16 ing the counties .severally to abolish slavery within their own borders. Delaware seems on the verge of emancipation, and panting for the untried prosperity it will bring. There are indications that Maryland will not be very far behind. The institution which her representative does not think ought to be spoken of here, is discussed very freely in her dwellings and by her roadsides. An uneasiness under the burden that so oppresses freemen is working in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. In Georgia, if report says true, the causes of the depression of the white laboring man are engaging a constantly increasing attention, and there are whispers even, that the thing is whispered even among the sandhillers of South Carolina. But whether more or less developed in one place or another, I take it to be unquestionable, that a desire for emancipation prevails, to an extent already not inconsiderable, among the non-slaveholding freemen of the Southern country. And it has a healthy root, and must grow. They are coming to see that for the welfare of the whole, and especially for their own, it is necessary that the nuisance be abated. Attention is getting fixed upon that great political truth. The baleful political aspect of the slave question stands out in the light. Discussion of it must take place, and must infallibly end in confirming, enlightening, and guiding to a practical issue, the sense of its reality, and of the obligation to seek a remedy. So that, as I view the case, this is by no means a geographical and sectional question, as the gentleman from North Carolina understands it, (page 11,) and as it is made to appear in the resolutions of Mr. Calhoun, one great point of whose sagacity is, to present different issues from the true ones.. The question is not at all between North and South, but between the many millions of non-slaveholding Americans, North, South, East, and West, and the very few hundreds of fhousands of their fellow citizens who hold slaves. It is time that this idea of a geographical distinction of parties, with relation to this subject, was abandoned. It has no substantial foundation. Freedom, with its fair train of boundless blessings for white and black—slavery, with its untold miseries for both—these are the two parties in the field; and, as to their relative power, the slaveholders, if collected, would be outnumbered by the population of the singie city of New York, while the name of the other host is Legion. I cannot, therefore, attach any importance to the hint which the gentleman threw out, towards the close of his remarks, of what “the South” might think it necessary to do, if the anti-slavery movement were too much pressed, (page 16.) On this point he spoke forbearingly, and in a strain which contrasts most agreeably with language to which these walls have listened in some other times. I have something to say upon the subject, but I do not feel called upon to bring it forward till some further occasion shall arise. I will now only express my deliberate and undoubting conviction, that the time has quite gone- by when the friends of slavery might hope any thing from an attempt to move the South to disunion for its defence. When they raise that question seriously, their non-slaveholding neighbors—with their majority of more than six votes to one, even in that region—will settle it for them very quietly and effectually, through the ballot-boxes. And it is altogether likely they will then go further yet, and say, “An evil which has all along annoyed, disgraced, and kept us down, and which now asks for its support the overthrow of our wise form of government, is no more to be tolerated. Our interests, our peace, our safety, demand its extirpation.” I do not believe it is good policy for the slaveholders to let their neighbors hear them talk of disunion. Unless I read very stupidly the signs of the times, it will not be-the Union they will thus endanger, but the interest to which they would sacrifice it. If they insist that the Union and Slavery cannot live together, they may be taken at their word, but it is the Union that must stand.
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