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must and will contend to the last. If they are to be sacrificed by a system of legislation that strikes at the root of all their interests, the safety of their lives and the prosperity of their fortunes, they will not be sacrificed without a struggle. There is a point, beyond which, on the part of the non-slave-holding states, it will be the worst of insults to proceed, and at which, it will become the solemn and imperious duty of the slave-holding states, to resist. The UNION to the latter, is not worth preserving, if they are to fall victims to such a policy, the outlines of which have already been developed by so bold a pencil. The stupendous and colossal power of the North and East, is gradually shadowing that of the South and West, and it is time for us to take such a stand, as will preserve a proper equilibrium in our political relations to them, and secure to us, beyond the possibility of all future cavilling, the full and uncontrolled enjoyment of our rights. We deprecate, from the bottom of our hearts, any steps but those which are sanctioned and strengthened by a sound, patriotic and enlightened policy, but, at the same time, we cordially recommend such a coalition in the Representation of the South and West, in their places on the floor of Congress, as must effectually, in conjunction with other interests, defeat the flagitious and unholy ambition of those who would rise to power though the separation of the Union were to be their stepping stone. We are not conscious of having indulged a tone of feeling inconsistent with that which should, upon this subject, be felt deeply and strongly too; nor have we used any latitude of expression in our language, to which the conduct of those to whom it refers, is not, in every respect, obnoxious. The speeches of many of the most influential

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members, both in the Senate, and in the House of Representatives in Congress, delivered, not in the heat of sudden excitement, but upon cool and deliberate reflection, breathe such a spirit of towering and unprincipled ambition, coupled with the most heartless apathy upon the subject of our mutual interests, that they fully justify the most severe reprobation. Our children will read them with amazement, our friends with the deepest regret, and our enemies will dwell upon this dark page in the history of our country with the liveliest satisfaction.

It is, by no means difficult, we think, to trace the sources of the rise, or to point out the final object of the progress of such feelings. The HARTFORD CONVENTION, that scorpion nest of sedition and intrigue; in which so many of the disturbed spirits of the Opposition exhibited such gigantic political effrontery, was, in all probabity, the origin of those profound and flagitious schemes, the true character and color of which have been since so thoroughly developed. It was within the circle of that association of powerful, though misguided intellect, that the seeds of those feelings, of which we so justly complain, were first sown, and which have since gradually ripened into a bitterness of hostility as deep as it is lamentable.

The people of the North and East, are, or they affect to be, totally ignorant of our situation, and yet they insist upon legislating for us upon subjects, with a knowledge of which they appear to be wholly unacquainted. This is neither fair, nor honorable, nor wise, nor prudent. It must be recollected, that every State is sovereign and independent within the circle of her own territory, and that her citizens have an indisputable right to frame whatever laws their intelligence

may deem necessary to its prosperity and happiness, provided they do not conflict with any of the great fundamental principles of the Federal Constitution. This proposition, so apparently self evident and just, is, nevertheless, in a manner, controverted, and that too in an age when the principles of State Sovereignty have been as fully admitted as they have been freely discussed. The people of the North and East, will, nevertheless, take the liberty of interfering in the designing of some of our most important local regulations and of directing the steps of our constituted authorities. We are not only dictated to, but we are slandered in their public prints, denounced in their pulpits, and calumniated in pamphlets and orations. We are exposed to still greater perils, by the swarm of MISSIONARIES, white and black, that are perpetually visiting us, who, with the Sacred Volume of God in one hand, breathing peace to the whole family of man, scatter, at the same time, with the other, the fire-brands of discord and destruction, and secretly disperse among our Negro Population, the seeds of discontent and sedition. It is an acknowledged fact, that some of these religious itinerants, these apostolic vagabonds, after receiving the charities which the philanthropy and open-hearted generosity of our people have bestowed, have, by the means of Tracts and other modes of instruction, all professedly religious in their character, excited among our Negroes such a spirit of dissatisfaction and revolt, as has, in the end, brought down upon them the vengeance of offended humanity, and given to the gallows and to exile, the deluded instigators of a most diabolical and unholy INSURREC

TION.

Those who are intimately acquainted with the efficient causes of the late intended Insurrection in

Charleston and the districts adjoining, which, from the testimony as well of many of those who have been executed, as from that of the hundreds who either knew of or were engaged in the plot, was to have been conducted with a ferocious barbarity, at which humanity shudders and turns pale; those, we repeat, who are acquainted with the rise and progress of that nefarious plot, know how blasphemously the word of God was tortured, in order to sanction the unholy butchery that was contemplated, and what a powerful agency was put into operation by the dispersion among our Negroes, of religious magazines, news paper paragraphs and insulated texts of scripture; all throwing such a delusive light upon their condition as was calculated to bewilder and deceive, and finally, to precipitate them into ruin. Religion was stripped of her pure and spotless robe, and, panoplied like a fury, was made to fight under the banners of the most frightful Conspiracy that imagination can conceive, and her voice was heard instigating the midnight ruffian and coward, to creep silently to the pillow of his unsuspecting master, and at one “" fell swoop” to murder him in the unconscious hour of sleep, prostitute the partner of his bosom, violate the child of his affections, and dash out the brains of his innocent and unoffending infant. The measure of desolation was not even yet full; after robbing our banks, and seizing on our shipping, killing all but the captains, who were to be reserved as pilots, their atrocious footsteps were to have been lighted from our shores by a general conflagration, and our city, that proudly swells with life and with wealth, was to have been left an awful monument of the most ferocious guilt. Such are a few of the barbarities to which we would have been

exposed had the late intended INSURRECTION been crowned with success. But the activity and intelligence of a wise and efficient police, strengthened and enlightened as they were by the protecting interposition of a benificent Providence, have frustrated the wicked designs of our barbarous and inhuman enemies, and consigned to a bloody and ignominious fate the master spirits of the Revolt. Notwithstanding all these projected atrocities, however, and with a full knowledge of the facts upon the subject, we have, nevertheless, been vilified and abused for having visited upon the heads of their stupid and flagitious instigators, the penalty which the Laws of our Country award, and which the vengeance of violated humanity required. We are sneeringly upbraided with a want of common justice in the framing, or a lamentable want of mercy in the execution of our laws. In many of the Northern and Eastern prints, there has been a great deal of that whining, canting, sickly kind of humanity, which is as disgraceful to the character of those journals, as it is contemptible in the eyes of all intelligent and reflecting men. Instead of meeting as we expected, and had a right to expect, the cordial and unaffected sympathy of those who wear the livery of our own color, who are connected to us by all the endearing affections of political brotherhood, whose hearts ought to beat with our own and whose hands ought to be the first to assist us in the hour of peril and of danger, we have too frequently encountered a heartless indifference or selfish apathy with respect to the horrors we have escaped, and what is still worse, the gibes and jeers of the idle and unfeeling, or the foul rebuke of the "humane" and the " "religious." This then is the plain unvarnished statement of facts,

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