The slave power, as represented by South Carolina, wants primarily but one thing――_a complete reversal of Northern moral convictions and social ideas. That change of civilization would permit her to open the slave trade and acquire new territory for slave States. All these things are impossible in the Union as headed now._ Therefore, South Carolina turns her back on it, and gives the command: forward, the whole line towards――_we’ll see when we get out_. We must confess there is no link wanting in this logic of the slave power. If it stays in the Union, it must be girdled, year by year, more irresistibly by freedom; as a great snow bank feels the April sun, day by day, enclosing it in glittering lines, and already dissolves in thought of June mornings ahead. With the most determined effort to keep its hands off the slave power, the spirit of American liberty will be compelled to deal with it more vitally every year. The age is forcing it towards this policy. Every school house and meeting house, free home, free journal, and country lyceum in the United States is a protest against this barbarism. It may be as well said at once _that what the slave power calls abolitionism, is simply the spirit of the nineteenth century applied to American Society. Every man who lives in that spirit is to it an abolitionist, with his own will, or spite of his will, must help abolish human slavery._ I doubt not the political fidelity of the North to all constitutional obligations; but if the fifteen slave states remain in the Union they must finally become free states. Freedom is aggressive. Virtue, truth, humanity, God are aggressive. The fathers intended that slavery should die a peaceful death in the Union, and the sons will not forget the tradition. The slave power now hears her sentence read and sees the executioner on the way. South Carolina counsels it to prolong its life by flying beyond jurisdiction of the court. But if the slave power flies from the Union, it is only rushing from the house of a regenerating friend into an open country peopled by its foes. The civilization of the age is against it. The South must, first or last, regenerate her false order of society, or walk towards final destruction. What is the duty of the North in this perilous condition of affairs? First. The paramount duty of the eighteen Northern States is to preserve and perpetuate the Christian civilization already inaugurated within their borders, and permit the sacred cause of liberty to suffer no eclipse. Second. The North has now become the natural protector of the Southern people against the tyranny of the slave power, and must do its uttermost to prevent the conquest of fifteen states by this remorseless tyranny.