Our Federal Union [pp. 31-42]

OUR FEDERAL UNION.
The Democratic party was overwhelmed with disastrous defeat in the last Presidential election, with a Northern man for
its candidate, in all but four of the Northern States, and you
behold it to-day, torn by dissensions and staggering along as if
already stricken with premature decrepitude and decay.
And along the whole line of the southern sections northward, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the base of
an immense party rests, culminating toward the North, whose
organization is perfect, whose leaders are sagacious, learned,
and bold, and which proposes to take possession of the government. The desire to carry out the policy of equality to the
extreme limit of the government, and in virtue of the asserted
superiority of the North, to exercise a preponderating influence
on the destiny of the country, and thus to gratify the ambition
of Northern politicians for place and power —-these are the
sources whence arose this great party; and it is from them, and
them alone, that it derives support. Having absorbed all
other parties, it has come to be the complete embodiment of
Northern encroachment on the integrity and rights of the
South. It has no policy; it sets forth no system of administration for the government. Questions, even the most important as well as the most trivial, in the field of domestic and
foreign politics, are alike discarded. Its whole life is con.
tained in its antagonism to the South. Take this from it, and
you would behold its instant dissolution.
These are the influences —the radical influences, in my judgment, that have produced this estrangement between the Northern and Southern sections of the confederacy. We have seen
how, beneath their pressure, one cord after another of the
Union has given way; how they have distempered the whole
Northern section; how its literature has become full of hostility to the South; how the two most powerful religious denominations have severed all connection with their brethren of
the minority section; how social life has become embittered;
how parties, venerable and patriotic, have been destroyed; and
at last how a great party, giving more efficient form and expression to these influences, strides the whole North like a
Colossus. In fact, the whole current of Northern thought and
feeling, originally tinged with dislike, is now swollen to over flowing with deadly hate to the institutions of Southern so ciety. Nor have they been without a decided influence on the
government. The proposition to exclude Southern institu tions from the comnmon territories; to deny admission to States
with institutions similar to our own; to confiscate Southern
property within Northern jurisdiction; to abolish slavery in
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