The British General Grant was so infatuated with this opinion, that he declared openly that he would undertake, "with five regiments of infantry, to traverse the whole country, and drive the inhabitants from one end of the continent to the other."

The Congress of colonial deputies which assembled in 1775 was clothed with ample discretionary powers to “concert, agree upon, and prosecute" such measures as should best secure justice from the home government and liberty to the people.

Under these instructions, Congress proceeded to organize an army for the general defense, to contract debts, and to issue paper currency upon the faith of the associated colonies.

This was rebellion in earnest. And it was the first act that implied permanent union.

The next year was the great year of the Declaration of Independence, in which we find our ancestors still tenaciously holding on to their old and cherished Saxon principle of the eternal right of self-government.

The second paragraph of that immortal declaration proclaims that government derives its "just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

It was in defense of this principle that our fathers periled their fortunes, their sacred honor, and their lives. The war of independence was fought on this basis. Independence was achieved on this basis. The Union was formed on this basis. This is the American principle.

To deny it-to forsake it-would be to turn our faces away from the American continent, and go back to the darkest period of the Norman despotism.

To deny it, would be to brand our fathers with the infamous name of " rebel," or to proclaim in the face of the world that we are " bastards, and not sons."

To deny it, would be to say that they died like fools in their own blood, and left us inheritors of nothing but a fraud and a lie!

We shall now see how jealous our forefathers were of losing the sacred principle for which they were fighting.

On the 11th of June, 1776, less than one month before Independence was proclaimed, the Congress of the colonies began to digest and prepare articles for a permanent confederation or union. And although these articles left the colonies the sovereign masters of their own local governments and domestic institutions, it was not until the 1st of March, 1781, (four years after they were drawn,) that all the colonies could be induced to sign them.

While in the midst of a bloody strife with the powerful foe-while suffering under the weight of a common calamity-it was only b slow and reluctant degrees that our fathers could be brought to consent to the establishment of any kind of a permanent general government, from the unconquerable dread that they would, somehow, lose their local independence and sovereignty.

By these articles of confederation, the colonies had no connection with each other, except through the medium of their respective local legislatures.

Under the confederation, therefore, which dated from the time of the Declaration of Independence, the complete sovereignty of the colonies was preserved.

As this confederation, which was concluded in 1781,forms the actual date of the Union, it is important for

us to understand the objects contemplated in its formation.

Article I. declares: "The style of this confederacy shall be The United States of America.'

"Article II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the U. S. in Congress assembled.

"Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever."

This shows you that the Union, when it was formed, contemplated only a combination, or association, for the " common defense." It was designed to be impregnably based upon the great Saxon principle of local independence and State sovereignty.

On no other basis cou'd the Union ever have existed.

And even on this basi, our forefathers hesitated, debated, and questioned for four years, before they all consented to the establishment of a general government of any description.

They were fighting for the old Saxon principle of local sovereignty, and would consent to no union, except for such external cbjects as a general defense against a common enemy.

The 13th and last article of confederation declared that " Every State shall abide by the determinations of the U. S. Congress, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them."

You see the caution of this language-you see that the intention was to impart no power to the confederate government which could ever lawfully encroach upon the local sovereignty of the States.

I think you will confess that it has been made conclusively to appear, that from the time when our fathers landed on this continent, down to the period of the Union, they never lost sight of this principle of Saxon freedom, embraced in the idea of local self-government in opposition to the Norman principle of centralized, civil power.

You can find the date of independence, of the confederation, and of the constitution; but you cannot define the date of the Union any more than you can define the date of a tree's growth.

Men did come to

"It was not done in convention. gether by some delegated authority, and deliberate in solemn council, and ordain a Union. Never." It was the work of time and Providence-the natural consequence of events stretching through more than a century of painful and varying colonial history.

It was not the work of any one man, nor of any body of men.

It was the work of God.

In its sublime growth we behold the hand of Deity creating the moral world.

We say in no human sense was it made. It grew. It grew as a tree grows, "planting its roots deeper and lifting its branches stronger and stronger, and higher and higher-its vital forces coursing upward and outward to its latest leaf."

The Union grew as the forest grows, the seed of which can be traced to no man's hand.

Confederation was not necessarily Union in its highest moral sense. Confederation was necessity--it was forced upon independent separate communities, for mutual safety and protection.

It did not necessarily imply love for each other, or family feeling; it might have been brought about—it was brought about by a thousand divergent self-inter. ests, which, through so many different channels, culminated in a political combination for the specific purposes of external defense.

But this does not necessarily imply the essential properties of union, any more than a heap of sand implies union. A heap of sand is composed of innumerable particles of separate atoms, pressed closely together, but there is no union between them.

Thus there may be society without union-communi. ties of men without union-combinations of States without union.

Bodies of men held together by restraint would not be a union, any more than States held together by ccercive force would be a union.

The empire of Austria is composed of several States, of the Hungarians, the Poles, and the Stabians, but it is not a union, it is a despotism.

A union implies the freedom of choice-the act of voluntary association and of moral affinity.

Destroy this among States, and you have destroyed not only the elements of union, but you have destroyed the substance of it too, and left nothing but a cumberous and expensive organized disunion--it may be an overpowering centralized Norman despotism.

But the Union !-the Union was another thing! It was a temple of liberty, reared upon the mutual wants, sympathies, and concessions of those brave and pure-minded men, whose prayers had gone up united