And how did the leaders of the South act in the emergency? It was just at the time the news of Paulding’s act at Punta Arenas reached Washington that the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution was ascertained. Then the President besought the men who were driving him on the Kansas question not to press him on the Central American policy, and the Southern leaders, giving up the substance, fled in pursuit of the shadow.[3] The Lecompton Constitution would not give another foot of soil to slavery, and the movement in Nicaragua might give it an empire; yet the latter was sacrificed to the former, and the insults of Paulding and the President have gone unrebuked by the South up to the present time. Is it not time for the South to cease the contest for abstractions and to fight for realities? Of what avail is it to discuss the right to carry slaves into the territories of the Union, if there are none to go thither? These are questions for schoolmen—fit to sharpen the logical faculty and to make the mind quick and keen in the perception of analogies and distinctions; but surely they are not such questions as touch practical life and come home to men’s interests and actions. The feelings and conscience of a people are not to be called forth by the subtleties of lawyers or the differences of metaphysicians; nor can their energies be roused into action for the defence of rights none of them care to exercise. The minds of full-grown men cannot be fed on mere discussions of territorial rights: they require some substantial policy which all can understand and appreciate. Nor is it wise for the weaker party to waste its strength in fighting for shadows. It is only the stronger party which can afford to throw away its force on indecisive skirmishes. At present the South must husband her political power else she will soon lose all she possesses. The same influence she brought to bear in favor of the position she took in Kansas would have secured the establishment of the Americans in Nicaragua. And unless she assumes now an entirely defensive attitude, what else is left for the South except to carry out the policy proposed to her three years ago in Central America? How else can she strengthen slavery than by seeking its extension beyond the limits of the Union? The Republican party aims at destroying slavery by sap and not by assault. It declares now that the task of confining slavery is complete and the work of the miner has already commenced. Whither can the slaveholder fly when the enemy has completed his chambers and filled in the powder and prepared the train, and stands with lighted match ready to apply the fire?