he immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this as the "rock upon which
the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him
is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great
truth upon which that rock stood and stands may be doubted. The
prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen
at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the
enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that
it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an
evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the
men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence,
the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not
incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time.
The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the
institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly
urged against the constitutional guaranties thus secured, because of the
common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally
wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This
was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon
it fell when "the storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its
foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that
the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery--subordination to
the superior race--is his natural and normal condition.

This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based
upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has
been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in
the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us.
Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was
not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past
generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the
North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we
justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of
the mind, from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One
of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is
forming correct conclusions fr