The war was not commenced by those to whom
your resolution refers; it was commenced by the South; they rebelled
against the majority. It was not a rebellion against a monarchy, or an
aristocracy, or some other form of government which has its hold upon
people, sometimes by services, but often from tradition; but it was
against a Government of their own, and a compact of their own, that they
violently rebelled, and for the expressed and avowed purpose of
maintaining the institution of slavery, and for the purpose, not
disavowed, of re-opening the slave trade, and, as these extracts show,
if their principles should be fully carried out, of making bondage
universal among all classes of labourers and artisans. When I say that
their object was to re-open the slave trade, do not for a moment imagine
that I am overstating the case against them. They argue, with a perfect
logic, that, if slavery was right, the slave trade could not be wrong;
if the slave trade be wrong, slavery cannot be right; and that if it be
lawful and moral to go to the State of Virginia and buy a slave for two
thousand dollars, and take him to Louisiana, it cannot be wrong to go to
Africa, and buy a slave for fifty dollars, and take him to Louisiana.
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