The blood of brethren is shed by each other.  The citizen of the nullifying State is a traitor to his country, by obedience to the law of his State; a traitor to his State, by obedience to the law of his country.  The scaffold and the battle-field stream alternately with the blood of their victims.  Let this agent but once intrude upon your deliberations, and Freedom will take her flight for heaven.  The Declaration of Independence will become a philosophical dream, and uncontrolled, despotic sovereignties will trample with impunity, through a long career of after ages, at interminable or exterminating war with one another, upon the indefeasible and unalienable rights of man.

The event of a conflict of arms, between the Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an alternative of calamity to all.  In the holy records of antiquity, we have two examples of a confederation ruptured by the severance of its members; one of which resulted, after three desperate battles, in the extermination of the seceding tribe.  And the victorious people, instead of exulting in shouts of triumph, “came to the House of God, and abode there till even before God; and lifted up their voices, and wept sore, and said,—­O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel?” The other was a successful example of resistance against tyrannical taxation, and severed forever the confederacy, the fragments forming separate kingdoms; and from that day, their history presents an unbroken series of disastrous alliances and exterminating wars—­of assassinations, conspiracies, revolts, and rebellions, until both parts of the confederacy sunk in tributary servitude to the nations around them; till the countrymen of David and Solomon hung their harps upon the willows of Babylon, and were totally lost among the multitudes of the Chaldean and Assyrian monarchies, “the most despised portion of their slaves.”

In these mournful memorials of their fate, we may behold the sure, too sure prognostication of our own, from the hour when force shall be substituted for deliberation in the settlement of our Constitutional questions.  This is the deplorable alternative—­the extirpation of the seceding member, or the never-ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies, ultimately bending the neck of both under the yoke of foreign domination, or the despotic sovereignty of a conqueror at home.  May Heaven avert the omen!  The destinies of not only our posterity, but of the human race, are at stake.

Let no such melancholy forebodings intrude upon the festivities of this anniversary.  Serene skies and balmy breezes are not congenial to the climate of freedom.  Progressive improvement in the condition of man is apparently the purpose of a superintending Providence.  That purpose will not be disappointed.  In no delusion of national vanity, but with a feeling of profound gratitude to the God of our Fathers, let