Not such, sir, were the "speculations" of the fathers of the Republic; nor is the world to be deceived by such assumptions. Decree and carry out what non-intercourse you will; surround yourselves with barriers as impassable as the Chinese wall, or the great gulf between Dives and Lazarus, still the evidences of your condition will exist on the imperishable pages of history, in the records left by the mighty and venerated dead; and the attempt to establish the belief that slavery is a universal blessing will be received but as an aggression upon the credulity of mankind. Forty years ago, a slave Territory applied for admission to the Union as a State. The friends of freedom objected that its reception would be contrary to the policy of our Government. "Admit it," it was urged, "with its present Constitution, and we will consent to a line of demarkation, north of which slavery shall never pass." This was solemnly agreed to before the whole world; and this compact, forced upon the country by the slave power, was claimed by it as a great triumph of slavery. Men at the North felt that this was a great aggression, a great outrage upon freedom; yet, to give quiet and restore harmony, they submitted, consoled by the national pledge that slavery should be extended no further, and believing that the nation might joyously look forward to long years of happiness and repose. But despotism is ever restless and grasping; but twenty-five years rolled by--a very short period in the life of a nation--ere Texas was admitted to the Union, that slavery propagandists could have a wider field for their operations. As everybody foresaw, war ensued; and the best blood of the nation fattened the soil of Mexico. More than two hundred millions of treasure were expended, and many thousand valuable lives sacrificed. All over this land, "the sky was hung with blackness;" "mourning was spread over the mountain tops." Territory enough was obtained to make four large States, well adapted to the productive labor of human chattels, and this territory was blackened over with slavery. Such a triumph ought to have satisfied the most grasping of the friends of this "peculiar institution;" but the world should have known that nothing short of universal dominion would satisfy the slave owner and slave breeder. Less than ten years after the annexation of Texas, it was discovered by Southern men that there was a Territory west of Missouri, wherein the peculiar institution of the South could be made profitable; but by a solemn league and covenant this land had been, for more than a third of a century, consecrated to freedom. This bond of national faith, this pledge of national honor, stood in the road of their ambition.