In ancient days the candidate was robed in white, while at the Capitol and in the Forum he canvassed the people for their votes. The candidate nation, unashamed of Slavery, should be robed in black, while it conducts the great canvass, and asks the votes of the Christian powers. “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,” as the outrage proceeds; for the candidate gravely asks international recognition of the claim to hold property in man, to sell wife away from husband, to sell child away from parent, to shut the gates of knowledge, to appropriate all the fruits of another’s labor. The candidate proceeds in the canvass, notwithstanding all history declares Slavery essentially barbarous, and that whatever it touches it changes to itself,--that it barbarizes laws, barbarizes business, barbarizes manners, barbarizes social life, and makes the people who cherish it barbarians. And still the candidate proceeds, although it is known to the Christian powers that the partisans of Slavery are naturally “filibusters,” always apt for lawless incursion and for robbery; that, during later years, under their instigation and to advance their pretensions, expeditions _identical in motive with the present Rebellion_ were let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, twice against Cuba, and twice, also, against Nicaragua, breaking the peace of the United States and threatening the repose of the world, so that Lopez and Walker were but predecessors of Beauregard and Jefferson Davis. And yet the candidate proceeds, although it is obvious that the recognition urged will be nothing less than solemn sanction by the Christian powers of Slavery everywhere throughout the new jurisdiction, on land or sea, so that every ship, being part of _the floating territory_, will be _Slave Territory_. And yet, with the phantasy that man can hold property in man shooting from his lips, with the shackle and lash in his hands, with barbarism on his forehead, with filibusterism in his recorded life, and with Slavery woven in his flag wherever it floats on land and sea, the candidate clamors for independent recognition. It is sad to think that there is delay in repelling the insufferable canvass. Can Christian nations longer hesitate? To detest and combat such an accursed pretension it is not necessary even to be a Christian,--it is sufficient to be a man.