be goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and to
traduce community character, and in the resentment which follows it is
not possible to tell how far the case may be driven. I therefore plead
to you now to arrest a fanaticism which has been evil in the
beginning, and must be evil to the end. You may not have the numerical
power requisite; and those at a distance may not understand how many
of you there are desirous to put a stop to the course of this
agitation. But let your language and your acts teach them to
appreciate a faithful self-denying minority. I have learned since I
have been in New England the vast mass of true State Rights Democrats
to be found within its limits--though not represented in the halls of
Congress.

And if it comes to the worst; if, availing themselves of a majority in
the two Houses of Congress, our opponents should attempt to trample
upon the Constitution; to violate the rights of the States; to
infringe upon our equality in the Union, I believe that even in
Massachusetts, though it has not had a representative in Congress for
many a day, the State Rights Democracy, in whose breasts beats the
spirit of the revolution, can and will whip the Black Republicans.
[Great applause.] I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it were,
by fire; but that the peaceful progressive revolution of the ballot
box will answer all the glorious purposes of the Constitutional Union.
[Applause.]

I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded me
in addressing you used the words _national_ and _constitutional_ in
such relations to each other as to show that in his mind the one was a
synonym of the other. And does he not do so with reason? We became a
nation by the constitution; whatever is national springs from the