It has rejected for years petitions to Congress against Slavery,--thus, in order to shield Slavery, practically denying the right of petition. It has imprisoned and sold into slavery colored citizens of Massachusetts, entitled, under the Constitution of the United States, to all the privileges of citizens. It 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. In formal despatches by the pen of Mr. Calhoun, as Secretary of State, it has made the Republic stand before the nations of the earth as the vindicator of Slavery. It puts forth the hideous effrontery, that Slavery can go to all newly acquired territories, and have the protection of the national flag. In defiance of the desire declared by the Fathers to limit and discourage Slavery, the Slave Power has successively introduced into the Union Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, as Slaveholding States,--thus, at each stage, fortifying its political power, and making the National Government lend new sanction to Slavery. Such are some of the usurpations and aggressions of the Slave Power. By such steps the National Government is perverted from its original purposes, its character changed, and its powers subjected to Slavery. It is pitiful to see Freedom suffer at any time from any hands. It is doubly pitiful, when she suffers from a government nursed by her into strength, and quickened by her into those activities which are the highest glory. "So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart. Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel, While the same plumage that had warmed his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast."