speech in reply, quite as harshly arraigning his opponent in debate, which enraged the slave-state senators. A day or two later, while Senator Sumner was sitting alone at his desk writing letters, after the adjournment of the senate, Preston S. Brooks, a representative of South Carolina and a relative of Senator Butler, stealthily approached Mr. Sumner's seat with a heavy bludgeon, and without warning, caned him nearly to death, breaking this gutta-percha weapon over his head in his cowardly and murderous assault. Several Southern senators witnessed the affair from the cloak rooms, ready to come to Brooks' assistance if needed. This brutal act was applauded in the South, and caused great anti-slavery agitation in the North as a slavery blow at free speech in the senate. After several years' absence from his seat by reason of this outrage, Mr. Sumner returned to his seat in the senate, but eventually died of the effects of the caning. Both Brooks and Butler went to their graves within a year after the brutal assault.

(2). In 1859, the South became greatly inflamed over the insane act of a monomaniac. John Brown was a graduate of the pro-slavery troubles in Kansas. He had been driven from his home there, and

two of his sons killed by pro-slavery mobs. On March 12, 1859, he arrived in Detroit with fourteen slaves from Missouri. That same night, Frederick Douglass, the colored orator, lectured in Detroit, after which, John Brown, Douglass, and several well-known colored people of Detroit met at 185 Congress street east, which seemed to be a preliminary meeting to plan the Harper's Ferry insurrection. The plans were perfected at Chatham, Canada, some time after. With twenty-one followers, John Brown attempted to put them in operation in September following, at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Seventeen of them, including their leader, were killed on the spot or hanged. This invasion by these few misguided men greatly inflamed the Southern heart, as indicating the attitude of the North towards them. John Brown's act was generally condemned in the North, and was not more insane than that of the South eighteen months later, when it fired upon the flag the shot that freed four million slaves.

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1860.

The summer of 1860 disclosed the opening acts of secession in the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina. The conspirators demanded advanced ground in behalf of slavery. Senator Pugh, of Ohio, evidently speaking for Stephen A. Douglas, the great Democratic leader of the North, plainly told them that the party had stood by the South until it was in the minority in nearly every Northern State, and it would never take advanced ground for slavery in defiance of the will of the people. Such language the South had never before heard in a national convention. The eyes of the Southern delegates snapped as if lightning had struck the building. They withdrew and nominated a slaveholders' ticket, thereby securing the success of the man whose election they declared. would be a sufficient cause for dissolving the Union.

The slavery question was virtually the sole issue in this presidential campaign.

(1). The slaveholders' platform (Breckenridge and Lane's) held that slavery existed in any territory whenever a slaveholder entered it with his slaves; that neither congress nor a territorial legislature had any power to prohibit its introduction or impair its existence therein; and that slaveholders had a right to travel with their slaves in the free States, and with said slaves sojourn therein without molestation of any free State laws.

(2). The Republican platform (Lincoln and Hamlin's) held that all national territory was free, and opposed any legislation giving

slavery validity therein, as well as the admission of any more slave States; and, as a reserved right, a State might free all slaves found therein, except fugitive slaves.

(3). The Northern platform of the Democratic party (Stephen A. Douglas') declared for non-intervention by congress with slavery in the territories, leaving the question to a vote of the people therein; that all rights of property are judicial, and pledging to defer to the decisions of the supreme court on the subject.

(4). The Pro-slavery National Union platform (Bell and Everett's) had nothing to say on the subject.

The contest resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln by nearly every Northern electoral vote, while the South divided its votes between Breckenridge and Bell.

THE DOCTRINE OF SECESSION.

Southern leaders had declared that the election of Lincoln would be a sufficient cause for seceding from the Union, and at once began to carry out their threats. The doctrine of secession had been taught for many years in the colleges, magazines and press of the South. In brief, this doctrine was that a man's first and highest allegiance was to his State; that the States as sovereignties had ceded only certain rights to the federal government; and whenever a State had a sufficient grievance, of which itself was the sole judge, it might resume to itself all the powers that it had before it entered the Union. This extraordinary claim rested upon the doctrine that the Union was only a confederation, or compact, or agreement a sort of "free love" at pleasure between independent States, and not a Nation; that the general reservation in the Constitution, to the States, of powers not granted to congress nor prohibited to them, made secession a reserved State right by implication. Thus by a perversion of language they set up their illogical doctrine as an escapement for treasonable conduct.

The Constitution itself best refutes these secession assumptions. This instrument was adopted in each State by conventions of delegates chosen by the people, and though, when completed, it was not submitted directly to the people, yet the latter had a voice in its adoption when they elected the delegates of their choice. After being thus adopted, it expressly voiced its own authority. In no part does it declare that it is a league of States, or compact or confederacy. On the contrary, it plainly says: "We, the People of the United States, etc., do ordain and establish this Constitution,"

which it declares to be "the supreme law of the land," "anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." It further declares as "supreme law," that “ no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation," nor "enter into any agreement or compact with another State." These are a few of the fundamental principles of the American Constitution, given up to the general government by the States, not for any specific period and then to terminate by some State's action, but forever. There is not a single principle in the Constitution for its own suicidal dissolution, and the above quoted prohibitions to the States exclude every idea of secession as a reserved right, in any manner. Secession was simply treasonable rebellion against constituted authority, established by the States themselves. It was not even revolution which is right only when its cause is justifiable in the deep conscience of nations and has a reasonable hope of success, neither of which the South had. We shall not follow this treasonable doctrine into the mazy subtleties of John C. Calhounism, nor dwell upon the many useless efforts in Congress and peace conventions to conciliate the South. They were compromise breakers and without honor in keeping agreements. In fact their leaders would accept no compromise now-nothing less than disunion.

SLAVE POWER BROKEN

SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY ORGANIZED.

The main cause of the South's rebellious conduct now was, that slavery had ceased to rule. The federal government had existed. seventy-two years, during which, slaveholders had held the presidency over forty-nine years. Of the twenty-eight judges of the supreme court, seventeen had been slaveholders. The pro tem. presidency of the Senate had been filled by slaveholders every year but three, the speakership of the House forty-five years, and so on. But henceforth, not another slaveholder would ever occupy the White House. No more wars for territory out of which to carve slave States. The slave power was broken in the Union, and having ceased to rule, would now destroy it.

There were traitors in the Senate, in the House and in the Cabinet. President Buchanan being indebted to the South for his election, charged all the troubles to the North, declaring in his senility that no State had a right to secede, but there was no power to prevent it if it did. This was plainly telling the Southern States that he would interpose no hindrance to their seceding, and they improved the opportunity. Michigan's time-honored statesman-Lewis Cass

resigned from the Cabinet, which act was a fitting rebuke to Buchanan's course. Oh, for sixty days of Old Hickory to stamp out this rebellion in its infancy!

While deprecating slavery as a heaven-defying practice, we do not anathematize all who held slaves, and these often by inheritance, to whom the laws forbade manumission. There were good men among them as their system allowed. The edicts of heaven were against it, but what to do they knew not, no more than sober reason in the North could tell. Notwithstanding the secession leaders, there was a large Union sentiment in parts of the South, of which Alexander H. Stevens, of Georgia, the ablest statesman in the South in his time, was the exponent. He openly declared that the South had not sufficient cause for secession, and clearly foretold the evils that it would bring upon that section. But the "fire-eaters," as the radical disunionists were called, fired the Southern heart, and by the most deceptive arguments and murderous browbeating all but four of the slave States passed ordinances of secession and formed a Southern Confederacy, with Jefferson Davis for president and Alexander H. Stevens for vice-president. The latter was a disciple of Calhoun's teachings, and he followed his State out of the Union.

THE WAR BEGUN-UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE.

Ere the conspirators in Washington had gone forth to organize secession, the approaching storm became manifest by the seizure of

inaugural address thus assured the South: mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

unguarded forts in the seceding States. On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Anderson transferred his command of four score men from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, the strongest in Charleston Harbor, to the indignation of all secessiondom.

On March 4, 1861, Mr. Lincoln became President, and in his "In your hands, not in The government will not