diction of the offence, and punish the violation of the law with appropriate punishments.”
So much about the way in which the combinations can be and ought to be suppressed and punished. Now, what and where are the combinations?
“Sir,” says the Judge, “what were the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry outrage? Without stopping to adduce the evidence in detail, I have no hesitancy in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harper's Ferry crime was the natural, logical, and inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, as explained and enforced in their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially in the speeches of their leaders, in and out of Congress. * * * The great principle that underlies the Republican party is violent, irreconcilable, eternal warfare upon the institution of American slavery with a view to its ultimate extinction throughout the land.”
This language is plain. There is the dangerous combination with intent to carry on a violent warfare against the institutions of other States. Now, let us see what the Judge is going to do with the unfortunate combination to which, I am sorry to say, most of us belong:
“Sir,” says the Judge, “give us such a law as the Constitution contemplates and authorizes, and I will show the Senator from New York that there is a Constitutional mode of repressing the irrepressible conflict. I will open the prison door, and allow the conspirators against the peace of the Republic and the domestic tranquillity of other States to select their cells, wherein to drag out a miserable life as a punishment for their crimes against the peace of society.”
But, in order to remove all doubt as to what the conspiracy and combination is, he proceeds:
