element of happiness with nations as with individuals. We are satisfied with ours. If they prefer a system of industry, in which capital and labor are in perpetual conflict-and chronic starvation keeps down the natural increase of population-and a man is worked out in eight years-and the law ordains that children shall be worked only ten hours a day—and the sabre and bayonet are the instruments of order-be it so. It is their affair, not ours. We prefer, however, our system of industry, by which labor and capital are identified in interest, and capital, therefore, protects labor, by which our population doubles every twenty years; by Citizens of the slaveholding States of the which starvation is unknown, and abundance United States, circumstances beyond our con- crowns the land; by which order is preserved trol have placed us in the van of the great con- by an unpaid police, and the most fertile regions troversy between the Northern and Southern of the world where the Caucasian cannot labor States. We would have preferred that other are brought into usefulness by the labor of the States should have assumed the position we African, and the whole world is blessed by our now occupy. Independent ourselves, we dis-own productions. All we demand of other claim any design or desire to lead the counsels of the other Southern States. Providence has cast our lot together, by extending over us an identity of pursuits, interests, and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny separated from yours. To be one of a great slaveholding peoples is to be let alone to work out our own high destinies. United together, and we must be the most independent, as we are the most important amongst the nations of the world. United together, and we require no other instrument to conquer peace than our beneficent productions. United together, and we must be a great, free and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down, we trust, to the remotest ages. We ask you to join us in forming a confederacy of slaveholding States. -Missouri Republican, Dec. 29, 1860. Doc. 255. SLAVES AND SLAVERY. MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS, in his Message to those whom he calls "Gentlemen of the Congress of the "Confederate States," of April 29, 1861, sets forth certain alleged reasons why Southern men ought to refuse to live under the same General Government with Northern men, should engage in battle with them on land, and attack their commerce at sea. The Message is a carefully prepared document, devised and intended to excite Southern men to this dreadful work, and to justify it in the view of the civilized world. For this purpose, it was necessary to impute to Northern men a character and conduct worthy to be blamed, and to be punished with all the inflictions of war. He accordingly inserted in his Message the two following paragraphs: "When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the country by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. The increase in the number of slaves by further importation from Africa was also secured by a clause forbidding Congress to prohibit the slave trade anterior to a certain date; and in no clause can there be found any delegation of power to Congress, authorizing it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice, detriment, or discouragement of the owners of that species of property, or excluding it from the protection of the Government. "The climate and soil of the Northern States soon proved unpropitious to the continuance of slave labor, whilst the converse was the case at the South. Under the unrestricted free intercourse between the two sections, the Northern States consulted their own interest by selling their slaves to the South, and prohibiting slavery within their limits. The South were willing purchasers of a property suitable to their wants, and paid the price of the acquisition, without harboring a suspicion that their quiet possession was to be disturbed by those who were inhibited, not only by want of constitutional authority, but by good faith as vendors, from disquieting a title emanating from themselves." of May 8, this accusation against the North was called "an old lie." On reflection, we doubt whether it is many years old. It was indeed full-grown when Mr. Davis found it and adopted it, and we presume, believed it, as he is evidently "given up to strong delusions; "but it is probably not much older than secession, having been invented for the purpose of making Northern men appear so hateful that Southern men would be willing to "secede " from them, and kill them. If so, it was skilfully invented; and as a device for exciting the passions which produce and sustain civil war, it is deserving of serious attention. Mr. Everett, in his late oration at New York, treats this calumny as worthy of a brief notice, He says: "The theory of a change in the Northern mind, growing out of a discovery made soon after 1789, that our soil and climate were unpropitious to slavery, (as if the soil and climate then were different from what they always had been,) and a consequent sale to the South of the slaves of the North, is purely mythical; as groundless in fact as it is absurd in statement. I have often asked for evidence of this last allegation, and I have never found an individual who attempted even to prove it." A disparaging assertion, put forth for a purpose evidently depreciatory, and which no one even attempts to prove, may commonly be left to die of itself; but when, as is now the case, it is efficient in producing rebellion, devastation, and slaughter, it is fortunate that we can show its true character by unquestionable documentary proof. The first census of the United States was taken in 1790, which was "soon after 1789," the time spoken of by Mr. Davis. According to that census, there were then the following numbers of slaves in what are now the "Free States": From 1790 to 1800, the slaves had diminished 150, and the free blacks had increased From 1800 to 1810, the 8 remaining In a communication published in the Courier I slaves disappeared, and the free blacks in 226. From 1790 to 1800, the number of slaves diminished 571, and the number of the free, 165; and of the total, 736. This may look, at first sight, as if about one-eightieth part of the slaves at the North had been virtually sold to the South; but, fortunately, we are able to explain it. The diminution of the free, 165, indicates an emigration; and we know, from the census of Massachusetts, that the increase of free blacks in that State, during those ten years, was about 715 above the average rate of increase. In New Bedford, they increased from 38 to 160; in Nantucket, from 110 to 228; in Duke's County, from 33 to 202; in Suffolk County the increase was 407. There was a great flocking to the whaling ports and to Boston, to engage as seamen. These 715 must have come from somewhere, and there is no indication in the census of any other State of a corresponding loss. On the contrary, as we shall see, there was a similar migration into Connecticut. If, of the 3,469 who were free in 1790, 715 migrated to Massachusetts, the number remaining would be only 2,754, instead of 3,304, leaving 550 places of free men to be supplied by emancipation. And such, nearly, was doubtless the fact. For the next ten years, the increase of the free is greater than the decrease of slaves. Here, too, every decrease of slaves was attended by an increase, more than equivalent, of the free. There was no sale to the South. Here, too, the increase of the free always exceeds the decrease of the slaves. There has been no diminution of the total, such as must have been caused by a general sale of slaves to the South. It stands out plainly, on the face of these tables, that emancipation, in most of the Northern States, has been a gradual work, spread out over about half a century. So far as effected by legislation, it has been conducted on what is called "the post nati principle," that those born after a certain date shall be free at a certain age. This plan was adopted, in part, for the sake of obliging those who had profited by the labor of slaves while able to labor, to support them in their old age and decrepitude. Such an operation is very different from that which Mr. Davis charges upon "the North." It is obvious, too, from the number of free blacks in the several States in 1790, that the work of emancipation, without sale to "the South," was already far advanced. In every State except New York and New Jersey, it was more than half done; for the free were more numerous than the slaves. This, too, utterly disproves the assertion of Mr. Davis, that the Northern movement began 66 soon after " 1789. Even in 787, when the Constitution of the United States was formed, it had been going on for years. This will be still more evident, when we look at the case of MASSACHUSETTS. Slavery was never abolished in Massachusetts by legislative action. A State Constitution was |