Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from scans of public domain works at the University of Michigan's Making of America collection.) [Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end of this ebook.] THE RIGHT OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. BY T. W. HOIT, OF THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION. SOUTHERN AND WESTERN EDITION. FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS, 500,000 COPIES. FOR SALE BY THE PRINCIPAL PUBLISHERS THROUGHOUT THE UNION. ST. LOUIS, MO.: PUBLISHED BY L. BUSHNELL. 1860. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, By T. W. HOIT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the District of Missouri. BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, Printing-House Square, opposite City Hall, NEW YORK. PREFACE. TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. _My Fellow Countrymen:_--Upon what manner of times have we fallen? Is our supposed experiment of self-government about to prove a failure? Are we so blind as not to see the abyss into which we are about to plunge? Section hostile against section; States arrayed against the Constitution; Churches sundered; the springs of intelligence poisoned at their source; treason stalking at noonday; insurrection rife; the equality of States and citizens denied, and derided; justice rebuked; treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations, as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless, and spell-bound, and appalled at the spectacle; as though the prophetic admonitions of the Father of our Country were forgotten, and nature, with an ominous silence, conspired to lull you into forgetfulness, the more to astound you with the wonders and the woes of an approaching catastrophe! What fatal error is there in our Republican principle? What virus sickens our body politic? What fascination lures us from the shrine of freedom? What infatuation hath seized the American people, that they should put to hazard this priceless inheritance,--the home, and refuge, and hope, of the down-trodden nations?