"Nor have these principles been merely inert or speculative. For the last
ten or twelve years slavery has altered her tactics, and from a defensive
she has become an aggressive power. Every compromise which the moderation
of former times had erected to stem the course of this monster evil has
been swept away, and that not by the encroachments of the North, but by
the aggressive ambition of the South. With a majority in Congress and in
the Supreme Court of the United States, the advocates of slavery have
entered on a career the object of which would seem to be to make their
favourite institution conterminous with the limits of the Republic. They
have swept away the Missouri compromise, which limited slavery to the
tract south of 36 degrees of north latitude. They have forced upon the
North, in the Fugitive Slave Bill, a measure which compels them to lend
their assistance to the South in the recovery of their bondmen. In the
case of Kansas they have sought by force of arms to assert the right of
bringing slaves into a free territory, and in the Dred Scott case they
obtained an extrajudicial opinion from the Supreme Court, which would have
placed all the territories at their disposal. All this while the North has
been resisting, feebly and ineffectually, this succession of Southern
aggressions. All that was desired was peace, and that peace could not be
obtained.

"While these things were done the South continued violently to upbraid the
Abolitionists of the North as the cause of all their troubles, and the
ladies of South Carolina showered presents and caresses on the brutal
assailant of Mr. Sumner. In 1856 the North endeavoured to elect a
President who though fully recognising the right of the South to its slave
property, was opposed to its extension in the territories. The North were
defeated, and submitted almost without a murmur to the result. On the
present occasion the South has submitted to the same ordeal, but not with