in the condition of one of her own colonies, a rich consumer of her wares. From the Chesapeake to the Gulf, a peaceful, intelligent, brave and proud people, found themselves defamed in the halls of Congress, rebuked from pulpit, denounced from press, and threatened on all sides with the knife and the torch. "Sir," said Senator BUCHANAN, in the midst of this intense agitation: "Touch this question of slavery seriously "let it once be made manifest to the people of the "South that they cannot live with us, except in a state "of continual apprehension and alarm for their wives "and their children, for all that is near and dear to "them upon the earth, and the Union is from that 66 moment dissolved. It does not then become a ques❝tion of expediency, but of self-preservation. It is a question brought home to the fireside, to the domestic "circle of every white man in the Southern States."

66

Following close upon this furious crusade-which relaxed a little of its violence when General HARRISON, the hope of the protectionists, ascended the Presidential chair, only to be resumed when the elevation of President TYLER dashed the cup from their lips-was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which aroused exultation on the part of the agitators, and corresponding indignation on the part of the South. The Constitution had made it mandatory that a fugitive slave "shall be delivered up on claim of the master; and according to the doctrine of coercion, as held by the Federalists, it became the duty of the authorities of the State to which the slave had fled to deliver him up. If the State should omit to enact laws, or should obstruct such delivery, it followed from the coercion theory that Congress could compel the

State authorities to carry out the mandate of the Constitution. The Constitution provides that the States shall elect members to Congress. Suppose, said the advocates of coercion, the State should refuse to do so, would not Congress have the power to compel her to carry out a provision so necessary for representative government? The class of politicians who have, at a recent day, decided this question in the affirmative, did not hesitate to deny, in 1843, the right of Congress to compel the State to carry out the constitutional mandate respecting fugitive slaves. In that year the Supreme Court held, in the case of "Prigg against the "commonwealth of Pennsylvania," that the State magistrates were not bound to aid the master so far as to grant warrants of arrest upon application.

66

If the master could have no aid from the local authorities, it was manifest, from the scarcity of Federal officers, that no arrests could be made, and that the provision of the Constitution would be nullified. This decision of the Court was claimed by Judge STORY as a triumph for freedom." He should rather have claimed it as a "triumph for nullification." So soon as the local magistrates were commanded to stand aside, a new and furious agitation was commenced against the continuation upon the statute book of the fugitive slave law of 1793, which required the Federal judges and magistrates, as well as those of the State, to carry its provisions into effect. Let it be remembered that this law was enacted by those who framed the Constitution, and during the administration of Washington. The Legislatures of several States passed laws prohibiting their magistrates from assisting in its execution. The use of State jails was denied for safe-keeping of the

fugitives. Personal liberty laws were enacted, imposing insurmountable obstacles to the recovery of slaves. Every means was resorted to to nullify the constitutional provision. The life and liberty of the pursuing masters were placed in jeopardy. They were often imprisoned and sometimes murdered.

Thus the people of the South, for no fault of their own, were doomed to see their States insulted, their property destroyed, their lives menaced, the laws of the Union reviled and the Constitution spurned. Is it strange that this persecution produced its inevitable result? Is it strange that emancipation was no longer mooted, that he who even suggested it was suspected as an enemy, that the stranger who wandered through the land was often treated with hasty indecency, that the reins were tightened upon the poor and innocent slave, that the geographical line became so distinct that to all intents the two peoples were separate nations, that the value of the Union became a question of discussion, that the wish for separation sought out and welded together arguments in support of the right of secession, and that the Southern people, from looking at slavery as a necessary evil, flung back into the teeth of their tormentors that it was a necessary good?

CHAPTER X.

Position of the South during the Van Buren and Harrison Administration-Relation and Tenets of Parties from 1840 to 1850-More Territory for the South-New Threats of Division at the North-The Mexican War - Quitman and the Palmettoes--Offer of the Mexican Crown to General Scott-Condition of a Mongrel Population, &c., &c.

"There is a political force in ideas which silently renders protestations, promises and guarantees, no matter in what good faith they may have been given, of no avail, and which makes Constitutions obsolete."

DRAPER'S "CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA."

"I have never read reasonings more absurd; sophistry more gross: "in proof of the Althanasian créed or transubstantiation, than the "subtle labors of Helvetius and Rousseau, to demonstrate the natural " equality of mankind. The golden rule, do as you would be done "by, is all the equality that can be supported or defended by reason, 44 or reconciled to common sense."

JOHN ADAMS.

"But nature's laws are stronger than bayonets. She made the 'Saxon and she made the Indian; but no mixed race called Mexican "will she support. Already we are told that the Indian blood pre"dominates; of course it will; but give the so-called nation another century, and then let us consider what must happen. The Castilian "blood will be all but extinct, the Indian predominating; but by "that time the Anglo-Saxon, true to his go-ahead principle, seizes Mexico; but no Saxon will mingle with dark blood; with him the "dark races must be slaves or cease to exist."

46

KNOX'S "RACES OF MEN."

Towards the close of Van Buren's administration, political parties, which had been in somewhat chaotic condition from the entrance of Alabama into the Union in 1819, now began to assume definite shape. The followers of CALHOUN, who, although seated voiceless in