This grasping spirit overreached itself, as will presently be seen. At last it had aroused the too long dormant lion of freedom. The slaveholders, after exhausting their cunning in seeking to provoke Mexico to declare war, sent to that Republic the unscrupulous and wily Slidell, (late the emissary of the insurgents to Louis Napoleon,) to provoke her to an act of hostility. He too failed, and the administration then marched an army upon Mexican soil, and declared war upon Mexico. On the 7th of July, 1845, a proclamation was issued by Commander Sloat, declaring that "California, (then a Mexican province,) now belongs to the United States."

The war against Mexico was openly proclaimed to be a war for conquest. The United States wanted California and other Mexican territory. Mexico refused to sell; war was then made upon Mexico, weak and unable to resist, and the territory taken. The gallant and adventurous Fremont scaled the Rocky Mountains and took possession of that land of gold. Generals Scott and Taylor marched their armies at will through Mexico. The pro-slavery administration of President Polk, desiring to secure by treaty, these acquisitions, in 1846 asked an appropriation of two millions with which to negotiate peace. To this appropriation David Wilmot, member of Congress from Pennsylvania, offered a proviso, known in history as the Wilmot proviso, which provided that it should be "an express and fundamental condition in the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys. hereby appropriated, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party should first be duly convicted." This proviso was adopted by the House, but was not at that session of Congress, brought to a vote in the Senate. At the next session President Polk asked an appropriation of three millions for the same purposes, and to this the Wilmot proviso was again attached in the House, by a vote of 115 ayes to 106 noes. The proviso was rejected by the Senate by a vote of 21 ayes to 31 noes. The bill being

returned to the House, was finally, after a furious struggle, passed without the proviso.

In the negotiations which followed, Mexico, sought to make it the condition of the cession of territory, that as it was then free, slavery should be excluded from all territory thus acquired. The United States' Minister peremptorily refused to treat on this basis declaring that "if the whole territory were offered, increased ten fold in value, and covered a foot thick with pure gold, upon the single condition that slavery should be excluded therefrom, he would not entertain the idea for a moment, nor even think of communicating the proposition to Washington."

Such was the animus of the Mexican war, and such the imperious arrogance of slavery.

New Mexico, and upper and lower California, were ceded to the United States without restriction, and the slaveholders were now exultant. They now believed in the indefinite extension of the slave empire. But the days of their supremacy were drawing to an end; there is a Divinity that shapes and moulds the destinies of nations, however men may craftily plan and arrange them.

It was in 1847, during the Mexican war, that Abraham Lincoln served for a single term in Congress. He took his position at once among the anti-slavery members, and voted as he afterwards said, at least forty times for the Wilmot proviso.

The future great leader of emancipation introduced a bill to emancipate slaves in the District of Columbia.

The "irrepressible conflict," and the aggressions of the slave power have thus been briefly sketched.

That power had by its control of the Federal Government, purchased and conquered, annexed and acquired, more territory for slavery than that embraced in all the thirteen original States. It had made war and peace in its own interests. It had controlled all parties. It had dictated to each the selection of its Presidential candidates, and it had carefully and stealthily strengthened itself in the Federal Judiciary. Fealty to slavery was a condition to all appointments under

the Government. Bold, honest, outspoken fidelity to freedom was fatal to political ambition.

But these aggressions had aroused the attention and awakened the indignation of the free States. A few zealous and determined men called at Philadelphia, in December, 1833, a National Anti-Slavery Convention. It was attended by sixty delegates from ten States. This convention organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. This was the acorn germ of that oak, the branches of which, in 1860, overshadowed the land. This and other kindred associations, were the beginning of the organization which twenty-seven years thereafter, effectively aided in the election of the Illinois backwoods democrat to the Presidency. Lundy, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Owen Lovejoy, Gerrit Smith, Dr. Channing, John Quincy Adams, J. R. Giddings, Henry Ward Beecher, Cassius M. Clay, were among the pioneers of those, who, differing as to means and views, yet in various ways sought to arouse the public mind to the dangerous encroachments and enormities of the slave power.

Among the most worthy, persistent, and distinguished of these founders of the anti-slavery organization, was William Lloyd Garrison. His name should be forever associated with the emancipation of the slave. His life has been devoted. with unselfish singleness of purpose to this great object. Consecrating himself to this grand aim he lived to see it triumph. For more than forty years, through poverty, persecution and indignity, he gave his pen and his voice with great intellectual and high moral power to pleading the cause of the poor, down-trodden, despised African. When the morning of final triumph dawned, he visited President Lincoln at the White House, to thank him for the proclamation of emancipation,and himself received from the lips of that great man, the thanks of humanity as one of the pioneers in the great work of emancipation.

The anti-slavery men and abolitionists, frequently encountered mobs and personal violence. Their printing presses were destroyed, and they themselves persecuted like the early christians. The newspaper press of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was destroyed at Alton, Illinois, and he was murdered

because he firmly persisted in discussing slavery. This was in 1835, and he was the first martyr in the contest for liberty and a free press. Pennsylvania Hall, erected for free discussion, was burned by a mob because abolitionists were allowed to hold meetings there. At Cincinnati, Ohio, a mob destroyed for the third time the printing press of an anti-slavery paper. Large pecuniary rewards were offered by Governors of slave States for the persons of prominent men in the free States, because of their opposition to slavery.

Governor Wise of Virginia said, "the best way to meet abolitionists is with powder and cold steel." He has been a leader among those who tried the experiment. Verily he sowed the "wind, and has reaped the whirlwind." The house of this proud aristocrat has, during the war, been used as a school house for negro children, taught by a New England abolitionist. Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina, recommended that abolitionists be punished with death without benefit of clergy. Under the administration of Amos Kendall, the United States mails were violated to suppress the circulation of anti-slavery documents. Fruitless efforts were made in New York, and in the legislatures of several of the other free States, to suppress by penal enactments, freedom of speech and of the press on the subject of slavery. These efforts failed, and seemed only to increase the numbers and stimulate the zeal of the friends of freedom. Neither mob violence, nor threats of legal penalties could silence the eloquent voices, nor stop the pens of the advocates of liberty. The abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions praying for the abolition of slavery at the National Capital. These were suppressed by what was known as "gag rules," by which it was declared that petitions on the subject of slavery should neither be received, read, nor considered by Congress. The right of petition on this subject was suppressed in the American Congress from 1836 to 1845.

John Quincy Adams was probably the most cultivated and best trained statesman our country has produced; educated by his father with express reference to public life, he enjoyed the best advantages both at home and abroad, and had the benefit of association with the best intellects of Europe and

America. His memory was wonderfully ready and retentive, and he contined to grow in intellect even to advanced years, and well deserved the name of "the old man eloquent." With all the courage and persistence with which his noble father had advocated Independence, he advocated the right of petition. Commencing in Congress almost alone, he bravely withstood the violence and denunciation, the threats and insults of the slaveholders, until gradually he aroused the people and they rallied to his aid. District after district gradually sent champions to his side, until finally, in 1845, the obnoxious gag rules were abolished and the right of petition vindicated. He,not only by his eloquence, courage and persistence, triumphed and secured the right of petition in Congress, but introduced an amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the United States. This proposition he submitted on the 25th of February, 1839. The institution was then far too powerful to be even shaken by the efforts of any man, however great. It was suffered by Providence to go on in its course of aggression and imperious power, until it should dig its own grave and die a suicide by the very means by which it undertook to overthrow the Government.

In 1835, South Carolina enacted a law providing that colored persons coming into her ports, should be imprisoned during the stay of the vessel in which they came. Many colored citizens of Massachusetts were thrown into prison under the provisions of this law. The validity of which law and the legality of such imprisonment, Massachusetts denied, and the Governor of that Commonwealth commissioned a venerable citizen, Judge Hoar, to go to South Carolina, investigate the facts and institute suits in the Federal Courts to test the validity of this statute. Judge Hoar was ignominiously expelled the State, by a mob, countenanced by the authorities of the State. While in the free States the outrages and violence of mobs, and the various persecutions to which the anti-slavery men were subjected, served only to add to their strength, and encourage their rapid increase; in the slave states, liberty of the press and freedom of speech on the subject of slavery were completely suppressed.