All these States apparently regarded the tie that bound them to the National Government as in no degree mutual, as imposing no duty upon them.

By some mysterious process still unexplained, the more they gained from connection with the National authority, the less was their obligation thereto, the more perfect their right to disregard and destroy the beneficent government which…

In all the speeches delivered by the senators from the seceding States, there was no presentation of the grievances which, in their own minds, justified secession.

If they had advised the Southern States that it was wiser and better to abide in the Union, and at least to wait for some overt act of wrong against the slave States, the whole movement would have collapsed.

South Carolina had taken the fatal step, and to fail in sustaining her would be to co-operate in crushing her.

While these motives and aims are intelligible, it seems utterly incredible that not one of the senators gave a specification of the wrongs which led the South to her rash step.

Not one of them deemed it necessary to justify his conduct by a recital of the grounds on which so momentous a step could bear the test of historic examination.

If now the danger was especially imminent, Southern leaders were solely to blame.

They would not accept the honorable assurance of the Republican party and of the President-elect that no interference with slavery in the States was designed.

The omission by individual senators to present the grievances which justified secession is perhaps less notable then the same omission by the conventions which ordained secession in the several States.

South Carolina presented, as a special outrage, the enactment of personal-liberty bills in the free States, and yet, from the foundation of the Federal Government, she had probably never lost a slave in consequence of these enactments.

But these were all public policies which had been in operation with Southern consent and largely with Southern support, throughout the existence of the Republic.

When South Carolina attempted, somewhat after the illustrious model of the Declaration of Independence, to present justifying reasons for her course, the very authors of the document must have seen that it amounted only to a parody.

Jefferson and his fellow-patriots in that great Act proceeded to submit their proof to the judgment of a candid world.

From that hour to this, there has been no disproval of the truth of these charges or of the righteousness of the resistance to which our forefathers resorted.

It would have been well for the dignity of the Southern Confederacy in history if one of its many able men had placed on record, in an authentic form, the grounds upon which, and the grievances for which, destruction of the Union could be…

On the other hand, the policy of the government had been steadily in favor of slavery; and the measures of Congress which would strengthen it were not only numerous, but momentous in character.

The acquisition of Louisiana, the purchase of Florida, the Mexican war, were all great national movements which resulted in strengthening the slave power.

More stringent provisions for the return of fugitive slaves were asked, and a law was enacted trampling under foot the very spirit of liberty, and putting in peril the freedom of men who were citizens of Northern States.

The Missouri Compromise, passed with the consent and support of the South, was repealed by Southern dictation the moment its operation was found to be hostile to the spread of slavery.

The rights of slavery in the Territories required judicial confirmation, and the Supreme Court complied by rendering the famous decision in the case of Dred Scott.

This position disclosed the real though not the avowed cause of the secession movement.

Its authors were not afraid of an immediate invasion of the rights of the slave-holder in the States, but they were conscious that the growth of the country, the progress of civilization, and the expansion of our population, were all…

The slave-holders ruled their States more positively than ever the aristocratic classes ruled England.

Besides the distinction of free and slave, or black and white, there was another line of demarcation between white men that was as absolute as the division between patrician and plebeian.