Can the enemies of the United States, at home or abroad, suppose that these vital questions can ever he yielded? That the nation can voluntarily abdicate its authority, confess the failure of its work for three quarters of a century; permit all the purposes of its creation to be utterly thwarted, and tamely and basely surrender all those hopes of a glorious destiny, which we have ever been taught to cherish as the goal of our unexampled freedom? The Southern people have been the sport of many delusions and infatuations; but the belief of these incredible and impossible suppositions, is the crowning folly of them all. These restless and daring men occupied the fairest region of the globe, with a virtual monopoly of the cotton culture. The unexampled increase of the cotton trade and manufacture, if it had not filled their coffers with unbounded wealth, had at least given them lavish returns for the labor of their slaves and enabled them to live in unlimited profusion. That under such a system they should have little provident care, but should indulge unbounded confidence in the future, was natural enough, for they conceived their prosperity, which cost them so little labor or anxiety, to be in its nature permanent. When, therefore, they saw gradually approaching the certain downfall of their power, they could not understand that this was the result of natural causes, but attributed it to the malignant enmity of the Government. A social organization, so agreeable, so full of pleasures and advantages, conferring not only ease and luxury, but also station and authority, must necessarily be right in itself, and worthy of every effort and every sacrifice to perpetuate it. What was the Government of the United States, that it should presume to erect itself as an obstacle to the progress of this rich and powerful organization? Was not the whole fabric of human industry dependent on it, and would not foreign nations be compelled by the very helplessness of their starving people to sustain and defend it? Why should there be anything sacred in the institutions of the country, when they evidently tended, by their spirit and operation, to overthrow the power of slavery? Washington was weak, with all his goodness; Jefferson was a demagogue; Madison had not forecast enough to see the necessary results of his political combinations. We have grown wiser; then let us sweep away the obstacles which were placed in our path by the weakness and folly of our deluded forefathers. Let us prostrate the clumsy fabric which they constructed, since the Yankees have taken possession of it, and are working it for the benefit of Irish and German immigrants and their descendants, and not for that of African traders and negro masters. By some terrible fatality, it was the misfortune of the Southern leaders to believe these delusions. They have gone so far as to act upon them, and have seduced their people into fatal coöperation; and