the sun has witnessed in his circuit, since God said,
"Let there be light." It assumes that to be practicable, which is
impossible, namely, that there can be freedom with slavery, union with
injustice, and safety with bloodguiltiness. A union of virtue with
pollution is the triumph of licentiousness. A partnership between
right and wrong, is wholly wrong. A compromise of the principles of
Justice, is the deification of crime.

Better that the American Union had never been formed, than that it
should have been obtained at such a frightful cost! If they were
guilty who fashioned it, but who could not foresee all its frightful
consequences, how much more guilty are they, who, in full view of all
that has resulted from it, clamor for its perpetuity! If it was sinful
at the commencement, to adopt it on the ground of escaping a greater
evil, is it not equally sinful to swear to support it for the same
reason, or until, in process of time, it be purged from its
corruption?

The fact is, the compromise alluded to, instead of effecting a union,
rendered it impracticable; unless by the term union we are to
understand the absolute reign of the slaveholding power over the whole
country, to the prostration of Northern rights. In the just use of
words, the American Union is and always has been a sham--an imposture.
It is an instrument of oppression unsurpassed in the criminal history
of the world. How then can it be innocently sustained? It is not
certain, it is not even probable, that if it had not been adopted, the
mother country would have reconquered the colonies. The spirit that
would have chosen danger in preference to crime,--to perish with
justice rather than live with dishonor,--to dare and suffer whatever
might betide, rather than sacrifice the rights of one human
being,--could never have been subjugated by any mortal power. Surely
it is paying a poor tribute to the valor and devotion of our
revolutionary fathers in the cause of liberty, to say that, if they
had sternly refused to sacrifice their principles, they would have
fallen an easy prey to the despotic power of England.

II. The American Constitution is the exponent of the national compact.
We affirm that it is an instrument which no man can innocently bind
himself to support, because its anti-republican and anti-Christian
requirements are explicit and peremptory; at least, so explicit that,
in regard to all the clauses pertaining to slavery, they have been
unif