exercised the right of a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southern
citizen. Was it for this cause that he had been signalized as a
slavery propagandists? He admitted in all its length and breadth the
right of the people of Maine to decide the question for themselves; he
held that it would be an indecent interference, on the part of a
citizen of another State, if he should arraign the propriety of the
judgment they had rendered, and that there was no rightful power in
the federal government or in all the States combined, to set aside the
decision which the community had made in relation to their domestic
institutions. Should any attempt be made thus to disturb their
sovereign right, he would pledge himself in advance, as a State-rights
man, with his head, his heart and his hand, if need be, to aid them in
the defence of this right of community independence, which the Union
was formed to protect, and which it was the duty of every American
citizen to preserve and to guard as the peculiar and prominent feature
of our government.

Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men to
converse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or exclude
them? He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many of
our brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here,
to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are the
political abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of the
character and the purposes of the Democracy of this State.

And now having brushed away the cob-webs which lay in his path, he
would proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audience
he had the honor to address.

Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may be