that of any South American republic, because our country is more populous, and sections of it would have greater strength of attack and defense. This pretense for secession would not have been concurred in by any of the states north of South Carolina, but for the previous agitation of slavery, which had welded nearly all the slaveholding states into a compact confederacy. This was done, not for fear of Lincoln, but to protect the institution of slavery, threatened by the growing sentiment of mankind. Upon this question I had been conservative, but I can see now that this contest was irrepressible, and that I would soon have been in favor of the gradual abolition of slavery in all the states. This could not have been effected under our constitution but for the Rebellion, so that, in truth, South Carolina, unwittingly, led to the only way by which slavery could be abolished in the present century. The existence of slavery in a republic founded upon the declaration that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is an anomaly so pregnant with evil that it is not strange that while it existed it was the chief cause of all the serious contentions that threatened the life of the republic. The framers of the constitution, finding slavery in existence in nearly all the states, carefully avoided mention of it in that instrument, but they provided against the importation of slaves after a brief period, and evidently anticipated the eventual prohibition of slavery by the voluntary action of the several states. This process of prohibition occurred until one- half of the states became free, when causes unforeseen made slavery so profitable that it dominated in the states where it existed, and dictated the policy of the United States. The first controversy about slavery was happily settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. But a greater danger arose from the acquisition of territory from Mexico. This, too, was postponed by the compromise of 1850, but unhappily, within four years, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise re-opened the controversy that led to the struggle in Kansas. Douglas prescribed the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Davis contended that slaves were property and must be protected by law like other property. Lincoln declared that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," that slavery must be lawful or unlawful in all the states, alike north as well as south. Seward said that an irrepressible conflict existed between opposing and enduring forces, that the United States must and would become either entirely a slaveholding nation or entirely a free labor nation. Kansas became a free state in spite of Buchanan and then the conflict commenced. The southern states prepared for secession. Lincoln became President. The war came by the act of the south and ended with the destruction of slavery.