the free White men of the South predicated their devotion to the present
Constitution of the United States; and it was the denial of that, as
much as anything else, that has created the dissatisfaction in that
Section of the Country.

"There is no instrument of writing that has ever been written that has
been more misapprehended and misunderstood and misrepresented than this
same unfortunate Declaration of Independence, and no set of gentlemen
have ever been so slandered as the fathers who drew and signed that
Declaration.

"If there was a thing on earth that they did not intend to assert, it
was that a Negro was a White man. As I said here, a short time ago, one
of the greatest charges they made against the British Government was,
that old King George was attempting to establish the fact practically
that all men were created Free and Equal. They charged him in the
Declaration of Independence with inciting their Slaves to insurrection.
That is one of the grounds upon which they threw off their allegiance to
the British Parliament.

"Another great misapprehension is, that the men who drafted that
Declaration of Independence had any peculiar fancy for one form of
government rather than another. They were not fighting to establish a
Democracy in this country; they were not fighting to establish a
Republican form of government in this Country. Nothing was further from
their intention.

"Alexander Hamilton, after he had fought for seven years, declared that
the British form of government was the best that the ingenuity of man
had ever devised; and when John Adams said to him, 'without its