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