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CRISSY & MARKLEY, PRINTERS, GOLDSMITHS HALL, LIBRARY STRE

1863.

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WITHOUT NEW ENGLAND.

ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF INDIANA.

MORE than a third of a century since, I found a home zens of Indiana, among you. Kindly you received me. L have you bestowed on me your confidence. I owe t honorable station and a debt of gratitude. Let me end now in your hour of danger, to repay, if in part I may, that

On the future of our country clouds and darkness rest. V engaged in a war as terrible as any which history records; a rage on civilization, if it be not God's agency for a great pu All good citizens earnestly desire its termination. The f longing of every Christian man and woman is for the resto of peace.

To this righteous desire there are addressed, especially E our North-West, certain proposals of compromise and acco dation. Shall we take counsel as to what these are w Can we reason together on a subject of interest more v ourselves and to our children?

But before we scan the future, let us glance at the past. we advance, let us determine where we stand, and ascertai we came hither. Looking back on our steps througho last two years, let us, in a dispassionate spirit, by the authentic and unimpeachable documents, very briefly ex the causes, underlying a stupendous national convulsion, have resulted in the present condition of things.

The secession ordinance passed the Convention of South lina, December 20, 1860. The next day, December 2 Convention adopted the "Declaration of Causes," just secession. In language plain as can be desired are these set forth. They all center in one complaint, Northern enc ment on slavery; there is no other cause alleged.

What proof of such encroachment is offered ? Fir

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allegation that "for years past" fourteen Northern States, among which Indiana is named, "have deliberately refused to fulfil their Constitutional obligations" (as regards the fugitive-slavelaw) by "enacting laws which either nullify the acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them." But if you have looked through our statute-book, you know that no such law then existed, or ever existed, there. That solemn Declaration, inaugurating a war as fearful as ever desolated a nation, is based, so far as regards our State, on a statement either ignorantly or wilfully false.

If, in regard to any of the other States named, there be truth in the allegation ;-if, in any one or more of these, there existed then, a state law nullifying or rendering nugatory a Constitutional provision;-none knew better than these South Carolinians what their easy, peaceful, effectual remedy was :—an appeal to the Supreme Court. That Court has sovereign control over all unconstitutional laws. Had the South no chance of justiceof more than justice-before the Supreme Court of the United States? Be the Dred Scott decision the reply!

A thing, to be credited, must have some semblance of common sense. Will any man believe that the citizens of South Carolina-who would find it difficult to prove that by the unconstitutionality of State laws at the North they had lost twenty slaves since their State first joined the Union-will any sane man believe that South Carolina sought to break up that Union for cause so utterly trivial as that?

No! far deeper must we search for the true cause. It is plainly set forth in the latter paragraphs of the Declaration, in which the Convention speaks, not of any special laws, but of "the action of the non-slaveholding States."

It declares that these States have "denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution;" that they "have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery;" that they "have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery ;" who declares that the Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that "the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction." And it winds up by this assertion: "All hope of remedy is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion of the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erronious religious belief."

These South Carolinian sentiments, afterward endorsed by every seceding State, are doubtless, in substance, sincere. They may be received as the secession creed. Though loosely worded

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