its present limits it shall not be extended, and therefore virtually claiming to appropriate to the exclusive use of the non-slaveholding States and their citizens the territories now held, or hereafter to be acquired, by the United States. In accordance with these views, they have, through their Representatives from those States, introduced and passed, in the House of Representatives of the United States, that notorious measure, known as the "Wilmot Proviso."
Nor have they stopped at this—one aggression is quickly succeeded by another. And we have seen the deliberate effort made in Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and the slave-trade between the several States where slavery now exists. Whether the passage by Congress of these several measures, or any one of them considered separately, would justify the Southern States in adopting immediate measures for their preservation, or not, there can be no doubt that it would be the true policy to pursue, when we recollect that in many of the Northern States, by Statute and the current of their judicial decisions, in open violation of an express provision of the Constitution of the United States, the owner is prevented from reclaiming his fugitive slave.
While wrongs should be endured for a season, rather than resort to extreme measures, about the propriety of which reasonable minds might differ, I cannot, however, persuade myself that our safety, or honor, will permit the perpetration of another additional aggression to the list of wrongs so long and patiently borne from the North. Let facts be stated, and the unprejudiced decide. As free and independant States the compact of Union was formed; conflicting interests between the several States, had to be reconciled; concession was, therefore, inevitable; the South yielded to the North and the North to the South; slavery had to be protected and secured to the South, or otherwise no Union could have been formed. This was done, and the constitution ratified; peace, prosperity and strength grew out of the Union; every portion of the country, North, South, East and West, was prosperous and prospering; the South made no encroachment on the North: no murmuring was heard from us at the concessions in favor of its interests; but the fell spirit comes, and the nation is aroused from its repose by the North suddenly springing upon us an alarming and agitating question. Slavery is discovered to be a great moral and political evil, in that quarter, so soon as it became their interest to abolish it, and though it may cost blood and tears, and forever sever the Union, the agitators boldly proclaim that their work is onward. They commenced first by agitating the public mind, alarming the timid, and arousing the ambitious—associations were formed, professedly to relieve the land of a great moral deformity, that end, as might have
