These disturbances were so great that the Federal Government had to interfere, the Anti-slavery party had gone so far as to elect a Governor, form a constitution, and set up a State Government, all In violation of Federal authority, which came along and indicted them for treason and they were compelled to take flight, to keep from being prosecuted by the laws of the land.

In 1857 James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was inaugurated president, and his whole term of office was disturbed by heated discussions between the politicians of the two sections on the subject of slavery , and the extension of slave territory.

Towards the latter part of his term the contest grew so bitter , that the people of the two sections took it up.

At the presidential election in 1860, the Northern States being in the majority elected Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a known Abolitionist, to the presidency.

Although born on Southern soil, in the State of Kentucky, he afterward moved to the State of Illinois, and imbibed those principles that were so much at variance with the feelings and interests of his native Southland.

Many of his own, and his wife's relatives, were subsequently in the Confederate State army.

The Southern people after having been in co-partnership with the North for 72 years, and viewing their constant encroachment upon their constitutional rights, thought it was time to separate.

The New Englander had by this time carried the slavery question into his pulpit and religion; many of them had become fanatics. They had saturated their church and society meetings with papers, lectures, sermons, resolutions, memorials and pro- tests, attacking and condemning slavery, until their whole body politic believed that way.

The spirit and methods of the New Englander in and out of his church have been that of agitation.

Listen to what doctrines the Rev. Henry Wright, of Massachusetts taught from his pulpit, he said, "The God of humanity is not the God of slavery, if so, shame upon such a God. I will never bow at his shrine, my head shall go off with my hat when I take it off to such a God as that. If the Bible sanctions slavery, the Bible is a self-evident falsehood, and if God should declare it to be right, I would fasten the chains upon the heels of such a God and let the men go free, such a God Is a phantom."

Now, was not this horrible language of Rev. Henry Wright, , taught by him from the pulpit, when his State, the State of Massachusetts had bought more Negroes on the African coast, paid for them in rum made from molasses, and sold them into slavery , aye, more than all of the United States put together. I say, this was as double, refined quintessence of gall, cheek, and religious fanaticism as could be found in any day.

No language ever threw out more defiance of civil authority and true religion than this politico-religious harangue.

It is a very common error that has been taught, that the Puritans persecuted themselves for opinion's sake, and sought liberty of conscience in the wilds of America, and there erected their altars.

To Sir George Calvert belongs this glory, of first establishing a Government of Universal tolerance of religious freedom in America, and this was done too, on the shores of Maryland, and strange as it may seem, on the shores of Maryland, in the city of Baltimore, in 1861, the first blood was shed for the extinction of political liberty and against our constitutional compact.

The Puritan said he fled from England on account of violent opposition, which amounted to persecution. The English at that time had an insight to his fanaticisms and tendencies.

Although the Puritans claimed that they were run out of the mother country on account of conscience sake, yet one of the first acts of their new colony was to establish a spiritual despotism and religious intolerance, that would put to shame the cruel and relentless Spanish Inquisition.

They said they were religious refugees, yet they pronounced banishment against all who did not conform to their religious faith.

Every student of American history is familiar with the sad story of Roger Williams.

He too was a fugitive from the Old World, but how different were his teachings from the laws enacted by the Puritans.

He taught that the civil magistrates should restrain crime but never control opinion; should punish guilt but never violate the freedom of the soul.

He contended for the repeal of all laws that punished the non- conformist; he believed in the equal protection of all religious creeds.

He also believed that the peace and dignity of the State was like the vital fluid we breathe, that it should be disseminated alike over Mosque, Synagogue, Cathedral and the humble house of the Protestant, securing to its worshiper unmolested freedom of conscience.

For having this belief and teaching this doctrine, this gifted young minister was cruelly persecuted by the Puritans, forced to leave his home and often compelled to hide himself in the recesses of the wilderness.

See what Bancroft says of him, "Often in the stormy nights he had neither fire nor food, nor company, and wandered about without a guide and had no house but a hollow tree."

This Christian Martyr suffered all this because he would not conform to the religious ideas of men, who they said, left England for conscience sake. Why the savage of the forest, who knew not his God, was more tolerant than these narrow bigots, for they rescued Roger Williams from impending death, when he afterwards found a new home on the banks of the clear waters of the beautiful Narragansett.