Shall we claim no more
from that which we have constituted for our own purposes, and which we
support by draining our own means for its support?
We have had agitation, changing in its form, and gathering intensity,
for the last forty years. It was first for political power, and directed
against new States; now it has assumed a social form, is all-prevailing,
and has reached the point of revolution and civil war. For it was only
last fall that an overt act was committed by men who were sustained by
arms and money, raised by extensive combination among the
non-slaveholding States, to carry treasonable war against the State of
Virginia, because now, as before the Revolution, and ever since, she
held the African in bondage. This is part of the history and marks the
necessity of the times. It warns us to stop and reflect, to go back to
the original standard, to measure our acts by the obligation of our
fathers, by the pledges they made one to the other, to see whether we
are conforming to our plighted faith, and to ask seriously, solemnly,
looking each other inquiringly in the face, what we should do to save
our country.
This agitation being at first one of sectional pride for political
power, has at last degenerated or grown up to (as you please) a trade.
There are men who habitually set aside a portion of money which they are
annually to apply to what are called "charitable purposes"--that is to
say, so far as I understand it, to support some vagrant lecturer, whose
purpose is agitation and mischief wherever he goes.
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