measure of a total dissolution of the bonds by which they were joined and confederated with the States of the North in a common Government. They have passed laws insulting and oppressive to us, and in open violation of the express letter of the Constitution; they have sought by acts of the Federal Congress to deprive us of all right to participation in the settlement of our common Territories; they have set on foot and organized emigrant-aid societies for the purpose of sending foreign and pauper immigrants into the Territories of the Union to crush out and prevent immigration to those Territories from the Southern States; they have enticed from service our slaves, and refused, though the demand was made upon a clear and indisputable provision of the Constitution, to deliver them up to the lawful possession of their owners; they have with force and violence rescued our slaves from the possession of their masters who have been, with their families, temporarily sojourning in the Northern States; they have unlawfully torn from Southern who have been forced by stress of weather to touch at their ports their entire property in domestic slaves, and their courts of justice (so called) have sustained them in the robbery; they have attempted by inflammatory and incendiary appeals made through the public presses to incite our slaves to rebellion and insurrection; they have refused to render up for trial fugitives from justice flying from crimes committed at the South whenever the crimes with which they were charged were committed in relation to slavery, although the Federal Constitution declares it their duty so to deliver them up; they have invaded the soil of a sister Southern State with an armed force for the purpose of exciting insurrection, and have murdered in cold blood her quiet citizens; they have refused to deliver up for trial individuals charged with being accessory before the fact to such invasion, insurrection, and murder; they have, in their State Legislatures, passed laws making it felony, and punishable with imprisonment for terms extending from two to fifteen years, for a master to assert upon their soil his rights to a fugitive slave; and finally, they have, by a combination of all the elements of antagonism to Southern institutions in the non-slave-holding States, succeeded recently in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States upon a platform of principles alike sectional in their character and dangerous to the peace, welfare, and domestic tranquillity of the slave-holding States.

With these startling facts before our eyes, what reasonable hope can be entertained that the Northern mind will undergo a change- will yield its prejudices? Can it be expected that a party which has been so long struggling for power upon an issue so interwoven with their religious fanaticism will, in the full flush of their first and most decided victory, renounce the principles and deny the faith which has alone secured them place and power? They know but too well that utter ruin and disgrace at home would follow close upon any adjustment or compromise which they might make that would be satisfactory to the South. The long-gathering and destructive political storm which has recently swept the North from Maine to Minnesota is but an earnest of the deep hatred and determined hostility of their people to our institutions. And now that the first shock of the tornado has been received, and its fury spent upon our heads, is there yet discernible any indication of returning calm and quiet? Who has been able up to this moment to discern a single ray of hope in the dark and lowering Northern horizon? What dove of promise