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This opening statement was followed by an historical review in which was traced the growth of the Republican party. The offences it had committed against the Southern States were then enumerated. Among other things, he said:

“It has sought to appropriate to itself, and to exclude the slaveholders from, the territory acquired by the common blood and treasure of all. It has, through the instrumentality of the Emigrants’ Aid Society under State patronage, flooded the territories with its minions armed with Sharp’s rifles and bowie knives, seeking thus to accomplish by intimidation, violence, and murder what it could not do by constitutional means.

“It claimed the constitutional right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, and other places ceded to the United States within the bounds of the slaveholding States. It proposed a prohibition of the slave-trade between the States, thereby crowding the slaves together, and preventing the exit south until they became unprofitable to such an extent that it would force the owner finally to abandon them in self-defence. It has, by the deliberate legislative enactments of a large majority of the Northern States, openly and flagrantly nullified the clause of the Constitution which provided for the return of fugitive slaves.