The American Conflict: An Address, Spoken Before the New England Society of Montreal, and a Public Audience, in Nordheimer's Hall, Montreal, on Thursday Evening, 22nd December, 1864

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Page 25 - ... secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it — when the ' storm came and the wind blew, it fell.
Page 29 - And if reckon from the end of the fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, we shall find each century showing an average of seven.
Page 26 - Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Page 25 - This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong in principle socially, morally, and politically.
Page 18 - The whole South is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn, and though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question, whether I should take part against my native State.
Page 24 - We eat together, trade together, and practise, yet, in intercourse, with great respect, the courtesies of common life. But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the North and the other at the South.
Page 11 - ... connected with the British realm and the British name. A similar trial of misconception, misrepresentation and mob violence, awaited the movement in the United States, but on a larger and more determinate scale. In America, there were political obstacles in the way which did not exist in England. And these obstacles not being rightly apprehended in England, it came to pass that English remonstrances addressed to the people of the United States on the subject of slavery frequently failed of their...
Page 25 - Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time.
Page 24 - The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections, for between such sections merely there can be no contest ; nor between the people of the North and the people of the South, for our relations have been pleasant, and on neutral grounds there is still nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together...
Page 24 - North they have no repugnance ; on the contrary, if it were to stand out for itself, free from the control of any other power, and were to offer to European states, upon fair terms, a full supply of its commodities, it would not only not be warred upon, but the South would be singularly...

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