immortal instrument and its equally immortal sequel, the Constitution of the United States, there was a tacit understanding to this effect; and the Northern States, true to their implied faith, abolished it within a short period after our national independence had been secured. Not so with the South. She has pertinaciously refused to perform her duty. She has apostatized from the faith of her greatest men, and even at this very moment repudiates the sacred principle that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," among which "are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is evident, therefore, that the free States are the only members of this confederacy that have established republican forms of government based upon the theories of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and other eminent statesmen of Virginia. The great revolutionary movement which was set on foot in Charlotte, Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, on the 20th day of May, 1775, has not yet been terminated, nor will it be, until every slave in the United States is freed from the tyranny of his master. Every victim of the vile institution, whether white or black, must be reinvested with the sacred rights and privileges of which he has been deprived by an inhuman oligarchy. What our noble sires of the revolution left unfinished it is our duty to complete. They did all that true valor and patriotism could accomplish. Not one iota did they swerve from their plighted faith; the self-sacrificing spirit which they evinced will command the applause of every succeeding age. Not in vindication of their own personal rights merely, but of the rights of humanity; not for their own generation and age simply, but for all ages to the end of time, they gave their toil, their treasure and their blood, nor deemed them all too great a price to pay for the establishment of so comprehensive and beneficent a principle. Let their posterity emulate their courage, their disinterestedness, and their zeal, and especially remember that it is the duty of every existing generation so to provide for its individual interests, as to confer superior advantages on that which is to follow. To this principle the North has adhered with the strictest fidelity. How has it been with the South? Has she imitated the praiseworthy example of our illustrious ancestors? No! She has treated it with the utmost contempt; she has been extremely selfish--so selfish, indeed, that she has robbed posterity of its natural rights. From the period of the formation of the government down to the present moment, her policy has been downright suicidal, and, as a matter of course, wholly indefensible. She has hugged a viper to her breast; her whole system has been paralyzed, her conscience is seared, and she is becoming callous to every principle of justice and magnanimity. Except among the non-slaveholders, who, besides being kept in the grossest