SPEECH OF...AT THE GREAT UNION MEETING, HELD DECEMBER 13, 1860, IN INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA

[Philadelphia, 1860. 15, [1] blank pp. Stitched. Light wear, Good+. The speech was reprinted in 1863, with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party platform for that year. A Democrat who ran for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1860, Woodward blames the Crisis of the Union on the Republicans, who argue "that all the States of this Union must become free or slave States." Adopting the Calhoun State Rights view of the Union, he denounces "the inexorable exclusion of slave property from the common territories, which the Government holds in trust for the people of all the States; and appears to justify Secession on the South's inherent right of "self-defence." He urges a Constitutional Convention to "re-assert the rights of the slaveholder." FIRST EDITION. LCP 11370. 673 NUC 0439182 [7]. Bartlett 5956 [1863 printing]. (Inventory #: 17405)