[210] to dictate terms to the National Government, in the Missouri Compromise, compelling it to receive that State into the Union with a slave-holding Constitution. The Slave Oligarchy instigated and carried on a most expensive war in Florida, mainly to recover fugitive slaves, thus degrading the army of the United States to be Slave-hunters. The Slave Oligarchy wrested from Mexico the Province of Texas, and, triumphing over all opposition, finally secured its admission into the Union, with a Constitution making Slavery perpetual. The Slave Oligarchy plunged the country in war with Mexico, in order to gain new lands for Slavery. The Slave Oligarchy, with the meanness as well as the insolence of tyranny, has compelled the National Government to abstain from acknowledging the neighbor republic of Hayti, where slaves have become freemen, and established an independent nation. The Slave Oligarchy has compelled the National Government to stoop ignobly before the British Queen, to secure compensation for slaves, who, in the exercise of the natural rights of man, had asserted and achieved their freedom on the Atlantic Ocean, and afterwards sought shelter in Bermuda. The Slave Oligarchy has compelled the National Government to seek to negotiate treaties for the surrender of fugitive slaves, thus making our Republic assert abroad, in foreign lands, property in human flesh. The Slave Oligarchy has joined in declaring the foreign slave-trade piracy, but insists on the coastwise slave-trade, under the auspices of the National Government. The Slave Oligarchy for several years rejected the petitions to Congress adverse to Slavery, thus, in order to shield this wrong, practically denying the right of petition. The Slave Oligarchy, in defiance of the privileges secured under the Constitution of the United States, imprisons the free colored citizens of Massachusetts, and sometimes sells them into bondage. The Slave Oligarchy insulted and exiled from Charleston and New Orleans the honored representatives of Massachusetts, who were sent to those places with the commission of the Commonwealth, in order to throw the shield of the Constitution over her colored citizens. The Slave Oligarchy has, by the pen of Mr. Calhoun, as Secretary of State, in formal despatches, made the Republic stand before the nations of the earth as the vindicator of Slavery.
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