the Union? And yet men prate of a first al- | where cotton may be grown, and for the labor legiance due to their State!

But to what power does the man of foreign birth assume allegiance when he becomes a citizen? and what is the character of his citizenship? Does he by his naturalization become a citizen of any particular State? No; he attains the dignity of American citizenship. Does he swear allegiance to any State? No; he swears to support the Constitution of the United States. He is not by that step identified with a part, but with the whole, of the Nation, and binds himself to the Government which represents the Nation. And yet that man is told that he owes primary and paramount allegiance to the State he lives in, the Constitution of which he never promised to support, and the obligation of which upon him ceases the moment he steps outside her border!

In sober verity, there is in this whole dogma of State allegiance an absurdity so glaring, a perversion of the true principles of constitutional law so flagrant, a delusion so pitiful and yet so monstrous, that it is a world's wonder that men of sense could anywhere be found to inculcate or even countenance a doctrine, that any school-boy might refute, and which a jurist or a statesman would regard as worthy only of ridicule and contempt.

ALLEGIANCE TO KING COTTON.

to cultivate it. Both will be found; and when found, the overthrow of the kingdom of cotton in this republic, and of the system of labor upon which that kingdom rests, is but a question of time; and with that overthrow, if not before, reason will resume its sway, patriotism its power, and allegiance to the Constitution its supremacy.

RIGHT OF REVOLUTION.

If it be asked, may not a people throw off their allegiance, and make for themselves a new government? the answer is, of course, they may. The right of revolution is inherent in every people; but it is ultima ratio-the last resort, and is not a remedy which any people may, without awful crime, needlessly appeal to. But so perverted are the judgments of many in the present crisis, and so deeply have their minds, insensibly to themselves, become imbued with destructive error, that thousands wildly claim the right of any portion of a nation to throw off and overturn their Government at their mere pleasure, for any cause or no cause, regardless of consequences, and in defiance of every principle which justifies or upholds any form of human authority. It were needless to say that such a doctrine tears up by the roots all social order, and prostrates like a whirlwind every institution of government. To see its legitimate and inevitable fruits, you have only to look at Mexico, where forty years of revolu tions have wrought desolations, which another forty years of peace and order might not repair. If the American people are not to take a place alongside of that poor victim of periodical revolt, let them understand the principles upon which alone any people may make themselves the executioners of their own Government. If it be not in vain to hold up the words and example of our Revolutionary fathers, let us learn from them when to take the sword; lest, taking it rashly and without cause, we perish by the sword.

Read their Declaration of Independence, and ponder these words:

But, my friends, the truth is, that this dogma is but a cloak for another kind of allegiance, which has usurped the place of that due to the Constitutional Government of the Union. The people of the insurgent States have, in great part, renounced allegiance to that Government, and transferred it to their cotton bales and the system of labor that produces them. With them COTTON IS KING, and they bow down to their king with a reverence denied to their country! A dream of the dominion of cotton over three mighty nations-the American, the French, and the British-has filled their imaginations, until it assumes to them the form of a reality. But for this delusion, never was there a more loyal people than they; with it, never was there a people more miserable than they are destined Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governto be, persisting in their unnatural rebellion.ments long established should not be changed No instance can be found, of great nations be- for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, ing permanently held tributary to any one spot all experience has shown, that mankind are of this earth, for a production of the soil ind's more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferpensable to their comfort and civilization, when able, than to right themselves by abolishing the only labor was needed to produce it in unlimited forms to which they are accustomed. But, quantities in other lands, unmindful of this, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, that people plunge into rebellion to clutch the pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a sceptre of commercial power, and, as they clutch, design to reduce them under ABSOLUTE DESPOTit eludes their grasp, and passes away forever, ISM, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw The dominion they might have wielded, as a part off such Government, and to provide new of the United States, for many years to come, guards for their future security. Such has been was broken in the hour they attempted to sep- the patient sufferance of these Colonics, and arate themselves from their country. They such is now the necessity which constrains them have disturbed the commercial equilibrium of to alter their former systems of Government. great nations; and to avoid a recurrence of The history of the present King of Great Britsuch disturbance hereafter, those nations are ain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpaalready searching the earth for new regions tions, all having, in direct object, THE Estae

LISHMENT OF AN ABSOLUTE TYRANNY OVER THESE | of rebellion, and announced her rejection of the STATES. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world."

law in conformity with her constitutional obli- | ed as sinful the institution of slavery, they have gations; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own laws and by the laws of Congress." Now, were this statement true in every particular, relating, as it does, only to the action of particular States, it would not constitute the shadow of a justification for rebellion against the General Government.

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted, have been defeated, and the Government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the non-slavehold-nal ing States. Those States [mark the words!] those STATES have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions: and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States, and recognized by the Constitution: they have denounc

or self-protection, and the Federal Government | tutions according to its own judgment exclusively, will have become their enemy."

This is the great indictment found by the South against the North, and proclaimed as the all-sufficient vindication of the rebellion. While it is true in the main fact alleged-the election of a sectional President-it is untrue in other points. I am no defender of the Republican party, its Anti-Slavery doctrines, or its candidates. From the day of the commencement of the Anti-Slavery agitation, thirty years ago, till the present time, I have opposed it without variation. But I detest falsehood, by whomsoever employed, for whatever purpose; and when it is used to justify the destruction of the Government of the Nation, it demands of me, and of every true man, unbounded execration. Let us examine this indictment, and fairly and honorably decide how far it is, in point of fact, true.

Leaving the main fact-the election of a sectional President-to be considered last, we will notice in the first place the allegations made against the party that elected him. Concerning this party it is averred that "it has announced that the South should be excluded from the common territory." Taking the Platform of the Chicago Convention as the criterion of the principles of the Republican party,—and we have a right to judge it by that, as it has a right to object to being judged by any thing else, this charge is true; for in the eighth resolution of that Platform they 66 deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States." This, in effect, excludes the South from the Territories, and so sustains this charge.

But when they go further, and charge the Republican party with announcing, "that the Judicial tribunal shall be made sectional," regard for truth requires me to say that no such announcement is to be found in the Platform of that party. True, individuals did give expression to such an idea; but no party is ever held responsible for all that individuals utter, nor can any party venture to become the endorser of all the sentiments of its individual members. As we would be judged, let us judge others.

A more extraordinary charge is, that the publican party announce "that a war must be waged against Slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States." The allegation is not, that fanatical Abolitionists in the party proclaim this war, but that the party do so. But when I seek for the naked truth, not to uphold or apologize for that party, but to test the justification advanced for treason, I discover no act or word which sustains the charge; but, on the contrary, I find in the Chicago Platform a resolution of directly opposite character, in these words:

is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce all lawless incasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

Justice and frankness demand that the Republican party shall have all the benefit of this explicit declaration. The cause of truth and right gains nothing by resorting to unfairness in dealing with an adversary. And when a party, after attaining power, acts out the principles it previously professed, its claim to be regarded as sincere in professing them must be considered as established. The above declaration was made in May, 1860. During the ensuing session of Congress, the Republicans, by the withdrawal of the Senators and Representatives of seven seceded States, were in a majority in both Houses; and they brought forward, and passed in both Houses, by a two-thirds vote, the following amendment to the Constitution :

"No AMENDMENT SHALL BE MADE TO THE CONSTITUTION WHICH WILL AUTHOrize or give TO CONGRESS THE POWER TO ABOLISH OR INTERFERE, WITHIN ANY STATE, WITH THE DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS THEREOF, INCLUDING THAT OF PERSONS HELD TO LABOR OR SERVICE BY THE LAWS OF SAID STATE."

No just man can read this amendment, and know that it was adopted by a Congress in which there was a majority of Republicans, and not see in it a fair vindication of the sincerity of the party in adopting the above-quoted resolution in regard to slavery in the States. As for myself, I am bound in candor to say-I cannot honorably refuse to say-that to my mind the evidence on that point is conclusive. The Republican party not only did not announce "that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States," but they expressly declared against any interference by Congress with slavery in the States; and, to guard against any such interference in the future, this amendment of the Constitution is offered to the country, which, if adopted, would, without doubt, endure as long as the Constitution itself.

But the great count in the indictment is the Re-election of a President by the votes of one section of the Union; and this is true. But how came he to be elected? This question instantly forces itself upon the mind. For thirty years the Anti-Slavery agitation had been in progress, without getting control of the Government; and only four years before, the Republican party had been defeated in a tremendous struggle: how did it secure a triumph in 1860? It is as certain to be recorded in history, as that the history of that year shall ever be written, that the action of the South itself was one of the immediate and prominent causes-if not the great cause-of that triumph. No fact is more undeniable, than that the Democratic party was the only one to which the country could look

That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic insti

of slavery. But what was this to the schemers of treason? Their work was to destroy the Union, not to defend slavery. If they stopped to do the latter, the former would be left undone; if they used their constitutional power to protect slavery, or to obtain guarantees, the Constitution would be preserved: so they trampled upon the Constitution, abjured their alleseized the sword to redress a grievance, which they themselves designedly aided to produce! I need not ask if history has a parallel to this. It stands out, in hideous deformity, the monster iniquity of all the ages, whose dark, deep stain ages cannot wash away.

Were any thing wanting to give completeness to the ignominy of this act, it is at hand, furnished by the leaders in it, at the moment of its perpetration. While they were putting forth to the world their "Declaration," they were engaged, in their debates, in denying its most solemn allegations. They appealed to mankind to justify their treason, because the President had been elected by a sectional vote; and at the same time declared, among themselves, that they had for a quarter of a century been plotting to accomplish the work of disruption then attained, and that that result had not been produced by that election! Listen to some of the many expressions made in the South Carolina Convention by its master-spirits.

for numerical strength to avert that result; except that other fact, known to you all, that the Cotton States broke up that party, and thereby rendered the defeat of Mr. LINCOLN impossible. At the very moment when the Anti-Slavery agitation seemed to be approaching victory, and when it was the stern duty of every man in the opposing ranks to forget all minor differences, and stand like a rock against its further prog-giance, snapped the bond of brotherhood, and ress, those States deliberately abandoned their former position, proclaimed principles which they had previously denied with emphasis, seceded from the party, and themselves opened the way for the result upon which they intended to base their subsequent secession from the Union. Secession was the great object they had aimed at for nearly a third of a century. The evidence of a deep-laid and long-cherished conspiracy among them to destroy the Union, is abundant and conclusive. The "proper moment" to "precipitate the Cotton States into a revolution," of which Mr. YANCEY wrote, in 1858-the proper moment to "pull a temple down that has been built three-quarters of a century, and clear the rubbish away and reconstruct another," as was proclaimed by a member of the South Carolina Convention-the proper moment to let slip the dogs of war among children of the same fathers and peo- | ple of the same nation-the proper moment, in a word, to consummate the treason which had been festering and growing for thirty years -was seen to have arrived; and the plotters were not slow to seize it. They had already proclaimed that the election of a President by the Republican party would be a sufficient cause for the dissolution of the Union, and they set themselves to the work of making that election certain, by their own disruption of the only party that had the numbers to prevent it. And they succeeded, to a miracle. Never was game of duplicity and treachery better played. They betrayed their previously professed principles, their party, and their country, all at once; and at the moment of consummating the crowning act of their sacrilege, they turn to the world, with an air of injured innocence, and appeal to mankind to justify a rebellion based on the success of their own most devilish machinations! Has history a parallel to this?

But were it otherwise-had they done all that men could do, to prevent the election of a sectional President, and such had, nevertheless, been elected, on the principles alleged by South Carolina in her Declaration, or even on worse -it was still an ascertained and indisputable fact, before her secession, that in both Houses of the present Congress there would be a majority against him, if all the States should stand firm, and retain their representation there. In that case, Mr. LINCOLN would have been this day, and certainly for two years to come, the possessor of a barren power, except as to official patronage, and utterly impotent to impress a single principle of his party on the Government, or to touch in a single point the institution

Mr. PARKER. "It appears to me, with great deference to the opinions that have been expressed, that the public mind is fully made up to the great occasion that now awaits us. It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us, but it has been gradually culminating for a long series of years, until at last it has come to that point when we may say the matter is entirely right."

Mr. INGLIS. "If there is any gentleman present who wishes to debate this matter, of course this body will hear him; but as to delay for the purpose of discussion, I, for one, am opposed to it. As my friend (Mr. Parker) has said, most of us have had this matter under consideration for the last twenty years, and I presume we have by this time arrived at a decision on the subject.”

Mr. KEITT." We are performing a great act, which involves not only the stirring present, but embraces the whole great future of ages to come. I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life. I am content with what has been done to-day, and content with what will take place to-morrow. We have carried the body of this Union to its last resting place, and now we will drop the flag over its grave."

Mr. RHETT. "The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. IT IS NOT ANY THING PRODUCED BY MR. LINCOLN'S ELECTION, OR BY THE NON-EXECUTION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. It has been a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years; and in the production of this great result the great men who have passed before us, whose great