These resolutions were adopted by a large and representative body of men at Worcester, Massachusetts, soon after Fremont’s defeat in 1856, and long before Governor Gist of South Carolina, and other Southern leaders, began to take measures for a peaceable separation, rather than to be forcibly expelled:
“Resolved, That the meeting of a state disunion convention, attended by men of various parties and affinities, gives occasion for a new statement of principles and a new platform of action.
“Resolved, That the conflict between this principle of liberty and this fact of slavery has been the whole history of the nation for fifty years, while the only result of this conflict has thus far been to strengthen both parties, and prepare the way of a yet more desperate struggle.
“Resolved, That in this emergency we can expect little or nothing from the South itself, because it, too, is sinking deeper into barbarism every year. Nor from a supreme court which is always ready to invent new securities for slaveholders. Nor from a president elected almost solely by Southern votes. Nor from a senate which is permanently controlled by the slave power. Nor from a house of representatives which, in spite of our agitation, will be more proslavery than the present one, though the present one has at length granted all which slavery asked. Nor from political action as now conducted. For the Republican leaders and press freely admitted, in public and private, that the election of Fremont was, politically speaking, the last hope of freedom, and even could the North cast a united vote in 1860, the South has before it four years of annexation previous to that time.
“Resolved, That the fundamental difference between mere political agitation and the action we propose is this, it requires the acquiescence of the slave power, and the other only its opposite.
“Resolved, That the necessity for disunion is written in the whole existing character and condition of the two sections of the country—in social organizations, education, habits and laws—in the dangers of our white citizens of Kansas and of our colored ones in Boston, in the wounds of Charles Sumner and the laurels of his assailant—and no government on earth was ever strong enough to hold together such opposing forces.
“Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely disunion, but the more perfect union of the free States by the expulsion of the slave States from the confederation in which they have ever been an element of discord, danger and disgrace.
“Resolved, That it is not probable that the ultimate severance of the union will be an action of deliberation or discussion, but that a long period of deliberation and discussion must precede it, and this we meet to begin.
“Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as an objection to any system of policy that will lead to the separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the highest of all recommendations and the grateful proof of statesmanship; and we will support politically and otherwise, such men and measures as appear to tend most to this result.
“Resolved, That by the repeated confession of Northern and Southern statesmen, the existence of the union is the chief guarantee of slavery, and that the despots of the whole world and the slaves of the whole world have everything to hope from its destruction and the rise of a free Northern republic.