The Continental Monthly | Page 3

any disposition manifested to permit its possession in any
manner honorable to the Government, although its exclusive property.
It must be surrendered unconditionally, or be attacked.
The worst feature connected with the secession movement is the hot
haste with which the most important questions connected with the
interests of the people are hurried through. The ordinance of secession
is not fairly submitted to the people, but a mere oligarchy of desperate
men themselves assume to declare war, and exercise all the
prerogatives of an independent and sovereign government. And yet the
terms submitted in the Crittenden Resolutions as a peace-offering to the
seceding States to win them back by concessions from the North,

present a spectacle quite as mournful for the cause of national unity and
dignity as the open rebellion of the seceding States. The professed aim
of these States is either a reconstruction of the Constitution in a way
that shall nationalize slavery and give it supreme control, or a forcible
disruption of the Union. What are the terms proposed that alone appear
to satisfy the South? They may be briefly comprehended in a short
extract from a speech delivered by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts,
February 21, 1861:
'But the Senator from Kentucky asks us of the North by irrepealable
constitutional amendments to recognize and protect slavery in the
Territories now existing, or hereafter acquired south of thirty-six
degrees, thirty minutes; to deny power to the Federal Government to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, in the forts, arsenals,
navy-yards, and places under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; to
deny the National Government all power to hinder the transit of slaves
through one State to another; to take from persons of the African race
the elective franchise, and to purchase territory in South-America, or
Africa, and send there, at the expense of the Treasury of the United
States, such free negroes as the States may desire removed from their
limits. And what does the Senator propose to concede to us of the
North? 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 cruel. Rev.
Dr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, most forcibly says:
'Every man who has any remaining loyalty to the nation, or any hope
and desire for the restoration of the seceding States to the Confederacy,
must see that