ed Secession until overborne and carried away by the
swelling tide, in his first elaborate speech justifying the movement,
ably and candidly set forth the natural fitness, justice, humanity,
beneficence, and perpetuity of Slavery as the corner-stone of the new
National edifice. The 'Peace Convention' presented the Crittenden
Compromise,--that is, the positive establishment by act of Congress of
Slavery in all present and future Territories of the United States,
south of the parallel of 36 deg. 30' north latitude--as its sole panacea for
our national ills. Nobody suggested in that Congress or any similar
conference that a permanent abolition of all duties on imports, or any
other measure unrelated to slavery, would be of the least use in
reclaiming the States which had seceded, or in arresting the secession
of others. The sole pretext for the Rebellion was and is that the Free
States had not been faithful in spirit and letter to their
constitutional obligations respecting Slavery, and could not be trusted
to do better in the future than they had done in the past. We are
involved in deadly war precisely and only because the Free States,
through the action at the ballot-box of a majority of their citizens,
refused to cooeperate in or make themselves a voluntary party to the
further extension or diffusion of Human Slavery.

Bearing this fact in mind, I think you will more readily realize the
moral impossibility of our assent, save under the impulse of a last dire
necessity, to a Disunion Peace, and for these reasons:

I. Such a peace will naturally secure to Slavery the precise object, for
which the Rebellion was fomented. If we consent to divide our country,
the victorious Rebels will very fairly say, 'Give us our share of the
Federal Territories.' In other words, 'Surrender to Slavery, through
Disunion, the very thing which you refused to concede to it to prevent
Disunion.' And that demand, if we concede the right and the fact of
Secession, can with difficulty be resisted. Yet its concession involves
the moral certainty that Mexico and Cuba will in time be overrun,
conquered, absorbed, and devoted to Slavery, by the martial, aggressive,
ambitious despotism to 'which we shall have succumbed. Read Prof.
Cairnes's recent essay on 'The Slave Power,' and you will have a clearer
idea of the wolf we now hold by the ears, and which is far less
dangerous while so held than he must be if let go.

II. The boundary which Secession