Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 42.djvu/27

PAPERS OF HON. JOHN A. CAMPBELL　15

In your speech you say, "in view of the principles, declara- tions and platforms of the Republican party, the avowal of their candidate that, 'the irrepressible conflicts' had commenced and would go on until slavery was abolished, and this in the face of the declarations of the South that she would not submit to the election of the Southern States, has arrived."

This presents with sufficient distinctness the additional grounds of complaint to be considered. My library furnishes some three or four distinct statements of the thought embraced in the phrase, “irrepressible conflict," and my memory retains one or two more. In the year 1850 I prepared two essays on the nature and results of the anti-slavery agitation, one of which was published in the "Southern Quarterly Review" for January, 1851, and both were circulated by Southern rights associations.

Their object was to show the nature and extent of the con- flict in the United States on this subject. The testimony ad- duced proved that divisions arising out of diversity of views upon the subject of slavery appeared in preparing the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Consti- tution, in the debates upon the treaty for the acquisition of Louisiana, in the proceedings of the Hartford Convention upon the admission of Missouri, the right of petition, the annexation of Texas, the organization of Oregon, and the measures con- nected with the disposal of the acquisitions of Mexico, and fugitive slave acts; that societies in the Northern States had been organized to effect the entire abolition of slavery in the United States, and that their plan was to excite, arouse, and agitate the public mind, especially by means of the debates in Congress; that they exercised over politicians, public officers, ministers of the gospel and citizens a censorship of the most stern and rigor- ous character. A kind word to a slave-holder was reproved and insuits and outrages upon him were commended. My conclu- sion was: there is an irrepressible tendency in every commun- ity to arrange its material interests around an uniform, con- sistent, and harmonious system of moral, social and political dogmas. It is this harmony which creates and constitutes a community. All classes which compose a civilized society, es-