against the government which each and all of them had solemnly sworn to "support, defend and maintain"—the facts that the treasury was emptied; that the army was scattered; that our ships of war were sent out of the way; that our forts and arsenals in the South were weakened and crippled,—purposely left an easy prey to the prospective insurgents,—that one after another the States were allowed to secede; that these rebel measures were largely encouraged by the doctrine of Mr. Buchanan, that he found no power in the Constitution to coerce a State, are all matters of history, and need only the briefest mention here.
To arrest this tide of secession and revolution, which was sweeping over the South, the southern papers, which still had some dread of the consequences likely to ensue from the course marked out before the election, proposed as a means for promoting conciliation and satisfaction that "each northern State, through her legislature, or in convention assembled, should repeal all laws passed for the injury of the constitutional rights of the South (meaning thereby all laws passed for the protection of personal liberty); that they should pass laws for the easy and prompt execution of the fugitive-slave law; that they should pass other laws imposing penalties on all malefactors who should hereafter assist or encourage the escape of fugitive slaves; also, laws declaring and protecting the right of slaveholders to travel and sojourn in northern States, accompanied by their slaves; also, that they should instruct their representatives and senators in Congress to repeal the law prohibiting the sale of slaves in the District of Columbia, and pass laws sufficient for the full protection of slave property in the Territories of the Union."
It may indeed be well regretted that there was a class of men in the North willing to patch up a peace with this
