7

holding State by inheritance, by her traditions, usages and laws,
a border State between those now forbidding slavery and those
retaining it; allied to all the States with equal sympathies, and
by her various interests nothing can be indifferent to her people
which tends to disturb their Union. To that Union she is in-
dissolubly bound by every tie; by every interest in the present,
by every association and memory of the past. Her people there-
fore have always refused to take part in the struggles for sec-
tional power. Her voice has always been raised for peace and
compromise, from the day of the first great settlement of this dis-
turbance down to its unpardonable renewal, and the violation of
the sacred compact, by which it was settled and silenced.

The people of Maryland have never listened to suggestions of
disunion from southern States, and have denied all appeals to
her sympathies from them, as steadily as they have refused all
sectional association with States in the north, whose misguided
councils have forgotten their allegiance to the Union, or attempted
to deny the constitutional rights of their equals. The people of
this State yet know of no grievance, for which disunion is a
remedy, and they have always, in the words of Washington, dis-
countenanced whatever might suggest even the slightest suspicion
that Union can, in any event, be abandoned.

Her people will hearken to no suggestion inimical to the slave-
holding States, for she herself is one of them. They will listen
to no suggestion inimical to union with the non-slaveholding
States, for she also has interests identical with theirs; and more
than any other State, by reason of her position and the variety
of her interests, is deeply concerned in the preservation of the
Federal Union. Ever ready to defend by arms her own rights
and liberties, from any aggression from within or without, she
has not yet begun to consider the chances of disunion. Her
people are content with the conviction, that however "designing
men" may have taught the contrary, no right of any State, north
or south, atlantic or western, has yet been infringed by the com-
mon Government of all. And the attempts of certain partizans
to make them think otherwise, are by them looked upon as only
"one of the expedients of party, to acquire influence within par-
ticular districts, by misrepresenting the opinions and views of otter
districts." They regard such alarmists as political adventurers,
who live by subsidizing the fears, and enlisting the prejudices of
a sectional party whose hopes they are the first to betray when
they have gained place and power by the cheat.

Holding these views, the people of Maryland have always
looked with pride on their share in the great compromises
of 1820 and of 1850; and with very different feelings on
the flagrant violation of those compromises, and their de-
struction by "designing men," in 1854. The name of one
of Maryland's ablest sons is forever associated with the Missouri