Our happiness and prosperity essentially
depend upon peace within our borders, and peace depends upon the
maintenance in good faith of those compromises of the Constitution upon
which the Union is founded. It is fortunate for the country that the
good sense, the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of
the people of the nonslaveholding States to the Union and to their
fellow-citizens of the same blood in the South have given so strong
and impressive a tone to the sentiments entertained against the
proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in these
unconstitutional and wicked attempts, and especially against the
emissaries from foreign parts who have dared to interfere in this
matter, as to authorize the hope that those attempts will no longer
be persisted in. But if these expressions of the public will shall
not be sufficient to effect so desirable a result, not a doubt can be
entertained that the nonslaveholding States, so far from countenancing
the slightest interference with the constitutional rights of the South,
will be prompt to exercise their authority in suppressing so far as in
them lies whatever is calculated to produce this evil.
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