aused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the City of Washington, this First day of January, in the year
of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

"By the President:
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

CHAPTER XIX.

HISTORICAL REVIEW.

Let us now refresh recollection by glancing backward over the history of
our Country, and we shall see, as recorded in these pages, that, from
the first, there existed in this Nation a class of individuals greedily
ambitious of power and determined to secure and maintain control of this
Government; that they left unturned no stone which would contribute to
the fostering and to the extension of African Slavery; that, hand in
hand with African Slavery--and as a natural corollary to it--they
advocated Free Trade as a means of degrading Free White labor to the
level of Black Slave labor, and thus increasing their own power; that
from the first, ever taking advantage of the general necessities of the
Union, they arrogantly demanded and received from a brow-beaten People,
concession after concession, and compromise after compromise; that every
possible pretext and occasion was seized by them to increase,
consolidate, and secure their power, and to extend the territorial
limits over which their peculiar Pro-Slavery and Pro-Free-Trade
doctrines prevailed; and that their nature was so exacting, and their
greed so rapacious, that it was impossible ever to satisfy them.

Nor were they burdened with over-much of that high sense of honor--a
quality of which they often vaunted themselves--which impelled others to
stand by their agreements. It seemed as though they considered the most
sacred promises and covenants of no account, and made only to be
trampled upon, when in the way of their Moloch.

We remember the bitter Slavery agitation in Congress over the admission
of the State of Missouri, and how it eventuated in the Missouri
Compromise. That compromise, we have seen, they afterward trod upon,
and broke, with as little compunction as they would have stepped upon
and crushed a toad.

They felt their own growing power, and gloried in their strength and
arrogance; and Northern timidity became a scoff and by-word in their
mouths.

The fact is, that from its very conception, as well as birth