by the Assembly two days later, on the 6th of following are extracts from the address then January: adopted:

Whereas, The people of the State of New-Mexico FELLOW-CITIZENS: Hitherto when we have assembled in have petitioned Congress for the establishment of a Ter- Convention, there were well known and well recognized ritorial Government which shall protect them against the bounds to our country, but now that the spirit of coninstitution of domestic Slavery while they remain a ter- quest has been let loose, who can tell where is his counritory of the United States, and have also petitioned Con-try, whether on the Rio Grande, the Sierra Nevada, the gress for protection against the unfounded claims of the Rio Gila or the Gulf of California, or whether part SpanState of Texas to a large portion of their territory lying ish, much Indian, and some Negro, Santa Féan or Calieast of the Rio Grande; and, whereas, it would be un-fornian may not be as good an American citizen as himJust to the people of New-Mexico and California, and revolting to the spirit of the age, to permit domestic Slavery an institution from which they are now freeto be introduced among them: and, whereas, since the acquisition of New Mexico by the United States the people thereof have a right to expect the protection of the General Government, and should be secured in the full possession and enjoyment of their Territory: therefore Resolved, That our Senators and Representatives in Congress be requested to use their best efforts to procure the passage of laws for the establishment of governments for the Territories acquired by the treaty of peace with Mexico, and that by such laws involuntary servitude, except for crime, be excluded from such Territories.

Resolved, That the territory lying between the Nueces and the Rio Grande is the common property of the United States, and that our Senators and Representatives in Congress be requested to use their best efforts to preserve the same as such common property, and protect it from the unfounded claim of the State of Texas, and prohibit the extension over it of the laws of Texas, or the institution of domestic Slavery.

Resolved, That the existence of prisons for the confinement and marts for the sale of slaves, at the seat of the National Government, is viewed by this legislature with deep regret and mortification; that such prisons and marts ought forthwith to be abolished; therefore be it

further

Resolved, That our Senators and Representatives in Congress be requested to use their strenuous efforts to procure the passage of a law that shall protect slaves from unjust imprisonment, and shall effectually put an end to the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Resolved, That the Governor be requested to forward copies of the preceding resolutions to each Senator and Representative in Congress from this State.

MR. DIX FOR SLAVERY PROHIBITION.

self? Our flag is borne, with fixed bayonets to surround it, and unmuzzled grape-shot to clear the way, in the conquering footsteps of Cortes-by the base of the snowy peaks of Popocatapetl, to the Eternal city of the Aztecs - and Mexicans of every color, and every breed, sprung from commingling Moor and straight-haired African, as well as from Castile and Leon, are made American citizens, or prepared for being made so, by the gentle logic of red-mouthed artillery, thundering from the bristling heights of Cerro Gordo to the bloody plains of Contreras and Churubusco. Wherever that flag is, with its stars and stripes, the emblem of our Nationality, there our hearts are; but woe! woe! to the men, we cry, who have dispatched it upon its mission of Conquest, and what is yet worse, the conversion of a Free into a Slaveholding Territory.

Fellow-citizens, disguise the Mexican war as sophistry may, the great truth cannot be put down, that it exists because of the annexation of Texas; that from such a cause we predicted such a consequence would follow: and that, but for that cause, no war would have existed at all. Disguise its intent, purposes and consequences as sophistry may struggle to do, the further great truth cannot be hidden, that its main object is the conquest of a Market for Slaves, and that the flag our victorious legions rally around, fight under, and fall for, is to be desecrated from its holy character of Liberty and Emancipation into an errant of Bondage and Slavery. In obedience to the laws, and in a due and faithful submission to the regularly constituted government of our country, we will rally by and defend our flag on whatever soil or whatever sea it is unfurled; but before high Heaven we protest against the mission on which it is sent, and we demand its recall to the true and proper bounds of our country, as soon as in honor it can be brought home. We protest, too, in the name of the rights of Man, and of Liberty, against the further extension of Slavery in North America. The curse which our mother country inflicted upon us, in spite of our fathers' remon

North Pacific.

These resolutions were presented in the U. S.Stances, we demand shall never blight the virgin soil of Senate by the Hon. John A. Dix (now, 1860,) Postmaster of New-York, and defended by him in an elaborate and able speech. On the first resolution, he said:

We will not pour out the blood of our countrymen, if we can help it, to turn a Fren hundred millions of dollars per year to make a Slave into a Slave soil. We will not spend from fifty to a Market for any portion of our countrymen. We will never, for such a purpose, consent to run up an untold mongers, Tax-Brokers, Tax-gatherers, laying an excise or National debt, and saddle our posterity with Fundan impost on everything they taste, touch or live by. The Union as it is, the whole Union, and nothing but the tory is our watch-wrd, unless it be Free. Union, we will stand by to the last-but No More Terri

RESOLVES.

This resolution was in sentiment, if not in words, identical with those which have been passed by fifteen of the thirty States of the Union. With a single exception, all the non-slaveholding and one of the slaveholding States have declared themselves opposed to the exten. sion of Slavery into territory now free. Sir, I fully concur in the propriety of this declaration. I believe that Congress has the power to prohibit Slavery in California and New Mexico; that it is our duty to exercise the Among the Resolutions unanimously adopted power, and that it should be exercised now. I am by this Convention was the following: always for acting when the proper time for action has come. I am utterly opposed to any course which shall Resolved, That while the Whig Freemen of New-York, cast upon others the responsibility which belongs to our-represented in this Convention, will faithfully adhere to selves. The resolution looks to the exclusion of Slavery all the compromises of the Constitution, and jealously from New Mexico and California during their territorial maintain all the reserved rights of the States, they condition only. It does not look beyond that condition declare-since the crisis has arrived when the question with a view to control the people when they shall have must be met-their uncompromising hostility to the Excome into the Union. It contemplates no invasion of tension of Slavery into any Territory now Free, or which State sovereignty. In this view of the subject, one of the may be hereafter acquired by any action of the GovernNew-York presses which has resisted all interference with ment of our Union. Slavery, even in the Territories, pronounced these resolutions conciliatory in their character. I do not know that I should call them either conciliatory or the reverse. They take firmly the ground that New-York has always taken, that Slavery shall by no act of hers be further extended. She believes it to be the ground of principle, of justice, and of right and I do not hesitate to say she will

never abandon it-never, never.

THE NEW-YORK WHIGS FOR FREEDOM IN 1847.

At the Whig State Convention held at Syracuse, October 6, 1847, the Hon. James Brooks reported a brief address to the Whigs of the State, which was unanimously adopted. The

FREE DEMOCRACY OF NEW-YORK CITY AGAINST
SLAVERY EXTENSION.

Park at New-York, October 9, 1848, at which
At a Free Democratic Meeting held in the
Henry Everson presided, and S. J. Tilden, John
Van Buren, and John Cochrane spoke, Mr.
Cochrane introduced the following Resolves,
which were adopted:

Resolved, That the politics of the times indicate prethat the absence from the field of discussion of the finan cisely to whom remain the principles of the Democracy; cial and commercial questions which formerly defined

political differences, permits that other party tests than those which, even if demanding attention, still as but questions of expediency, should be, as they have been, postponed to the consideration of that one of vital importance, the freedom of our land.

single foot of soil where it is not now authorized by
law.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
GREENE C. BRONSON.
To Messrs. J. COCHRANE, and others, Committee.
NEW-HAMPSHIRE FOR THE WILMOT PROVISO.

The legislature (then Democratic) of NewHampshire, in June, 1847, passed the following resolution:

Resolved, that we think contemptuously of the mind which discovers in the extension of the area of Freedom cause for the degradation of the South. Could nature so belie herself that the preservation of their "inalienable rights" to any portion of mankind, must be attended by proportionate violation of those of any other portion, we say, perish those rights dependent on the Slavery of others, rather than one tittle of those be injured that are Resolved, That in all territory which shall hereafter be consistent with the rights of all; that our Constitution added to or acquired by the United States, where Slavery and our federal history speak to us through the voices of does not exist at the time of such addition,or acquirement, the Jeffersons, the Pinckneys, the Lees, and the Ran- neither Slavery or involuntary servitude, except for the dolphs of the South, against this miserable, false pre-punishment of crime, whereof the party has been duly tense. It is not so! The success of the free principles convicted, ought ever to exist, but the same should ever for which we contend, will reestablish the lost equality of remain free; and we are opposed to the extension of the States-lost in the insidious increase of the Slave Slavery over every such Territory-and that we also States from six, their original and constitutional number, approve the vote of our Senators and Representatives in to fifteen, the present aggressive and unconstitutional Congress in favor of the Wilmot Proviso.. number-lost in the twenty-one voices and votes which Southern chattel slaves possess among the representatives of a free people at Washington-lost in the limited wealth, in the low intelligence, and in the inferior civilization of the South. We would restore this lost equality, and, so far from degrading any portion of the Union, we mean to elevate the whole to the possession of that Freedom which alone should be the National characteristic. Resolved, That our senses reject the audacious assertion that the Extension of Slave Territory at the South will abate the evil at the North. Aside from the absurdity which it involves, that an evil declines in proportion to and expires with the substance which it procures, experience has taught, and the history of the "Peculiar Institution" itself manifests, that the slaveowner of the "Old Dominion" breeds an increasing gang, and amasses an accumulating hoard, just as the demand for slaves increases with the diffusion of Slavery over free

territory at the South. In the year 1790, when Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida, were free soil, the slave population was 697,896. In the year 1840, when Slavery had spread over this free soil, it numbered 2,487,355, being an

increase in fifty years of 1,787,457 slaves. The extension of Slavery to new territory, instead of abating the evil in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, where it numbered in the year 1810, 590,000 slaves, has multiplied them to 775,000, in the year 1840, showing an increase in thirty years of 185,000 slaves. The existence of Slavery depends on its diffusion.

GREENE C. BRONSON'S OPINION IN 1848.

OHIO FOR FREE SOIL.

In the Ohio House of Representatives (session of 1847-8) the following resolution was passed by a vote of 43 to 12:

Resolved, By the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, that the Senators and Representatives from this State in the Congress of the United States be and they are hereby requested, to procure the passage of measures in the National Legislature, providing for the exclusion of Slavery from the Territory of Oregon, and also from any other Territory that now is, or hereafter may be, annexed to the United States.

ILLINOIS FOR FREE SOIL.

The following Resolutions were adopted by the Senate of Illinois on the 8th of January, 1849, and the House of Representatives on the following day. The Legislature was largely Democratic in both branches at the time:

Resolved by the Senate of the State of Illinois, the House of Representatives concurring, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use all honorable means in their power to procure the enactment of such laws by Congress for the government of the countries and territories of the United States acquired by the treaty of peace, friendship, limits and settlement with the Republic of Mexico, concluded February 2, 1848, as shall contain the express declaration "that there shall be neither Slavery nor involun

the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have

In a letter dated July 15th, 1848, Mr. Bron-tary servitude in said territories otherwise than in son, after declining an invitation to attend a been duly convicted." political meeting, says:

Slavery cannot exist where there is no positive law to uphold it. It is not necessary that it should be forbidden; it is enough that it is not specially authorized. If the owner of slaves removes with or sends the into any country, State or Territory, where Slavery does not exist by law, they will from that moment become free men, and will have as good a right to command the master, as he will have to command them. State laws have no extraterritorial authority; and a law of Virginia which makes a man a slave there, cannot make him a slave in NewYork, nor beyond the Rocky Mountains.

Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring herein, That the Governor be respectfully requested to transmit to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress a copy of the joint resolution of the Senate, concurred in by the House on the 9th inst., for the exclusion of Slavery from the new territories ao quired by our late treaty with the Republic of Mexico. SOUTH CAROLINA FOR THE FOREIGN SLAVE-TRADE.

IN the annual message of Governor Adams, of South Carolina, for the year 1856, he prothe slave-trade, as follows: ceeded to argue in favor of the reopening of

Entertaining no doubt upon that question, I can see no occasion for asking Congress to legislate against the extension of Slavery into free territory, and, as a question It is apprehended that the opening of this trade will of policy, I think it had better be let alone. If our South- lessen the value of slaves, and ultimately destroy the ern brethren wish to carry their slaves to Oregon, New-institution. It is a sufficient answer to point to the fact Mexico or California, they will be under the necessity of asking a law to warrant it; and it will then be in time for the Free States to resist the measure, as I cannot doubt they would, with unwavering firmness.

I would not needlessly move this question, as it is one of an exciting nature, which tends to sectional division, and may do us harm as a people. I would leave it to the Slaveholding States to decide for themselves, and on their own responsibility, when, if ever, the matter shall be agitated in Congress. It may be that they will act wisely, and never move at all; especially as it seems pretty generally agreed that neither Oregon, New-Mexico, nor California, are well adapted to slave labor. But if our Southern brethren should make the question, we shall have no choice but to meet it; and then, whatever consequences may follow, I trust the people of the Free States will give a united voice against allowing Slavery on a

that unrestricted immigration has not diminished the value of labor in the northwestern Confederacy. The cry there is the want of labor, notwithstanding capital has the pauperism of the old world to press into the grinding service. If we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to supply with a species of labor we do not want, and which is, from the very nature of things, antagonistic to our institutions. It is much better that our drays should be driven by slaves, that our factories should be worked by slaves, that our hotels should be served by slaves, that our locomotives should be managed by slaves, than that we should be exposed to the introduction from any quarter of a population alien to us by birth, training, and education, and which in the process of time must lead to the conflict between capital and labor, which makes it so difficult to maintain free institutions in all wealthy and civilized nations where such institutions as

ours do not exist. In all slaveholding States true policy | necessary to a continuance of our monopoly in plantation dictates that the superior race should direct, and the inferior perform all menial service. Competition between the white and black man for this service may not disturb Northern sensibility, but does not exactly suit our latitude. Irrespective, however, of interest, the act of Congress declaring the slave-trade piracy is a brand upon us which I think it important to remove. If the trade be piracy, the slaves must be plunder, and no ingenuity can avoid the logical necessity of such a conclusion. My hopes and fortunes are indissolubly associated with this form of society. I feel that I would be wanting in duty if I did not urge you to withdraw your assent to an act which is itself a direct condemnation of your institutions. But we have interests to enforce a course of self-respect. I believe, as I have already stated, that more slaves are

products. I believe that they are necessary to the full development of our whole round of agricultural and mechanical resources; that they are necessary to the restoration of the South to an equality of power in the Federal Government, perhaps to the very integrity of slave society, disturbed as it has been by causes which have introduced an undue proportion of the ruling race. To us have been committed the fortunes of this peculiar form of society resulting from the union of unequal races. It has vindicated its claim to the approbation of an enlightened humanity; it has civilized and christianized the African; it has exalted the white race to higher hopes and purposes, and it is perhaps of the most sacred obligation that we should give it the means of expansion, and that we should press it forward to a perpetuity of progress.

MR. HAMLIN RENOUNCES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

ON the 12th of June, 1856, Mr. Hamlin rose | in his place in the Senate, and spoke as follows: Mr. Hamlin. Mr. President, I rise for a purpose purely personal, such as I have never before risen for in the Senate. I desire to explain some matters personal to myself and to my own future course in public life. Several Senators.-Go on.

Mr. Hamlin.-I ask the Senate to excuse me from further service as Chairman of the Committee on Commerce. I do so because I feel that my relations hereafter will be of such a character as to render it proper that I should no longer hold that position. I owe this act to the dominant majority in the Senate. When I cease to harmonize with the majority, or tests are applied by that party with which I have acted to which I cannot submit, I feel that I ought no longer to hold that respectable position. I propose to state briefly the reasons which have brought me to that conclusion.

During nine years of service in the Senate, I have preferred rather to be a working than a talking member; and so I have been almost a silent one. On the subjects which have so much agitated the country, Senators know that I have rarely uttered a word. I love my country more than I love my party. I love my country above my love for any interest that can too deeply agitate or disturb its harmony. I saw, in all the exciting scenes and debates tarough which we have passed, no particular good that would result from my active intermingling in them. My heart has often been full, and the impulses of that heart have often been felt upon my lips; but I have repressed

them there.

That Senators might have voted for that measure under

the belief then expressed and the predictions to which I have alluded, I can well understand. But how Senators can now defend that measure amid all its evils, which are overwhelming the land, if not threatening it with a conflagration, is what I do not comprehend. The whole of the disturbed state of the country has its rise in, and is attributable to that act alone-nothing else. It lies at the foundation of all our misfortunes and commotions. There would have been no incursions by Missouri borderers into Kansas, either to establish Slavery, or to control elections. There would have been no necessity, either, for others to have gone there partially to aid in preserving the country in its then condition. All would have been peace there. Had it not been done, that repose and quiet which pervaded the public mind then, would hold it in tranquillity to-day. Instead of startling events we should have quiet and peace within our borders, and that fraternal feeling which ought to animate the citizens of every part of the Union toward those of all other sections.

Sir, the events that are taking place around us are indeed startling. They challenge the public mind and appeal to the public judgment; they thrill the public nerve as electrity imparts a tremulous motion to the telegraphic wire. It is a period when all good men should unite in applying the proper remedy to secure peace and harmony to the country. Is this to be done by any of us, by remaining associated with those who have been instrumental in producing these results, and who now justify them? I do not see my duty lying in that direction.

I have, while temporarily acquiescing, stated here and at home, everywhere, uniformly, that when the test of those measures was applied to me as one of party fidelity, I would sunder them as flax is sundered at the touch of fire. I do it now.

Sir, I hold that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a gross moral and political wrong, unequaled in the annals of the legislation of this country, and hardly equaled in the annals of any other free country. Still, sir, with a desire to promote harmony and concord and The occasion involves a question of moral duty; and brotherly feeling, I was a quiet man under all the excit- self-respect allows me no other line of duty but to follow ing debates which led to that fatal result. I believed it the dictates of my own judgment and the impulses of my wrong then; I can see that wrong lying broadcast all own heart. A just man may cheerfully submit to many around us now. As a wrong, I opposed that measure-enforced humiliations; but a self-degraded man has not, indeed, by my voice, but with consistent and steady and uniform votes. I so resisted it in obedience to the dictates of my own judgment. I did it also cheerfully, in compliance with the instructions of the legislature of Maine, which were passed by a vote almost unanimous. In the House of Representatives of Maine, consisting of one hundred and fifty-one members, only six, I think, dissented; and in the Senate, consisting of thirty-one members, only one member non-concurred.

But the Missouri restriction was abrogated. The portentous evils that were predicted have followed, and are yet following, along in its train. It was done, sir, in violation of the pledges of that party with which I have always acted, and with which I have always voted. It was done in violation of solemn pledges of the President of the United States, made in his Inaugural Address. Still, sir, I was disposed to suffer the wrong,,while I should see that no evil results were flowing from it. We were told, by almost every Senator who addressed us upon that occasion, that no evil results would follow; that no practical difference in the settlement of the country, and in the character of the future State, would take place, whether the act were done or not. I have waited calmly and patiently to see the fulfillment of that prediction; and I am grieved, sir, to say now that they have at least been mistaken in their predictions and promises. They have all signally failed.

ceased to be worthy to be deemed a man at all.

Sir, what has the recent Democratic Convention at Cincinnati done? It has indorsed the measure I have condemned, and has sanctioned its destructive and ruinous effects. It has done more-vastly more. That principle or policy of Territorial Sovereignty which once had, and which I suppose now has, its advocates within these walls, is stricken down; and there is an absolute denial of it in the resolutions of the Convention, if I can draw right conclusions-a denial equally to Congress, and even to the people of the Territories, of the right to settle the question of Slavery therein. On the contrary, the Convention has actually incorporated into the platform of the Democratic party that doctrine which, only a few years ago, met nothing but ridicule and contempt here and elsewhere, namely: that the flag of the Federal Union, under the Constitution of the United States, carries Slavery wherever it floats. If this baleful principle be true, then that National Ode which inspires us always as on a battle-field, should be re-written by Drake, and should read thus:

"Forever float that standard sheet;

Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Slavery's soil beneath our feet,

And Slavery's banner streaming o'er us?"
Now, sir, what is the precise condition in which this
matter is left by the Cincinnati Convention? I do not

ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.

To the HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Illinois.

SIR: The representatives of the Republican Party of the United States, assembled in Convention at Chicago, have this day, by a unanimous vote, selected you as the Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States to be supported at the next election; and the undersigned were appointed a Committee of the Convention to apprise you of this nomination, and respectfully to request that you will accept it. A declaration of the principles and sentiments adopted by the Convention accompanies this communication.

In the performance of this agreeable duty we take leave to add our confident assurance that the nomination of the Chicago Convention will be ratified by the suffrages of the people.

We have the honor to be, with great respect and regard, your friends and fellow-citizens.

GEORGE ASHMUN, of Massachusetts,
President of the Convention.

WM. M. EVARTS, of New-York,

JOEL BURLINGAME, of Oregon,