which shall invade the rights of any portion of the United States.

And here permit me as a duty to you, and an obligation upon myself, to
pay the tribute which I believe to be due the Northern Democracy.
Having formed my opinion of them upon insufficient data, I have had
occasion, after much intercourse with them, to modify it. I believe
that a great reaction has commenced; how far it will progress I do not
pretend to say, but am hopeful that agitation will soon become
unprofitable to political traders in New England, and this hope rests
upon the high position taken by the Northern Democracy, and upon the
increased vote which in some of the States, under the more distinct
avowal of sound principles, their candidates have received. You may
now often hear among them not only the unqualified defence of your
constitutional rights, but the vindication of your institutions in the
abstract, and in the concrete.

In the town of Portland, just preceding the election, a Democrat of
large means and extensively engaged in commercial transactions and
city improvements addressed the Democracy, arguing that their
prosperity depended upon their connection with countries, the products
of which were dependent upon slave labor; and the future growth and
prosperity of their city depended upon the extension of slave labor
into all countries where it could be profitably employed. He showed by
a statistical statement the paralysing effect which would be produced
upon their interest by the abolition of slavery. The Black Republican
papers of course abused him, and compared him to Davis and Toombs, but
his sound views were approved by the Democracy, and so far as I could
judge, he gained consideration by their manly utterance.

A generation had been educated in error, and the South had done