“Six slave states added at a breath! one flourish of a pen,
And fetters are riveted on millions more of men,
How all the damned leap up, and half forget their fire,
To think men take such pains to claim the notice of God’s ire.”
Nor has it been satisfied when all this was done. It has laid its hands upon the nation’s standard, and has urged its way through flood, and field, until that blood-stained banner waves on the halls of the Montazumas. It claims its victories on the ensanguined plains of Monterey, Cero Gordo, Chepultepec, Churubusco, and Beuna Vista, and hangs out its stiffened and gory garments from the old grey walls of Vera Cruz. These are but a part of slavery’s conquests on this continent. It is among the things that are possible that these triumphs are defeats in disguise. “God taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the ungodly carries headlong.” I would not dispair of the triumph of freedom in the hemisphere, were Mexico to be annexed to this union. For one I would welcome my dark-browed and liberty-loving brethren to our embrace. Aye! let them come with the population of seven and a half millions. One fifth of that number are white, and they are ultra Abolitionists. Two fifths are Indians, and the other two fifths are of the black, and mixed races. I repeat it, I should not dispair if they should come.
The dominions of slavery are directly between Northern and Southern freedom—between Eastern and Western Democracy. In the East the sons of New England are waking up at freedom’s call, among the tombs of their fathers.
“Grey Plymouth’s Rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb.”
The men of the North begin to appreciate the doctrine which has been long inculcated, that in order to be free themselves, they must emancipate the bondmen. The young lion of the West has torn the net of voluntary servitude, and gives signs of his latent strength. “The peculiar Institution” is doomed. President Polk sees this, and he spares neither blood, nor treasure to save it. Mr. John C. Calhoun is aware of it, and like some mighty Collossus, he stands astride the dark and troubled waters of his darling system, and like a frightened girl, appeals piteously to his brethren of the North and the South, to come to the rescue, and save him from a humiliating downfall. His predicament is pictured, very correctly by the gifted and devoted Bard of Liberty, John Greenleaf Whittier.
“Where’s now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o’ the senate flung,