But these traitorous traders in the phrase have (as before said) but one single point in view. In the whole compass of the Constitution their devotion embraces nothing in their vows for its unchangeable sacredness except its recognition of slavery, its provisions for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and for counting five Southern chattels as three white citizens in the basis for Federal representation. These are provisions that must not be changed. This is what they mean, and all they mean, when they shout for 'the Constitution as it is.' So sacred is the Constitution in this one sole respect, that they have rung every change of protest--from solemn remonstrance to frantic howls of wrath--against the recent law for taking from rebels the slaves that dig trenches and grow food for them while they are fighting for the overthrow of the Constitution. And the only vision of a Constitution '_as it is_' which looms up to their views and wishes in the future--'the Mecca of their hearts' fond dream'--is the overthrow of this legislation, and the reinstatement of slaveholders in their old rights fortified and extended by Supreme Court decisions carrying slavery and their slave laws into all the Territories, with the right of transit and sale for slaves in all the free States. But most wise men believe that in the end of the war there is not likely to be much slavery to need constitutional protection. And since our nation at its very birth solemnly proclaimed the doctrine that of right 'all men are born free and equal' as before the law, and have an equal right 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' perhaps these Democrats may be willing to let these provisions in behalf of slavery be dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer any thing but a dead letter--with no power of political victory and reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of Independence they have been the source of all our woes. It is not necessary to blame the framers of our Constitution for introducing them. They did it for the best, as they thought. They themselves hoped and believed the necessity for such provisions would long before this time cease to exist. They little dreamed what mighty mischiefs, what long contentions, what bitterness, what crimes, what bloody horrors they were entailing on their descendants. They little dreamed what a terrible _Nemesis_ would so soon avenge the expedient and temporary introduction (as they thought) of a contradiction to the principles of liberty into the organic law of a free nation whose first foundations they themselves had laid in the solemn proclamation of man's inalienable rights.