5. A change of tactics characterizes the fifth stage. The faster growing population of the north, furnishing settlers in far greater number than that of the south, was sweeping away all chance of new slave States. The situation commanded that the defence of the south change to the aggressive, just as Stoessel was constrained the other day to take the offensive against 203 Meter Hill. In the first sortie the south got the Missouri compromise repealed. Then she tried to make a slave State of Kansas. She failed. When she had lost Kansas--like California in southern latitude--she could not help recognizing that the outlook for slavery in the union had become desperate. My northern countrymen, if you were as free from the surviving influence of the old intersectional quarrel as we all ought to be, you would applaud the ability and valor with which the south had fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort of her people; and especially would you admire her supreme effort in behalf both of that people, and also of the union which she loved next to the cause of her people. Not quailing before odds incalculable, she was as brave and self-sustained as Miltiades, coming forth with his little ten thousand to fight the host of Mardonius hand-to-hand. The only thing for her now was new aggression, to make a demand never seriously urged before. That was that congress protect the master's property in every Territory until it became a State. If this were done, she could, perhaps, keep slavery in some of the Territories long enough for it to strike root permanently. If it could not be done she must choose between her own cause and the union. Her persistence in the demand mentioned--and she was obliged to persist--split the democratic party, which had until this time been her main upholder in the union. The north refused her demand by electing Lincoln. This was the end of the fifth stage. Her nationality had become fully ripe. She seceded into the Confederate States, her only opportunity of conserving the property and occupation interests of her people. Of course she expected to get her part of the public domain, and to enforce extradition of her fugitive slaves.