from the
necessity_ of slavery. Rufus King, for many years one of the most
distinguished statesmen of the country, writes thus to John B. Coles and
others:--"I am perfectly anxious not to be misunderstood in this case,
never having thought myself at liberty to encourage or assent to any
measure that would affect the security of property in slaves, or tend to
disturb the political adjustment which the Constitution has made respecting
them."

John Taylor, of New York, said, "If the weight and influence of the South
be increased by the representation of that which they consider a part of
their property, we do not wish to diminish them. The right by which this
property is held is derived from the Federal Constitution; we have neither
inclination nor power to interfere with the laws of existing States in this
particular; on the contrary, they have not only a right to reclaim their
fugitives whenever found, but, in the event of domestic violence, (which
God in his mercy forever avert!) the whole strength of the nation is bound
to be exerted, if needful, in reducing it to subjection, while we recognize
these obligations and will never fail to perform them."

How many more could be brought! opinions of great and good men of the
North, acknowledging and maintaining the rights of the people of the South.
Everett, Adams, Cambreleng, and a host of others, whose names I need not
give. "Time was," said Mr. Fletcher in Boston, (in 1835, at a great meeting
in that city,) "when such sentiments and such language would not have been
breathed in this community. And here, on this hallowed spot, of all places
on earth, should they be met and rebuked. Time was, when the British
Parliament having declared 'that they had a right to bind us in all cases
whatsoever,' and were attempting to bind our infant limbs in fetters, when
a voice of resistance and notes of defiance had gone forth from this hall,
then, when Massachusetts, standing for her liberty and life, was alone
breasting the whole power of Britain, the generous and gallant Southerners
came to our aid, and our fathers refused not to hold communion with
slaveholders. When the blood of our citizens, shed by a British soldiery,
had stained our streets and flowed upon the heights that surround us, and
sunk into the earth upon the plains of Lexington and Concord, then when he,
whose name can never be pronounced by American lips without the strongest
emotion of gratitude and love to every Amer