sion of disgust
that the Southern republic is about to call forth among us.

It is important that they should know this in advance at Charleston, and
not delude themselves as to the kind of welcome for which the Palmetto
State and its accomplices have to hope. Not only will no one recognize
their pretended independence at this time, for to recognize it would be
to tread under foot the evident rights of the United States, but they
will excite one of those moral repulsions which the least scrupulous
policy is forced to take into account. It is one thing to hold slaves;
it is another to be founded expressly to serve the cause of slavery on
earth; this is a new fact in the history of mankind. If a Southern
Confederacy should ever take rank among nations, it will represent
slavery, and nothing else. I am wrong; it will also represent the
African slave trade, and the fillibustering system. In any case, the
Southern Confederacy will be so far identified with slavery, with its
progress, with the measures designed to propagate and perpetuate it here
below, that a chain and whip seem the only devices to be embroidered on
its flag.

Will this flag cover the human merchandise which it is designed to
protect against the interference of cruisers? Will there be a country,
will there be a heart, forgetful enough of its dignity to tolerate this
insolent challenge flung at our best sympathies? I doubt it, and I
counsel the Carolinians to doubt it also. The representative of England
at Washington is said to have already declared that in presence of the
slave trade thus practised, his government will not hesitate to pursue
slavers into the very ports of the South. France will hold no less firm
a tone; whatever may be the dissent as to the right of search, the
_right of slave ships_, be sure, will be admitted by none; a sea-police
will soon be found to put an end to them; if need be, the punishment
will be inflicted on their crews that is in store for a much less crime,
that of piracy; these wretches will be hung with short shrift at the
yard-arm, without form or figure of law.

The Carolinians deceive themselves strangely. They fancy that they will
be treated with consideration, that they will even be protected, because
they maintain the principle of free trade, and because they hold the
great cotton market. Free trade, cotton, these are the two
recommendations upon which they count to gain a welcome in Europe. Let
us see what we are to