"Stop a minute," he answered; "that is not exactly a fair statement of the question. Each State has its reserved rights. It gives up to the federal government the decision of certain questions affecting the interests of the whole Union. Its domestic laws and institutions it reserves entirely for its own decision. The North--I am a Northern man you must remember--seeks to violate this compact, upon which the whole Union depends, and wages war--for it is a moral warfare--against the South, upon the institution of slavery. That institution is, in fact, the battleground. The South occupies it, and says,--'It is mine. You shall not drive me from it. It is true, I care very little for this debatable ground, and may hereafter, in my own good time, give it up as a thing not worth contending about; but I will not give it up to force; and on this ground I will fight you; for if you carry this aggression by my imbecility or indolence, no one can tell where you will attack me next. In regard to your abstract doctrines, you may be right or you may be wrong; but with regard to your interference with my domestic affairs, you are decidedly wrong; and that I will not tolerate.' In short, my good friend, whatever the North has done, and whatever the North may do, in this sense, only tends to rivet the chains on the hands of the negro more firmly than before. It may seem very absurd, but such is human nature; and although I admit that in many of the arguments used by the abolitionists, and even by this man, McGrubber, to-night, there is a great deal of force, yet their strength is changed to weakness when men become convinced, as every Southern man is, that they are used for political, factious, and partisan purposes. You cannot have a domestic police in such a union as this; and every man will whip his own children in his own house, when he thinks they deserve it." "Although I judged it rash and most dangerous," I answered, "to preach such doctrines as we have heard to-night to a large crowd of negroes, yet I could not help thinking that many of Mr. Mc Grubber's arguments were exceedingly specious, if not cogent: that little apologue of his, for instance, of the white slave in Barbary and his liberation. It struck me as a very happy illustration of his views."'