MR. PRESIDENT—It is three years since 1 had the honor to address the Democrocy of Rockland County. Three years of terror, desolation and blood! That was just after Mr. Lincoln and his party had hoisted the flood-gates of death. It was a peace-meetingthe first peace-meeting held in the United States after that act of folly and crime of calling out 75,000 soldiers to cut away the already strained and snapping bands of the Union. It will be something for you, gentlemen, when these unhappy events are matters of history, to have it said that the first peace-meeting was held in Rockland Co. And it will be something for me that I addressed that meeting. Sir, I am proud of that record. I would not exchange it for a pyramid of greenbacks and five-twenties. That occasion I shall never forget. We were to be mobbed and murdered. Well do I remember the fiendish look that glared upon me in the streets of Nyack that afternoon. They were not humanthey were the faces of devils. The

A speech delivered at a mass meeting of the Demacracy of Rockland Co., N. Y., Friday evening, January 10th, 1864.

awful combination of idiotcy and fury made them frightful to behold. Our simple words of truth and peace fell upon them like a hammer. Their writhing and cursing did not cease for many months, if, indeed, they are not still going on. Now, after three years of frutless bloodshed, we come to re-affirm the truths then uttered. Sir, we have nothing to take back. We still proclaim them in language as determined and defiant as then. If we began by denouncing, events have taught us to despise the authors and abettors of this foul war. We say foul, because neither its object nor the manner in which it is conducted can be endorsed by patriotism or Christianity. It has turned out, what we predicted it would be, a war against white men in favor of negroes-a war against the great American principle of government, against the Constitution of our country, and against Christian civilization. It is a war against everything that a patriot should hold dear, and in favor of nothing that a white man and a Christian should not despise. Did not our ancestors heroically fight, did not many of them manfully

fall, to establish the very principle of self-government and Constitutional li berty which this war is meant to destroy? If this war is right, the war of the Revolution was wrong. We are ignominiously destroying the work of our fathers. We have laid the axe at the root of the tree of liberty that was planted by Washington and his compatriots of the Revolution. The part a man takes in relation to this strife must stamp him indellibly with the character of a patriot or a parricide. Time will not wear out these immortal marks. They will deepen under the pressure of revolving years; and the generations of our offspring shall gaze upon them with admiration or with horror. The great business of the Revolution is going on again. The same grand principle of popular sovereignty and self-government is em braced in this conflict; only this time, the North plays the part of England, while the South takes the part of the colonies in their noble struggle for the right of local self-government and Saxon liberty. We dare say these hings, because they are true; and because no pro-negro Norman dare step forward to controvert them by an argument. They called this bloody strife a war for the Union." That was the stupendous fraud. There is, there can War is nehe, no war for the Union. cessarily and inevitably disunion. It is a cutting away of the fraternal tie, the voluntary bonds, that make union. This sundered, the Union is gone, and what remains is a mass of States standing in their original separate so vereignty, to go on alone, or be united again by the tie of mutual interest, and for the general welfare. Sir, our northern pro-negro Normans have at

last dropped the hypocritical cry of war for the Union, and have boldly run up their own true black and piratical flag of war for subjugation and extermi nation. We thank them for dropping the false mask of Union. By so doing they have at once simplified their motives and our duties. The flag of subjugation, they now flaunt, we know. It is as old as despotism itself. The barbarian cry of subjugation and destruction is not original with our Abolition Normans. It was heard with the first lisp of the infant tongue of despotism, and it will be the last accent that dies in the jaws of its decrepitnde. During the barbarous wars between Rome and Carthage, the awful judgment was pronounced in the eternal city-" Delanda est Carthago !" Carthage must be destroyed. In the reign of Charles the Second, Delanda. est Carthago was quoted by the Earl of Shaftesbury, in the British Parlia ment, and applied to Holland. The brutal declaration sent a shock of hor ror through the civilized world. Every peer in the House of Lords shuddered at the terrible sentence, and was quick to purge himself of all responsibility for it. Delanda est Carthago was again. quoted in the British parliament, and applied to these American colonies, by a furious imbecile of the forgotten name of Van, "The colonies must be destroyed!" Again the world shuddered, dered. From France, Lafayette, from Poland, Kosciusko, from Ireland, Montgomery, hastened to these shores, as the immortal representatives of mankind, to help us protest in the name of humanity and civilization against the barbarian's creed of destruction. Even in the British parliament Mr. Van was answered by the Hon. Temple Luttrell

in these bitter words :-"It is, it seems, by the German policy of dominion that British America is to be reduced to vassalage; but let the all-potent minions beware, lest while they are bowing the stubborn necks of these colonists to the yoke, they find their own necks bow to the block of the executioner." Brave, just, glorious words! Let them be sounded and resounded evermore in the ears of all tyrants, who embark in the bloody business of subjugating and destroying a people who only seek the God-given right of governing themselves. Still again this madman's shiboleth of Delenda est Carthago was heard when the Emperor of Russia sent forth his ukase decreeing the annihilation of Poland; and again the civilized world was struck with horror. There was hardly a village in all America that did not hold some public meeting to express sympathy for Poland, and to denounce the barbarity of Russia. The Emper or Alexander was held up to the public gaze as a demonized wretch, cut off from the respect of mankind. Our poets all sung of Poland's wrongs, and even our legislative halls rung with the eloquence of indignant protest against the infernal decree for the destruction of a whole people. The fugitive Poles found a welcome and an asylum in every land, while the name of Russia was execrated throughout the world. Delenda est Carthago was the brutal and bloody inspiration of the Cabinet of Austria, when it sent forth the decree of destruction against Hungary. Mankind shuddered again. We sent a ship to Turkey to bring to our shores the brave man who represented the fortunes of exterminated Hungary. He came; and the whole American

people attested their abhorrence of the deed of Austria by idolizing the victim of its barbarities as a deity. Our men threw their purses at his feet, while our fair women strewed his path with flowers. Sublime and fitting expression of our detestation of the despot's rule of destruction! Sir, we have this despot's cry of Delenda est Carthago again repeated even here in free America. "The South shall be destroyed!" is the hellish watchword inscribed upon the black banners of the Republican party. "The South shall be destroyed!" is the damnable eloquence of Congress. "The South shall be destroyed," is the brutal jargon of the pulpits! "The South shall be des troyed," is the cry of slavering ignorance in the streets! These accursed words of barbarism are every where belching forth like hot flame out of the bottomless pit. The rage and lust of the old Punic wars seem to have leaped over centuries, and fallen upon America. Sir, what is the duty of the patriot in such a mad hour as this? We are told it is useless to resist the current. Well, if that were so, would it therefore follow that we must basely turn in and help swell the tide of wrong? The true position of the Democratic party of the North I conceive to be to keep out of these bloody waters altogether. If we cannot stop the war, and restore peace and prosperity to our country, for God's sake let us not help on the work of destruction and despotism! If we are pow erless to do good, let us not assist in doing evil. This is not our fault-it is Abolitionism's war. Let it fight its own battles with those whose liberty and institutions it seeks to destroy. The result cannot be doubtful. Had

the Democratic party remained faith ful to its own principles, and sternly refused to give a helping hand to Abolitionism, the South would long before this have driven Abolitionism to the wall, and then the Democratic party would have been in a position to step in and heal the breach and restore the Union. The overthrow of Abolitionism is the only hope of restoring the Union. The death of Abolitionism is the condition of the life of the Union. There is, and there ought to be, no other hope; since that alone is to blame for all our country has suffered But we are told that we must try to succeed in the next Presidential election. How would you succeed? Do you wish to triumph on a false basis? Do you expect to be able to stand the truth upon a lie? Do you seek to stick the head of the Goddess of Liberty upon the body of a satyr? In plain words, do you think to establish Democracy upon the foundations of despotism? 0, vain and shallow triflers with your country's honor! Deluded victims of shoddy, shin-plasters, or fear! Party success on such grounds would be the ruin of your country. And it would be the end of the party. It ought to be. A party which seeks to establish itself upon cunning tricks and lies, deserves to die. Not in that way are nations preserved, nor even parties long kept in existence. It is yet extremely doubtful whether it will be best for the Democratic party to assume the responsibility of the Federal Administration for the next term. Four years are nothing in the life of a nation, not much in the life of a party; but they might bring upon us a catastrophe which would destroy the party forever as effectually as the old Fede

ral party was destroyed. Either before the next election, or within a year afterwards, the country must pass through a fiery financial trial, which will carry to the bottom any party that has the responsibility of it upon its shoulders. The question of bread is one that will settle the fate of parties for a long time in this country. The time is not distant when the laboring man will have to work six days in the week to get his dinner for three days. That will be the judgment-day for the Abolitionists. Then the people, rich and poor, will realize what they have brought upon themselves by supporting and encouraging this war. The party now in power has loaded a terrible bomb, which must sometime explode, carrying ruin and destruction in its track. For one, sir, I prefer to let it explode in the hands of those who have loaded it, as the party which holds it at that dread instant may never be heard of again. I prefer to let the Abolitionists play out their own war, since it is now too late for the Democratic party to save our country from its terrible consequences. I have no ambition to get possession of their loaded bomb before it bursts. If, as is more than probable, events shall bring the people to their reason and

their manhood before the next election-that is, if the Republican fiery shell bursts, blowing up their finance and their war together-nothing can prevent the success of the Democratic party. Then it will come into power uncursed by having the Abolition destructive war and its equally destructive finance on its hands. Then it will have a fair field for the trial of its patriotism and wisdom at reconstruction, or at rebuilding the temple of

liberty upon its old foundation. Under no other circumstances is it probable that the success of the Democratic party would be a benefit either to itself or our country. The horrible undertaking of the Republican party must be seen, and felt, and acknowl edged to be a failure and a crime, before Democracy can go to work at repairing the waste and desolation. Another year of war will inevitably demonstrate all this, and arouse the deluded and cheated masses to such a pitch and storm of fury as will cause the leaders of the Republican party to wish that they had never been born. I can conceive of no more dreadful punishment to those men than success at the next election, which will compel them to settle their own accounts with all the parties they have wronged. It would be a mercy to them if the Democratic party were to take the bloody job off of their hands, and relieve them of the responsibility of closing it up-giving them a lying chance to say, "It was the Democratic party which, by a change of policy, broke down the work and ruined the country!" Sir, at this juncture we neither wish to break down their work nor to give them a chance to escape from its consequences. It is now so near at an end, is it not best to let it run its length, and perish in its own follies? The work they have begun cannot stand, and what better can we do than to leave it to the natural workings of the discords and embarrassments it is sure to engender for them and for their name forever. They have covenanted for the extermination of the southern people, let them take the consequences of the fury they have inspired, and the shame of the failure which the justice

of God and the prayers of civilized mankind have reserved for them. And as for the Democratic party, instead of hunting about like a scurvy politician, for ignoble expedients to get into power, by denying or hiding its principles, let it sternly, inflexibly hold fast to the Constitution, and to the system of government and laws established by our fathers. The Constitution is our platform-the Constitution as established by those who made it, by the Supreme Court, and by the Democracy from the time of Jefferson until now! That is our platform, in relation to slavery as well as to habeas corpus, trial by jury, freedom of speech and press, and every thing else. It is magnum in parvo. It is every thing in one. Said Sir Edward Coke, in his celebrated speech against inserting the words "sovereign power" in the prerogative of the throne, "Magna Charta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign." So say we of our Constitution. It is the master of the President and of Congress. By it we mean one day to try Abraham Lincoln, and his Cabinet, and his Generals, and his Provost-Marshals. To this must they all come for judgment at last. If Congress, the President, and all his officers, are not bound by the Constitution, then the Federal Government is absolutely at an end, and Abraham Lincoln has no more business at the White House than Jefferson Davis would have there. The Constitution is such a fellow that he will have no master, and he may take it into his head some day to hang the rascals who are trying to overthrow him. Let not the Democracy be bribed, nor fright ened, nor wheedled, into any attitude in the smallest degree antagonistic to