pleasure, and to do every thing in their power to destroy the unity of the National Government, it is made out that to attempt to recover the property of the Federal Union is unjustifiable aggression upon the slave States.  Thus we see eleven States in a confederate capacity openly making war upon the Federal Government, and compelling it either into a disgraceful surrender of its rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, or war for self-defense.  Fort Sumter was not allowed to be provisioned, nor was there any disposition manifested to permit its possession in any manner honorable to the Government, although its exclusive property.  It must be surrendered unconditionally, or be attacked.

The worst feature connected with the secession movement is the hot haste with which the most important questions connected with the interests of the people are hurried through.  The ordinance of secession is not fairly submitted to the people, but a mere oligarchy of desperate men themselves assume to declare war, and exercise all the prerogatives of an independent and sovereign government.  And yet the terms submitted in the Crittenden Resolutions as a peace-offering to the seceding States to win them back by concessions from the North, present a spectacle quite as mournful for the cause of national unity and dignity as the open rebellion of the seceding States.  The professed aim of these States is either a reconstruction of the Constitution in a way that shall nationalize slavery and give it supreme control, or a forcible disruption of the Union.  What are the terms proposed that alone appear to satisfy the South?  They may be briefly comprehended in a short extract from a speech delivered by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, February 21, 1861: 

’But the Senator from Kentucky asks us of the North by irrepealable constitutional amendments to recognize and protect slavery in the Territories now existing, or hereafter acquired south of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes; to deny power to the Federal Government to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, in the forts, arsenals, navy-yards, and places under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; to deny the National Government all power to hinder the transit of slaves through one State to another; to take from persons of the African race the elective franchise, and to purchase territory in South-America, or Africa, and send there, at the expense of the Treasury of the United States, such free negroes as the States may desire removed from their limits.  And what does the Senator propose to concede to us of the North?  The prohibition of slavery in Territories north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, where no one asks for its inhibition, where it has been made impossible by the victory of Freedom in Kansas, and the equalization of the fees of the slave Commissioners.’

Here we have the true position in which the free States are placed toward the slaveholding States.  Seven