indeed a marvel
and a mystery. That the intelligent, educated, and civilized portion
of a race should consent to the sway of their ignorant, illiterate,
and barbarian companions in the commonwealth, and this by reason of
that uncouth barbarism, is an astonishment, and should be a hissing to
all beholders everywhere. It would be so to ourselves, were we not so
used to the fact, had it not so grown into our essence and ingrained
itself with our nature as to seem a vital organism of our being. Of
all the anomalies in morals and in politics which the history of
civilized man affords, this is surely the most abnormous and the most
unreasonable.

The entire history of the United States is but the record of the
evidence of this fact. What event in our annals is there that Slavery
has not set her brand upon it to mark it as her own? In the very
moment of the nation's birth, like the evil fairy of the nursery tale,
she was present to curse it with her fatal words. The spell then wound
up has gone on increasing in power, until the scanty formulas which
seemed in those days of infancy as if they would fade out of the
parchment into which they had been foisted, and leave no trace that
they ever were, have blotted out all beside, and statesmen and judges
read nothing there but the awful and all-pervading name of Slavery.
Once intrenched among the institutions of the country, this baleful
power has advanced from one position to another, never losing ground,
but establishing itself at each successive point more impregnably than
before, until it has us at an advantage that encourages it to demand
the surrender of our rights, our self-respect, and our honor. What was
once whispered in the secret chamber of council is now proclaimed upon
the housetops; what was once done by indirection and guile is now
carried with the high hand, in the face of day, at the mouth of the
cannon and by the edge of the sabre of the nation. Doctrines and
designs which a few years since could find no mouthpiece out of a
bar-room, or the piratical den of a filibuster, are now clothed with
power by the authentic response of the bench of our highest
judicatory, and obsequiously iterated from the oracular recesses of
the National Palace.

And the events which now fill the scene are but due successors in the
train that has swept over the stage ever since the nineteenth century
opened the procession with the purchase of Louisiana. The acquisition
of that vast te