statistics, without now controverting these
false conclusions, I ask—
" What constitutes a State?
Not high raised battlements, or labored
mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires' and turrets
crowned,
Not bays, and broad armed ports,
Where laughing at the storm, rich navies ride,
Not starred or spangled courts,
Where low-born' d baseness wafts perfumes to
pride—
No ! men, high-minded men,
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing dare
maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the
chain—
These constitute a State."
I further affirm that slavery was not the
cause, though made the occasion, of the war
and our national woes. And as showing that
in this view I am not speaking merely as a
partisan, I refer to an article in the Ameri-
can Quarterly Church Review, of January,
1864, where the cause's of our national ca-
lamities are discussed with great philoso-
phical power, founded on historical facts.
There was and is now, no "irrepressible
conflict" which based on principles of rea-
son demand the overthrow of slavery, as
the condition of preserving our national life
and republican liberties. And the states-
man who supposes that he has discovered
in the abolition of negro slavery a remedy
for our national condition, will find himself
as much mistaken in restoring the vigor
and health of the national authority as the
physician is in producing a recovery in a
patient whom he treats for a single symp-
tom of disease, when he is racked and tor-
tured by a complication of deep-seated
maladies. Among the primal causes of this
war were the decay of public and private
virtue—the disregard of laws, accompanied
with the doctrine of obedience to a higher
law, viz: a man's own ideas of law—the
growth of abolitionism moving on like the
glacier's "cold and restless form" day by
day, until it culminated in John Brown in-
surrections, alarmed the Southern people
for the safety of their homes, firesides and
domestic peace, and fostered a corresponding
want of attachment to the Union among
the Southern people—the failure to recog-
nize the decisions of the Supreme Court as
conclusive of the right of the people of the
several States to enjoy the common domain |
or territory—the growing tendency of the
North to appeal from the Constitution to
the will of an irresponsible majority, ending
in consolidation—the refusal to concede
constitutional guarantees which would se-
cure the minority against the unauthorized
acts of the majority—the threat to over-
throw the institutions of the South through
constitutional amendments adopted by a
sufficient number of States;—and not so
much the wrongs and oppressions suffered,
as the fears that the North would attempt
the abolition of slavery at a future time,
when having the power to accomplish it,
the South would be forced to submit from
necessity to the superior strength of the
North. And yet with all these powerful
incentives, I affirm that as a class the slave-
holders did not bring on this war, and that
as a class they were the last men in the
South to desert the flag of the Union.
To sustain this position, I refer, Mr. Pre-
sident, to high republican authority.
" Throughout all the agitations pending
the outbreak of the rebellion, the more ex-
tensive and wealthy among them (the slave-
holders) steadily resisted disunion as involv-
ing the overthrow of slavery. Gov. Aiken,
the largest slaveholder in South Carolina,
* * * has never had a word of cheer
for the rebellion. Gov. Hammond, another
South Carolina patriarch, rich, shrewd and
a most intense devotee of "the institution,"
has been ominously silent ever since Lin-
coln's election. * * * The men who
had most at stake upon slavery hesitated to
play the desperate game to which they
were impelled, knowing well that by play-
ing it they risked their all.''—New York
Tribune.
And Major General Francis P. Blair, in
one of his speeches, says:
"Every man acquainted with the facts
knows that it is fallacious to call this a
"slaveholders rebellion." * * * * * A
closer scrutiny demonstrates the contrary to
be true; such a scrutiny demonstrates that
the rebellion originated chiefly with the non-
slaveholders resident in the strongholds of
the institution, not springing however from
any love erf slavery, but from an antagonism
of race, and hostility to the idea of equality
with the blacks involved in simple emanci-
pation."
I admit, Mr. President, that as a conse-
quence of that very policy which Southern
statesmen predicted would be pursued,
slavery exists not to-day in Maryland as an
element of political power. But it does |
