my answer. Let the true friends of our movement find each other out, and stand together as one man. Let our friends who have been led in an evil hour to affiliate with Know Nothingism immediately retrace their steps, and oppose it just as they oppose slavery itself. Let those who have remained outside of the Order continue their warfare against it. Let it be distinctly understood that an anti-slavery man is, of necessity, the enemy of caste, bigotry, and proscription. Let the brotherhood of all men, without regard to race, color, religion, or birthplace, be the platform on which all may gather; and let us speedily organize our forces for a genuine contest with our foe. Let us thus determine how little, as well as how much, was achieved for the slave in the late elections; what was done for the cause by honest and hard fighting, and what was done against it by the arts of mere diplomacy, in temporarily uniting opposite and irreconcilable elements in an empty and deceptive triumph. Let us be steadfast in our work, endeavoring to impart something of permanence to the organization we may adopt, as necessary to success, and thus shunning that instability that would form a new party, with a new name, for every campaign, and thus fritter away our strength in the fickleness of our schemes, instead of husbanding it for effective service. Let us not be troubled about the smallness of our numbers, but solicitous only for the honor of our cause, as the sure means of its triumph, firmly trusting that, through our fidelity, the right result will come. Let us not strive after any personal ends or transient success, but so act, in reference to this great cause, that the calm and final judgment of future times shall be awarded in our favor. "The passions which inflame us," says a great writer, "the sophistries which delude us, will not last forever. The paroxysms of faction have their appointed season; even the madness of fanaticism is but for a day. The time is coming when our conflicts will be to others what the conflicts of our fathers are to us; when our priests who convulse the State, and our politicians who make a stalking-horse of the Church, will be no more than the Harleys and Sacheverells of a by-gone day." Sir, if we are animated by such a spirit as this, we shall not doubt that God will smile upon our labors, and hand us down to our graves in peace; but we shall be sustained by an assured faith, at every step of our progress, whatever may for the time betide us or our cause, that "Truth shall triumph at the last, For round and round we run, INDIANA POLITICS. DELIVERED AT RAYSVILLE, JULY 4, 1857. [This picture of Indiana Politics, carefully drawn during the political lull which followed the campaign of 1856, and now reproduced, will interest many who were lookers-on or active participants in the strifes of the period reviewed. While the interest in the political movements here criticised is mainly local, the moral which they teach has a general value, which the student of politics will scarcely fail to appreciate.] I AM not here to-day, my friends, for the purpose of entertaining you with an old-fashioned Fourth of July address. This would be as unprofitable to you as it would be unsuited to my own tastes. I propose to speak of those practical questions and present duties which most deeply concern each one of us, and which the existing state of our country naturally suggests. I shall speak only for myself, and with the most unreserved freedom; and I must do this, especially, in dealing with our latter-day Indiana Politics. I shall refer particularly to the policy pursued here by the opposition to the party in power during the past three years; for whoever would understand the true features of our politics at this time, in their various complications, and thence determine the path of duty for the future, must revert to the new dispensation ushered in by the repeal of the Missouri Restriction, and trace the progress of events to the point that has at last been reached. This margin of time affords a fruitful text for profitable discussion. It covers a sort of revolutionary or transitional period, - a season of hopeful chaos, promising new and higher political creations if wise counsels had prevailed, and furnishing, at all events, valuable lessons for our guidance. There is a sense, I know, in which it is well to let by-gones be by-gones, and the dead past bury its dead, but we can never afford to dispense with the lessons of experience. In politics, as in morals, to-day is the child of yesterday and the parent of to-morrow. The past and the present form the warp and woof of one fabric, nor is it possible to sever the cord that unites them, and thus links them to the future. Men might as reasonably attempt to run away from their own shadows, or to dissolve the relation between cause and effect, as to escape the inevitable consequences of their deeds. It is true philosophy therefore to provide for the future by doing the duty of the present, guided by the teachings of the past, profiting by mistakes to the extent of shunning their repetition, and causing the past to re-appear where its deeds have proved worthy. At the beginning of the year 1854 the Democratic party of the Union was largely in the ascendant. As regards the administrative policy of the government it had achieved a signal triumph over its foe, whilst as to the slavery question it was reposing in apparent security upon the compromise measures of 1850. The Whig party had outlived the questions that called it into being, and that party antagonism which kept up its organization years after its main dogmas had been abandoned. As if to demonstrate more fully that its mission was entirely fulfilled it had espoused the democratic creed on the subject of slavery, and perished at last in the miserable attempt thus to prolong its own life. Under these circumstances the proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise startled the country. Outside of the old Free Soil Party, which still struggled for its principles, I believe the measure excited less opposition in Indiana than in any other free State. It is true that the Whigs and many revolting Democrats denounced it, but their denunciations were leveled chiefly against the violation by the South of her compact, and the wickedness of reviving sectional agitation, and not against the cold-blooded conspiracy to blast an empire with slavery. Their zeal for freedom appeared to .be less a matter of conscience, than of geography, spending its force north of the Missouri Restriction. They talked far more eloquently about the duty of keeping covenants than the evils of slavery extension, irrespective of any bargain, however solemnly made. They loudly demanded the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, not especially because the interests of humanity and free labor plead for it, not as a mere preliminary to other measures which should restore the free States to the fullest assertion of their constitutional rights, but as a means of propitiating the spirit of compromise, and a convenient retreat to the adjustment acts of 1850. The sad truth is, that Indiana is the most pro-slavery of all our Northern States. Her Black Code, branded upon her recreant forehead by a majority of nearly one hundred thousand of her voters, tells her humiliating pedigree far more forcibly than any words I could employ. Our people hate the negro with a perfect, if not a supreme hatred, and their anti-slavery, making an average estimate, is a superficial and sickly sentiment, rather than a deep-rooted and robust conviction. Peopled in large proportion by emigrants from the South and their descendants, with comparitively few from the Middle and New England States, and containing a population of more than seventy thousand white adults who can neither read nor write, it is not strange that the slave power has the control of the State. I mention these facts in this connection because they invite our attention, and should be squarely confronted and honestly dealt with by those who would work wisely for the slave. The organization of an anti-slavery party that shall rule the State is not to be the work of a day. It must be the fruit of time, toil, and patience. We can lay the foundations, broad and deep, but must build as we can command the material. There was an honest element in the struggle of 1854, but it was, to a great extent, overlaid and smothered by adverse influences. We had, strictly speaking, no anti-slavery party. It was simply an Anti-Nebraska party, mustering its large numbers by appealing to prejudices essentially hostile to anti-slavery truth, or at best only distantly related to it. But there were two other questions which entered extensively into our politics at the time of which I speak. One of these was the Temperance Question. Three years ago the rallying cry of our temperance men was "Seizure, confiscation, and destruction of liquors kept for illegal sale." The demand for a law embodying this principle, which had been growing louder and louder since the enactment of the "Maine Law," was reaching its climax. The excitement was at high tide. Many even resolved that this question should be made paramount in the politics of the State, and however time and experience may have moderated our zeal or modified our opinions, such were the numbers, intelligence, and character of the men who embarked in this movement that our politicians were compelled to defer to their wishes. No party could afford to trifle with so potent an influence. The other question referred to, and which still more complicated our political affairs, was Know Nothingism. Thousands were made to believe that the Romish Hierarchy was rapidly becoming a dangerous power in "The things that are Cæsar's," and that the Man of Sin must be put down at once and at all hazards. Thousands were persuaded that the evils of foreignism had become so alarming as to require the most extraordinary measures to counteract them, involving even the grossest injustice to the foreigner himself that our native demagogues might be rebuked for pandering to his ignorance or brutality. Thousands, misled by designing knaves, through the arts of the Jesuit, believed that the cause of freedom was to be sanctified and saved by this new thing under the sun. Thousands, swayed by an unbridled credulity, thought that political hacks and charlatans were to lose their occupations under the reign of the new Order, and that our debauched politics were to be thoroughly purified by the lustration which it promised forthwith to perform. Thousands, eager to bolt from the old parties, but fearful of being shot down on the way as deserters, gladly availed themselves of this newly devised "Underground Railroad" in escaping from the service of their old masters. Under these various influences, but chiefly actuated by the extraordinary feeling which prevailed on the subject of foreign and Catholic influence, secret and oath-bound affiliated lodges were established throughout the country, which exerted a controlling influence over political matters. These lodges were first organized in Indiana in the early part of the year 1854, and rapidly spread over the State. Their grand aim was to carry out their peculiar dogmas, and secure the offices of the country; and they enlisted a large majority of those who had been known as Whigs and Free Soilers, besides. great numbers of Democrats, some of whom stood openly with their party, but secretly bolted by the light of the "Dark Lantern." Such were the elements of the movement of 1854, which first fused together in the State Convention at Indianapolis on the 13th of July of that year. Here was the favored opportunity to organize a party of freedom on a substantial basis. The people were in process of self-eman-cipation from their tyrants. Once fairly sundered from their partymoorings, they would never again be so effectively marshaled in the same unsanctified service; and although they were out at sea,. and exposed to the perils of the deep, they were in little real dan-ger with safe pilots at the helm. The charge of abolitionism,. which was incessantly flung at the Anti-Nebraska combination here, whilst it alarmed the timid, naturally set men to inquiring: what it meant; how they stood related to slavery, as citizens; and whether their opposition to the Nebraska Bill did not require them to go still further. It is true, the dispersion of the old parties was a very different thing from organizing a new one, on just princi-ples; but it was an indispensable preliminary to it, since nothing: could be done whilst they continued to control the masses. The moment of rebellion against their despotism should have been thechosen moment to mould the public conscience and crystallize the popular thought around the true central point of union. Distin- |