In that war the banners of _freedom_ will be the banners
of Mexico, and your banners--I blush to speak the word--will be the
banners of slavery."

The nature of that war, its dangers, and its consequences, Mr. Adams
proceeded to analyze, and to show the probability of an interference on
the part of Great Britain, who "will probably ask you a perplexing
question--by what authority you, with freedom, independence, and
democracy, on your lips, are waging a war of extermination, to forge new
manacles and fetters instead of those which are falling from the hands
and feet of men? She will carry emancipation and abolition with her in
every fold of her flag; while your stars, as they increase in numbers,
will be overcast by the murky vapors of oppression, and the only portion
of your banners visible to the eye will be the blood-stained stripes of
the taskmaster."

"Mr. Chairman," continued Mr. Adams, "are you ready for all these wars?
A Mexican war; a war with Great Britain, if not with France; a general
Indian war; a servile war; and, as an inevitable consequence of them
all, a civil war;--for it must ultimately terminate in a war of colors,
as well as of races. And do you imagine that while, with your eyes
open, you are wilfully kindling these wars, and then closing your eyes
and blindly rushing into them,--do you imagine that, while in the very
nature of things your own Southern and South-western States must be
the Flanders of these complicated wars, the battle-field upon which the
last great conflict must be fought between slavery and emancipation,--do
you imagine that your Congress will have no constitutional authority to
interfere with the institution of slavery, _in any way_, in the states
of this confederacy? Sir, they must and will interfere with it, perhaps
to sustain it by war, perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace; and
they will not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere,
but they will be bound in duty to do it by the express provisions of
the constitution itself.

"From the instant that your slaveholding states become the theatre of
war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant the war powers of
Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every
way by which it can be interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for
slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the state burdened with
slavery to a foreign power.

"Little reason have the inhabitants of Georgia and of