y it, that
for many years it has been a favorite idea with some of your statesmen,
and not of leaders of the Democratic party only, to stave off the
troubles that were rapidly growing out of the slavery question, by
having recourse to a 'distraction' based on the acquisition of Cuba. You
know, or ought to know, that the very man who is now at the head of the
Southern Confederacy was advised, at the North, in 1853, to pursue such
a course with regard to Cuba, he being then the most influential member
of the Pierce administration, as should 'distract' American attention
from slavery as a local matter; and that he thought this Northern advice
good, and would have given the administration's support to the project
it involved, and probably with success, and to our great loss and
disgrace, when a new turn was given to your strange politics by the
movement in behalf of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, a movement
that has brought safety to us, and loss and disgrace upon yourselves. We
admit that your cause is the cause of law, of order, and of
constitutional freedom; but why should we desire the triumph of the
cause of law, of order, and of constitutional freedom in the United
States, when that triumph would be but preliminary to a triumph over our
own country? Had your internal peace been continued for ten years
longer, your free population would have reached to forty millions, and
your wealth would have grown at a greater rate than your population. You
would have been able to give law to America, and you would, under one
plausible pretext or another, have taken possession of all the European
colonies of the Occident. Nothing short of a European alliance could
have prevented your becoming supreme from the region of eternal snows to
the regions of eternal bloom; and such an alliance it would have been
difficult to form, as there are nations in Europe that would have been
as ready to back you in your day of strength as they are now both ready
and anxious to back your enemy in this your hour of weakness. In plain
words, it is for our interest that you should fall; and as your fall can
be best promoted through the success of the Secessionists, therefore do
we give them our moral support, and sympathize with them in their
struggle to establish their national freedom on the basis of everlasting
slavery. Why should we not sympathize with them, and even aid, at an
early day, in raising the blockade of their ports? Are they not doi