Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[25] sovereignty over one-half her domain. Not to Mexico, for England had caused the abolition of slavery there also. Their retiring confederates ought not to forget the events of 1834, when George Thompson, the English abolitionist, was sent to enlighten the dead conscience of the American people. In this connection he cited a letter from Thompson to Murrell, of Tennessee, in which was this sentence: “The dissolution of the Union is the object to be kept steadily in view.” In the event of a Southern Confederacy, there will be, besides the African slave-trade, other elements of discord and agitation. Slavery was the great ruling interest of the extreme States, while the other States had other great interests which could not be lightly abandoned. It would be for the interest of the coast States to have free trade in manufactured goods; but how would that operate on the mechanical and manufacturing industry of Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware? There would be, therefore, in the proposed Union, an antagonism quite as great as there ever has been in this. But if manufactories were to be protected and encouraged in the Border Slave States, their white population would increase so fast that they would be but nominally Slave States, and would finally become Free States. He appealed to the North to guarantee by constitutional enactments the principle secured by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. Let us feel, he said, that we have a country to save instead of a geographical section to represent. Let us act as men, and not as partisans, and the old Constitution, now in the trough of the sea, with battered masts and sails, will weather the storm.--Times, Jan. 23.