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p. 6

Contemplating in our country the rapid increase of its
settled territory, the variety of its resources and rich-
ness of its different products; beholding the increase of a
population which spreads across the entire continent from
ocean to ocean, and fills up nearly twenty-five degrees of
latitude; considering our commerce penetrating every sea,
and our flag flung out to every breeze, well may we say
"what hath God wrought!" "What nation is there so great,
who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in
all things that we call upon him for?"

Gratefully, then, do we cherish the memory of those, by
whose exertions and sacrifices we enjoy the countless
blessings which belong to freedom, who gave freely of
their treasure, even to the last shilling, and poured our
their blood like water to secure us our rich inheritance.
Let us at the same time remember him who is the giver of
victory, and by whose favor alone we can hope to retain the
blessings transmitted to us.

These fears are not imaginary. See already the violence
and bloodshed which attend the popular elections in our
large cities! See the portentous collisions between the
authorities of the State and the general Government! At
this very hour, on the anniversary of that day when the men
of the North and of the South stood shoulder to shoulder,
and pledging each to the other "their lives, their for-
tunes, and their sacred honor," hurled defiance at a
nation the proudest and strongest in the world: at this
very hour, in some of the States, public sentiment insults
the majesty of law; public opinion, fired by fanaticism,
and led on by religious intolerance, resists the laws
enacted by the authority of Congress, and invested with all
the sanctity which the most solemn forms of legislation can
throw around them, and confidently boasts that they shall
not be executed.

It matters little what individual law be thus resisted:
the precedent once established, we may anticipate the sub-
version of all just authority. We have no standing armies
to overawe our citizens and accomplish the behests of irre-
sponsible power: we have trusted for the maintenance of
our freedom, and of that law on which it depends, to the
moral sense of the community, and not to physical coercion:
let that moral sense be corrupted, and what must result?
The law is a dead letter, and freedom is an empty name.

I must now ntice an intimation that this movement wears
the appearance of sectionalism; an apprehension that it may,
however, without design, tend to weaken the bands of this
Union.

I repel the unfounded suspicion. It is supported by no
act, or sentiment, or word, of those who originated this
enterprise, and have labored for its accomplishment up