Territory. The anti-slavery party, for the first time since the organization of the Government, triumphed in the election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency, and the pro-slavery party seceded from the Union, or rather I should say, ten or eleven of the fifteen slave States seceded and set up what they call a Confederate Government for themselves. What are called the border slave States, as Missouri, Kentucky, Western Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, have declared for the old Union; but they are made the battle-ground of the contending parties. It is evident that, according to the Constitution of the United States, no State has the right to secede from the Union. The Union was intended to .be perpetual. But the Secessionists contend that the States, as separate peoples, have, at any rate, the right of revolution when sufficient cause exists; and they further contend that a sufficient cause does exist in the hostility of the free States to the institution of slavery. But I have already remarked that the General Government was bound by the Constitution to protect slavery in the States where it existed. This is true; but the slave States regarded the hostile feelings of the Northern people as a sufficient cause for the act of secession. They regarded the fact that they were excluded from the Territories as a sufficient cause.
The truth is that the present state of the country is due to an angry controversy, long ago begun, on the subject of African slavery. Several compromises between the parties had been entered into, looking to the settlement of the difficulty; but the feeling remained with the one party that slavery is right, and with the other that slavery is wrong. These two hostile feelings have culminated in a revolution, or rebellion, the most formidable that the world has ever seen. What will be the end of it? No one can say. One thing seems evident, namely, that slavery will be extinguished; for though the General Government does not claim any constitutional power to interfere with the Constitutions in the States, yet, as a war power, as a means of putting 91