Look for a moment at the unprecedented character of this pretension. A President known to be against the extension of Slavery was duly elected by the people in the autumn of 1860. This was all. He had not entered upon his duties. But the apostolic Slavemongers saw that Slavery at home must suffer under the popular judgment against its extension; they saw that a vote against its extension was a vote for its condemnation; and they rebelled. Under this wicked inspiration, State after State pretended to withdraw from the Union, and to construct a new Confederacy, whose “corner-stone” was Slavery. A Constitution was adopted, declaring these words: (1.) “No law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed”[106]; and (2.) “In all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several States, the institution of Negro Slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial Government.”[107] Do not start. These are the authentic words of the text. You will find them in the Rebel Constitution. Such was the unalterable fabric of the new government. Nor was there any doubt or hesitation in proclaiming its distinctive character. Its Vice-President, Mr. Stephens, thus far remarked for moderation on Slavery, as if smitten with diabolic light, undertook to explain and vindicate the new Magna Charta. His words are familiar, but they cannot be omitted in a complete statement of the case. “_The new Constitution_,” he said, “has put at rest _forever_ all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution, African Slavery, as it exists among us,” which he proceeds to declare “was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” The Vice-President announced unequivocally the change that had taken place. Admitting it was “the prevailing idea of most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the Laws of Nature, that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically,” he denounces this idea as “fundamentally wrong,” and proclaims the new government “founded upon _exactly the opposite idea_.” Here is no disguise. “Its foundations,” he avows, “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 normal condition.” Not content with exhibiting the untried foundation, he boastfully claims for the new government priority of invention. “_This our new government_,” he vaunts, “_is the first in the history of the world_ based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.… This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, ‘is become the chief stone of the corner.’” And then, as if priority of invention were not enough, he proceeds to claim for the new government future