grace which civil
war will bring upon the victors and vanquished--by the untried horrors
of those scenes to which disunion must conduct, to repeal her ordinance,
and not to force upon us that dread alternative, in which we must
support the flag of our country, or surrender our Union and liberty
without a struggle: that we cannot, we will not, we dare not, surrender
them; and, if forced to draw the sword to defend our liberties, the
motto will gleam on every blade: 'The Union shall be preserved.' For
were it abandoned, life would not be a blessing, but a curse; and
happiest would those be whose eyes were closed in death ere they beheld
the horrors of those scenes to which with viewless and rapid strides we
seem to hasten. Well, fellow citizens, may our hearts be wrung with
sorrow on this occasion, in looking back to what we were, and forward to
what we may soon be. Well may the tears unbidden start, for they are the
tears that patriots shed over the departing greatness of our once
united, but now distracted and unhappy country.

THE SIOUX WAR.

Compared with the great storm of rebellion which has darkened and
overspread our whole national sky, the Indian war on our northwestern
frontier has been a little cloud "no bigger than a man's hand;" and yet,
compared with similar events in our history, it has scarcely a parallel.
From the days of King Philip to the time of Black Hawk, there has hardly
been an outbreak so treacherous, so sudden, so bitter, and so bloody,
as that which filled the State of Minnesota with sorrow and lamentation,
during the past summer and autumn, and the closing scenes of which are
even now transpiring. We were beginning to regard the poetry of the
palisades as a thing of the past, when, suddenly, our ears were startled
by the echo of the warwhoop, and the crack of the rifle, and our hearts
appalled by the gleam of the tomahawk and the scalping knife, as they
descended in indiscriminate and remorseless slaughter, on defenceless
women and children on our border.

In the year 1851, the Sisseton, Wahpeton, M'dewakanton and Wahpekuta
bands of Dacotah or Sioux Indians by treaty ceded to the United States,
in consideration of certain annuities to be paid them, all their lands
within the present limits of the States of Iowa and Minnesota, excepting
a reservation set apart for their habitation and use, embracing a narrow
strip along the southern side of the Minnesota River, of about ten miles
in w