It destroys ideals of disinterestedness and generosity which relieved political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious.

To many it seemed strange, if not absolutely ludicrous, to hoist a pro-slavery flag in the Empire State.

Personally, Brady was perhaps the most popular man in New York City; and had he stood upon other than a pro-slavery platform his support must have been generous.

But the fact that he advocated the protection of slave property in the territories, although opposed to Buchanan's Lecompton policy, was destined to subject him to humiliating defeat.

He was evidently a man without guile, and, although modest and plain-spoken, he knew what the farmer and workingman most wanted, and addressed himself to their best thought.

In its eagerness to unite every phase of anti-slavery sentiment the convention buried the past in its desire to know, in the words of Seward, "whether this is a constitutional government under which we live.

But in freshness of thought and kaleidoscopic phraseology, they were attractive, full of eloquence, and of statesmanlike comment, lifting the campaign, then just opening, upon a high plane of political and moral patriotism.

Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately--now it met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious passion.

The election occurred on November 6, and on the 9th he declared that "if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace.

The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless....

Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in.

If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to go.

The belief obtained that, the election having been fair and constitutional, the South ought to submit to the decision as readily as Northern Democrats acquiesced in it.

Besides, a spontaneous feeling existed that the United States was a nation, that secession was treason, and seceders were traitors.

To go back to the line of 36° 30´, permitting slavery to the south of it, meant the loss of all that had been gained, and a renewal of old issues and hostilities in the near future.

Republican congressmen from the State, almost without exception, yielded to this view, voicing the sentiment that it was vain to temporise longer with compromises.

Never, with my consent, shall the Constitution ordain or protect human slavery in any territory.

With our experience of the little importance attached to former compromises by the South, it is ridiculous to talk about entering into another.

We of the North are called upon to save the Union by making concessions and giving new guarantees to the South....

But I am opposed to tinkering with the Constitution, especially in these exciting times.

We owe our existence as a party to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

But for the ever blind spirit of slavery, Buchanan would have taken away our ammunition and spiked our guns.

The continued blindness of Democracy and the continued madness of slavery enabled us to elect Lincoln.

If the Republican members of Congress stand still, we shall have a divided North and a united South.

Let the Union slide--it may be reconstructed; let Presidents be assassinated--we can elect more; let the Republicans be defeated and crushed--we shall rise again.