“Last, not least, the new Constitution has put at rest _for ever_ all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution,—African Slavery as it exists among us, the proper _status_ of the negro in our form of civilization. _This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution._ Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock _stood_ and _stands_ may be doubted. _The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of Nature, that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically._ It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent, and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guaranty to the institution, while it should last; and hence no argument can be justly used against the Constitutional guaranties thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. _Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error._ It was a sandy foundation: and the idea of a government built upon it—when ‘the storm came and the wind blew, it fell.’ “_Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas: its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition._ (Applause.) _This our new government is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth._