the freedom of his own race, or any respect for honesty and fair dealing. Now that the excitement of the occasion has passed off, I know that there are thousands and tens of thousands who, if they would examine this subject and its history fairly, could scarcely be made to believe they had ever permitted themselves to be made participators in, or had lent their active aid to the perpetration of such an iniquity. Yet such was the fact; this was a part and parcel, and but one of the scenes in the great drama that had been put upon the stage by Southern Democracy, the boasted friends and champions of the rights of the people and the rights of the states; and then the people of the South, in the wild excitement of their passions, were made to believe that the resistance offered to this scheme of tyranny, despotism, and fraud by men who had the right to establish their organic law that we claimed for ourselves, was an unconstitutional and unholy war made upon the rights of the South. I quote what I said of it at the time in my Academy of Music speech in 1859.

MR. BOTTS'S SPEECH IN NEW YORK IN 1859.

"They claim to be a State-rights party, and utterly deny that any man can be a friend to the rights of the states who does not attach himself to their Democratic organization.

"Well, in the course of my reading and my experience I have known of but few instances in which there has been any attempt on the part of the general government to interfere with or encroach upon the rights of the states; and those few are very striking and very remarkable instances, as well as of transcendant importance, and of very recent date, and have all originated and been sustained by the Democratic party.

"The first case was that of the Lecompton Constitution, in which the doctrine was asserted by a State-rights Republican Democratic President (for that is the title they have. assumed to themselves), and strenuously attempted to be carried out in Congress, that it was in the power of the Federal authorities to legislate one of the territories of this government as a state into the Union, with a Constitution which had never been submitted to the people for ratification, on the avowed ground that, if submitted, it would be rejected, and against which seven tenths of the people of that territory were then remonstrating and protesting-a doctrine that struck a death-blow at the basis and foundation of our Revolution -a doctrine that denied both the right and the capacity of the people for self-government-a doctrine, the advocacy of which, in the absence of party machinery and party demands, there was not one of its advocates within the broad limits of this nation whose standing and popularity could have withstood the storm of popular indignation and wrath with which he would have been overwhelmed—a doctrine that was the most anti-Democratic, anti-Republican, anti-state-rights, anti-constitutional, anticommon-sense, and anti-common-honesty doctrine that was ever propounded to the American people; and yet there was not one Southern Democrat in either house of Congress that had the consistency, the principle, or the independence to vote against it. And it is a historical fact never to be forgotten or overlooked, that the only party in this country that could be found to give it their support. was the Democratic Republican State-rights party, and that that fraction of the party claiming, "par excellence," to be the true and genuine Simon-pure State-rights wing of the party, gave it the most earnest and active support.

"For my own part, having just returned from abroad

when this question was raging with its greatest violence in Congress, I stood by an inactive but not an unconcerned spectator, feeling that if the final result should show that the power and influence of the President had become so omnipotent and overwhelming, or that the people had become so debased and indifferent to their own rights and the enjoyment of free government, as to have submitted patiently to such outrageous and intolerable oppression and wrong, that then there was no despotism in the Old World under which I would not as soon have lived as under the tyrannical and iron despotism of Democracy.

"Thanks to God, the doctrine did not prevail; and, thanks to God, the people are resolved to be left free to choose their own form of government, in defiance of bribes on the one hand, and the threats on the other of the Democratic Republican State-rights party that now holds the reins of government in its hands, I trust for a limited period only; for if after this they shall be retained in power, the moral effect and virtue of the action of the people will have. been thrown away.

"Does this action of the party indeed constitute Democracy? If a case parallel to this could occur in England, it would drive any ministry into everlasting disgrace, if no more. In France it would produce a revolution that no power of government could resist. In Russia it would be regarded as an act of detestable tyranny, against which the serfs themselves would rebel. Yet here it is claimed as evidence of Democratic consistency, and adherence to the principles of true Democracy.

"Look again at the question of the admission of Kansas under a new Constitution. Every Southern Democrat has already voted for its admission under a Constitution that the people of Kansas have disavowed, rejected, and

spurned. They were offered admission, with their thirtyfive thousand population, if they would ignore all that had passed, stultify themselves, and yield obedience to the dictation of the Federal Executive and Congress; and now, since they have indignantly rejected the bribe, and spurned the threats which accompanied it, it is recommended by the representative of the Democratic State-rights party, that one rule shall be adopted for the admission of Kansas, and another for Oregon, and all the other territories of the United States.

"May we not ask, in the name of Heaven, what has this government come to? In what direction are we drifting? What haven are we to reach? Is this Democracy? Is this justice? Is this honesty? Is this constitutional liberty? Is this what our fathers fought for? Is this state rights? Is one territory to be left free to form a government to suit itself, and another to be required to frame one to suit the President or the Democratic party? Is this the way the President hopes to put down agitation, and restore harmony to our already distracted country? Yet where is that party which looms up in bold relief for the equality and sovereignty of all the states? Where is that Democ racy that is always loud-mouthed in proclaiming the equality and sovereignty of the people ?"

I also append a sketch of the proceedings of the Kansas Convention, as taken from the National Intelligencer of that day, that a fair conception may be formed of what an outrage the South had been led to take an active part in perpetrating, while, as I have said, they were made to believe. they were only contending for their plain legal rights in the territories, of which they were about to be unceremoniously robbed. Here is the sketch:

"The Douglas wing of the Convention wanted to submit

the slave clause to the people, but not the body of the Constitution. The plan is to force the people to vote for the instrument itself, whether they are for it or against it. This Constitution legalizes all the laws past by the spurious Legislature, including the Black Code, which punishes with death those who oppose slavery.

"We have space only for a condensed sketch of the proceedings:

"Mr. John Randolph, a blunt, outspoken pro-slavery delegate representing Atchison County, in the course of debate on Friday said that he was in favor of the minority report, because he considered the plan of the majority (Calhoun's) a swindle. The idea of submitting one clause of the Constitution, and not allowing the people to vote on the whole, was mean, cowardly, and infamous; it was worse than a swindle, it was scoundrelism! He ridiculed the idea that the love of Democracy and the principles of free suffrage actuated the Nationals' in the Convention. Else why did they deny to the people the right to vote upon the whole instrument? He was in favor of submitting the whole or none; he was down on all sneaking, half-way dodges. For himself, he believed the Convention to be a sovereign body, and therefore possessing the right to send up to Congress its Constitution without submitting it to the people at large. He was opposed from principle to letting the Abolitionists and Black Republicans vote down their Constitution, as they would do if they had a chance. What he did he wanted to do openly; he was opposed to stabbing in the dark. He hated Judases, who kissed only to betray. The majority report was a cheat and a fraud.

"Mr. Morley, of Riley County, pitched into both reports. He denounced the proposition of the majority as a base attempt to swindle the people, and the minority report as a