protection, by the Federal Government, of each | England against the lives of the princes of France. 1 State against invasion from any and all sources, States. I predicate my argument upon the Constitution shall not argue the question of comity between foreigu and continued: The question then remaining is, what legislation is, necessary and proper to render this guaranty of the Constitution effectual? I presume there will be very little difference of opinion that it will be necessary to place the whole military power of the Government at the disposal of the President, under proper guards and restrictions against abuse, to repel and suppress invasion when the hostle force shall be actually in the field. But, sir, that is not sufficient. Such legislation would not be a full compliance with this guaranty of the Constitution. The framers of that instrument meant more when they gave the guaranty. Mark the difference in language between the provision for protecting the United States against invasion and that for protecting the States. When it provided for protecting the United States, it said Congress shall have power to "repel invasion." When it came to make this guaranty to the States, it changed the language, and said the United States shall "protect" each of the States against invasion. In the one instance, the duty of the Government is to repel; in the other, the guaranty is that they will protect. In other words, the United States are not permitted to wait until the enemy shall be upon your borders; until the invading army shall have been organized and drilled and placed in march with a view to the invasion; but they must pass all laws necessary and proper to insure protection and domestic tranquillity to each State and Territory of this Union against invasion or hostilities from other States and Territories. by which we are governed, and which we have sworn to obey, and demand that the Constitution be executed in good faith so as to punish and suppress every combina tion, every conspiracy, either to invade a State or to molest its inhabitants, or to disturb its property, or to subvert its institutions and its government. I believe this can be effectually done by authorizing the United States courts in the several States to take jurisdiction of the offense, and punish the violation of the law with appropriate punishments. It cannot be said that the time has not yet arrived for such legislation. It cannot be said with truth that the Harper's Ferry case will not be repeated, or is not in danger of repetition. It is only necessary to inquire into the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry outrage, and ascertain whether those causes are yet in active operation, and then you can determine whether there is any ground for apprehension that that invasion will be repeated. Sir, what were the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry outrage? Without stopping to adduce evidence in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harper's Ferry doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, as crime was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the explained and enforced in their platform, their partisun presses, their pamphlets and books, and espe cially in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress. (Applause in the galleries.) And, sir, inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States confers upon Congress the power coupled with the duty of protecting each State against external aggression, and inasmuch as that includes the power of suppressing and punishing conspiracies in one State against the institutions, property, people, or government of every other State, 1 desire to carry out that power vigorously. Sir, give us such a law as the Constitution contemplates and authorizes, and I will show the Senator from New York that there is a constitutional mode of repressing the "irrepressible conflict." I will open the prison doors to allow conspirators against the peace of the Republic and the domestic tranquillity of our States to select their cells wherein to drag out a miserable life as a punishment for their crimes against the peace of society. Then, sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to use the military power when the actual case of invasion shall occur, but to authorize the judicial department of the Government to suppress all conspiracies and combinations in the several States with intent to invade a State, or molest or disturb its government, its peace, its citizens, its property or its institutions. You must punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in advance. There is no principle more familiar to the legal profession than that wherever it is proper to declare an act to be a crime, it is proper to punish a conspiracy or combination with intent to perpetrate the act. Look upon your statute-books, and I presume you will find an enactment to punish the counterfeiting of the coin of the United States; and then Mr. President, the mode of preserving peace is plain. another section to puni-h a man for having counterfeit This system of sectional warfare must cease. The Concoin in his possession with intent to pass it; and another stitution has given the power, and all we ask of Congress section to puni-h him for having the molds or dies or in is to give the means, and we, by indictments and construments for counterfeiting, with intent to use them.victions in the Federal courts of our several States, will This is a familiar principle in legislative and judicial pro- make such examples of the leaders of these conspiracies ceedings. If the act of invasion is criminal, the conas will strike terror into the hearts of the others, and spiracy to invade should also be made criminal. If it be there will be an end of this crusade. Sir, you must unlawful and illegal to invade a State, and run off fugi- check it by crushing out the conspiracy, the combinative slaves, why not make it unlawful to form conspiracies tion, and then there can be safety. and combinations in the several States with intent to do the act? We have been told that a notorious man who has recently suffered death for his crimes upon the gallows, boasted in Cleveland, Ohio, in a public lecture, a year ago, that he had then a body of men employed in running away horses from the slaveholders of Missouri, and pointed to a livery stable in Cleveland which was full of the stolen horses at that time. I think it is within our competency, and consequently our duty, to pass a law making every conspiracy or conbination in any State or Territory of this Union to invade another with intent to steal or run away property of any kind, whether it be negroes, or horses, or property of any other description, into another State, a crime, and punish the conspirators by indictment in the United States courts and confinement in the prisons and penitentiaries of the State or Territory where the conspiracy may be formed and quelled. Sir, I would carry these provisions of law as far as our constitutional powers will reach. I would make it a crime to form conspiracies with a view of invading States or Territories to control elections, whether they be under the garb of Emigrant Aid Societies of New England or Blue Lodges of Missvari. (Applause in the galleries.) In other words, this provision of the Constitutions means more than the mere repelling of an invasion when the invading army shall reach the border of a State. The language is, it shall protect the State against invasion; the meaning of which is, to use the language of the preamble to the Constitution, to insure to each State domestic tranquillity against external violence. There can be no peace, there can be no prosperity, there can be no safety in any community, unless it is secured against violence from abroad. Why, sir, it has been a question seriously mooted in Europe, whether it was not the duty of England, a power foreign to France, to pass laws to punish conspiracies in Mr. Mason, of Va., was chairman, appointed to [A special committee of the Senate, of which investigate the Harper's Ferry affair, ascertain the cause of the raid, and report what laws, if any, were necessary to prevent a repetition, reported near the close of the session, that the committee were unable to discover that any persons were either directly or indirectly engaged in the invasion, other than John Brown and those who. accompanied him to Harper's Ferry.] WHAT POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY HAS DONE. From Mr. Douglas' Speech in the Senate, May 16, 1860. That But, we are told that the necessary result of this doctrine of non-intervention, which, gentlemen, by way of throwing ridicule upon it, call squatter sovereignty, is to deprive the South of all participation in what they call the common Territories of the United States. was the ground on which the Senator from Misissippi (Mr. Davis), predicated his opposition to the Compromise Measures of 1850. He regarded a refusal to repeal the Mexican law as equivalent to the Wilmot Proviso; a refusal to recognize by an act of Congress the right to carry a slave there as equivalent to the Wilmot Proviso; a refusal to deny to a Territorial Legislature the right to exclude Slavery as equivalent to an exclusion. He believed at that time that this doctrine did amount to a denial of southern' rights; and he told the people of Mississippi so; but they doubted it. Now let us see how far his theory and suppositions have been verified. I infer that he told the people of Mississippi so, for he makes it a charge in his bill of indictment against me, that I am hostile to southern rights because I gave those votes. Now, what has been the result? My views were incorporated into the Compromise Measures of 1850, and his were rejected. Has the South been excluded from all the territory acquired from Mexico? What says the bill from the House of Representatives now on your table, repealing the slave code in New Mexico, established by the people themselves? It is part of the history of the country that under this doctrine of non-intervention, this doctrine that you delight to call squatter sovereignty, the people of New Mexico have introduced and protected Slavery in the whole of that Territory. Under this doctrine, they have converted a tract of Free Territory into Slave Territory, more than five times the size of the State of New-York. Under this doctrine, Slavery has been extended from the Rio Grande to the Gulf of California, and from the line of the Republic of Mexico, not only up to 36 deg. 30 min., but up to 38 deg.-GIVING YOU A DEGREE AND A HALF MORE SLAVE TERRITORY THAN YOU EVER CLAIMED. In 1848 and 1849 and 1850, you only asked to have the line of 36 deg. 80 min. The Nashville convention fixed that as its ultimatum. I offered it in the Senate in August, 1848 and it was adopted here but rejected in the House of Representatives. You asked only up to 36 deg. 30 min., and nonintervention has given you Slave Territory up to 38 deg., A DEGREE AND A HALF MORE THAN YOU ASKED; and yet you say that this is a sacrifice of Southern rights! These are the fruits of this principle which the Sena tor from Mississippi regards as hostile to the rights of the South. Where did you ever get any other fruits that were more palatable to your taste or more refreshing to your strength? What other inch of Free Territory has been converted into Slave Territory on the American continent, since the Revolution, except in New Mexico and Arizona, under the principle of non-intervention affirmed at Charleston? If it be true that this principie of non-intervention has given to Slavery all New Mexico, which was surrounded on nearly every side by Free Territory, will not the same principle protect you in the northern states of Mexico when they are acquired, since they are now sur rounded by Slave Territory; are several hundred miles further South; have many degrees of greater heat; and have a climate and soil adapted to Southern products? Are you not satisfied with these practical results? Do you desire to appeal from the people of the Territories to the Congress of the United States to settle this question in the Territories? When you distrust the people and appeal to Congress, with both houses largely against you on this question, what sort of protection will you get? Whenever you ask a Slave code from Congress to protect your institutions in a Territory where the people do not want it, you will get that sort of protection which the wolf gives to the lamb; you will get that sort of friendly hug that the grizzly bear gives to the infant. Appealing to an Anti-Slavery Congress to pass laws of protection, with a view of forcing Slavery upon an unwilling and hostile people! Sir, of all the mad schemes that ever could be devised by the South, or by the enemies of the South, that which recognizes the right of Congress to touch the institution of Slavery either in States or Territories, beyond the single case provided in the Constitution for the rendition of fugitive Slaves, is the most fatal.-Appendix to Congressional Globe, page 314. THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. A SPEECH BY WILLIAM H. SEWARD, FELLOW-CITIZENS: The unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me, show that you are earnest men and such a man am I. Let us, therefore, at least for a time, pass by all secondary and collateral questions, whether of a personal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of the present canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, the party which wears that attractive name, is in possession of the Federal Government. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss it from its high trust. this new continent as an engine of conquest, and for the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South America, Central America, Louisiana, and Mexico. Its legitimate fruits are seen in the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy, which now pervade all Portuguese and Spanish America. The free-labor system is of German extraction, and it was established in our country by emigrants from Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. We justly ascribe to its influences the strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom which the whole American people now enjoy. One of the chief elements of the value of human life is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The slave system is not only intolerant, unjust, and inhuman toward the laborer, whom, only because he is a laborer, it loads down with chains and converts into merchandise, but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only because he is a laborer from necessity, it dethe community because it cannot enslave and convert him into merchandise also. It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper and flourish or droop and decline in just the degree that they practice or neglect to practice the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of men, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent. The main subject, then, is, whether the Democractic party deserves to retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against that party, or by prepossessions in favor of its adversary; for I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue. Our country is a theatre, which exhibits in full opera-nies facilities for employment, and whom it expels from tion, two radically different political systems; the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen. The laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or less purely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The principle of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed, is necessarily unintellectual, groveling, and base; and that the laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State, ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bondage. You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two, and that once it was universal. The emancipation of our own ancestors, Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of five hundred years. The great melioration of human society which modern times exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the system of voluntary labor for the old one of servile labor, which has already taken place. This African slave system is one which, in its origin and in its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habits of the races which colonized these States, established civilization here. It was introduced on | The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment, and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole State. In States where the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, secure all political power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy. In States where the free-labor system prevails, universal suffrage necessarily obtains, and the State inevitably becomes, sooner or later, a republic or democracy. Russia yet maintains Slavery, and is a despotism. Most of the other European States have abolished Slavery, and adopted the system of free labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systems which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europe would ultimately be either all Cossack or all Republican. Never did human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous-they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this impossibility, from the irreconcilable contrast between their great principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every state in Europe. Free labor has supplanted it everywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities developed in modern times, are now obliging even those two nations to encourage and empl y free labor; and already, despotic as they are, we find them engaged in abolishing Slavery. In the United States, Slavery came into collision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fell before it in New-England, New-York, NewJersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it effec-over, in order that these modifications might not altotually, aud excluded it for a period yet undetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act a choice of the one and an exclusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war, if necessary. The Slave States, without law, at the last national election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, even the casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United States supposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system in new States. Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended net-work of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming in o closer contact, and collision results. whole structure of Government broadly on the principle It is not to be denied, however, that thus far the course of that contest has not been according to their humane anticipations and wishes. In the field of federal politics, Slavery, deriving unlooked-for advantages from commercial changes, and energies unforeseen from the facilities of combination between members of the slaveholding class and between that class and other property classes, early Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who rallied, and has at length made a stand, not merely to rethink that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of in-tain its original defensive position, but to extend its sway terested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, throughout the whole Union. It is certain that the slavemistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible con- holding class of American citizens indulge this high ambiflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it tion, and that they derive encouragement for it from the means that the United States must and will, sooner or rapid and effective political successes which they have later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or already obtained. The plan of operation is this: By conentirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice tinued appliances of patronage and threats of disunion, fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of they will keep a majority favorable to these designs in the Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Senate, where each State has an equal representation. Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legiti-Through that majority they will defeat, as they best can, mate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and the admission of Free States, and secure the admission of wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New-York must again Slave States. Under the protection of the Judiciary, they be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to will, on the principle of the Dred Scott case, carry Slavery the production of slaves, and Boston and New-York be- into all the Territories of the United States now existing, come once more markets for trade in the bodies and and hereafter to be organized. By the action of the Presouls of men. It is the failure to apprehend this great sident and the Senate, using the treaty-making power, they truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at will annex foreign slaveholding States. In a favorable final compromise between the Slave and Free States, conjuncture they will induce Congress to repeal the act of and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all 1808, which prohibits the foreign slave-trade, and so they such pretended compromises, when made, va.n and will import from Africa, at the cost of only $20 a head, ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, slaves enough to fill up the interior of the continent. fellow-citizens, it is by no means an original or even a Thus relatively increasing the number of Slave States, they modern one. Our forefathers knew it to be true, and will allow no amendment to the Constitution prejudicial to unanimously acted upon it when they framed the Consti- their interest; and so, having permanently established cution of the United States. They regarded the exist their power, they expect the Federal Judiciary to nullify ence of the servile system in so many of the States with all State laws which shall interfere with internal or foreign sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, and commerce in slaves. When the Free States shall be suflithey looked upon the collision between them, which was ciently demoralized to tolerate these designs, they reasonthen just revealing itself, and which we are now accus-ably conclude that Slavery will be accepted by those States tomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that themselves. I shall not stop to show how speedy or how either the one or the other system must exclusively pre- complete would be the ruin which the accomplishment of vail. these slaveholding schemes would bring upon the country. For one, I should not remain in the country to test the sad experiment. Having spent my manhood, though not my whole life, in a Free State, no aristocracy of any kind, much less an aristocracy of slaveholders, shall ever make the laws of the land in which I shall be content to live. Having seen the society around me universally engaged in Unlike too many of those who in modern times invoke their authority, they had a choice between the two. They preferred the system of tree labor, and they determined to organize the Government, and so to direct its activity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For this purpose, and no other, they based the agriculture, manufactures and trade, which were innocent and beneficent, I shall never be a denizen of a State where nien and women are reared as cattle, and bought and sold as merchandise. When that evil day shall come, and all further effort at resistance shall be impossible, then, if there shall be no better hope for redemption than I can now foresee, I shall say with Franklin, while looking abroad over the whole earth for a new and more congenial home, "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." You will tell me that these fears are extravagant and chimerical. I answer, they are so; but they are so only because the designs of the slaveholders must and can be defeated. But it is only the possibility of defeat that renders them so. They cannot be defeated by inactivity. There is no escape from them, compatible with non-resistance. How, then, and in what way, shall the necessary resistance be made? There is only one way. The Democratic party must be permanently dislodged from the Government. The reason is, that the Democratic party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders, which I have described. Let me be well understood. I do not charge that the Democratic candidates for public office now before the people are pledged to, much less that the Democratic masses who support them really adopt, those atrocious and dangerous designs. Candidates may, and generally do, mean to act justly, wisely, and patriotically, when they shall be elected; but they become the ministers and servants, not the dictators, of the power which elects them. The policy which a party shall pursue at a future period is only gradually developed, depending on the occurrence of events never fully foreknown. The motives of men, whether acting as electors, or in any other capacity, are generally pure. Nevertheless, it is not more true that "Hell is paved with good intentions," than it is that earth is covered with wrecks resulting from innocent and amiable motives. The very constitution of the Democratic party commits it to execute all the designs of the slaveholders, whatever they may be. It is not a party of the whole Union, of all the Free States and of all the Slave States; nor yet is it a party of the Free States in the North and in the Northwest; but it is a sectional and local party, having practically its seat within the Slave States, and counting its constituency chiefly and almost exclusively there. Of all its representatives in Congress and in the Electoral College, two-thirds uniformly come from these States. Its great element of strength lies in the vote of the slaveholders, augmented by the representation of three-fifths of the slaves. Deprive the Democratic party of this strength, and it would be a helpless and hopeless minority, incapable of continued organization. The Democratic party, being thus local and sectional, acquires new strength from the admission of every new Slave State, and loses relatively by the admission of every new Free State into the Union. A party is, in one sense, a joint-stock association, in which those who contribute most direct the action and management of the concern. The slaveholders contributing in an overwhelmning proportion to the capital strength of the Democratic party, they necessarily dictate and prescribe its policy. The inevitable caucus system enables them to do so with a show of fairness and justice. If it were possible to conceive for a moment that the Democratic party should disobey the behests of the slaveholders, we should then see a withdrawal of the slaveholders, which would leave the party to perish. The portion of the party which is found in the Free States is a mere appendage, convenient to modify its sectional character, without impairing its sectional constitution, and is less effective in regulating its movement than the nebulous tail of the comet is in determining the appointed though apparently eccentric course of the fiery sphere from which it emanates. office had been filled by slaveholders thirty-two out of forty years. In 1836, Martin Van Buren-the first non-slaveholding citizen of a Free State to whose election the Democratic party ever consented-signalized his inauguration into the Presidency, by a gratuitous announcement, that under no circumstances would he ever approve a bill for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. From 1838 to 1844, the subject of abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia and in the national dock-yards and arsenals, was brought before Congress by repeated popular appeals. The Democratic party thereupon promptly denied the right of petition, and effectually suppressed the freedom of speech in Congress, so far as the institution of Slavery was concerned. From 1840 to 1843, good and wise men counselled that Texas should remain outside of the Union until she should consent to relinquish her self-instituted slavery; but the Democratic party precipitated her admission into the Union, not only without that condition, but even with a covenant that the State might be divided and reorganized so as to constitute four Slave States instead of one. In 1846, when the United States became involved in a war with Mexico, and it was apparent that the struggle would end in the dismemberment of that republic, which was a non-slaveholding power, the Democratic party rejected a declaration that Slavery should not be established within the territory to be acquired. When, in 1850, governments were to be instituted in the Territories of California and New-Mexico the fruits of that war, the Democratic party refused to admit New-Mexico as a Free State, and only consented to admit California as a Free state on the condition, as it has since explained the transaction, of leaving all of New-Mexico and Utah open to Slavery, to which was also added the concession of perpetual Slavery in the District of Columbia, and the passage of an unconstitutional, cruel, and humiliating law, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, with a further stipulation that the subject of Slavery should never again be agitated in either chamber of Congress. When, in 1854, the slaveholders were contentedly reposing on these great advantages, then so recently won, the Democratic party, unnecessarily, officiously, and with superserviceable liberality, awakened them from their slumber, to offer and force on their acceptance the abrogation of the law which declared that neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist within that part of the ancient territory of Louisiana which lay outside of the State of Missouri, and north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30 min, of north latitude-a law which, with the exception of one other, was the only statute of Freedom then remaining in the Federal code. In 1856, when the people of Kansas had organized a new State within the region thus abandoned to Slavery, and applied to be admitted as a Free State into the Union, the Democratic party contemptuously rejected their petition and drove them, with menaces and intimidations, from the halls of Congress, and armed the President with military power to enforce their submission to a slave code, established over them by fraud and usurpation. At every subsequent stage of the long contest which has since raged in Kansas, the Democratic party has lent its sympathies, its aid, and all the powes of the Government which it controlled, to enforce slavery upon that unwilling, and injured people. And now, even at this day, while it mocks us with the assurance that Kansas is free, the Democratic party keeps the State excluded from her just and proper place in the Union, under the hope that she may be dragooned into the acceptance of Slavery. The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a Supreme Judiciary, fixed in its interest, a dec.ee that Slavery exists by force of the Constitution in eve. y Territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority either within the Territory, or residing in Congress. To expect the Democratic party to resist Slavery and favor Freedom, is as unreasonable as to look for Protestant missionaries to the Catholic Propaganda of Rome. The history of the Democratic party commits it to the policy of Slavery. It has been the Democratic party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its preSuch is the Democratic party. It has no policy, State sent alarming culmination. Without stopping to ascertain, or Federal, for finance or trade, or manufacture, or comcritically, the origin of the present Democratic party, we merce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the may concede its claim to date from the era of good feeling protection or even the security of civil or religious libwhich occurred under the Administration of President erty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest Monroe. At that time, in this State, and about that time of Slavery-negative, compromising and vacillating, in in many others of the Free States, the Democratic party regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality deliberately disfranchised the free colored, or African citi- and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the sen, and it has pertinaciously continued this disfranchise- only aristocracy known in the land. It professes fraterment ever since. This was an effective aid to Slavery; nity, and, so often as Slavery requires, allies itself with for while the slaveholder votes for his slaves against Free-proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign dom, the freed slave in the Free States is prohibited from voting against Slavery. In 1824, the Democracy resisted the election of John Quincy Adams-himself before that time an acceptable Bemocrat -and in 1828, it expelled him from the Presidency, and put a slaveholder in his place, although the 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 Demo cratic party has left only one yet to be consummated- | too conservative for others. As if any party ever foresaw the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave trade. race. Now, I know very well that the Democratic party has, at every stage of these proceedings, disavowed the motive and the policy of fortifying and extending Slavery, and has excused them on entirely different and more plausible grounds. But the inconsistency and frivolity of these pleas prove still more conclusively the guilt I charge upon that party. It must, indeed, try to excuse such guilt before mankind, and even to the consciences of its own adherents. There is an instinctive abhorrence of Slavery, and an inborn and inhering love of Freedom in the human heart, which renders palliation of such gross misconduct indispensable. It disfranchised the free African on the ground of a fear that, if left to enjoy the right of suffrage, he might seduce the free white citizen into amalgamation with his wronged and despised The Democratic party condemned and deposed John Quincy Adams, because he expended $12,000,000 a year, while it justifies his favored successor in spending $70,000,000, $80,000,000, and even $10,000,000, a year. It denies emancipation in the District of Columbia, even with compensation to masters and the consent of the people, on the ground of an implied constitutional inhibition, although the Constitution expressly confers upon Congress sovereign legislative power in that District, and although the Democratic party is tenacious of the principle of strict construction. It violated the express provisions of the Constitution in suppressing petition and debate on the subject of Slavery, through fear of disturbance of the public harmony, although it claims that the electors have a right to instruct their representatives, and even demand their resignation in cases of contumacy. It extended Slavery over Texas, and connived at the attempt to spread it across the Mexican territories, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, under a plea of enlarging the area of Freedom. It abrogated the Mexican slave law and the Missouri Compromise prohibition of Slavery in Kansas, not to open the new Territories to Slavery, but to try therein the new and fascinating theories of Non-intervention and Popular Sovereignty; and, finally, it overthrew both these new and elegant systems by the English Lecompton bill and the Dred Scott decision, on the ground that the Free States ought not to enter the Union without a population equal to the representative basis of one member of Congress, although Slave States might come in without inspection as to their numbers. Will any member of the Democratic party now here claim that the authorities chosen by the suffrages of the party transcended their partisan platforms, and so misre presented the party in the various transactions I have recited? Then I ask him to name one Democratic statesman or legislator, from Van Buren to Walker, who either timidly or cautiously like them, or boldly or defiantly like Douglas, ever refused to execute a behest of the slaveholders, and was not therefor, and for no other cause, immediately denounced, and deposed from his trust, and repudiated by the Democratic party for that contumacy. I think, fellow-citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time for the friends of Freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administration of the Government. Why shall it not be done? All agree that it ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent its being done? Nothing but timidity or division of the opponents of the Democratic party. Some of these opponents start one objection, and some another. Let us notice, these objections briefly. One class say that they cannot trust the Republican party; that it has not avowed its hostility to Slavery boldly enough, or its affection for Freedom earnestly enough. I ask in reply, is there any other party which can be more safely trusted? Every one knows that it is the Republican party or none, that shall displace the Democratic party. But I answer further, that the character and fidelity of any party are determined, necessarily, not by its pledges, programmes, and platforms, but by the public exigencies, and the temper of the people when they call it into activity. Subserviency to Slavery is a law written not only on the forehead of the Democratic party, but also in its very soul-so resistance to Slavery, and devotion to Freedom, the popular elements now actively working for the Republican party among the people, must and will be the resources for its ever-renewing strength and constant invigoration. Others cannot support the Republican party, because it it has not sufficiently exposed its platform, and determined what it will do, and what it will not do, wher triumphant. It may prove too progressive for some, and so clearly the course of future events as to plan a universal scheme for future action, adapted to all possible emergencies. Who would ever have joined even the Whig party of the Revolution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it would declare for Independence in 1776, and for this noble Federal Constitution of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or later? The people of the United States will be as wise next year, and the year afterward, and even ten years hence, as we are now. They will oblige the Republican party to act as the public welfare and the interests of justice and humanity shall require, through all the stages of its career, whether of trial or triumph. Others will not venture an effort, because they fear that the Union would not endure the change, Will such objectors tell me how long a Constitution can bear a strain directly along the fibres of which it is composed? This is a Constitution of Freedom. It is being converted into a Constitution of Slavery. It is a republican Constitution. It is being made an aristocratic one. Others wish to wait until some collateral questions concerning temperance, or the exercise of the elective franchise are properly settled. Let me ask all such persons, whether time enough has not been wasted on these points already, without gaining any other than this single advantage, namely, the discovery that only one thing can be effectually done at one time, and that the one thing which must and will be done at any one time is just that thing which is most urgent, and will no longer admit of postponement or delay. Finally, we are told by faint-hearted men that they despond; the Democratic party, they say, is unconquerable, and the dominion of Slavery is consequently inevitable. reply to them, that the complete and universal dominion of Slavery would be intolerable enough when it should have come after the last possible effort to escape should have been made. There would, in that case, be left to us the consoling reflection of fidelity to duty. I But I reply, further, that 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 prestige 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, notwithstanding all this, I know that the Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democatic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practiced 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 practice the life-inspiring principles 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 idea is a noble one-an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality-the equality of all men be fore 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 f.ee 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 perse veringly 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. |