ployment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States, a citizen can not travel the high-way with his servant, who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon, and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility, than by the fraternity of such brethren.
The public law of civilized nations requires every State to restrain its citizens or subjects from committing acts injurious to the peace and safety of any other State, and from attempting to excite insurrection, or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquility of their neighbors, and our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offences against the laws of nations.
These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries, and all centuries. But they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past, the Abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States, have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions, and to excite insurrection and servile war amongst us. They have sent emissaries among us, for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the National Councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries, who escaped public justice by flight, have found fraternal protection among our Northern Confederates.
These are the men who say the Union shall be preserved.
Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican Party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States; we know their treachery, we know the shallow pretences under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations; if we submit to them, it will
