To the Delegates from the Free States to the Whig

National Convention :

GENTLEMEN: There are occasions in the history of individuals and of parties, when the usual methods of friendly address are felt to be insufficient. The common means of communicating and exchanging opinions, by private conversation or public debate, however well they are suited to ordinary times, are not adapted to a great emergency, when either the subject to be considered, or the person to be addressed, is of such importance that it becomes necessary to use the largest means at our command.

In the present instance, both these circumstances combine. The subject to be considered is of vital importance to the country and to the world. Your relations with it, and your present position in political affairs, make you the proper persons to be addressed. It needs no apology for the step I am taking. Nothing but an irrepressible sense of duty, compelling me to speak, whether I will or no, could induce me to take the trouble to address you. I am not in the way of such things. My course of life is out of the reach of political affairs. I can have nothing to hope and nothing to fear from your deliberations, except as I am interested in the general good, and expect to share in a general misfortune.

I see, or I think I see, that a great cutrage is about to be committed on the Constitution and the Morals of the country; and though others, who ought to resist it, sit quietly down with folded hands, and contemplate in silence a calamity which they feel they will mourn

over for years to come, I, with either more courage or less prudence, am ready to meet the threatened danger.

It does not suit my habits to temporize at such times. I see an open and direct road before me, leading to the result, I desire to accomplish; I may fail of reaching it—I may err in my judgment—but I am prepared for either event.

It is perfectly well known to the electors of this union, that General Zachary Taylor, has been named as a candidate for the first office in the gift of the people. It is perfectly well known, also, to all intelligent persons in the North, what has been done, and how it has been done, to bring this name into the prominence it now occupies. I shall not at this time speak of the means used, here or elsewhere, to influence your determinations at Philadelphia. I am concerned only with results. I somewhat admire the skill and activity which has been displayed in arranging the preliminaries for the contest in the convention. Courage and success, even in a bad cause, command a sort of respect, provided the cause is not too bad, and the success is not attended with disgrace to its heroes, disaster to their friends, and ruin to their country.

It is on this subject that I propose to address you. It involves, in my apprehension, more serious consequences to this country, to the North, and to yourselves, than any question which has arisen since the adoption of our Constitution.

We are on the eve of a crisis in the history of this government. In the heat and turmoil of the battle, individual considerations and zeal for party success may blind many to the true situation of affairs. Personal ambition may dazzle and confound the judgment, and lead away patriotism and duty captive; but there are some facts and considerations that must have arrested the attention of every one, however much he may be concerned in the issue of the contest.

The approaching Presidential Election will probably decide the future character of our government. Upon

its issue hang questions of Foreign and Domestic Policy, and of Internal Peace and Happiness, of more importance than have yet been connected with any Federal election. Upon it hang, in some sort, the issues of life and death. The ordinary themes of the Tariff, Finance, Commerce, &c., that have usually been the rallying cries of party warfare are not heard at this time. Minor topics like these have sunk out of sight. Towering above them all, and absorbing or overshadowing all, is the one imminent, momentous, threatening question of the SLAVE POWER.

It cannot be disguised, and it ought not to be. This is to be the great issue in the next Presidential campaign: shall there be a further increase of the Slave Power in the national councils? shall this institution be extended over new territory, or shall it be confined within its present sectional, local, and constitutional limits?

It is to battle for victory in this contest that the political hosts are now marshaling themselves. We may attempt to conceal the fact from ourselves at the North, and try to keep it out of sight by all sorts of political subterfuges; but the South is more bold and more honest. She sees, and admits that she sees, that it is necessary for her purposes, that a Southern Slaveholding whig, who is also in favor of the extension of Slavery, should be thrust upon the North, and that we should be required with our own hands, to set a man over us who will achieve our political subjection, or at least secure the political supremacy of the South. It is required, in this struggle for existence, that the North should commit a political suicide, in order that the South may become her heir at law.

To accomplish this end, the Southern politicians have resorted to the cheap expedient of carrying the war into the enemy's country. They are endeavoring to bring about a state of things in which it will be necessary, or appear to be necessary, for the whigs of the North to unite their force upon a Southern candidate. The more effectually to attain this result, the democratic

wing of the Southern army- the entire South fights under but one banner, no matter how many squadrons she musters for the field—has selected for its leader a renegade citizen of the North-west. It would not answer to nominate a Slaveholder that would not serve her turn-besides it would be useless. This pitch of infamy was left to the free North. It has been reserved, as the last degree of cowardice and subjugation, for us, after forging our own chains, during several years of wicked legislation upon Texas, Mexico, and Slavery, to fasten them upon our supple limbs, with our own willing hands. And all for what? I blush to say for what-for party success-for personal aggrandisement.

It is to be feared that the whig party of the North will earn for itself, by its conduct in the convention and during the canvass, the uneviable title of — the BETRAYER OF Liberty.

What will the intelligent whig party be able to say for itself, when it is inquired of by the lovers of Constitutional liberty at home, and by the friends of Humanity everywhere, what hand it had in perpetuating Slavery and increasing the Slave Power? What answer will the free North give, when it is asked what disposition it has made of the rich legacy of the Revolution? "The blood of our fathers cries to us from the ground, 'My sons scorn to be slaves." The blood of millions of Slaves cries to us from the soil we are about to curse with the horrid institution," Fellow-men, do not rivet our chains."

"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give car unto the law of our God ye people of Gomorrah.

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats.

When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hands to tread my courts?

Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me. I am weary to bear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of blood.

"Wash

you, make

make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil.

Learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.”—ISAIAH, ch. i.

It is not believed that there is any sincerity, on the part of Southern gentlemen, in the proposition to nominate Mr. Clay for the Presidency. The mention of his name, at the South, and the appearance of an organization in his favor, can be intended for no other purpose than to deceive the Whigs of the North. When the Southern delegates meet in the Convention, they will present an undivided front in support of one

man.

Mr. Clay himself undoubtedly is sincere in his attempts to thrust himself on the country again; but he is a mere tool in the hands of Gen. Taylor's friends, to be played off against a Northern candidate. We have no words to characterize properly Mr. Clay's ambition, and the means he has taken to secure his ends. If he were the gentleman he takes himself to be, he would imitate the generosity of his northern rival in 1844, withdraw his name from the canvass,and set himself heartily to secure the election of Mr. Webster.

But recent events have taught us that the "chivalry of the sunny south," if it ever existed except in a rhetorical flourish, has long since gone, with the age whose departure Mr. Burke so eloquently lamented. Everything, at least in politics, is selfish, grasping, mean; and it is so as much as anything because we submit to it, and oftentimes aid and abet it.

It requires no sagacity in Gen. Taylor's friends, or in