ng the character of the nation, invoking the blessing of
God, securing the future harmony and perpetuity of the Union, and the
ultimate fraternity of man. Never, before, would any nation have made so
grand an investment in the gratitude of emancipated millions, the thanks
of a world redeemed from bondage, the applause of the present age and of
posterity--the exchequer of time and eternity. It would live forever in
history, and the recording angel would inscribe it in God's eternal
archives. Statesmen, scholars, savans, philosophers, poets, patriots,
orators, and divines would proclaim its glory. The new drama of man's
political redemption would be witnessed by the audience of the world.
Music would chant its praise in every clime, and all peoples would swell
the chorus. The painter would give it immortality, and the sculptor
monuments more enduring than the pyramids, statues more godlike and
sublime than ever crowned Grecian Parthenon, or adorned with Parian
marble the temples of Augustan Rome. The press would glow with
enthusiasm, and the procession of nations march in the grand ovation,
not to national airs, or under national banners, but under the world's
new flag, and to the music of the world's new anthem of universal
freedom and regenerated man.

The census proves that our progress as a nation has been greatly
retarded by slavery. If the North had retained, and the South had
abolished slavery, their relative positions would have been reversed.
Virginia would have taken the place of New York, Maryland of
Massachusetts, Delaware of Rhode Island, Kentucky of Ohio, Missouri of
Illinois, and Tennessee of Indiana.

I begin with Maryland, because, in proportion to her area, she has
greater natural advantages than any one of the thirty-four States, and,
if the comparison with the free States is most unfavorable to her, it
will be more so as to any other Southern State, as the census shows
that, from 1790 to 1860, and from 1850 to 1860, Maryland increased in
population per square mile more rapidly than any other slaveholding
State.

Maryland borders for two hundred miles the great free State of
Pennsylvania, and Delaware one hundred and thirty miles, whose slaves
have decreased from 8,887 in 1790, to 1,798 in 1860, and where slavery
now exists in name only. Delaware, like Maryland, is also a loyal State,
and would be the last to leave the Union, which it was her glory first
to enter under the Constitution of 1787. On th