lopment of
material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at
home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for
Disunion, come from whatever source they may: And we congratulate the
Country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or
countenanced the threats of Disunion, so often made by Democratic
members, without rebuke, and with applause, from their political
associates; and we denounce those threats of Disunion, in case of a
popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles
of a free Government, and as an avowal of contemplated Treason, which it
is the imperative duty of an indignant People, sternly to rebuke and
forever silence.

Fourth, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and
especially the right of each State, to order and control its own
domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is
essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and
endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless
invasion, by armed force, of any State or Territory, no matter under
what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

Fifth, That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our
worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of
a Sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions
to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people
of Kansas; in construing the personal relation between master and
servant to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted
enforcement, everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of
Congress and of the Federal Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a
purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the
power intrusted to it by a confiding People.

* * * * * * *

Seventh, That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force,
carries Slavery into any or all of the Territories of the United States,
is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit
provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition,
and with legislation and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its
tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the Country.

Eighth, That the normal condition of all the territory of the United
States is that of Freedom; that as our Republican fathers, when they had
abolished Slavery in all our National