State.  It was left for a free country to establish, practically, civil disabilities against freemen,—­for Republican America to proscribe Republicans!  Think of it,—­that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or patriotism,—­could two years ago serve his country in any branch of its executive administration, unless he was unfortunate enough to agree with the slaveholders, or base enough to sham an agreement with them!  The test, at Washington, of political orthodoxy was modelled on the pattern of the test of religious orthodoxy established by Napoleon’s minister of police.  “You are not orthodox,” he said to a priest “In what,” inquired the astonished ecclesiastic, “have I sinned against orthodoxy?” “You have not pronounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the righteousness of the conscription.”

Now we had been often warned of the danger of sectional parties, on account of their tendency to break up the Government.  The people gave heed to this warning; for here was a sectional party in possession of the Government.  We had been often advised not to form political combinations on one idea.  The people gave heed to this advice; for here was a triumphant political combination, formed not only on one idea, but that the worst idea that ever animated any political combination.  Here was an association of three hundred and fifty thousand persons, spread over some nine hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, and wielding its whole political power, engaged in the work of turning the United States into a sort of slave plantation, of which they were to be overseers.  We opposed them by argument, passion, and numerical power; and they read us long homilies on the beauty of law and order,—­order sustained by Border Ruffians, law which was but the legalizing of criminal instincts,—­law and order which, judged by the code established for Kansas, seemed based on legislative ideas imported from the Fegee Islands.  We opposed them again, and they talked to us about the necessity of preserving the Union;—­as if, in the Free States, the love of the Union had not been a principle and a passion, proof against many losses, and insensible to many humiliations; as if, with our teachers, disunion had not been for half a century a stereotyped menace to scare us into compliance with their rascalities; as if it were not known that only so long as they could wield the powers of the National Government to accomplish their designs, were they loyal to the Union!  We opposed them again, and they clamored about their Constitutional rights and our Constitutional obligations; but they adopted for themselves a theory of the Constitution which made each State the judge of the Constitution in the last resort, while they held us to that view of it which made the Supreme Court the judge in the last resort.  Written constitutions, by a process of interpretation, are always made to follow the drift of great forces; they are twisted and tortured into conformity with the views of the power dominant in the State; and our Constitution, originally a charter of freedom, was converted into an instrument which the slaveholders seemed to possess by right of squatter sovereignty and eminent domain.