defence of slavery, by increasing the political power of their section within the Union. The old barriers had become, in their eyes, but a feeble defence against those who proclaimed that the Union itself was an accursed thing, and that if immediate emancipation of the slaves was not adopted, the Union ought to be broken up. While it is true that the doctrines of the abolitionists were at first regarded by the great body of the Northern people as the ravings of fanatics, insomuch that they were sometimes subjected to popular violence, they were nevertheless making progress. Year after year the agitation was carried on in the same spirit, and year after year the excitement on the whole subject of slavery continued to grow until it reached a fresh impulse in the proposed annexation of Texas. It should in justice be remembered that the effort at that period to enlarge the area of slavery was an effort on the part of the South, dictated by a desire to remain in the Union, and not to accept the issue of an inherent incompatibility of a political union between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. It was not at this period that the Southern States embraced, or were much disposed to embrace, the doctrine of “secession.” The views of the nature of the Union, maintained by their most distinguished and powerful statesman, Mr. Calhoun, in 1830-33, led logically to the deduction that every State has, by the terms of the Federal compact, a right to quit the Union when, in its own judgment, it deems that step necessary. But no considerable body of persons in the South, out of his own State, accepted his premises or followed them to their conclusion, until long after he was in his grave; nor did he himself propose secession as a remedy against what he and the whole South regarded as the unwarrantable aggressions of the Northern abolitionists. He aimed to strengthen the political power of his section within the Union, and his whole course in regard to the acquisition of Texas shows his conviction that if that country were not brought under our dominion, there would be an exposed frontier, from which England and the American abolitionists would operate against slavery in the Southern section of the United States. The previous history of the Union shows very plainly that prior to the commencement of the Northern anti-slavery agitation, the political equilibrium between the two sections had not been seriously disturbed.