constitution, have preserved their integrity, and are to-day the only
national party and the only hope for the preservation and perpetuation
of the Union of the States.

Mr. Jefferson denominated the Democracy of the North, the natural
allies of the South. It is in our generation doubly true; they are
still the party with whom labor is capital, and they are now the party
which stands by the barriers of the constitution, to protect them from
the waves of fanatical and sectional aggression. The use of the word
aggression reminded him that the people here have been daily harangued
about the aggressions of the slave power, and he had been curious to
learn what was so described. It is, if he had learned correctly, the
assertion of the right to migrate with slaves into the territories of
the United States. Is this aggression? If so, upon what? Not upon
those who desire close association with the negro; not upon
territorial rights, unless these self-styled lovers of the Union have
already dissolved it and have taken the territories to themselves. The
territory being the common property of States, equals in the Union,
and bound by the constitution which recognizes property in slaves, it
is an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into that
territory of one of its joint owners, because carrying with him any
species of property recognized by the constitution of the United
States. The Federal government has no power to declare what is
property anywhere. The power of each State cannot extend beyond its
own limits. As a consequence, therefore, whatever is property in any
of the States must be so considered in any of the territories of the
United States until they reach to the dignity of community
independence, when the subject matter will be entirely under the
control of the people and be determined by their fundamental law. If
the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and