The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a supreme judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree that slavery exists by force of the constitution in every territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority, either within the territory or residing in Congress. Such is the Democratic party. It has no policy, state or federal, for finance, or trade, or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the protection or even the security of civil or religious liberty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest of slavery-negative, compromising, and vacillating, in regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality, and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only aristocracy known in the land. It professes fraternity, and, so often as slavery requires, allies itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign lands, but it sends the national eagle forth always with chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs. This dark record shows you, fellow-citizens, what I was unwilling to announce at an earlier stage of this argument, that of the whole nefarious schedule of slaveholding designs which. I have submitted to you, the Democratic party has left only one yet to be consummated-the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave-trade. I know-few, I think, know better than I-the resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave power. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I know further-few, I think, know better than I-the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that the Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and prac tise the life-inspiring principle which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men.' Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain. The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea; but that is a noble one—an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality-the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the divine tribunal and divine laws. I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the constitution and freedom forever. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 1805-1879 The story of William Lloyd Garrison's life is a practical lesson in the value of persistency and continued application. It shows how a man devoid of genius, and with only an ordinary education, from the humblest ranks, became a world-famous reformer, of enormous influence, and a vital factor in the unravelling of the Gordian knot of slavery. He had but a single aim, and that was-the abolition of slavery. He hammered at slavery early and late, suffering persecutions and rebuffs, and was threatened with death and thrown into prison, only to attack slavery in a new quarter when released. He studied the question in its every aspect; he wanted no compromise; he was never swerved from his main purpose by side issues. He desired to keep the Union intact, but he preferred dissolution to slavery. It is inevitable that to stand the strain of such a life a strong physique and a clear brain are necessary. These Garrison inherited from his parents, who were poor people of Newburyport, Mass., where Garrison was born December 10, 1805. His first settled occupation in life began with his apprenticeship in the printing-office of the newspaper of his town. After completing his apprenticeship he was for a time the owner and editor of the Newburyport "Free Press," and in its columns entered upon the great struggle to which he devoted his whole life. His journalistic enterprise did not prove a financial success, and after filling various positions in the capacity of editor, always devoted to the Abolitionist cause, he began, in 1831, supported by Arthur Tappan, the publication of the "Liberator," of which he continued as editor during thirty-five years. The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1843, and Garrison was elected president, a position he filled with his accustomed vigor until 1865. He had great influence in the election of Lincoln, especially in New England, where Lincoln was almost unknown. His style of oratory was acrimonious and bitter, as befitted the subject, but at the same time his speeches were logical and clear. The speeches here given, "On the Death of John Brown" and "The Union and Slavery," are good examples of his speeches in the anti-slavery cause. After the war a large purse was made up for Garrison by his friends, which enabled him to spend the remainder of his life in comparative ease. He died May 24, 1879. ON THE DEATH OF JOHN BROWN Delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, December 2, 1859 G OD forbid that we should any longer continue the accomplices of thieves and robbers, of men-stealers and women-whippers! We must join together in the name of freedom. As for the Union-where is it and what is it? In one-half of it no man can exercise freedom of speech or the press-no man can utter the words of Washington, of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry-except at the peril of his life; and Northern men are everywhere hunted and driven from the South if they are supposed to cherish the sentiment of freedom in their bosoms. We are living under an awful despotismthat of a brutal slave oligarchy. And they threaten to leave us if we do not continue to do their evil work, as we have hitherto done it, and go down in the dust before them! Would to heaven they would go! It would only be the paupers clearing out from the town, would it not? But, no, they do not mean to go; they mean to cling to you, and they mean to subdue you. But will you be subdued? I tell you our work is the dissolution of this slavery-cursed Union, if we would have a fragment of our liberties left to us! Surely between freemen, who believe in exact justice and impartial liberty, and slaveholders, who are for cleaning down all human rights at a blow, it is not possible there should be any Union whatever. "How can two walk together except they be agreed?" The slaveholder with his hands dripping in blood-will I make a compact with him? The man who plunders cradles-will I say to him, "Brother, let us walk together in unity"? The man who, to gratify his lust or his anger, scourges woman with the lash till the soil is red with her blood-will I say to him: "Give me your hand; let us form a glorious Union"? No, nevernever! There can be no union between us: "What concord |