eight and ten million of slaves that are to be in this country in the next fifty years, if some means be not devised for their emancipation.

They are already under the control of the same influences that control their masters; they are becoming, in a degree, more and more intelligent every year; they comprehend the doctrine of human rights; and it will not be in the power of this government, or of any other, to keep these men in submission twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years. Therefore whoever furnishes an opportunity for the free people of the slave States to consider this matter for themselves is a benefactor of our country; for, if the South shall be deluged with blood in consequence of a servile war, the calamity will be one affecting the whole nation. Hence it is hardly less our interest than it is theirs to pursue the discussion of this question, but yet with an earnest desire to adyance the fortunes of the whole country.

Whenever the Republican party comes into power, the moderate and conservative and upright minds of the South will see that we contemplate no injury to them. The most that can happen is, that, by a proper and constitutional administration of this government, there shall be freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the mails, in the slave States; and, as the result of this freedom, the people themselves will proceed to discuss the question of slavery, and finally to devise means for its abolition.

My friends, I do not propose to keep you longer. I wish, in conclusion, to ask you to consider how great the question is that you are called upon to

determine. It is none other than the question of the freedom of these vast Territories, from the summits of the Rocky Mountains towards the Mississippi River on the one side, and the Pacific Ocean. on the other,Territories sufficient to form ten or twenty new, influential, and populous States. Would it not be, not only a calamity, but a disgrace, to the people of this country, if at this moment, when Russia has emancipated her millions of serfs and provided for their education; when Hungary is already contemplating her own redemption from Austria; when Italy is freeing herself from the Bourbons and from the Pope; when, in the language of one of our poets,

"Voices from her mountains speak,
Appenines to Alps reply,
Vale to vale and peak to peak

Toss the old, remembered cry,

ITALY SHALL BE FREE!'".

the millions of people on this continent should desecrate to slavery a territory equal to the thirteen. original States of the Union?

61

SECESSION.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CHARLESTOWN, MASS., ON THE EVE OF THE EIGHTH OF JANUARY, 1861.

IT is a melancholy circumstance in our experience,

that an assembly of American citizens should be convened under the shadow of Bunker Hill, and within sight of Faneuil Hall, to consider whether, and by what means, the Union of the American States can be preserved. But it is only by exigencies and trials that the greatness possible to an individual or a nation is developed; and, under Providence, I yet believe that the wisdom and virtue and power of the American people are sufficient to exact of posterity, for the men of this generation who are at once true to Liberty and Union, the admiration and homage which we accord to those of our ancestors who inaugurated a system of popular liberty, and organized the Union of the States on this continent. Yielding what is due to difference of civilization and circumstances, our experience corresponds to that of the renowned nations of ancient and modern times.

Institutions may protect the rights of a people; but they have never essentially changed the character of men. Personal ambition, envy, disappointment, and hatred, organizing themselves in base

and dangerous conspiracies, have waited upon every prosperous commonwealth. Vain hope it was, in the founders of these States and of this confederacy, that they and theirs should escape the evil to which free governments have been ever exposed!

But, oh, what excellency of wisdom it was, that in free schools; a free press; a religion untrammelled by law; a clergy identified with the interests, the hopes, and the fortunes of the people; the right of every citizen to bear arms; and the recognized though limited sovereignty of each State,-they secured liberty to all the generations of men on this continent, and set an example which the nations of the earth shall gladly imitate! Nor is it improbable, that the trial through which we are passing will demonstrate, more than any previous experience, our capacity to reconcile liberty and law.

No citizen ought now to be surprised or alarmed. And I may appeal to those of you who honored me with your presence on a former occasion, that nothing has yet transpired, of which you were not, in general terms at least, fully forewarned. Looking to events subsequent to the 6th of November, I then said: "The slaveholders will not loose their grasp upon the treasury, the army, the navy, all the chief offices of government at home and abroad, without active, possibly not without violent, resistance. The lovers of power and the enemies of the Union will combine." The conspiracy against the Union, of which, alas! there is now but too ample evidence, was then announced, and some of the conspirators pointed out. We knew then that unbridled license and unblushing corruption existed in the govern

ment: but we did not know that three traitors to the Union were members of the President's Cabinet; that the President himself-unwittingly, as we may now hope—was the instrument of their designs; that munitions of war in great abundance were distributed in Southern forts and arsenals; that these forts and arsenals were purposely kept in a defenceless state, that their contents might easily and surely fall into the hands of the secessionists; that our small navy was unnecessarily employed in distant seas; that the strongholds of the nation were wilfully exposed to the attacks of the enemies of the Union; and, finally, that a chief officer of the government, the head of the War Department, had, without the knowledge of the President, entered into an agreement, by which South Carolina, the leader of the rebellion, was put in a position to seize the forts in the harbor of Charleston, without danger to those engaged in the treason.

One simple act of instinctive patriotic devotion to the country has precipitated events, disclosed the plot, startled the traitors, awakened the President to his duty, aroused and concentrated the energies of the people. So long as the incorruptible integrity of the captors of André shall be remembered; so long as men shall be moved to sympathy by the winter horrors of Valley Forge; so long as the common trials and common dangers endured by the men of the South and the North shall be recognized,-so long will the people of this country cherish the wise act and sturdy patriotism of Major Anderson. Nor is it to be deemed among the least of the fortuitous circumstances of that movement, that its author is a