Excerpt from Address to the People of California

You, most conclusively, that there are obligations imposed in the contract upon the State governments, and that the failure for seventy years to fulfill this important obligation, may well be considered to be an 1' overt act of bad faith that would fully justify the Southern States in the course they have seen fit to pursue. M11. Webster said in his celebrated speech in Virginia: If this refusal to surrender fugitive slaves is per sisted ln the compact will be violated, and a bargain broken on one side is a bargain broken on all sides. But they did persist, and according to the view of their favorite expounder of constitutional law, the compact was broken. Are these things denied? Has any man the hardihood to deny them? Then, what compact did the Southern States violate in withdrawing from the Union? A compact already broken into a then sand fragments. Which of you having agreed with your neighbor to purchase a piece of land and work it in partnership, will continue, year after year, to divide the crop with him when he has totally failed to com ply with his part of the bargain And yet that is precisely the position of the seceded States. And for this the President undertook to declare war against eleven sovereign States of this Union and to blockade their orts. P Let us now consider the President's conduct in this matter, and see how far it was warranted by the Constitution. The action of the southern people was either that of sovereign States, or of individuals. Mr. Lin coln ignores the sovereignty of the States, and declares this to be rebel lion on the part of individuals. We will take it so. It is a fundamental principle in all civilized society that judgment and punishment follow trial and conviction. If the citizens ofthe south who are in arms against the Federal Government, are not covered by the aegis of State sover eignty, then are they guilty of treason, and punishable under the laws of the United States. But they must be indicted, tried, and convicted be fore they can be punished, and if they are executed without these for malities, their executioners, their aiders, and abettors, are murderers, not only in the eye of the law but in the Opinion of the civilized world. On M11. Lincoln's own hypothesis he stands convicted of murder at the bar of God and man. But, really, this hypothesis is an absurdity, and is treated as such by all the powers. Of Europe. The Federal Government is formed of States. Both Houses of Congress and the Executive are elected by States, and therefore represent the States, hence the Federal Legislature is in the Constitution called Congress, a term applied only to a council of nations. How then can the States rebel against the Fed eral Government? It would be to rebel against themselves. Suppose thirty-three States should secede, would it be said that they had rebelled against their remaining Confederate? But the number of seceding States cannot affect the principle, and either no State can be in rebellion against the Federal Government, or all may be. There is, then, there can be, no question of rebellion involved in this matter, but there can be, and there is, a state of war between the sovereign States that formerly composed the American Confederacy. Twenty-three of them are still represented by the government at Washington, and the other eleven, by the new gov crnment, located at Richmond. The question for us to determine is, shall we lend our countenance to this war; and this again involves several questions necessary to its solution. As, first, is the war just and right eous; and secondly, is it wise and politic? If that much admired docu ment, the Declaration of Independence, be not a farce, if we be not the vilest of hypocrites in our pretended devotion-to its doctrines, we? Must acknowledge that ten million of men possess the inalienable right to abol.