But you may reply, “Do you think the South is not in earnest in her threat of dissolving the Union?” I rejoin, by no means;—­yet she pursues a perfectly reasonable course (leaving out of view the justice or morality of it)—­just such a course as I should expect she would pursue, emboldened as she must be by her multiplied triumphs over the North by the use of the same weapon.  “We’ll dissolve the Union!” was the cry, “unless Missouri be admitted!!” The North were frightened, and Missouri was admitted with SLAVERY engraved on her forehead.  “We’ll dissolve the Union!” unless the Indians be driven out of the South!!  The North forgot her treaties, parted with humanity, and it is done—­the defenceless Indians are forced to “consent” to be driven out, or they are left, undefended, to the mercies of southern land-jobbers and gold-hunters.  “We’ll dissolve the Union!  If the Tariff” [established at her own suggestion] “be not repealed or modified so that our slave-labor may compete with your free-labor.”  The Tariff is accordingly modified to suit the South.  “We’ll dissolve the Union!” unless the freedom of speech and the press be put down in the North!!—­With the promptness of commission-merchants, the alternative is adopted.  Public assemblies met for deliberation are assailed and broken up at the North; her citizens are stoned and beaten and dragged through the streets of her cities; her presses are attacked by mobs, instigated and led on by men of influence and character; whilst those concerned in conducting them are compelled to fly from their homes, pursued as if they were noxious wild beasts; or, if they remain to defend, they are sacrificed to appease the southern divinity.  “We’ll dissolve the Union” if slavery be abolished in the District of Columbia!  The North, frightened from her propriety, declares that slavery ought not to be abolished there NOW.—­“We’ll dissolve the Union!” if you read petitions from your constituents for its abolition, or for stopping the slave-trade at the Capital, or between the states.  FIFTY NORTHERN REPRESENTATIVES respond to the cry, “down, then, with the RIGHT OF PETITION!!” All these assaults have succeeded because the North has been frightened by the war-cry, “WE’LL DISSOLVE THE UNION!”

After achieving so much by a process so simple, why should not the South persist in it when striving for further conquests?  No other course ought to be expected from her, till this has failed.  And it is not at all improbable, that she will persist, till she almost persuades herself that she is serious in her menace to dissolve the Union.  She may in her eagerness, even approach so near the verge of dissolution, that the earth may give way under her feet and she be dashed in ruins in the gulf below.

Nothing will more surely arrest her fury, than the firm array of the North, setting up anew the almost forgotten principles of our fathers, and saying to the “dark spirit of slavery,”—­“thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.”  This is the best—­the only—­means of saving the South from the fruits of her own folly—­folly that has been so long, and so strangely encouraged by the North, that it has grown into intolerable arrogance—­down right presumption.