Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/145

Rh into power, will demand their peculiar boon. So another compromise is to be feared, and the extension of slavery to whom it was a long time confined; but now it has swelled into a torrent of popular opinion at the North; it has invaded the fireside and the church, the press and the halls of legislation; it has seized upon the deliberations of Congress, and at this moment is sapping the foundations, and about to overthrow the fairest political structure that the ingenuity of man has ever devised.

"The overt efforts of abolitionism were confined for a long period to annoying applications to Congress, under colour of the pretended right of petition; it has since directed the whole weight of its malign influence against the annexation of Texas, and had well-nigh cost to the country the loss of that important province; but emboldened by success and the inaction of the South, in an unjust and selfish spirit of national agrarianism it would now appropriate the whole public domain. It might well have been supposed that the undisturbed possession of the whole of Oregon Territory would have satisfied the non-slaveholding States. This they now hold, by the incorporation of the ordinance of 1787 into the bill of the last session for establishing a territorial government for Oregon. That provision, however, was not sustained by them from any apprehension that the territory could ever be settled from the States of the South, but it was intended as a gratuitous insult to the southern people, and a malignant and unjustifiable attack upon the institution of slavery.

"We are called upon to give up the whole public domain to the fanatical cravings of abolitionism, and the unholy lust of political power. A territory, acquired by the whole country for the use of all, where treasure has been squandered like chaff", and southern blood poured out like water, is sought to be appropriated by one section, because the other chooses to adhere to an institution held not only under the guaranties that brought this confederacy into existence, but under the highest sanction of Heaven. Should we quietly fold our hands under this assumption on the part of the non-slaveholding States, the fate of the South is sealed, the institution of slavery is gone, and its existence is but a question of time Your committee are unwilling to anticipate what will be the result of the combined wisdom and joint action of the southern portion of the confederacy on this question ; but as an initiatory step to a concert of action on the part of the people of South Carolina^ they respectfully recommend, for the adoption of this meeting, the following resolutions:—

"Resolved, That the continued agitation of the question of slavery, by the people of the non-slaveholding States, by their legislatures, and by their representatives in Congress, exhibits not only a want of national courtesy, which should always exist between kindred States, but is a palpable violation of good faith towards the slaveholding States, who adopted the present Constitution ’in order to form a more perfect union."

"Resolved, That while we acquiesce in adopting the boundary between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States, known as the Missouri Compromise line, we will not submit to any further restriction upon, the rights of any southern man to carry his pi'operty and his institutions into territory acquired by southern treasure and by southern blood.

"Resolved, That should the Wilmot Proviso, or any other restriction, be applied by Congress to the territories of the United States, south of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, we recommend to our representative in