? The prohibition of
slavery in Territories north of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes, where no one asks for its inhibition, where it has been
made impossible by the victory of Freedom in Kansas, and the
equalization of the fees of the slave Commissioners.'

Here we have the true position in which the free States are placed
toward the slaveholding States. Seven States openly throw off all
allegiance to the Federal Union, do not even profess to be willing to
come back upon any terms, and then such conditions are proposed by the
other slaveholding States as leads to the repudiation of the
Constitution in its whole spirit and import upon the subject of slavery.
The alternative, in reality, is either civil war or the surrender of the
Constitution into the hands of pro-slavery men to be molded just as it
may suit their convenience. The price they ask for peace is simply the
liberty to have their own way, and that the majority should be willing
to submit to the minority. They aim for a reconstruction of the Union
that shall incorporate the Dred Scott decision into the whole policy of
the Government and make slavery the supreme power of the country, and
all other interests subservient to it. The North has its choice of two
evils--unconditional and unqualified submission to the demands of
slavery, or civil war. It is expected, since the country has yielded
step by step to the exactions of slavery ever since the Government was
instituted, that the free States will keep on yielding until the South
has nothing more to ask for, and the North has nothing more to give.
With such a servile compliance, the free States are assured that they
will have no difficulty in keeping the peace. But the question to be
decided is: Is such a kind of peace worth the price demanded for it? May
it not be true that great as is the evil of civil war, it is less an
evil than an unresisting acquiescence to the exactions of slavery, and
the admission that any State that pleases can leave the Union? The
theory of secession involves, if admitted, a greater disaster to the
Federal Union than even the slow eating at its vitals of the cancer of
slavery. National unity, one country, the sovereignty of the
Constitution, are all sacrificed by secession. It involves in it either
the worst anarchy or the worst despotism. United, the States can stand,
and command the respect of the world, but secession is an enemy to the
country, the most cru