rejected--yet there are those who now instigate you to sectional
strife for the purpose of sectional dominion and the destruction of
the rights of the minority. Do they mean treason to the Constitution
and the destruction of the Union? Or do they vilely practice on
credulity and passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested by
the contradictory course they pursue. At the same time they proclaim
war upon the slave property of the South, they ask for protection to
the manufactures of the staple which could not be produced if that
property did not exist. And while they assert themselves to be the
peculiar friends of commerce and navigation, they vaunt their purpose
to destroy the labor which gives vitality to both; whilst they
proclaim themselves the peculiar friends of laboring men at the North,
they insist that the negroes are their equals; and if they are sincere
they would, by emancipation of the blacks, bring them together and
degrade the white man to the negro level. They seek to influence the
northern mind by sectional issues and sectional organization, yet they
profess to be the friends of the Union. The Union voluntarily formed
by free, equal, independent States.

We of the South, on a sectional division, are in the minority; and if
legislation is to be directed by geographical tests--if the
constitution is to be trampled in the dust, and the unbridled will of
the majority in Congress is to be supreme over the States; we should
have the problem which was presented to our Fathers when the Colonies
declined to be content with a mere representation in parliament.

If the constitution is to be sacredly observed, why should there be a
struggle for sectional ascendency? The instrument is the same in all
latitudes, and does not vary with the domestic institutions of the
several States. Hence it is that the Democracy, the party of the