occupation was incontestible, both in law and equity, and proposed that the compromise of 1820 should be renewed, by extending the Missouri line of 36° 30′ to the Pacific Ocean. This the politicians of the North refused. The controversy became so violent, that a separation of the North and South seemed imminent. A compromise, however, took place in 1850, which stopped the discussion, but did not settle the main point in dispute, namely: the right of the South to joint occupation of all new territory. In 1853, Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, became President. During this term, the discussion on slavery was renewed. A portion of western territory, named Nebraska, was divided into two territories. One of these was called Kansas and the other Nebraska. The com promise line of 36° 30′ ran to the south of these territories, which would have given Kansas as well as Nebraska, the largest, to the North. On the proposition of the Senator from Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas, the compromise line was repealed by Congress. Emigrant societies were established in Massachusetts and Connecticut, in 1854, to furnish pecuniary aid to settlers in Kansas. In consequence, a hostile population from the North poured into Kansas. Bands of armed men from the North paraded the territory. The Federal Government, whose jurisdiction extended over this distant country, was finally forced to interfere. The leaders of the anti-slavery propaganda, having violated the Federal prerogative by passing a constitution and electing a Governor, were indicted for treason, and obliged to take flight.. In 1857, James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was inaugurated President. The whole of this term was disturbed by a heated contest between the politicians of the North, on the subject of slavery in the territories. Towards the close of this Presidency, the prolonged strife between the politicians, on the topic of slavery, was taken up by the people of the two sections, in an election for a new President, November, 1860. The Northern States, being in the majority, pronounced in favor of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, the exponent of their sectional views. Under these circumstances, the Southern States have dissolved their connection with the Union. The civil compact they made with the Northern States, in 1789, guaranteeing equal rights to both, and equal protection to all, had been violated. Being in a minority in the Confederacy, they could oppose no legal barrier to the anti-slavery sentiments of the North, which, carried into legislation, would confiscate their property, and even involve their lives. The abolitionist is a practical atheist. In the language of one of their congregational ministers-Rev. Henry Wright, of Massachusetts: "The God of humanity is not the God of slavery. If So, shame upon such a God. I scorn him. I will never bow to his shrine; my head shall go off with my hat when I take it off to such a God as that. If the Bible sanctions slavery, the Bible is a self-evident falsehood. And, if God should declare it to be right, I would fasten the chain upon the heel of such a God, and let the man go free. Such a God is a phantom." The religion of the people of New England is a peculiar morality, around which the minor matters of society arrange themselves like ferruginous particles around a loadstone. All the elements obey this general law. Accustomed to doing as it pleases, New England "morality" has usually accomplished what it has undertaken. It has attacked the Sunday mails, assaulted Free Masonry. Its channels have been societies, meetings, papers, lectures, sermons, resolutions, memorials, protests, legislation, private discussion, public addresses; in a word, every conceivable method whereby appeal may be brought to mind. Its spirit has been agitation—and its language, fruits and measures, have partaken throughout of a character that is thoroughly warlike. "In language no element ever flung out more defiance of authority, contempt of religion, or authority to man. As to agency, no element of earth has broken up more friendships and families, societies and parties, churches and denominations, or ruptured more organizations, political, social or domestic. And as measures! What to spirit of man ever stood upon earth with bolder front and wielded fiercer weapons? Stirring harangues! Stern resolutions! Fretful memorials! Angry protests! Incendiary pamphlets at the South! Hostile legislation at the North! Underground railroads at the West! Resistance to the Constitution! Division of the Union! Military contribution! Sharpe's rifles! Higher law! If this is not belligerence enough, Mohammed's work and the old Crusades were an appeal to argument and not to It is a very common error that the Puritans persecuted themselves for opinion's sake, sought liberty of conscience in the wilderness of America, and there erected its altar. To Sir George Calvert belongs the imperishable glory of first establishing a government of which universal toleration and religious freedom were the chief foundation stones. It is a remarkable fact that the same spot-the shores of Maryland-which was thus embalmed in the af- · fections of freemen, should, after the lapse of a little more than two centuries and a quarter, be the first territory of the great republic desecrated by the foot of the tyrant, and the extinction of political and civil liberty. It is true that the Puritans fled from England on account of violent opposition, amounting to persecution. In thus expatriating these schismatics, the English of that day, as subsequent developments have demonstrated, exhibited a thorough insight into the nature and tendencies of their principles and character. One of their first acts, after their colony had assumed some form and substance, was the establishment of a spiritual despotism and religious intolerance as cruel and relentless as the Roman Inquisition in Spain. Professing to be themselves religious refugees, they denounced a dreary banishment against all heretics and non-conformists. Every student of American history is familiar with the sad but ever-glorious story of Roger Williams. He was a fugitive from the persecutions of the old world, but, unlike his fellow-sufferers, comprehended the nature and wrong of intolerance, and proposed the true remedy. He taught that "the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of the soul." He contended for the abolition of all laws punishing non-conformists, requiring the performance of religious duties, enforcing pecuniary contributions to the support of the church; and that equal protection should be extended to every religious belief the peace of the State, like the vital fluid we breathe, surrounding and gathering alike over mosque, synagogue, cathedral, and the humble "house of God" of the Protestant, securing to their respective worshippers unmolested sanctity of conscience. For holding and advocating these just and truly sublime doctrines, now fully recognized and enforced by the free Constitution of the Confederate States, this "young minister, godly and zealous, having precious gifts," and whose opinions and teachings we have given in almost the identical language of the historian, was most cruelly persecuted by the Puritans, and forced to hide himself in the recesses of the howling wilderness "in winter snow and inclement weather, of which he remembered the severity even in his late old age." "Often," says Bancroft, "in the stormy night he had neither fire, nor food, nor company; often he wandered without a guide, and had no house but a hollow tree." The savage of the forest, more tolerant than these narrow bigots, and who knew not his God at all, kindly rescued him from from the dread doom to which he had been consigned, to find a new home, and found a new State, by the undisturbed waters of the Narragansett. Mrs. Hutchinson, a most pure and excellent woman, for the same crime, suffered the same miserable persecutions. There is no more infallible criterion of the tone of a people than the position occupied by the weaker sex. Gallantry was the guiding-star of returning light in the mediæval ages. Devotion to women makes gentleAnd where gentlemen inhabit, there woman "rules the court, the camp, the grove;" her refined presence elevates him above his more grovelling nature; and in return he is in very truth her slave, and with life and limb and manly honor devoted to her service. The historical fact which we last mentioned, therefore, truly illustrates Yankee character. Heavens! what a spectacle! men. a horde of mean-spirited, whining Yankees pelting a shivering, defenceless woman into a rigorous exile, for entertaining a peculiar opinion, or not conforming to some rite of public worship. And with what unutterable indignation does the blood boil at the hanging of Mary Dyer, simply because she was a Quaker. This was her only offence. She died, and died upon the gallows, because she held a faith different from those people who had devoted themselves a sacrifice on the altar of religious liberty. The ferocious and bloody fanaticism of the witchcraft persecutions is too revolting for statement. It is enough to recur to it. Glance for a moment at the Puritans in power in the colony of Maryland, in the year 1676. We have already alluded to the fact that the Roman Catholics had there established perfect freedom of conscience, and opened an asylum for the persecuted and proscribed of every faith. Availing themselves of this liberality of religious jurisprudence, many Puritans from New England entered the colony, and in the course of a revolution, in the year we have named, mounted into political power. The earliest exercise of sovereignty by this new and godly regime was an edict prohibiting the freedom of public worship to all papists and prelatists. Here we see manifested the same despicable spirit that now animates the Abolition party of the country. Indeed, the Yankee is the same animal in all ages, and in all situations. He is "universal." The great fathers of the State were convinced that the heterogeneous peoples, whom they had bound together, would not long dwell in peace. Washington sincerely desired the perpetuation of the Union, but he died in the belief that, in the course of time, his tomb would become the exclusive property of the South. And John Adams, perhaps the next man to Alexander Hamilton, among the Northern patriots, had a clear and unclouded vision of the great rupture, though he was somewhat deceived as to its proximity to his own day. The following passage from Mr. Jefferson's diary, presents the views of Mr. Adams upon this subject, and is also interesting as another |