on of our constitutional rights.

"It is a crime against the inalienable and indefeasible rights of
every American citizen to attempt to destroy the Government under
which we were born. It is a crime against constitutional freedom
and the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the wide world
to attempt to blot out the United States from the map of Christendom.
Yet this attempt is now being made. The Government of our fathers
is to be overthrown and destroyed. The capital that bears the name
of the Father of his Country is to be bombarded and levelled with
the earth among the rubbish and the dust of things that are past.
The records of your Government are to be scattered to the four
winds of heaven. The constituted authorities, placed there by the
same high authority that placed Washington and Jefferson and Madison
and Jackson in the chair, are to be captured and carried off, to
become a byword and a scorn to the nations of the world.

"You may think that I am drawing a picture that is overwrought.
No man who has spent the last week in the city of Washington will
believe that I have done justice to it. You have all the elements
of the French Revolution surrounding the capital now, and threatening
it with its terrors. Not only is our constitutional Government to
be stricken down; not only is our flag to be blotted out; but the
very foundations of social order are to be undermined and destroyed;
the demon of destruction is to be let loose over the face of the
land, a reign of terror and mob law is to prevail in each section
of the Union, and the man who dares to plead for the cause of
justice and moderation in either section is to be marked down as
a traitor to his section. If this state of things is allowed to
go on, how long before you will have the guillotine in active
operation?

"I appeal to you, my countrymen--men of all parties--not to allow
your passions to get the better of your judgment. Do not allow
your vengeance upon the authors of this great iniquity to lead you
into rash, and cruel, and desperate acts upon loyal citizens who
may differ with you in opinion. Let the spirit of moderation and
of justice prevail. You cannot expect, within so few weeks after
an excited political canvass, that every man can rise to the high
and patriotic level of forgetting his partisan prejudices and
sacrifice everything upon the altar of his country; but allow me
to say to you, whom I have opposed and warred aga