THE

UNITED STATES REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1856.

THE UNION-THE DANGERS WHICH BESET IT.

NUMBER ONE.

WHEN storms and tempests howl around and beat upon our Union and our Republican institutions with a fierceness that threatens their entire prostration and ruin, no patriot should repress the expression of his fears, but should pour them out into the public ear, freely and without reserve. No man who can reason from cause to effect, can so far misunderstand the signs of the times, as not to see, that the intense sectional excitement, increasing in bitterness and inveteracy every day, which Abolitionism, aided by Northern "Know-Nothingism," has produced, must, unless extinguished by the miraculous interposition of divine providence, end in the disruption of this mighty Union, and the consequent destruction of our free institutions and the liberty of our people. It is impossible, too, that this Union can be dissolved, without being followed by the erection, first of several petty Republics -then Oligarchies, and then, Kingdoms. The fate of the Grecian Republics and others, warn us of the sad but inevitable consequence of such an event. At one time, such was our confidence in the virtue and intelligence of the people, and the strength of the ties that bound the Union together,

that we believed the most terrific political or fanatical tornado could not prostrate them; the most awful earthquake could not shake, or the severest thunderbolt shiver this Union to pieces. That, however, which Washington foresaw, and against which he warned his countrymen, with the most paternal and anxious solicitude-sectional partyism-is upon us, in all its most dangerous and fearful aspects, and the fears of our great statesman and patriot, about to be realized.

In this excited, dangerous, and threatening condition of public affairs, which may result in calamities to us and to posterity, which no pen is adequate to describe, no man should be idle or indifferent, but, without regard to party affinities or party associations, should do all that in him lies to avert them, if, upon the true principles of the Constitution, the rights of the States and the equality of citizenship, it can be done. No man, though his country or his party may have wronged him, can stand aloof in this great crisis--this trying hour of the Union, of free institutions, of liberty and of civil and religious freedom. He should lay all his wrongs, all of his resentments, upon the altar of his country's good, and employ all his energy and influence to avert the threatened storm. The historic pen has recorded for our imitation, many examples of such a noble self-sacrifice, made by patriots and statesmen, whose names illume the pages which record them.

Every reflecting and intelligent mind ought to know, every one must see, that in a government extending over an area of country so expansive as ours, with a climate so variant, and interests so diversified, there must be some mutual compromises of interest and conciliations of feeling in order to promote the success of the government, and secure other, greater and more important interests. Upon this principle and with such feelings, the Constitution was framed, was ratified by the States and approved by the people; and upon this principle and with these feelings, must the government be conducted to attain the great end of its establishment. Sectional hostility, sectional hatred, sectional jealousy and sectional partyism, are no friends to the Union, the Constitution, free institutions, liberty or prosperity. Beneath their blows, dealt by artful, ambitious, and unscrupulous hands, they must all fall and be buried in a common ruin, the monuments of mad ambition and reckless fanaticism and folly.

When we contemplate the structure of our Federal and State Governments, and see in them, their adaptation to secure the power, the wealth, and the prosperity of the Union and

the people, so far as national subjects are concerned; the fitness of the State Governments for every thing of domestic or local concern; the necessarily, sublimely, high destiny of power, of wealth, of prosperity, of influence and of freedom, which attend our onward march, if the Union and our free institutions be preserved, we can not but execrate the parricidal and traitorous hand that would strike a fatal-a suicidal blow against such a system.

Many of our wisest, most sagacious and most patriotic statesmen, have always feared the slavery question, as the most dangerous and trying to the Union, which traitors and fanatics could agitate; and have tried by every means which the threatening aspect of the case seemed to require, to repress it within safe bounds. And, perhaps, their efforts would have been successful, had not two other elements, each of which is equally, if not more exciting and dangerous than slavery, entered into the controversy, to increase its heat. We refer to the proposed disfranchisement and proscription of Roman Catholics and adopted citizens, all blowing from the same thrice-heated furnace. In the Northern States, the Abolitionists, the Free Soilers and the new order of "Know-Nothings," composed, mainly, of Whigs, all working harmoniously together, are using their strongest and most unremitted exertions to make the question sectional, by proclaiming that "slavery is sectional." To meet this tyrannous and dangerous sectional antagonism of the North, the South is driven to present an unbroken front; maintaining, however, a cordial fellowship and alliance with those of the North, who, in defiance of sectional considerations and sectional appeals, peril their political fortunes upon the Constitution, and the Union as the Constitution made it, and the rights of the South as the Constitution guarantees them. With such a patriotic, intrepid, and devoted band, the South should determine to stand or fall.

This controversy having become, and daily becoming more and more excited, bitter, and sectional, it becomes a subject of interesting inquiry, why is it so, and where the fault lies. That slavery, religious bigotry and the disfranchisement of naturalized citizens, are the pretended prominent causes, we can all see; but that ambition, power, and a determined purpose of tyrannical domination by the North,* over

*J. G. is too sweeping, in using the term NORTH. The assumption that the North, as such, is filled with a crusading spirit against the South or its institutions, is false in fact and pernicious in theory; an assumption which does more to endanger the relationships of the two portions of the Union, and promote real sectionalism of

the rights and interests of the South, to the extent of entire subserviency, is the hidden cause, we have no doubt, as the progress of the controversy will certainly develop.

We have no purpose of discussing the slavery question, either in its moral or religious aspect. It is here; the Revolution and the Constitution found it here, and the Federal Government, by the Constitution, has no power to establish or abolish it, or to declare where it shall, or shall not, exist. All its power, upon the subject, is to provide for the reclamation of fugitive slaves. When we look to the Constitution as our instrument of imparted powers. and bear in mind, that slavery existed at the very time of its adoption, and find, that no such power is imparted to the Federal Government, it should be decisive, that no such power exists, and that none such was intended to be imparted. If, then, no such power is imparted to the Federal Government, the establishment, abolition, or prohibition of slavery, either in the States or terri tories, would be a usurpation of power and a palpable violation of the Constitution. The South has never sought, and does not desire the establishment of slavery by law, anywhere. It has only sought its protection where it exists, or shall be established by the States.

If we were to enter into a history of the introduction and progress of slavery in this country, we might show some facts. reflecting no credit upon the North, taking their present professed opinions about slavery as the standard of judgment. We might show that their own citizens were the captors, the transporters, and dealers in this property. We might show, that t the formation of the Constitution, the five New-England St those that are now boiling over with rage about slavery, a ed by South-Carolina and Georgia, kept open the slave-t.ade twenty years, while Virginia sought to close it; and that of this twenty years, the Northern ship-owners, ands lave-traders made the most profitable use.

From the very formation of the government, to the present hour, there has been a large party in the North, now increased, we fear, to a majority, opposed to the progress of the South. They seem to have determined to reduce the South to a state

feeling and action, than all the mad ranting of the party called Abolitionists. There is an Abolition party in the North, as there is a Secession party in the South, and the number of foolish and wicked men in the United States is pretty equally divided between them. To call the whole North Abolition is about as fair as to call the whole South Secession; an exceedingly left-handed compliment to the sense or virtue of either.-EDITOR DEMOCRATIC REVIEW.

of provincialism and vassalage—all under the pretext of preventing the "extension of slavery" as they call it. This purpose was first strongly exhibited, by their opposition to the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, of Florida in 1819, and later to the annexation of Texas, and the acquisition of California; and this is the same party, with new adherents, that is now harassing and oppressing the South, and hunting down Catholics and naturalized citizens.

The first act of positive aggression by the North on the South, was in 1820, in what is called the "Missouri compromise." This so-called "compromise" was in fact a prohibition to every slaveholding State, to carry any of their slaves into any of the territories of the United States north of the State of Missouri, and of the line of 36° 30', commencing on her western boundary, annexed as a condition of the admission of Missouri into the Union, as a State, although, under the Constitution, Missouri had a right to admission, without any such restriction-a restriction, not upon Missouri, but the citizens of the United States, without discrimination, and upon a territory which was thereafter to be divided into States, each of which would have a right, under the Constitution, to establish slavery, and to demand admission into the Union, upon terms of perfect equality with the original States. Which could not be, if the question of slavery was closed upon her. This so-called compromise, then, was void, as being unauthorized by the Constitution, and violative of the constitutional rights of those who were not parties to it. It was an act of unauthorized power and unmitigated tyranny, and is not entitled to be respected or ated as a compromise. Let no man talk of statesmanship, of riotism, or of good faith who talks about the faith of a mere legislative enactment, founded on a palpable breach of the Constitution. By the so-called compromise acts of 1850-51, and the Kansas-Nebraska bill, this restriction-not upon Missouri, but upon the citizens of the slaveholding States and the unborn States-was removed, and the constitutional rights of the citizens of all the States and of the territories, placed upon that • exact footing of equality which the Constitution originally placed them upon. The new States fornied out of the territories, will have each, for itself, exclusive jurisdiction, to deter mine this question of slavery. These are the acts stigmatized, by those very faithful and patriotic Abolitionists, Free-Soilers, and Know-Nothings of the North, as faithless and perfidious!

a faithlessness and perfidiousness that stands upon the Constitution, and accords to every State and every citizen an